Review: Heritage Hills Golf Resort (Part 1)

When I go to a new course for one of these review, I usually hope for the best. I hope the course will provide interesting design so that I'll have something to really dig into. More rarely, I hope that a course, if I can tell beforehand that it won't be the pinnacle of golf course architecture, will be offbeat and quirky, so that at the very least I'll have something to laugh at. The "so bad it's good" golf course, like Westminster National. I think, however, that my round at Heritage Hills Golf Resort, located in York, Pennsylvania, was the first time I was hoping for a golf course to be terrible.

I should explain: Years ago my younger brother played in the Pennsylvania state high school golf championship at Heritage Hills, and he hated the course. Hated it. I've heard multiple rants about how stupid and how difficult the course was, and after a while, my other brother and I developed a certain curiosity about it. How bad could Heritage Hills possibly be? Well, after a couple years of batting the idea around, I decided we should do something about it. So here we are, Heritage Hills. This should be an interesting review.

The first hole is a fairly long par 4 at 430 yards. The tee shot is blind and you definitely don't want to miss left. There's a bunker and O.B. to that side. The second shot is back down the hill to a wide and shallow green protected by two bunkers. Not a particularly exciting opening hole, but nothing terrible either.

Not much to see on the first tee.

Approaching the first green.

The first green.

The second hole is a par 5, but it's less than 500 yards so it's definitely reachable. Much like the first hole, the tee shot is blind. There's O.B. to the left, but other than that and some trees, there's no trouble on the drive. This isn't a wide fairway though, so you can't exactly swing freely. If you lay up, there's nothing to worry about, but there are bunkers left and right of the green. The green is pretty big, but it's got some decent slope to it, just like most of the greens at Heritage Hills. Once again, nothing particularly good, but nothing terrible.

Another blind tee shot on 2.

Approaching the second green.

The second green.

The third hole is another fairly long par 4, about 10 yards longer than the first hole. There's plenty of room out to the right to miss, and there's O.B., a very tall tree, and bunkers left of the fairway. Guess what side I decided to miss the fairway. Go ahead, guess. Anyway, provided you don't miss left like an idiot, the second shot is slightly uphill to a big green guarded by two bunkers with quite a bit of back to front slope, especially in the first half of the green.

The third hole.

The third green.

The fourth hole is a short par 4 at 325 yards, which is definitely not long but not really driveable. In fact, a good drive would end up in a bunker in front of the green, so laying up with a wood or long iron is definitely the way to go on this hole. Just avoid the big fairway bunker left of the fairway, it can easily cost you multiple shots. And for once, I'm not speaking from personal experience, I was merely an eyewitness. The green isn't large and you do have to carry it the whole way, so the second shot isn't easy, but still, this isn't a tough hole.

The fourth hole.

Approaching the fourth green.

The fourth green.

The fifth hole is where things start to get weird. Though this hole isn't too bad. It's a 170 yard par 3, but the green is way below the tee, so you don't need much more than a wedge to get there. There are no bunkers, but there's a small native area past the green that you don't want to end up in. And that's easy to do since the hole plays so short. The green itself is pretty undulating, with some severe slope from back to front, so staying below the hole is advisable.

The fifth hole.

The fifth green has plenty of slope.

The sixth hole is quite possibly the narrowest hole I've ever seen. Between the trees and steep dropoff left and the big hill right, there's maybe 20 yards of roughly level ground for a ribbon of fairway. But the hole is just over 300 yards, so if you think you can hit your driver in a straight line, you can go for the green. If you're not so confident, the hole is a simple long iron and wedge.

The exceedingly narrow sixth hole.

The sixth green.

The seventh hole is 510 yards, uphill basically the whole way. I'm not sure what the architect had against par 5s, but all three have blind tee shots. At least this one isn't dead straight through a chute of trees. There is O.B. left, but otherwise the fairway is pretty wide. A good drive will take the fairway bunkers right of the fairway out of play, as they're too far away to reach from the tee, but far away enough from the green that a lay-up won't go in them. The green is pretty typical for Heritage Hills, medium sized, two bunkers.

The seventh hole.

Approaching the seventh green.

The seventh green.

The eighth hole isn't so bad when you use anything other than the back tee, but if you are, have fun. From there, the tee shot to this par 3 is blind as there are trees directly between you and the green. And its nearly 240 yards long. We weren't playing the back tees, but even if we were, I think I'd have chosen not to use them here. From the other tees, this is a fairly standard par 3.

The eighth hole.

The eighth green.

The ninth hole is not as narrow as the sixth, but that's not much comfort. This hole is 420 yards, so you really do need to hit driver, and there's water right and O.B. very close to the fairway left. There's maybe 30 yards of room, and that's just not very much. That pond continues up to the green, and there's a bunker left as well. The green is large, but this is an extremely tough and not very good hole. And since we started on the back, it's a brutal finishing hole.

The ninth hole.

Some nice branding behind the ninth green.

Looking back at the ninth hole.

That's it for this week, next week we'll take a look at the back nine.