Favorite Hole
No. 14, par 4, 483 yards
This demanding long par 4 is quite fun despite the scorecard yardage. Semi-blind off the tee, you can only see a line of bunkers guarding the right side and the crest of the fairway. Hugging the deep and steep sand traps will provide the most direct route to the hole and the best angle to the green. This approach is one of the most thrilling on the entire course, allowing long irons to trundle down the hill and onto the long and narrow peninsula green.
Illustration by Matt Rouches
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Overall Thoughts
While Hanse’s West Course is sleek and understated, the South Course is perhaps the direct opposite: ambitious and boisterous. The site has been manufactured in every sense of the word, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it can create some issues. However, I can confidently say this golf course is very fun to play and allows for creative shotmaking (as well as some heroics). The design itself has some merit and good intentions, but underdelivers on execution. Let’s break this enthralling course down with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good
Fazio and Davis’ South Course follows the modern trend of supreme width and playability. It’s designed in a way that creates some mental gymnastics for the stronger player while being highly playable for the weaker. Take the par-4 second. One can hug the water down the left and take on the penalizing diagonal cross bunker to push drives up towards the green and gain the best approach angle, or simply avoid it and play out right to a swath of fairway. While the right side creates a semi-blind approach to a green that falls away, it at least gives players the option of how much risk they are willing to take. This theme of optionality repeats itself throughout the round.
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Additionally, there are a few split-fairway par 5s – Nos. 4 and 15 – that will try to bait you into the heroic approach, as well as some splendid par 3s and a pair of exciting, driveable par 4s. The short par-3 third has some rambunctious green contours that put a premium on precision, and the brawny 17th boasts a Redan-like tilt, allowing for a variety of tactics off the 250-yard tee. Going for the green on the eighth and 16th can dispense both big numbers and circles on the scorecard. So yes, there is a lot of appealing, sound design, but it’s just not as elegant or seamless as one would hope.
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The Bad
Holistically overhauling an existing landscape gives you an unlimited creative flexibility that comes with some infrastructural disadvantages. You must completely recreate the way water drains and runs off the golf holes and their features. In simpler terms, you need a lot of catch basins. As for the South Course, they relied on these catch basins rather than using surface drainage or other clever engineering tactics that keep the course dry without the below-ground infrastructure. The main drawbacks of catch basins are the unnatural shaping required to guide the water to the drain and their effect on playability. You’ll see several cases of overtly sunken bowls in the fairways that are abrupt, unsightly, and gather balls to the same location. The 16th presents the most egregious example of this, but it is seen throughout the course. While this is sort of an inherent drawback of the ground-up, man-made construction method, it’s too prevalent and poorly applied to dismiss.
The 16th hole at Apogee South (Fried Egg Golf)The Ugly
While the reliance on catch basins may go unnoticed to the average golfer, the theatrical bunkering will not. Interestingly, multiple bunker styles and sand types were implemented across the course. Larger waste bunkers have jagged edges, tan sand, and floating grass islands, while the more common bunker has artificial turf edges, white sand, and very steep faces. These varying styles simply clash too much, creating a chaotic and unnatural visual. Perhaps over time they will settle into the landscape and appear more symbiotic, but the overall approach is questionable. There’s so much going on with the golf holes themselves that the extra whipped cream on top isn’t doing the course many favors.
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While the bad and the ugly sections can be considered nitpicks based on my personal opinions on how golf courses should be built and presented, there’s too much dysfunction across the entire golf course to praise the design. There’s certainly plenty of fun to be had when playing the course, including undulating greens, a variety of shot types, and sound design concepts, but the execution and totality of the design feel too manufactured and impractical.
0 Eggs
(How We Rate Courses)
Apogee South is a fine course that any golfer would enjoy playing, but it cannot be praised for its land, design, or presentation. There are simply too many flaws with the construction details and finish work, as well as the total coherence of the course. But at the end of the day, we play golf to have fun, and the South provides that for players of all abilities.
Course Tour
Illustration by Matt Rouches
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