The Best American Courses To Never Host a Major

Much has been made this week about "the pros not liking Liberty National" -- and perhaps they don't. My take is that if you put 10-12 million dollars on the line, and promised the winner a seven figure check, I think that the pros would play in a cornfield as long as it had eighteen sticks and a crowd of 20,000 fans to watch.

This is especially true if the tournament is a US Open or a PGA Championship. For any golf course, hosting a major is a badge of honor, one that cements something in the minds of the membership something very near and dear to their heart: the greatness of their golf course.

For most clubs, anyway. Above and beyond some of very best courses in the US are clubs that have courses so great that they are world-renowned works of golfing art. And unlike "lesser" clubs, their memberships' don't particularly give a damn if they get attention from the golfing world. In fact, it can be safely said that they would prefer they didn't. These courses ought to host major championships, but don't, and that's something of a loss to the game itself. What if, for example, St. Andrews was private and decided it was too much of a bother for them to host an Open Championship every so often?

Here are my top 3 American courses that should have a major on them, not that the members are asking me:

1. Pine Valley, Camden County, NJ

With a modest 155 slope from the championship tees, it is said that members say that no one with a handicap higher than 5 will break 100 their first time on the course, and that on at least one hole, that player will score a quintuple -- or worse. That is, if they were even invited -- a rare event indeed.

Pine Valley is one of the most exclusive pieces of real estate in the entire United States -- and it wants to stay that way. Never having hosted any major events (not to be confused with a Major) the reason most often cited is that there is not enough room for spectators on the property. Perhaps, but rhe only time the course ever received much television exposure was a 1962 Shell's Wonderful World of Golf match between Gene Littler and Byron Nelson.

2. Sand Hills Golf Club, Mullen, Nebraska

The web site for this course is blunt: "The Sand Hills Golf Club is a private facility and does not accept any on-line requests for membership information or tee times." In other words, if you ain't already a member, don't bother us, kid.

Established in 1995, and designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, this course regularly appears in the top 100 lists as well as the best new course in the last fifty years in the US. What it looks like is mostly a mystery to golf fans: the entrance road is some 55 miles long, making a stolen glimpse all but an impossibility. It has never (to my knowledge) hosted even a made-for-TV event.

As a club, Sand Hills is all about golf: there is only a tiny changing room -- no bodacious locker room with poker tables, a small clubhouse and no tee times. In fact, there are no clocks on the property. If you can play Sand Hills, you have the time.

3. Cypress Point, Monterey, California

Poor Pebble Beach.

Lauded as it is, Pebble Beach is not even the best golf course on the street it is on. That distinction would definitely belong to Cypress Point, the uber-private club down 17 Mile Drive from Pebble.

Cypress used to host tournament play up until the 1990's, when it was decided that the PGA's new diversity requirements were not amenable to the membership -- they felt it was they themselves who would decide who could be a member, and no one else. Rather than meet the PGA's requirements, they decided to drop out of the Crosby (now AT&T) course rota and keep their global Top 3 course all to themselves.

It is a shame, because this is Alistair MacKenzie's finest course -- better even than Augusta National. The reason for that? Augusta National doesn't lay hard aside the ocean, and Cypress Point does, giving it additional unmatched scenery and the additional element of seaside weather. On top of that, Cypress has pretty much stayed the way it was since it was built - a few tweaks here and there - and Augusta National has been re-engineered so many times that it is almost fair to say that neither MacKenzie or Bobby Jones would recognize the place were they to walk its fairways today.

This isn't the case with Cypress Point. It is what it is, and that is one of the top golf courses in the world, hands down, no additional discussion necessary. No one needed to "improve" the Mona Lisa by adding new paint when DaVinci finished it, and no one has needed to re-work Cypress Point. Perhaps that's because the pros don't bomb it with 330 yard drives, but then again, if the wind is up - as it is most days in the Big Sur - they would be unwise to do so anyway. If there is a heaven, and as a golfer you end up spending eternity there - it probably looks a lot like Cypress Point. But it has never hosted a US Open or a PGA Championship.

