Post by Richie3Jack on Jul 5, 2012 8:32:36 GMT -5
Mission Inn Resort is located in Howey-in-the-Hills, Florida, just northwest of Orlando. It’s a resort area that has two 18-hole championship courses, El Campeon and Las Colinas. It is also the home to the world famous Gary Gilchrist Junior Golf Academy which was in full force practicing before we went out to play.
El Campeon was designed in 1917 by George O’Neil. It has a bit of an old school design feel to it with rolling fairways, undulating greens and 10 of the 14 par-4’s and par-5 having doglegs. In fact, their signature hole #17, aka the Devil’s Delight, is a double dogleg par-5. You can also sense the old school design as the 9th green does not route you back into the clubhouse and the tees and fairways for different holes are often very close to each other.
El Campeon plays at 7,001 yards with a 73.8 index and 136 slope from the back tees. While I think I would have had better luck playing here next time and if I was swinging better, I still view El Campeon as a very difficult course.
This is mainly due to the stunning elevation. The amount of elevation will surprise you as when you get to Mission Inn it appears to be just as flat as the rest of Florida. And the first 3 holes are rather flat as well. But, then you start to hit some extreme elevations. #4 (405 yards) goes directly uphill. #5 (450 yards) goes dead downhill. Then #6 (398 yards) and #7 (457 yards) follow the same route. Then #8 (190 yards) is off a very elevated tee. I then proceeds to flatten out again from holes 9 thru 12, only to have #13 (340 yards) mirror the extreme uphill 4th hole. Then #14 goes steeply downhill. After that it flattens out outside of #17 (Devil’s Delight) which has a little elevation to it.
For July in Central Florida, we found that El Campeon was in excellent condition. The fairways were nice and plush, which is somewhat common on good courses in the area in the summer because of the daily rainfalls. But the key was that the greens rolled at a legit 9 on the stimpmeter and were smooth. Typically in the area the greens can’t handle the heat to roll at a pace more than 7 on the stimp so many courses keep the greens very long to save the grass for the fall and winter.
Also, the pace of play moved along nicely. My dad and I played in 3 hours 15 minutes and the course was fairly busy. The staff was helpful and we got to see the cart girl on 5 different occasions combined with there being about 6 holes that had restroom areas and those areas were even designated on the scorecard.
Design wise I’m starting to become an even bigger fanatic of old school designers. Of course, the problem with old school designs is that they wind up being too short for somebody of my distance. But, if you can find a reasonable course yardage from a vintage designer, I find the course designs much more enjoyable and fair than what I see out of modern designers like Dye, Fazio and RT Jones.
El Campeon has a very old school Tour course feel to it. I found I could reach 3 of the 4 par-5’s in two shots (doubt I could reach #17). But, it would require 2 quality shots in order to do so. Two of the par-3’s were relatively easy (#2 and #15) and two of them were difficult (#8 and #12). And I generally found that I could be left with some Danger Zone shots on the par-4’s (#3, #5, #7, and #18), but I would not have more than 200 yards into those approach shots if I struck the driver well enough.
I think the easiest holes are #1, #6, #9, #10, #13, #14, #15, #16. I think the most difficult holes are #3, #5, #7, #8, #12, #17 and #18. A list of the best holes are:
#4: 405 yards straight uphill with a deceptive looking fairway that you must position the ball down the right side to have a shot at the green.
#5: Beautiful 450 yard par-4 off a very elevated tee into a rolling fairway and then an elevated green.
#7: Gorgeous 457 yard par-4 that doglegs a little bit and required a very well struck and position tee shot.
#8: Excellent 190 yard par-3 that has water hugging the right half portion of the green from an elevated tee.
#10: Dog leg right 570 yard par-5 with water all up the right side and a requires a good, gutsy second shot that can go far enough to carry the water up the right side, but will avoid some trees that are to the left portion of the fairway.
#14: Extremely downhill sloped 532 yard par-5 that doglegs right and requires a very tough tee shot, but if you can hit that tee shot you should have an iron into the green.
#18: Dogleg right, 431 yard par-4 over water.
The only holes I didn’t care for were probably #15 (135 yard par-3 over water, just pretty easy and I made birdie) and #17, the Devil’s Delight.
I’m generally not a big fan of double doglegs anyway. But like #6 at Eastwood, it has water in front of the green and I honestly doubt that I could ever make it past the water in 2-shots. Thus it becomes an automatic layup hole and takes the excitement out of the hole. I much preferred the other par-5’s, particularly #14, over their signature hole.
Overall though, we were extremely pleased with the course. Particularly since it only cost us $35 per person. And in reality, my grips against #15 and #17 were really nitpicking ‘you gotta criticize something’ critiques of the course.
When we were looking for a tee time, generally I do not like to pay more than $35 this time of year since there are so many good courses to choose from that charge less than that. Typically, Mission Inn charges $48 at the time we played (12:45pm). Even though we got the deal, it would have been well worth the normal rate. We usually are skeptical of course conditioning this time of year so we like to pay a lower rate and sometimes in Florida you never know what you are going to get design wise, but we could not have been happier with our experience.
In fact, I think it will only become more enjoyable the next time we play El Campeon as we’ll have a better feel for the course by then.
3JACK