Posting an updated profile on the 6,455 yard Roaring Gap the same week that the PGA Championship is being held on the 7,501 yard Whistling Straits puts the old brain in motion. Both are eighteen hole golf courses but one measures 1,000+ yards longer and has 20 times (!!) more bunkers. There is no doubt which is the ‘harder championship test’, but which is
better? That’s where divergence occurs! I know where I would rather play, particularly on a frequent basis, and it is Donald Ross’s recently restored mountain gem. In fact, it is the kind of course that you want to play all the time. Honestly, what else matters?! Am I alone in thinking that most golf course rankings - tragically - fail to take this crucial factor into account?
Be it in the fall or summer as when this photo was taken, Roaring Gap is always delightful. How or why a course is better is an unending topic, one that this web site and Discussion Group frequently explore. Personally, courses that are fun, provoke thought, are in a pretty setting and can be walked in under three hours score high. A ~ million courses around London, Reddish Vale, Country Club of Fairfield, etc. fall in that bucket. The more I see, the more I realize one thing: The better the targets (i.e. the greens), the better the golf. Surely, that is unassailable logic, even in this Discussion Group?
To that end, one of my all-time favorite set of targets is now Roaring Gap’s. No great surprise that Ross is the architect, BUT I never would have guessed I would be saying so after a 2001 tour there. Back then, the greens were a 1/3 smaller, oval and featureless. No more! Led by green committee member Dunlop White and architect Kris Spence, the course, and especially its green complexes, has been transformed over the past twelve years into something very special. Even when measured against all the other high quality restoration work that has taken place around the world in the past decade, this one stands out.
A June email from Lynn Shackelford said as much. He had just completed a Carolina mountain tour, but his
raves on Roaring Gap didn’t remind me of what I had seen so long ago. So brother Bill, Dunlop and I rendezvoused there. Unfortunately, Bill and Dunlop both currently enjoy fine form
, so it was enthralling to see how the green complexes at Roaring Gap retarded low scoring from either scratch player.
A interior view out across the Home green. Sean Arble heads there later this month – I can’t wait to read his take, especially as Roaring Gap is wonderfully British in its low key approach to the game. Meanwhile, it is always a pleasure to check in with Dunlop, see what superlative work looks like, and appreciate that courses need not exceed 6,500 yards to be deemed ‘great’, no matter what course rankings and television say.
Hope you enjoy this updated course profile found under Courses by Country, Architecture Timeline, and the link below.
http://golfclubatlas.com/courses-by-country/usa/roaring-gap/ Best,