Victory
for the colonies in the American Revolution brought the burden
of solving
longstanding territorial squabbles, including a contested
boundary between
Massachusetts and Connecticut that originally stemmed
from faulty British survey
work in 1642. Settlement of this dispute
produced a deviation in the states'
straight-edged border, a
cartological quirk known as the Southwick Jog.
In
very recent times, a dynamo of a daily-fee golf course has taken
shape within
this trivia-question tract of land. If you haven't yet had
the pleasure, let
this serve as your introduction to the Damian
Pascuzzo-designed Ranch Golf Club,
sited on a former country retreat of
the Crane Paper Company
clan
Commencing
his work on the relatively blank canvas provided by
subtly pitching dairy land
at the base of the big ridge, Pascuzzo drew
on classic hole-routing concepts
that reward forethought and either
lightly scold or sternly admonish
grip-and-rip aggressiveness. No. 10,
for example, is a Cape-style hole on which
the bolder players in our
group paid dearly for trying to bite off extra yardage
around the
dogleg, landing in British-style fescue that ought to produce audible
burps, given the way it eats golf balls. Better to play it safe off the
tee,
since this is one Cape hole that plays comfortably downhill on the
approach
shot.
Route
options and risk-assessment work continues in the high-country
holes, although a
few of the tighter corridors may leave you thankful
for any drive that finds
fairway. The back nine's transition hole is
No. 11. Here horizontal golf
concludes and your siege of the ridge
holes begins. As we approached this tee, I
was crossing my fingers on
behalf of the designer. Holes that connect lowland to
upland can
sometimes make the golfer feel like a haybale riding a grain conveyor
up into the silo. But instead of a get-it-over-with trudge, this par 4
does one
the favor of playing shorter off the tee than it looks and
legitimately
demanding right-side placement of the drive.
For
a golf course to be exceptional, I've lately decided, it has to
lower a wispy
cloud of bliss upon the golfer somewhere early in its
back nine. A hint of
rapture must overtake a player, brought on by the
routing and the surroundings.
The Ranch passes this bliss test, or so
it struck me on the tee at No. 15, which
seems like the heart of the
upland collection. The tee shot is slightly uphill
to a landing area
you can see but you can't visually chart. The fairway's
right-to-left
downward cant is fully revealed as you walk over a rise and survey
a
narrow, deep green burdened beautifully on the right by a long sweep of land
rendered nearly unnavigable by multiple bunkers and a towering oak
tree.
The
18th is a prove-it par 4 that ducks back nostalgically into the
first tier of
woodland. This hole provides ample driving space, but
rises on a mild upslope to
reveal less landing area than the eye of a
fretful player would like to see. But
No. 18 is really a second-shot
hole, playing downhill to a green site that
distracts the unfocused
golfer by providing a half-acre of fairway-like space
pin-high to the
right.
This
is a popular trick of modern course-building, one I find oddly
stimulating. The
Ranch's opening hole goes mad for this little ruse,
providing a vast arc of
lovely-looking fairway—even mounds and
bunkers—miles to the right of where
common sense would tell you to
play. It’s one more little way in which this new
layout in an old
border town gets into your head, and stays
there.
