I originally posted this on the Courses site. It was evidently the wrong placement.

Everyone has played courses that were just too darn difficult. Here is my list. How about yours.

Carnoustie. Played it twice and it ate my lunch both times.
Old Scot saying. "no wind,rain or cold no
golf. We had it all both days & suffered.


PGA West, Much too long even from the white tees.Bunkers
are frightening.Too much for me.

Bethpage Black. Huge waste areas,Tough undulating greens.
No carts. Hard to walk even when I was young.
Especially on a hot, humid day.

Pinehurst #2 Sneaky Donald Ross masterpiece with very
strange effects on depth perception.
Almost like an optical illusion.Crowned
greens require great imagination and short
game.

Wolf Creek,Nv Gouged out of arroyo's and plateaus.
Visually stunning with tremendous elevation
changes. Play it the first few times and you
have a hard time figuring yardage even with
a GPS

I concur with Pinehurst No. 2 as one of my top 5 (prior to the renovation). Amazingly difficult green complexes and really hard to hold the greens unless one hits a high spinning shot.

Links at Spanish Bay (CA) - Links style course on steroids. Relentlessly difficult. Easier to get on than Pebble or Spyglass because it is no fun to play.

Killington Golf Course (VT) - played this a year or two after it opened. Built along side a major ski area in Vermont. Many up or downhill blind shots. Firm, canted fairways send balls off into sites unknown. Unseen rock outcroppings in the middle of the fairway. It you strayed off the fairway you ran the danger of getting impaled on all the trees that had been bulldozed to make the course.

Ballybunion - Old (IRE) - Wind, heather, dunes, blind shots, rain - it has it all. It was a blast to play there but hard to score.

Old White TPC (WV) - The green complexes are quite difficult. Hole #3 (Par 3) has a 6 foot trench that runs through the middle of the green.

I haven't played any "big name" courses.

The course I have the most trouble with, that I've played more than once, is the Woods of Westminster in Westminster, MA. It's built in and around a small mountain, with a number of elevation changes. It lives up to its name, and is heavily wooded, with very little room for error off the tee. 3 of the 4 par 5s are severe dog legs, with no visibility to try and cut the corner. You are left to either hit a prayer over the woods off the tee, or a perfect shot to a specific distance. If you choose to hit to the dogleg, you have very little chance of getting home in 2, as you would be looking at a 220+ shot into the green.

However, they do have a nice, fun, gimmicky hole. The 9th is a 320 yard par 4 that drops almost the full height you climbed going out.

It makes no difference whether a course is famous. I don't care where it is or who knows about it. Some of the most difficult courses I have played are executive courses. lenght is just one component.

bkuehn1952 wrote:

Old White TPC (WV) - The green complexes are quite difficult. Hole #3 (Par 3) has a 6 foot trench that runs through the middle of the green.

You don't like that green? I love the green, i'm more worried about the bunker to the right haha. What's that, like 12 feet deep?



I haven't played many big courses either, but Old White definitely is one of the harder ones. Also the old 84 lumber course at Nemacolin. Stadium course with some odd tee shots.

birdieXris wrote:

You don't like that green? I love the green, i'm more worried about the bunker to the right haha. What's that, like 12 feet deep?

Ha! I thought I had hit a perfect tee shot, right on the flag to a hole cut center front. Upon my arrival the ball was sitting in "the trench." How hard does one need to hit a putt to get out of a 6 foot hole, the sides of which have a 60 degree grade? Lots of fun. The only thing more fun would be to hit from the 12 foot deep bunker into "the trench".

You would think a golf course at a beach resort would be somewhat user friendly for the tourists. Not so, for the course at Playa Del Carmen, Mexico.

Gotta be Devil's Knob on Wintergreen Mountain here in Virginia. We do a guy's golf weekend there once a year. There are heavy woods throughout, and the elevation changes are significant. From the ninth tee up to the green, for example, it's such a difference in altitude that you can tell a difference in temperature. Plus, while the views are beautiful, they're also horrifically distracting.

The hardest would be AA St. Omer, in the north of France. Quite steep hills, hard to read greens. Played it twice and both times it rained cats and dogs and the wind was blowing 6 Bft or more.