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Hardest Golf Course you’ve played

I would have to say the Ocean Course at Kiawah. I got beat for 18 holes, but loved every moment of it. A close second would be the Atlanta Athletic Club mainly becasue my swing was a hot mess even by my usual horrible performance.
 
Bethpage. Honestly half the battle was walking that damn course, you need to be both a solid golfer and in good shape to enjoy that course.
 
I think it would have been Eagle Landing. It was a course in Charleston Sc... what made it difficult for me was its placement in a subdivision. It had houses on the outside of almost every fairway. That's not a good thing. Especially when you're a lefty. And you've got a wicked slice. I don't remember hitting any houses or breaking any windows.
 
Jaw2000 said:
In or around 2000 I played the Ocean Course at Kiawah. It was glorious. I played the blue - because why not. I shot (and I remember to this day) a 97 and felt like a world conquerer. I think the course is harder today - but I can't really explain why. I did make 1 birdie, and when the wind was in your face it was easily a 2 or more club wind (and it felt like it was in our face the entire back nine).

And, I'd play it again if I could - but today I think it's around $500 then it was about $125ish - and no caddies were required.

Edit, I also played a course in New Mexico that was fantastic - I forget the name of it, or for that matter how I scored, it was not great, I remember leaving a lot on the driving range. Oh well. It was a course that Phil Mickelson played in college (for an event or regular school play?) and they said there was par 5 that was over 600 yards that he eagled - this was again around 2000-2003 - so he was incredibly long even then - I think he was still yet to win his first major at that time.
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Pete Dye courses are always hard. They demand a specific shot from almost every location and they punish you severely for missing. My pro tip for a gold trip to a place with a lot of courses is avoid a Dye course on day 1. You gotta warm up to that kind of test.
 
BuckNasty said:
Bethpage. Honestly half the battle was walking that damn course, you need to be both a solid golfer and in good shape to enjoy that course.
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That’s how PFAU was. While they allow carts, the cart paths do not extend through the entire course so if its “cartpath only” type conditions, you are walking. It’s 8000 freaking yards from the tips and lots of undulations and very spread out. I can’t even imagine whir I would have shot walking it.
 
Based on slope and rating, Iron Valley from the tips: par 72, Rating 73.6, Slope 136, 7000+ yards. Toughest due to conditions? Port Royal in Bermuda from the blues. 30mph winds, Par 71, Rating 71.1, Slope 128, 6150y.
 
wubears71 said:
I’m curious what is the hardest course you’ve ever played and what made it so hard?

Yesterday I was in Bloomington, IN for work and afterwards played the PFAU course, which is the University of Indiana’s home course opened last year. To say it’s difficult is an understatement. I found it impossible. While the course was beautiful, there was no room to miss and also required a lot of course knowledge just to understand where to hit it and how far you could hit it. And if you missed the fairway, forget about it. Finding the ball felt like a freaking miracle. There were 3 holes that I lost 3-4 balls on. If it wasn’t for ESC I would have posted a 121 in GHIN. The course was just stupid hard.

Here is the scorecard.
View attachment 9013264
I played the blue tees and it kicked my butt.

This was typical of the bunker complexes. If you landed between the bunkers you likely lost a ball View attachment 9013265
There was fairway, a first cut, rough, extra rough and then don’t even bother looking rough

View attachment 9013266

This is a very typical fairway - extremely narrow with lots of slope. I can’t tell you the number of times I was on the tee box thinking “what do I even aim for???”
View attachment 9013267
The greens were hard as a rock and must have rolled at least a 13. Any mid to long iron into the green meant landing it short and let it roll out. I hit a beautiful 5i into the 200 yard par 3 and it landed 5’ on the front of the green and still managed to roll all the way to the back of the green uphill!
View attachment 9013268

If I ever see a University of Indiana golfer in the NCAA championships, I’m betting the farm on them. If you can score here, you have a stellar game
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My college course :love:
 
2010.... My dad offered to buy us a round at Harbour Town as a college graduation gift.... He had pretty much quit playing, but always wanted to play that course so we went for it. Haha we made a joke on 5 (par 5) we didn't have any business playing a course of that caliber. It must have stuck with me, because I haven't played a tour stop since lol. It was a fun day and we had a lot of fun once we managed the expectations.

There's plenty of harder courses out there, but that's the hardest one I have played.
 
Thunder Hill in Madison, Ohio. Built on a former fish hatchery, water everywhere, bunkers everywhere, trees everywhere. We used to play it once a year just as a lark. The PGA played there once, and the players refused to come back, according to local lore.
 
Snowman said:
The toughest one I can remember is The Golf Club at Dove Mountain, in Marana, AZ. It's a Jack Nicklaus design that hosted the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship from 2009-2014, and even the PGA Tour pros complained about how difficult it was (they specifically hated the greens because of their difficulty). It's a butt-kicker of a course and was pretty humbling to play.

