Road Trip!!! Golf 'Down the Shore' 2013

Dave Tutelman -- Nov 2, 2013

( Click on thumbnail photos to see full-size pictures )

We played Sea Oaks, Twisted Dune, and Eagle Ridge. The weather mostly cooperated, being unseasonably warm for the time of year, with lots of sunshine Monday and Tuesday. We did have some rain on Wednesday. Not enough to put a crimp in the golf, but we did notice it at times.

Sea Oaks


For our first day, we drove straight to Sea Oaks in Little Egg Harbor township. Well, we did stop for breakfast at a diner in Tuckerton, then proceeded to the course. We arrived almost an hour before our tee time, but the course was nearly empty and they let us go right out. Sea Oaks is a walkable parkland course, though we didn't walk it. (We had wanted to travel in one vehicle, and even Warren's van wasn't big enough for the four of us, our luggage, our golf bags, AND our pull carts. So we arrived resigned to ride. Anyway, this was the only course of the three where walking would have been permitted -- or even practical if permitted.)

To the left are Bruce, Rich, and Warren at Sea Oaks. And yes, Rich really is that tall.

We decided the course should have been named "Sea Pines", because it's much more of a south Jersey piney woods course than deciduous oak forest. In fact, it reminded me a lot of some of the courses at Pinehurst.

The fairways are pretty generous, and you can score well if you keep your ball under control. It is manageable from the 6300-yard white tees, even for us old guys. In fact, I had two birdies on the front nine myself.

But if you didn't strike it in the direction you wanted, you could leave yourself with nothing but a punch-out -- which pretty much describes my back nine. And there are enough places where you must not just aim at the fairway but place your ball. If you don't, the the next shot might be a lot more difficult, or you might catch one of the [relatively few] fairway bunkers in the middle of the fairway.

The course condition was good. The greens were faster than our Monmouth County greens, and the bunkers had very playable sand. We liked the course and would come here again, even just for a winter day trip. (It's less than an hour from where we live.)

Twisted Dune

 Tuesday morning we drove more than a half hour to Twisted Dune outside Atlantic City.

I love this course! It is the hardest course we played the three days, both in reality and sheer intimidation factor. You have to hit the fairways; the rough is juicy and limits your next shot. The rough is also relatively narrow; get more than a few yards off the fairway, and you have to deal with big, nasty bunkers and tall tufts of sea grasses where you probably won't find your ball. Even if you keep it in the fairway, it plays long. Even though the white tees are 6332 yards (no longer than Sea Oaks or, for that matter, Howell Park or Hominy Hill at home), we found it hard to reach the par-fours in regulation. The fairways were tight and usually not straight. A decent drive might not have a sight line to the green at all; the sight line would require a perfect drive. Bottom line: it's challenging and a lot of fun, but I didn't score well at all. (I did break 100, but not by much. Of course, six strokes worth of penalties didn't help.)

Here's Warren, Bruce and Rich. And at the right is the sort of stuff your ball might wander into if it gets past the rough or just off the cart path. The course is full of shots where you wonder if you will run out of fairway and wind up with an unplayable or even lost ball; for instance, keeping the ball in the safe right half of the fairway in the picture at the left. (We can't reach the trouble from the tee, but it doesn't look like it. That is part of the visual intimidation.)

There is a local rule on the scorecard: "Cart paths are an integral part of the course. No relief." Shades of Match Play Madness! But it makes sense, and is actually an advantage. The cart paths are sandy waste areas, not paved; a lie in the cart path is usually a better deal than one just off the path. On one occasion, my second shot to a [blind] par-4 went through the fairway and came to rest in the cart path about 50 yards from the green. The ball was sitting cleanly on fairly hard sand. Any drop from the path (were relief allowed) would have been an infinitely worse lie in the tall grass. I hit a downward stroke with a sand wedge -- ball first then sand -- and put the ball on the green and fairly close to the hole, for one of my few pars of the day.

Here are some more looks at Twisted Dune.

Eagle Ridge

Our final round was at Eagle Ridge, halfway back home. It would have been nice if we decided we liked it, because it is a relatively short drive from home. But it turned out to be a rather ordinary parkland course. At any rate, the front nine (the "Pines" nine; they have 27 holes) was ordinary. Nice, but no more so than any of the better Monmouth County courses.

Our back nine (the "Links" nine) is a cut below that. Not many trees, and none of us liked what they did with the very hilly terrain. I do like hilly courses; RSG Pittsburgh is one of my favorite events. But I just didn't like the architecture of this mountain nine; it's too tricked up. On top of that, it is about a half-mile cart ride out to the first hole of Links, and another half mile from the final hole back to the clubhouse. The whole thing is reminiscent of the new nine at Butlers, which my RSG crowd refuses to play after trying it twice: a long ride out to a poorly designed, only-cart-golf nine, followed by a long ride back. Or perhaps (for both Eagle Ridge and Butlers) it wasn't a design problem; maybe the terrain was such that building a good nine is impossible -- but they tried anyway.

The good news is that they sent us out when we arrived, even though we were early. We played in a bit of on-and-off drizzle (one of the reasons I have no pictures), but it wasn't too uncomfortable.

Obligatory sunset pictures

One or more sunset pictures seem to be part of [almost?] every trip writeup. Maybe it's because there is so much opportunity to see beautiful colors in the sky over the bay, right down the block from Warren's house.

We took a walk across the island (a whole three blocks) to the ocean beach. The rosy color of the sand and sky told me we were about to have a spectacular sunset. I hoofed back to the bay side with my camera for a better look.

The houses along the bay were definitely showing the red illumination. I hung around for a while, and watched the sun go down on the mainland side of the bay. And I was rewarded with some really good pictures.



Last modified 11/2/2016