It’s rare to see a golf course that looks as though it’s always been there, but the front nine at Tot Hill Farm looks as though someone was cutting trees one day and came across a golf course. The front nine feels like Stranz wanted to get some work done while he waited for the bulldozer to get there. I’ll spare you the gory details of a hole-by-hole description (you can see an excellent flyover here) and hit the highlights. Somehow golf carts seem like the wrong conveyance – pack mules would fit right in. Tot Hill Farm was built long after Mean Joe Conrad wrote the book that would become Apocalypse Now, but as you make your way from the first tee down the winding maze into the forest canopy of the front nine I wouldn’t blame you if you felt the urge to keep looking over your shoulder. They, no doubt, like the rest of us, found what they deserved. I know nothing as to the fate of the less valuable animals. Long afterwards the news came that all the donkeys were dead. In a few days the Eldorado Expedition went into the patient wilderness, that closed upon it as the sea closes over a diver. ![]() My playing companion had more faith in his driver (and justly so), and was able to parlay that into a slightly better score, but since I would never play him straight up, I’m counting it as a moral victory. After an atrocious start, hitting driver off the planet on nos 1 and 2, I settled down, accepted my limitations, and ended up bunting my way around using mostly my hybrid and mid irons, escaping this 132-slope maze with the same score I’m happy to card at my 119-sloped home course. If you’re willing to be honest about your game you can navigate the course with remarkably little fuss. If you’re a little short or a little long, it’s a drop and at least one extra stroke on your card.īut if Tot Hill Farm is harsh, she’s also fair. At Tot Hill Farm you have to hit to targets. At many golf courses you can hit toward targets – if you’re a little short or a little long that’s okay, it’s a chip and a putt. ![]() Nearly every hole offers you several places to safely hit the ball, but if you don’t hit it to one of those places, my advice is not to waste time looking for it. A recurring theme during Master’s Week is that “you have to miss it in the right spot.” At Tot Hill Farm it’s very rare for there to be a good miss. If you watch any professional golf you’ll hear commentators talk about a “good miss”. In those 6,500 yards, Tot Hill Farm makes you use not only every shot in your bag, but something even more rarely called for in many designs: self-restraint. That’s practically a pitch-and-putt course by today’s standards, but I doubt that many will walk off the 18th green wishing for more length. For starters, it plays just 6,500 yards from the tips. That’s fitting, because Tot Hill Farm isn’t your average golf course. Ask anyone who’s played there and you won’t get a tepid opinion – the consensus is that you may love Tot Hill Farm or you may hate it, but you aren’t likely to forget it any time soon. ![]() Voted the 7th hardest course in America in 2007, Golf Digest gave it 4.5 stars in 20 and named it to their coveted list of Best Places to Play in 2010. I don’t know if these two gentlemen ever met, but after a day at Tot Hill Farm I’m positive that Mike Stranz and Dirty Harry share a philosophy: “A man’s got to know his limitations.” What’s important is the connection between “Cowboy” Mike Stranz and Clint “Dirty Harry” Eastwood. Thanks for playing, you can now forget that I ever mentioned Kevin Bacon. There’s a picture in the clubhouse at Tot Hill Farm of Mike Stranz sitting on a horse, wearing a cowboy hat, as he surveys the property that would eventually become Tot Hill Farm.Clint Eastwood got his start playing cowboy Rowdy Yates in Rawhide.Kevin Bacon was directed by Clint Eastwood in “Mystic River”.I think that I can connect Kevin Bacon, star of Footloose, to Mike Stranz, designer of Tot Hill Farm in Asheboro, North Carolina: Since you’re using the Internet to read this I’m sure you’re familiar with the game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”, where you see how quickly can you connect Kevin Bacon to any other actor in the world.
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