After watching the 2008 Augusta National I looked up their course information and noticed some interesting parallels with our Alder Hills Golf Course and decided we could have some fun with these similarities
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Alder Hills is an 18 hole par 3 that is more challenging than your average par 3 course. Like the Augusta National Golf Course, Alder Hills has an 85 foot elevation change, variable yardage tee boxes, trees, gullies, water hazards and tough greens. Alder Hills also has 7 bridges, with 3 of them being over 35 feet long. You could think of the Alder Hills Course as a regular Mini-Augusta National Golf Course.
Alder Hills provides enough psychological difficulty, optical illusions and smiles to entertain the average golfer and can occasionally unsettle really good golfers. We found that Alder Hills is a bit of a surprise for the first timer, or for those who think all par 3s are easy. So rating Alder Hills Golf Course would seem a logical choice. However the CGA and the USGA don’t have a standardized handicap or slope system for a par 3s golf course. Full size golf courses have some par 3 holes. Why not rate our par 3s the same way that par 3 holes on a full-sized course are rated?
The Augusta National Golf Course is all about getting down to the par 3 size anyway. Usually, one good drive on a long fairway effectively leaves a par 3 golf game.
So we need a course rating for Alder Hills and here’s how you do your own course rating.
Course rating, according to the USGA, is the evaluation of a course for scratch players. Courses are rated from forward tees. Since Alder Hills has one tee box on each fairway, it becomes the forward rated tee box. Beginners can use the driving range mat on the concrete pad tee box, but they won’t be used for ratings Courses are rated in strokes and decimal fractions of a stroke, and are based on yardage and other obstacles to the extent that they affect the scoring ability of a scratch player. It is done by judging 10 obstacle factors for each fairway, each of which is assigned a number from one to ten.
The rating criteria
1. Topography - Difficulty of stance in the landing area and the vertical angle of shot from the landing area into the green.
2. Fairway - The effective width and depth of the landing area, which can be reduced by a dogleg, trees or fairway slope.
3. Recoverability and rough - The existence of rough and other penalizing factors in the proximity of the landing area and the green.
4. Out-of-bounds - The existence of out-of-bounds in the proximity of the landing area and around the green.
5. Water hazards - The existence of water in the proximity of the landing area and around the green.
6. Trees - The strategic location, size, height and number of trees.
7. Bunkers - The existence of bunkers in the proximity of the landing area and around the green.
8. Green Target - The size, firmness, shape and slope of a green in relation to the normal length of the approach shot.
9. Green Surface - The contour and normal speed of the putting surface.
10. Psychological - The mental effect on play created by the proximity of obstacles to a target area.
Slope itself is a universal standard that enables a golfer to adjust his handicap to fit the difficulty of the course he is playing on a given day. For instance, at the municipal Pine Valley course, you'd probably assign a lower number for each factor. Your Course Rating at Alder Hills might put it in the top ten toughest par 3 courses in Canada. Who knows?
How the Alder Hills course plays
Like the Augusta National Golf Course, Alder Hills is a complex, robust course with towering conifers, dramatic elevation changes, broad fairways, riparian areas, and greens that can dribble a ball right off into the collar. The popular conception for a par 3 has always been that you can drive the ball anywhere and the greens are a given. Not so at the Alder Hills par 3, the drives have to be hit to specific areas that will yield the best putts. You may have a good drive, but if you don't hit the good drive to the right spots on the greens, you can three-putt all of them.
How tough are they? At Augusta National the USGA calculates that adding the green surface ratings for each of the 18 holes on the average U.S. Open course produces a difficulty figure of 110, as compared with a figure of 72 for all U.S. courses. Augusta National's total is an astonishing 148, the highest in the country. Alder Hills has got to be in the 100 range
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OK, so the greens are tough. Anybody who has watched any number of players putt clear off the 16th green can attest to that. But there is more to Alder Hills. Let's take some examples.
The rating might reveal that the toughest green to hit is the 7th, a 132-yard par 3 that has a wide, fairly shallow target that requires an accurate roll up to a narrow pin area. The 14th hole resembles the 7th, only longer at 161-yards and, except for the false front, most of the green gently slopes to the rear. The 14th green is larger but also requires an accurate hit to the false front and a roll up to the pin area
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The difficulty in recovering from an imperfect drive is greatest on the 10th, a stunningly beautiful par 3 of 80 yards and a raise of 32 feet from tee to green. From the tee box all that can be seen of the green is the flag marking the hole. A well-hit drive, kept clear of the trees on the right, can put the golfer near the center of the green with only a short putt remaining. A drive that stays right never gets up the hill and leaves the perpetrator with a short iron from a side hill, uphill lie in deep grass. To the left is a paved path that will deliver a spectacular bounce and brush that makes balls disappear
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It does get easier, particularly at the 11th, which has a nice slope smack up against the left side of the green that can be used to steer the ball onto the green. On the right is a down hill slope to a pond guarded by large trees, but with lots of space to recover from.
