Post by Richie3Jack on May 27, 2010 11:53:04 GMT -5
Caledonia Golf & Fish Club used to be an old rice plantation owned by wealthy businessman and his family. When the rest of the family argued over who would get the property that was mainly used for hunting and fishing, he decided to turn the property into a golf club and make a profit off it instead. The fish club still exists and still does fish fries (for the friends of the owners) and still serves Fish Chowder for golfers making the turn (which I wouldn't touch with a gun to my head).
Caledonia is a design of the late, great Mike Strantz and was his first course design. Strantz is probably the equivalent of Jackson Pollack when it comes to course design, often going outside the box of conventional course design theory. Strantz liked to lean more towards the artistic side of course design rather than the tradition form and function approach. This often created wonderful golf clubs, but also caused some real problems and some courses became impossible to shoot a reasonably good score on.
Like Pollack, who started off his art career as a very traditional painter, Strantz created a very traditional style course with his first project at Caledonia. The entrance is straight out of Mangolia Lane in Augusta and none of the holes are goofy or impossible just so they could be artistic.
But, there are signs of Strantz's propensity to worry more about beauty than to worry about form and function. For starters, there is no range. You hit into a net and if you want to hit range balls, you have to go to Caledonia's sister course, True Blue (another Strantz design) and use their range. Also, the 9th hole is about a 90 yard par-3, which looks like Strantz ran out of room and needed one more hole to design and all he had room for was this short knocker.
I would suggest that if you are to ever book a time at Caledonia that you ask to tee off on the first hole because Caledonia double tees (starts golfers off at #1 or #10) and the 18th hole is a great finishing hole, but #9 is a terrible hole to finish on.
Condition wise Caledonia is superb in the spring and fall, like most Myrtle courses and probably hits its peak condition in late March where the course is manicured almost to perfection. The greens have switched to Championship Bermuda. When I was there, they had standard bermuda greens and they were often slow and bumpy. With the championship bermuda they should be much slicker, but the undulations in the greens may make for some tough rounds.
I really like most of the par-3's at Caledonia as they have large teeing areas and large greens, so the course can present a new challenge any day on those par 3's where you can have a 3 to 6 club difference depending on the tee and pin placement.
My favorite holes are #3, #5, #6, #7, #8, #10, #11, #13, #14, #16, #18. The weak holes are #1 and #9.
My favorite hole on the course is #10. A long, but reachable in two par-5 that has a waste bunker and O.B right with the green hugging the right side. Two good shots, even a second shot that doesn't reach the green will provide the golfer with a much better chance at birdie. But the waste bunker, the pot bunkers and the O.B. make it a very good risk/reward hole.
Caledonia is filled with golfers who have great experience in traveling to top golf destinations. When I worked there, I had numerous golfers tell me that they liked Caledonia more than Pebble Beach. Now, I've never played Pebble so it's hard to quite agree with them, but the thought was usually that Pebble had those classic great holes like #7, #9 and #18, but Caledonia had more great golf holes throughout the course. Again, I'm not saying that it's right...but to be in the category of Pebble Beach is one of the highest compliments one can give a golf course and to the legacy of its designer.
3JACK