[PHOTO: Courtesy of Roger Snyder]
International team matchplay events are a unique breed of golf. The cauldron of elite players competing for several days in four-ball and foursomes would make for riveting golf on any course, but designs that place a premium on elite accuracy, mental control and the ability to execute dangerous risk/reward shots take the drama to new heights.
Virginia’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, on the shore of 800-acre Lake Manassas, wasn’t designed by its namesake purposefully for matchplay, but it assumed status as one of the USA’s premier team-competition venues after hosting the first four Presidents Cups held on American soil, each won by the United States. The club, located roughly 60 kilometres west of Washington DC, will once again assume matchplay centre stage when it hosts this week’s Solheim Cup.
The course is laid out across an idyllic, wooded property with gentle rise and fall. The professional women will find a style of design that’s familiar to tour players, with fairways that suggest defined shot shapes as they tumble and pivot around bunkers and natural slopes. The greens are average-sized and well-bunkered, and possess interior levels and ridges to create distinct hole locations.
Seven holes are strung along the Lake Manassas shoreline, the type of asset Trent Jones rarely failed to utilise (Kyle Phillips has consulted with the club on renovations for the past 25 years). “Water lures us to a supreme triumph or painful death,” Trent Jones wrote, and that is likely to be true as the Solheim Cup competitors hit a run of consecutive holes in the middle of their matches from the ninth to 13th that all play along the lake.
Three of these volatile holes – nine, 10 and 12 – should have profound effects on the outcome of the competition. Let’s take a closer look.
9th – 177 yards, par 3
This par 3 is the most recognisable hole at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club, playing downhill to a green perched above Lake Manassas. During construction of the course in the late 1980s, Trent Jones was able to extend the peninsula further into the lake, so the green is effectively covered on three sides by the water. It’s an exacting shot made more challenging due to its exposure to the wind, and hole location can significantly alter the dynamics. Flags towards the front of the slender green leave little room to miss left or right. As they move progressively deeper, they add extra distance and hang time, courting the water. Only the bravest players will take on back-left pins.
10th – 362 yards, par 4
It’s likely that at least for some sessions, Solheim Cup officials will set up the short 10th as a driveable par 4. Depending on where the tees are placed, players who want to take on the shot will either try to fly drives 250 to 260 yards onto the front of the green or shoot for the narrow gap between the front bunkers. Playing from either of the bunkers isn’t the worst tactic, depending on where the hole is cut, and there’s also the option of laying back to try to get up and down from a favourite distance in the fairway. Gamesmanship and position in the match, however, may take the conservative option out of play.
12th – 475 yards, par 5
The 12th is the third of four holes with water playing down the left. Like the 10th, this is a scoring hole, an easily reachable par 5 for all the competitors. The trick here is placing the drive in the fairway where the landing area is just 30 paces across, pinched between the lake and a line of trees and a small pond in the right rough. From there it’s a clear shot of perhaps 200 yards or less to another deep, narrow green divided into several tiers. Care must be taken not to miss long or left, but expect the players to be on the attack, and teams or individuals who walk away with a 5 here have probably lost the hole.
