It's time for our Greens of Dreams series to start getting serious.
We left off last week at the halfway house, having completed the front nine with its final stretch of aggressive-or-conservative holes.
I don't know if you believe in mid-round momentum, but it certainly wouldn't hurt to have a lot of it as we begin the back nine.
This trio has a solid mix of yardages and elevation changes, and it places a premium on precision with approach shots into tricky greens.
You may remember that our ninth hole was the 14th at The Aiken Golf Club, a driveable par 4. Well, the back nine starts with the exact opposite.
Hole No. 10 — the seventeenth hole on the Hollow Creek course at The Reserve Club
There's just something about a monstrously long par 5, even an impossibly long one, that beckons the risk-taker in all of us.
Just look at the 17th at Hollow Creek, the ninth hole on the 10-hole layout that pro golfer Matt NeSmith calls "the hidden gem of Aiken".
Measuring at 650 yards from the black tees – 612 from the blues, but just 487 from the whites – this par 5 simply isn't reachable in two.
Typically, we gauge our second shot on par 5s based on how the drive went. If the green's reachable, we go for it. If not, we're either laying up to a comfortable yardage or hitting it as close to the green as possible.
Well, how about needing to crush two shots just to have a manageable third?
"You've got to hit three good shots there. ... That's all you can do," said Jake Carter, a former state champion at South Aiken who's now a junior on the Florida State golf team. "You've got to land it in a driving area that's not terribly big. And then your layup area is – it's not like an island, but it's separated by a hazard. You've got to hit three good shots if you want to make a good score."
The tee shot should be played down the left-center of the fairway to set up the second shot. Cunning Lake runs along the entire right side of the fairway, and a drive left of the fairway puts you up on a bank with the ball positioned well below your feet – or above them, for my fellow lefties.
From there, it's determining what you're going to have to hit to give yourself the distance you want on your third.
"The second shot is actually the toughest shot on that hole, because the fairway bottlenecks up to where you have to position your third shot," said Ryan Carpenter, Carter's T-Bred teammate who recently turned pro. "If you lay up short of that bottleneck, it's like 175 yards for your third shot. And nobody wants that for your third shot into a par 5; you want a wedge in.
"So it kind of forces you to hit 3-wood up there to where it bottlenecks. From then on in, it's not that bad. It's a little flip wedge onto the green. I think it's a great hole."
Hole No. 11 — the thirteenth hole at Palmetto Golf Club
Up next is "Cabin", the 385-yard par-4 13th at Palmetto.
The tee shot here, in theory, should be fairly straightforward. It better be, because the uphill second shot demands a precise iron shot to a green that plays tricks on your eyes.
A drive left brings trees into play, and one to the right could bring other golfers into play while also creating a difficult angle to a green that a lot of players like to play to the front-left portion. Distance control is key, too – the fairway bunker makes the second-toughest hole on the course a whole lot tougher.
"It's kind of a hole where if a really good player came to play it and they were really long, you could make that hole really easy if you can carry that left bunker," said NeSmith. "... It makes it a total risk-reward kind of hole.
"That bunker shot from the middle of the fairway is not easy. A pretty big lip, up the hill, and it's a blind shot so you have no depth perception, really. I can't tell you how many times I've hit shots to the back of that green that I thought were gonna be awesome, and I get up there and they're in between 14 tee and 13 green and I'm going 'Man, I am screwed.'"
And then there's the putting surface. Just like so many of the other greens at Palmetto, 13's simply doesn't do what it looks like it's going to do. And, like most every hole at Palmetto, missing the green can be a costly mistake.
"The problem is, you're hitting uphill. When you get on the green, it almost looks like the green slopes front to back. But it doesn't. It still slopes back to front," said Palmetto director of golf Brooks Blackburn. "So if you happen to hit it over the green, chipping back, it's hard to hold the green.
"So you wind up chipping it back down the front of the green. That's the problem with missing that green. And then, yeah, right's dead; you're in that little bunker. Yeah, you can hit it out on the green. And left, you're probably gonna hit it back into that bunker."
It's another favorite of golf legend Ben Hogan, the nine-time major champion and career Grand Slam winner who was awfully fond of Palmetto. According to Dick Taylor of Golf World, Hogan called No. 13 one of his 18 favorite holes.
Hole No. 12 — the sixteenth hole at The Aiken Golf Club
We're already in the downtown area, so let's take a short trip over to The Aiken Golf Club to to play one of the most charming golf holes you'll ever see.
The par-3 16th at Aiken plays as one of the easiest on the course, measuring 183 yards from the medal tees and 164 from the mids down the hill to a green protected by bunkers.
The drop in elevation can make this hole tricky if you're playing a shorter club. You ordinarily wouldn't expect to come up short on a downhill par 3, but I've watched many an 8-iron balloon above the trees before plummeting to the ground 15 yards short of the green.
It's just a beautiful golf hole, from the view atop the tee box to the stone steps down the hill. It's not incredibly difficult – even if you refuse to club up and keep leaving it short – and it's just enjoyable to play.
"You hit a good shot there, you've got a good chance to make birdie," said USC Aiken golf coach Michael Carlisle. "But if you hit a bad shot, par is still gonna be a good score there. But I think it's just an enjoyable, fun hole to play. I think it has a lot of aesthetic qualities to it, just the view from on top of the hill."
The stone steps are a perfect feature of a course that emphasizes its history and style of architecture. The pathway is literally buried treasure – it was unearthed during reconstruction work that club owner Jim McNair, Jr. took on around 20 years ago when the club transitioned from the Highland Park Golf Club back into The Aiken Golf Club.
"Just because of the picturesque nature, the beauty of the hole, basically," said McNair, who teamed up with Carlisle to win a state championship at Aiken High in 1975 before both headed off to play golf at Clemson. "The elevation drop and everything makes it neat."
