What club would you use?
What club would you use?
What club would you use? You’re standing in the left center of the fairway on the 16th hole at Kingsmill Resort’s River Golf Course, looking at this approach shot of 142 yards into the mild but gusting wind of the James River at the famed Burwell’s Landing.
The 6,831-yard, par-71 The River Course is the crown jewel of Kingsmill. It is rated one of Virginia’s best golf courses. It has hosted 38 PGA and LPGA tour events, most recently the Pure Silk Championship.
Initially designed by the late Pete Dye in 1975, the golf course contained all the standard Dye attributes, including railway ties that divided the 16th fairway. Pete Dye was coming into his own as a golf course architect. He was entering the stage of his career – and an age of golf – when course difficulty was considered a paramount virtue (from the tips, with the original Course Rating: 73.2; Course Slope: 136). The rolling topography along the James River lent itself perfectly to Dye’s penchant for visual deception. When players can’t see the ground between themselves and their targets because of swales or valleys, yardages are much harder to estimate. And in the 1970s, laser rangefinders weren’t a thing yet.
2004 Pete Dye Redesign
In 2004, Pete Dye and his crew came back in and redesigned the River Course layout, making it player-friendly. That didn’t make the golf course any easier. According to the yardage book, the rating /slope is now 74.7/139. For example, he took out the railway ties on the 16th hole. Now, any golf shot on the right side of the fairway slopes downhill toward a long bunker. There is a historical marker behind the green that describes how the first English settlers in North America landed near the escarpment above the wide James River that is now the elevated tee box of the par-3 17th hole. Those settlers moved upriver a bit further, to Jamestown, where ships could anchor closer to shore. Looking down the river, you can see a graveyard of old naval vessels in the middle of the river.
The photograph is used as an illustration for my new book, “Golf a la Cart Version 2,” now available on Amazon or by contacting me. It’s also available as a digital print on my Etsy Store. To purchase a print, go to the pbsstudios.com photography golf gallery section.