Edit after reading @mtbloco and @Roadrunner's posts above - I've played both Starr Pass and Dove Mountain (only once for each of them), and I thought Dove Mountain was the more diabolical of the two (I didn't play either one from the tips, though!). Jack was just evil when he designed that course.
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Both are very tough courses, but Starr Pass was tougher to me due to blind shot after blind shot. @Wildcat4life and I were laughing on some of the tee boxes because we were guessing where to hit it!
 
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I played Torrey Pines about 2 weeks before the Buick Open several years ago. They had already let the rough grow up so high that if your ball went in, it rarely came out.
Mostly you couldn't even find it. A couple of times I new exactly where the ball went in but no luck finding it. I found 5 or 6 other balls each time but never found mine.
When I did find mine, I had to go almost straight sideways to get it back to the fairway. I made the mistake of trying to advance the ball a little down the fairway and promptly lost that ball in the rough no more than 25 yards ahead of me. That was a really "rough" round.
 
Played Wolf Creek from some of the back tees and wind. I was a really bad golfer then and it ate my lunch.
Played Carnoustie in no wind and shot my handicap. Thought people were crazy saying it was hard.
Played Bandon Dunes in crazy wind, golf bags were being blown over, and it was unplayable.
Castle Stuart was very windy and I had issues there.
 
Royal Melbourne slapped you in the face with the tee shot, kicked you in the nuts when you hit your second and twisted your nipples with your short game , but the putting was the toughest part, especially if you finished above the hole. I'd go back in a shot.

:surrender::surrender::surrender::surrender:
 
one of the harder courses i’ve played is interlachen country club in winter park florida. there is nowhere to miss. the course is cut into marshy swamp land, so the fairways run off into hazards. most greens are elevated with steep turtlebacking for drainage. greens are super undulated. afaik they’ve had a few redesigns over the last 10-ish years because the members keep complaining about how unplayable it’s become. i kinda hate it haha
 
Played Bandon Dunes and Sheep Ranch in unheard of conditions (no wind, perfect weather) Shot what I normally shoot. Played Bandon Trails in Bandon conditions.....it ate my lunch.

Loved Bandon Trails though.
 
PGA National Champion course. It's unrelenting.
 
Bethpage Black, that rough is legit and gets more difficult the closer you get to the green.
 
Torrey is up there, Vic National is crazy hard, Olde Stone, French Lick/Donald Ross course. Tough to nail it down to just one.
 
Royal Hawaiian on Oahu. The whole course is hemmed in with dense jungle after 5-10 yards of rough, and there is a lot of slope, so there is absolutely no room to miss. I lost a dozen balls there and I think I shot mid 100's. Absolutely spectacular though.
 
Ticonderoga in in Ticonderoga NY, yes that Ticonderoga NY. First off I never play the Blue tees I know I'm not that good so why bother. Back to the course, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing. It is a mountain course and it is hilly to the extreme. If you think your going to walk this one think again, I tried walking it once and by the 15th I thought I was going to die. The Fairways are a good width but you never have a flat lie. Either your feet are above or below the ball or your hitting on the down slope or the up slope. Most second shots are blind because of the terrain, your either in a valley or around a bend. With all that said I really do enjoy playing there on occasion but I definitely ride and will not be playing from the Blue.
 
They just played the PGA there. On a windy day and you're already shooting hosel rockets during warm-ups. Yikes.
 
@Carolina Dundee I actually Masonboro Country Club is the toughest I have played (least fun at least). Really no where to miss off the tee or around the greens without going into OOB or into another hazard. I've played Whistling Straits, Ko'olau Golf Club, and Carnoustie and I think Masonboro was more of a challenge.
 
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Roadrunner said:
Both are very tough courses, but Starr Pass was tougher to me due to blind shot after blind shot. @Wildcat4life and I were laughing on some of the tee boxes because we were guessing where to hit it!
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We played Coyote/Rattler, which the starter told us was the layout the PGA Tour used when the Tucson Open was played there (if I remember right, I think there were actually a couple holes from Roadrunner mixed into the routing also, to make it match the old PGA layout). It was definitely a challenging course, but I felt like it rewarded good (or at least decent) shots more than Dove Mountain, which seems to relentlessly punish anything less than a perfectly placed shot. Since my game isn't exactly the poster child for precision and accuracy, I suffered badly on that course!
 
My home course. If you can play 18 without losing a golf ball, you've accomplished something. The course isn't long, but the fairways are narrow, not a lot of rough to speak of, and hazards abound.
 
I once played Shinnecock Hills in a constant 2-3 club wind. It just wore me out.
 
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