Lake of the Woods GC, Locust Grove (Fredericksburg), Va 201129

Описание: Grade: B+
Cost: $40 for 18r Saturday 12:30pm
Slope: 135 6500 yds
This is a neighborhood woods course in the middle of a fairly old neighborhood that runs in a circle around a corner of a lake. You can't really see the lake, so don't think that you're going to see anything but houses. The course has Bermuda grass fairways and rough around the greens, but the fairway-rough is regular grass. Each hole is bordered by a lot of tall trees and there is OB bordering every hole with as little as 10 yards between the cart path and the OB in places, but normally it's about 20 yards with maybe 50 yards between the green and the nearest OB. It's a fairly tight course with a good deal of verticality. The course has really everything I'd ask for in a decent woods course except fescue, tall grass or waste and there is more than enough rough to play from on most of the greens. It's a tight course but not too tight. A good challenge off the tee but not too much of a challenge, with some trees in play overhanging the fairway in places, not a whole lot of room between the treeline and the line of backyards beyond, a good amount of sloping fairways up and across the line of the fairway (mostly left to right slope). A couple of holes with cars passing close by, but mostly it's pretty good with that. No planes flying overhead that I noticed. It's basically challenging enough from all the tees but not too tight as to be obnoxious. I also found the greens to be a good challenge with good speed and grass mostly on them...not perfect but definitely playable with good slope and they tracked well..

It wasn't anything outstanding, but it still played pretty well. consistently well from hole to hole, and for that reason I gave it a B+ with the understanding that it is only a tree-lined neigborhood golf course with a LOT of houses.

But nothing really looming over the course except on some of the greens.
And even then, no greens where you'd have trouble walking around the greens without walking in someones' backyard. It's a modest yet still challenging course, an eminently-playable course that didn't leave me bored halfway through it...definitely worth the $40 to play it.

I think that it would be a better course when the fairways are green and the trees have leaves, fewer trees on the fairway and more leaves on the trees. And since I couldn't find anything seriously wrong with it, and I found a lot of good with it, I went ahead and gave it a B+. Probably it's really somewhere between a B and a B+ but I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Let's put it this way, I went back and played the 9th hole again because it was so much of a challenge and it is just a straight ~400ydish hole from the back tee. In my opinion the course is a little under-rated at Slope 135, it is most definitely harder and better than some Slope 135 courses that I've played that were 300-500 yards longer, as many "long" courses reach Slope 135 because of their length, not their inherent difficulty.

Anyway this course is a good compromise between length and difficulty per hole. On several holes it was clear that the back tees had been moved-up behind the blues, so if you really need extra distance it's there. And the greens are probably going to be 50 yards from front to back, so the exact yardage depends on where they put the tees and the pins...on any given day, any given hole could be 50 to 100 yards shorter than the card-distance. If 6500 yds doesn't sound like enough for you then you can take risky "stroke-saving" shots since the course is so short & easy :)

Whether the course is 5500 yards or 7500 yards, you still have to make shots. This course does not have any real carries off the tee and that definitely is a minus. I think that it has more than enough variety & challenge to make up for that because a challenge of length can be matched by a challenge of width. It's easy to hit long & lose balls. It's damm hard to hit long into play. If the fairways & greens are tight enough you'll need multiple tries for each good shot. I wouldn't call such a course "a challenge". I'd call it "overwhelming". So would the average course-manager which is why you rarely see high-slope tees (over 130) because people "tin-cup" on them & stretch-out rounds. Anything excessive will cause that, not just total course-distance. You want to sit 6 hours on a course, play golf on a weekend. That is why I try to play during the week. You want a real golf challenge, try to understand what slope means with regards to a golf course and then find out what slope some of your favorite courses are and go from there. https://ncrdb.usga.org/

This is a legitimate slope 135 course. It's not a walk in the park.