Favorite Holes in Golf: #4, Willowdale Golf Club

Today, I’m taking readers back to a place near and dear to my heart: Willowdale Golf Club in Scarborough, Maine. One of the only courses I’ve belonged to, Willowdale was home turf throughout high school. In the fall, the course hosted Scarborough Red Storm home golf matches. Despite being in the mold of a what-you-see-is-what-you-get public course, it offered certain advantages to those who played it most.

Most of the course is set up like a grid, with fairways lying parallel to each other, separated by modest tree lines. I’d never advocate playing down the wrong fairway as a golfer, especially in a match, but Willowdale’s layout afforded scramblers that option on a number of holes. One of those holes was the fourth.

A short, 349-yard par 4, the fourth hole at Willowdale is a soft dogleg right. The green isn’t visible from the tee box and the fairway is at its widest about 225 yards out. The easiest way to play it is to take a hybrid or a long iron out the bag and put your first shot somewhere in the fairway because there’s plenty of it. But for most, there’s too much temptation not to whip out the big stick.

For longer players, blasting driver makes birdie more realistic, assuming accuracy off the tee is on point. Ideally, a player can take aim down the right side of the fairway and cut the corner, taking about 20 yards off the hole and leaving a little pitch to a relatively flat green. The other option with a driver is to take aim dead straight at the fairways widest point and take the trees down the right side out of the equation completely, leaving about 75 to 100 yards in. But both strategies present problems.

If a player takes the most aggressive line down the right side, a mishit could clip a tree and force a punchout on the next shot. If a player chooses to try to hit it as far as s/he can down the left-middle of the fairway, there’s the danger of snap-hooking one into the pines on the left. Suddenly, a hole that should be a fairly manageable par and round-settler, turns into a grind for bogey. But all is not lost if an aggressive tee shot goes awry.

If you’re going to mishit your tee shot on the fourth, the bigger the hook or slice the better. Because of the grid set up, a player taking aim down the right side can overcook a shot into the middle of the par 3 fifth hole. If a player’s comfortable getting the ball elevated with a mid-iron, par is still conceivable. Depending on wind and pin placement (and a little bit of luck), a player in this situation might not even have to rule out birdie. For players who make a mistake playing down the left side, there’s room to pull or push a shot 50 yards left of the target and scramble from the third fairway.

Speaking from experience, it’s more comfortable to play from the third fairway than the fifth. There’s almost no chance for birdie but it’s hard to come away with worse than a bogey, assuming a decent second shot that gets things back on track. Playing from the fifth gives players more hope at hitting a green in regulation, but the trees are harder to clear and there are more variables to consider. If there’s too much wind in a player’s face from the fifth fairway, clearing the trees and holding the green are tall tasks on a second shot. Realistically, a player is more likely to come up short, land in the woods, and be forced to punch out for their third, bringing double bogey into play.

Again, this is golf. It’s only as tough as a player makes it. Willowdale was a great home course because it gave scramblers like myself a chance to compete outside my class. A scrambling 12 handicap can hit the ball sideways at Willowdale and still compete with a 7 handicapper just by knowing when and where to take risks and how to get out of trouble efficiently. I loved the fourth hole because par or bogey was almost always guaranteed, no matter how far I strayed off the tee.