A Day on Kiawah
If you’re just an occasional golfer, don’t play the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island in South Carolina. In fact, if you’re handicap is over 10, maybe don’t try to keep score. This is a hard course. Not from a design standpoint only, but from a visual one as well.
The first hole, which is straight forward, short, and should be an easy birdie for most low handicappers who can overcome their nerves. Then over the seventeen holes that followed (aside from some par 3’s) there were forced carries on every tee shot. Plenty of the guys in our foursome went right into the fescue (made up of South Carolina sweetgrass, which had turned pink) but that was just the first thing that made the course hard.
Once you figure out where to hit the ball, you have to keep it on the fairway. Unless you can hit a 9 iron 150 or 7 iron 190, I cannot, if you find the rough, it’ll be a layup all day long. Many times, I hit what looked like a good tee shot that rolled into the rough, leaving me 200+ yards from the hole. On par 5’s, it was fine, but did cost me a few birdie chances. On the par 4’s, it meant laying up and scrambling. The rough isn’t high, just thick and nasty and my P-790 irons could not cut through without high swing speeds, which I don’t have.
Thankfully, I scrambled well and made many pars, some from one putts after decent, not great chip shots. The greens on the Ocean Course are NO JOKE. Many are raised so that if you miss it, you may very well be hitting a blind shot to the hole from 20 yards straight down. After making pars on the first 5 hole on the back nine, I put a ball on the beach at 15, not knowing where to miss (an important thing to ask your caddy), and then shot it back to the waste area on the other side of the course only to hack it up to the green and make double. Urggghhhh.
Back to the caddy, you should definitely use one, but I had a feeling these guys didn’t want to be out there making $200 per round by finding balls, calculating shot distance, and reading greens. My caddy that day was a former semi-pro golfer that played a few years on the Web/Nationwide tour. I hope he gets to play the course for free, it’s not cheap, but he seemed like he would rather be at home than carrying bags. I get it, just don’t want to feel like the guy helping me find my way when I’m playing wishes he was elsewhere.
That said, my caddy definitely helped on a few putts and always had the right club ready, most of the time I hit it correctly. If I was playing the course without a caddy, I would definitely need to play better. That is a reason I usually walk anyway, but having another person carry my clubs was a strange feeling. He was a shared employee for roughly 5 hours, but I never got to interview him. Next time…
The most amazing aspect of the Ocean Course, rated by the USGA as the hardest course in America (circa 2014), is that you can see the Atlantic Ocean on most holes. Definitely on the back nine, you can walk on the beach if you desire, or if you sliced a drive. The 19th hole (aka the Ryder Cup Restaurant) provided a 180º view of the ocean and the 18th green (made par) and was a welcomed respite after the round.
I was not expecting to be so tired after the round. My hands hurt. My feet hurt. I had a burnt neck. It wasn’t warm and the wind blew hard all day, but the subtle hills add the the high slope rating at Kiawah. I stayed fairly close to the fairway most of the day, yet after the round, I needed a massage. Didn’t get that.
Did have a blast, yet for the cost, it was not worth it unless you’re staying at the resort and receiving that discount. Hiring the caddie was not worth the expense other than finding my golf ball occasionally, which was fairly easy anyway as I stayed close to the fairway or completely off the grid. Save the $100+ and find your own ball. Also, at least in my case, I don’t like someone that I just met telling me what club to hit, IT’S ANNOYING.
That said, if I played the Ocean Course at Kiawah every week, I think I would shoot par (or close to it) on average; however, I’d probably rather live on Long Island and play Bethpage Black regularly. At least there, I’d be close to civilization, and I won’t have to “find my swing.”