Get Your Picks In...

I am not a big fantasy-sports player, often to my friends' chagrin. Thing is, I am just too busy to spend a lot of time to be good at fantasy baseball or football. This, however, seems to be pretty easy, and I bet you might find it the same:

PGA of America Announces '09 Majors Fantasy Challenge

The PGA of America has launched The 2009 Majors Fantasy Challenge, an online fantasy sports league available exclusively on PGA.com where fans make picks for the four major championships and the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. Prizes will be awarded after each major championship with the grand prize of a trip to Bermuda for the 2010 PGA Grand Slam of Golf.

The prizes are nice, it's free and easy. Why not? After all, most of our NCAA brackets got torn up a week or more ago!

The Ladies At The Kraft-Nabisco Might Need Radar Detectors On The Greens

If you're a typical golfer, you've no doubt seen some fast greens in your time. In fact, some courses may even have a reputation for them. Faster greens put more pressure on your game because they reduce the margin for error, magnify breaks and can make things tougher all around for even the shortest of putts. Once those challenges get inside your head, look out...after all, too much thinking is a golfer's worst enemy. In championship golf, not having every bit of confidence over putts can make the difference between winning and losing, or even playing on the weekend. And that's what the LPGA players will be seeing this weekend at the Kraft-Nabisco championship that tees off today:

"The greens were rolling about 12 on the stimpmeter early in the week (a measure of how far a ball rolls out a notch in a stick on a flat surface) and someone even tossed out the possibility of the greens reaching 13 by the end of the week."

How fast is a twelve? As a recreational golfer, it's unlikely you've ever had to play greens that glassy. Here's a chart from the Turf Management school at Michigan State University to give you an idea of what a typical non-pro sees on their home course:

Speeds for Regular Membership Play (measured by Stimpmeter)
8'6" Fast
7'6" Medium-Fast
6'6" Medium
5'6" Medium-Slow
4'6" Slow

Speeds for Tournament Play
10'6" Fast
9'6" Medium-Fast
8'6" Medium
7'6" Medium-Slow
6'6" Slow

The main reason a superintendent doesn't keep greens at your club that quick are simple: many climates won't support it long-term in the summer. On top of that achieving fast greens on a daily basis requires more maintenance. Due to labor, material and equipment costs that makes it prohibitively expensive, and if anything is missed, or things go wrong the grass on the greens will die very quickly. Again, from Michigan State, here's a look into what is necessary:

Fast greens must be mowed more frequently. They must be verticut more frequently. They must be topdressed more frequently. Fertilization must be on a light and frequent basis. Watering must be done more carefully. Lower mowing heights needed to achieve fast greens also place the turfgrass plant under more stress. A reduced rooting depth can be expected under lower mowing heights. The shorter roots require more frequent irrigation and syringing during the summer to sustain the turfgrass plant. Shorter roots also reduce the grass plant's ability to recover from insect and disease attack. An increase in insecticide and fungicide use may be needed.

And if you're the super or the head pro, you can expect your higher handicap golfers to howl about how "unfair" the greens are. For example, on "Home" -- the 17th hole at Eagle Ridge, where I live, the green is a slope from left to right as you face it on the fairway, and Tom Kite and Bob Cupp, our course's designers, saw fit to put a false side along the right edge of the narrow green, with a 20-foot dropoff to a creek below that. Miss it right, you are dead, and in the water. A draw is a necessity, fades or slices are punished severely. I've seen dozens of golfers hit the green from the fairway only to watch the ball trickle off and roll all the way down into the gully. In fact, it is cheap entertainment to sit on our back deck and watch this happen over and over during golf season. And we've seen some incredible temper tantrums and flying clubs as a result. Can you imagine a green like that cut at tournament speed?

Pictured: Eagle Ridge's 17 Green looking back up the fairway. You can't see the drop off from the right side, but it looms over the top of the green in this picture. I call it "The Valley of Sin." Photo by Charles Boyer.