Ohoopee Match Club

‍Favorite Hole

No. 9, Par 3.5, 334 yards

There are myriad options for this award at Ohoopee but a hole I kept coming back to is the short par-4 9th. It’s such a fun hole.

Long hitters are almost always going to go for the green. A perfect shot is up the right over the bunkers. Due to the pace of the turf (particularly in the winter) and firmness, a ball needs to land short and run up – go long and you will be faced with a brutal up and down. If you leak it right, every slope works against you. If you miss left, you’ll be way below the green level.

For a shorter hitter, laying up left leaves a really nice approach shot into the heavily contoured green.

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Overall Thoughts

There have been landmark courses in American golf history. The original Chicago Golf Club in Downers Grove served as the first golf club. National Golf Links of America transformed the trajectory of golf design into “The Golden Age.” Robert Trent Jones’s work at Oakland Hills in the early 1950s shifted design from strategic to penal. Sand Hills serves as a beacon that pushed architecture into the current minimalist era. Bandon Dunes reshaped the concept of resort golf.

One day, we may look back at Ohoopee Match Club as the place that changed private destination golf. I say this because over the past few years, I have heard countless developers use the refrain, “We are looking to build a club like Ohoopee.” They say this because Ohoopee pushed American golf boundaries with new concepts. For this profile, let’s focus on what makes the golf design work.

At the heart of everything at Ohoopee is the concept of an exclusively match play club. Architect Gil Hanse described the work of designing Ohoopee as “liberating.” By removing the strictures of total score to par, Hanse was able to construct more bold and risky features without worrying about players piling up big numbers or calling the fair police. With supreme playing conditions and a bold design, this makes Ohoopee an intoxicating place to play golf.

Ohoopee has 22 holes and they operate as two unique courses. The morning round you play the original 18-hole routing and in the afternoon, you play “The Whiskey Routing.” This routing drops the second, third, fourth, and fifth holes and adds the A, B, C, and D holes. Played in the afternoon of a 36-hole day, the Whiskey Routing is hundreds of yards shorter and facilitates quicker and easier rounds on the body.

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With match play as the only format, Ohoopee boasts many “half-par” holes. These holes are ideal for match play and can lead to a wide range of strategies and outcomes. Each of them invite bold plays, which is more likely when an individual score is not being tabulated. These holes, paired with daring greens, reward the executed aggressive shot. Hanse called his green design philosophy here as “creating greens within a green.” It leads to a ton of variety and allows holes to play dramatically different from different tee boxes and different hole locations. With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at the holes that would be classified as short par-4s or long par-3s on the morning routing.

Hole 4 – 342 yards

The first hole of the drivable par-4/long par-3 variety is the fourth. It presents a conundrum from the tee. The angular nature of the green makes driving it very difficult. The cross hazard eating up the left side obscures the ideal approach angle. It leaves players with two options: play ultra conservative or go for broke and attack the green, which is small and repelling.

Hole 8 – 252 yards

This long par-3 occupies some of the more dramatic topography on the course. Aside from a miniscule bunker, this green is wide open to a running shot. The green sits at grade and subtly runs away from you. Smaller misses to the right and left are greeted with doable recovery shots.

Hole 9 – 332 yards

As mentioned in the favorite hole section, the key features to look for at the ninth from a variety sense are the layup areas, achievable and open. Also notice the larger size of the green, especially in comparison to the fourth hole.

Hole 13 – 256 yards

This “long par-3” is a modified Biarritz. The front section is pinnable, which creates a very gettable setup as balls will halfpipe their way around the slopes. But the back pin is extremely challenging and requires supreme precision.

Hole 14 – 312 yards

A hole that does just about everything with simple green contouring. The large mounds on the left side of this narrow green drive all the strategy. Take on the waste area on the right and reap a big reward with helping contours. Bail left into the endless fairway and find the wrong side of the contour with a treacherous bunker on the other side of the green. While this green is small like the fourth, it’s set on a completely different angle to the line of play.

Ohoopee’s ground is subdued compared to many great courses. The movement up and down is minimal. This makes creating variety more challenging as there are fewer defining features that signal one hole being different from the next. It would be easy to design a bunch of short par-4s and long par-3s that look similar but Hanse was able to vary them through the greens and the hazards. This variety is what carries the course and makes it a place that you want to lap around all day.

2 Eggs

I’ve mulled over this ranking and decided to change it. The design and conditioning are top-notch. The land is not dramatic, but the excellence of its sand, along with the beautiful and varied flora and fauna around the course, make it fantastic for golf. I do have a critique, however, of the routing and pacing of the golf course. The walk between the first green and second tee is 200+ yards. In the first seven holes, you play three par 5s and a beast of a par 4. The round drags a bit overall. Often I find myself thinking, Is the whiskey routing better than the main course routing? If Ohoopee were truly a three-Egg course, I wouldn’t be asking this type of question.

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