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West offers its share of tour-caliber par 5s
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Reno's Montrêux Country Club hosts the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open Aug. 3-9
Professional golfers love a good, juicy par 5. To each tour's longest hitters, a 580-yard hole is nothin'; they eat them alive with birdies and eagles and leave the scraps for the rest of us. And sometimes mere mortals grab those scraps and manage to make some low numbers of their own. Or not.
The two back nine par 5s at Augusta National, holes 13 and 15, are easily the world's most famous go-for-it designs, and more than one Masters has been won (and lost) at either of these tricky and beautiful holes. But every week on the PGA Tour, the par 5s have stories to tell, and they'll no doubt speak loud and clear of the strokes to be made up — or squandered — as Tiger and company play Warwick Hills in Grand Blanc, Michigan during the Buick Open, while a few hundred miles south, Greg Norman and a legion of seniors go for the U.S. Senior Open title at Crooked Stick in Carmel, Indiana.
Warwick Hills has hosted the Buick for 49 of its 50 years as a regular Tour stop, and is definitely old school-Midwest in look and feel — the kind of relatively flat, tree-lined layout found in California's Central Valley, both private and public; one must-play muni with a Warxick vibe is Sacramento's Alister MacKenzie-designed Haggin Oaks, which happens to finish with back-to-back par 5s). Warwick's longest hole is No. 7, a Par 5 of 584 yards that will still yield its share of birdies this week. It's the same similar deal at Haggin's 17th, which stretches to 561 yards into a prevailing Sacramento Delta breeze. Straightaway with a green tucked into a copse of old oaks, it's a green-light special, too, if conditions are right.
At Crooked Stick it's on No. 5 where architect Pete Dye pulls out the big guns, stretching the hole to 600 yards with a slight dogleg right with a small pond 300-plus yards from the tee and well right of the fairway. For the seniors it'll pretty much play as a three-shotter. There's a slew of such steroid-fueled holes to choose from in Northern California; on the public side, the brutal 18th at Sevillano Links near Corning comes to mind; it takes a huge drive and a 250-yard second shot to get anywhere near the green on that beast from the back tees. Ironically enough it was co-designed by John Daly, who's competing this week at Warwick Hills and won his first major, the 1991 PGA Championship, at Crooked Stick. As for thrilling private-side par 5s, the 8th hole at Montrêux Golf and Country Club in Reno — which will play as No. 17 in next week's Legends Reno-Tahoe Open — comes to mind. Dead-away and generally downwind over water to a wide fairway, the whole stretches to a whopping 636 yards at 5500 feet of elevation, making it reachable for a handful of pros in the 11-year-old tournament's field. Tiger won't be there next week, but many other guys playing in the Buick will make the trip out west. Check back right here for stay-and-play ideas around Reno-Tahoe should you decide to make the trip, too.
For more info on West Coast golf: www.fgmagazine.com
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