Best seen in a rearview mirror

When you've played a course 50 to 60 times during a two-year period you often gain confidence about playing certain holes that at first gave you problems. This was the case for Oldgolfdawg when he had season passes to New Albany Links back in 2001 and 2002.

On the front nine, Nos. 1, 2 and 9 often proved to be problematic, but eventually the hurdles they presented seemed to shrink. That phenomenon never occurred, however, for No. 12, a 406-yard par 4 dogleg left, and for that reason it is the eighth member of Oldgolfdawg's Elegant Eighteen.

Off its tee, the golfer wants to hit a 240- to 250-yard drive to the center or just left of center of a fairway that climbs a slight hill before it flattens out. The tee shot must carry a creek the runs across the fairway about 160 yards from the tee box. The right-handed golf must avoid pulling the drive or hitting a big draw because the fairway at the top of a slight rise drops off sharply to the left into a sand trap or worse, a pond that protects the front of a sliver-like green. Poorly hit drives to the left that manage to carry the creek often funnel into the aforementioned pond. Drives that fade to the right usually settle down in a nasty rough and make the second shot over the pond protecting the green very dicey. Big hitters who hit through the left-hand turn of the fairway, can end up in a bunker, making a second shot over water an adventure one might think twice about embarking on.

The second shot from the fairway is downhill into a narrow green that is 50 to 60 feet deep from front to back and protected by a front right sand trap. It can be tricky, especially when hitting into the wind, which often is the case. Trying to be too fine with anything from a sand wedge to a 7-iron, Oldgolfdawg often tugged his approach shot or hit too much draw and saw his ball run off the left side of the green and down into a creek that runs along side it. After making that mistake once too often, Oldgolfdawg got into the habit of bailing right with the second shot and leaving himself a difficult chip to try to salvage par.

Although Oldgolfdawg did post a few birdies on the hole, they were few and far between. For the most part, he was just glad to have that hole in his rearview mirror with a bogey or better on his scorecard.

New Albany Links, designed by Barry Serafin and opened in 2000, plays 7,004 yards from its longest tees and is basically a private country club that the public can play. From the blue tees at 6,570 yards, it carries a rating of 71.3 and has a slope of 128.
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