The 12th a 114-yard pitch, is also a relaxing shot, once the golfer gets used to the towering height the ball seems to rise. The tee box and green are just about even in elevation but the long deep swale of a fairway makes the ball loft look incredibly high and the ball distance appears too long every time, and then lands short.
Then we come to the 13th. This may be the best par 3 in the world and it's no surprise that it ranks as the easiest hole on the course over all. To begin with, it is a downhill 109 yarder which drops in elevation about 18 feet. It is surrounded by a sloping away collar to the left and back, and in which a long left or right ball runs into one of two ponds--if not the creek--and a push leaves you too far away to putt for the green. The green is one of the flattest, and long putts can be drained.
Fairway number 2, a 160-yard uphill roller that appears to slant right, hemmed in off the tee box by 85 foot tall spruce on the left and a 20 foot deep gully in front of the tee box requires great mental discipline. A normal day will record that men and women are equal coming out of the tee box on this hole. The 22-foot uphill change in elevation, and a green that looks like a sliver in the distance backed by a high grassy surround, makes men over swing off tempo, and women plow a ball into the gully or bridge. A good drive, then, is essential, but only partially solves the problem, which is to hit the green close to the pin and putt a green rated 7 for difficulty. Add all this together--and then put a tournament itself on the line--and one can see why the hole rates a perfect 10 in psychological difficulty. Did I mention the fairway has three rollers, each one higher than the next, that really stop any short drives?
Some holes don't have the glitz of others but they are beautiful. The 5th, for example, is to most people a picturesque par 3, but that only serves to trap the unwary. There is no elevation change and the only indication of trouble is the water spray from the # 5 fountain directly behind # 5 green, an over the green drive isn’t going anywhere but into the water. It doesn't even have any bunkers, it is a green surrounded by grass and hidden water at the back. What it does have is a great putting surface that for once is mostly readable. The drive from the 40 foot long tee box, across another deep jungle of a gully, and guarded on the right side by two massive spruce trees brooding overhead, provide the required psychological confusion for a golfer that might be thinking of relaxing a bit. Oh, and a third massive spruce half way down the right side prevents anyone that flies a right to left ball, from making any shot at all to the green.
For the contenders there is pressure everywhere at Alder Hills, but it can be unbelievably intense at the 18th fairway. This is a par 3 of 127 yards, playing out of a chute of trees, with a large water pond and fountain on the right, to a downhill green, over a slightly left leaning fairway and a 35 foot drop in elevation on to a well-hunkered green. Trees behind the green, a grassy trap on the back right and the lone birch tree half way down the fairway adds to the pressure, forcing players to make their drives well lofted and delivered carefully.
There is a psychology that cannot be measured on a rating chart. The 1st fairway is the wake up call that contenders must not take any shot at Alder Hills for granted. This 146-yard rising fairway to a green guarded by trees and a pond on the right, lets contenders know right away that this is going to be an interesting game of golf.
Naturally we suspect that Alder Hills is a hall-of-fame course requiring awesome talent to make even par. If anything, having a high bona fide rating raises the course in stature. Not bad for a par 3 everyone can play, and demanding enough to make contenders tear up their card
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Alder Hills suggested ratings:
3rd hole with a 73-yard downhill drop of 14 feet. If the drive on the 3rd doesn't stay high and in the center, you'll face another iron from an uphill lie. We think recoverability and rough rating could be a rated a 7.
4th hole is a level 129-yard par 3 with riparian cover down the left side and a green that has a false left side that drains away any ball. Green-target rating: 6.
9th hole has the driving range nets on the left and the water on the right in front of the green – an approach no contenders can take for granted. Water-hazard rating: 5.
17th hole--On the 17th, a drive too far left winds up in the trees or one to the right leaves you too far away to go for it and in the rough. This is the highest tee box as the gully in front of the tee box drops 25 feet leading to a green that slopes toward the tee box with a total change of about a 6 foot drop in elevation. Fairway rating: 6.
16th hole--Disaster awaits the careless on the 16th green. Any pin placements right of center are not allowed as the green slopes to the right, so playing anything but back to front is going to be tense. Green-surface rating: 8.
Contenders playing to win at the Augusta National Golf Course need to win the short game, and practice on psychologically difficult courses will provide the needed confidence and control for those big moments. Anyone that does well at Alder Hills is one confident golfer.
Come on out, play the Alder Hills course and give us your course rating. It will make you a better golfer, especially when it is your turn to play the Augusta National Golf Course. Remember to say hi to the people down there for us, I’m sure they have heard of Alder Hills by now.
Lee Sexsmith
Alder Hills Golf Course, 6011 Giscome Road, Prince George, BC
Telephone: 250.963.7500 email :
