Ask the designers and professional reviewers of the world’s many golf courses and most agree that the best golf courses attain such reputations due to a few difficult to name factors. What is that “je ne sais quoi?” that the highest rated or most preferred courses have that others don’t? Let’s consider a few key points:
- Design: As one expert suggested, “look at the golf course through more ‘strategic’ eyes.” Ask yourself why designers might incorporate small greens or tighter fairways. Is it to ensure that every hole is a challenge not just of skill but the general knowledge of which club to use? Typically, the courses that players love but are not sure just why are also courses designed with lots of strategies carefully integrated into the overall pattern of the entire course.
- Condition: It is impossible to ignore the difference between a course that is the recipient of good upkeep and conditioning and one that is not, and yet many courses skimp on this and end up being less preferred by players.
- Routes: Does play follow the most organic and fluid course? For instance, what directions do the holes play? Do they work with factors like prevailing wind directions and are they of similar length?
- Diversity: Players can become bored if routes ask for ongoing short or long holes, and yet diversity also has to include more than a strategic design where routes are concerned. As another expert said, the best courses are those offering “mix of doglegs, straight holes, long and short ones, all playing in every direction possible.”
- Personality: Like people, a good golf course will have a distinct character or personality. The best of the best is a bit flexible from day to day and even over the course of a year or more. They are places that seem to react to the weather, the seasons and even the players.
- Architects: They are often the result of professional design done by architects specializing in golf courses, and because of that, they should reflect the designer’s vision. Most experts in this field will try to set the scene, and so that hazard that gives the player a sense of foreboding is a truly well-designed one.
If you are on the hunt for the best golf courses in Hunterdon County, Copper Hill Country Club offers all of those elements described above and is the result of the expert vision and dedicated staff performing top quality upkeep year round.
