Post by Richie3Jack on Jun 3, 2010 11:43:53 GMT -5
Seven Oaks is a course I played many of high school and junior golf tournaments at and was usually the course that we played to qualify for the NY State High School Championship. You can check it out at www.sevenoaksgolf.com.
Seven Oaks is located just off of Colgate University which is a prestigious university roughly located in the middle of nowhere. However, Robert Trent Jones designed a fantastic golf club here that has hosted several big tournaments like an old Ben Hogan Tour (now the Nationwide Tour), US Open Qualifiers and NCAA Championship qualifiers. It plays to 6,915 yards from the back tees (I believe they have lengthened the course since my last playing there) and has a 143 slope. And when I played there, it was home to the best lunch and a milkshake, ever.
The course is moderately hilly, but usually has very deep rough, lightning fast greens and is filled with strategy. For some reason, I almost always played fantastic there, including a 68 in a money match with a couple of my buddies there. Granted, that was in the summer when the course may be about 5 shots easier than in the spring or the fall because of the better weather and harder ground.
It's a course filled with a lot of pretty easy holes and then very tough ones and the key is to survive the tough ones, know when to just punch it out of the rough and really tear up the easy holes. Both sides play about the same in difficulty, but for me I'd say the back side is a tad easier.
It's also got one of the toughest starting holes I've ever played. The first hole has a creek that winds thru the fairway and the goal is to get it as close to the creek as possible, but still finding the narrow fairway. I've hit everything up to a 2-iron into the creek if the wind is blowing and then hit a driver that wound up 70 yards short with the cold north wind blowing in my face. But to its credit, this was probably the first course where I started to realize about focusing on the process (not making double bogeys, hitting a certain amount of GIR, etc) and not the score.
The best holes on the course are #5, #7, #10, #15 and #18. The weaker holes are #4 and #13.
Here's a look at the scorecard:
www.sevenoaksgolf.com/golf-course/score-card
The longest golfer I ever played with was a guy named Dan. I had a buddy who was playing a tournament here and I followed him and Dan around. Playing off the maroon tees, I saw the following from Dan:
- He drove #3.
- He just missed driving #4
- He put it in the greenside bunker off the tee on #6
- He was 30 yards away from the green on #16
Yes, he did have some strong tailwinds there, but this was also in the time of metal heads and balata golf balls, and he was bordering on hitting some 400 yard drives.
Anyway, my favorite hole on the course is probably #5. It typifies the design of the course as it requires a solid and accurate drive and then has a perfectly placed creek that just comes into play on the 2nd shot and tests the guts and precision of the golfer.
Overall just an excellent golf course that is well worth the money to play. And what else are you going to do in Hamilton, NY?
3JACK
