Par Three Jewels At Forsgate

One of my pet theories about golf course design is that a variety of par threes distinguish the best courses from the rest. Each hole should require the player to hit his or her one shot from the tee with a different club to handle distance, prevailing winds, and shot shape. If they are pleasing to the eye, so much the better. The Banks Course at Forsgate Country Club in central NJ meets all these criteria and then some.

Charles Henry Banks, aka "Steam Shovel" Banks, created four of the finest par three holes in the game for this course, which opened in 1931. All are guarded by his trademark deep, deep bunkers and have heavily-sculptured contours on the putting surface, but each one presents a different challenge.

The #3 hole, Eden, is named after the 11th hole at St. Andrews, and may be the most difficult of the four. It's 182 yards of full carry over a ravine from the blue tees to a steeply elevated green. Depending on pin position and wind, it can play much, much longer. The massive bunker guarding the right side must be nearly 20 feet below the putting surface. The green itself has a ridge that runs from front to back, effectively cutting the target area in half.

Hole #7 is named after the original Redan, the 15th at North Berwick in Scotland. The green is huge and breaks not only strongly left to right but slopes away from the tee so that club selection and shot placement are crucial.

photo courtesy of Forsgate CC

At 140 yards playing slightly downhill, the #12 hole would seem to be a pushover--but it's not. The hole earned it's name, Horseshoe, from a circular ridge that creates some near-impossible breaking putts for anyone who doesn't hit a precise shot from the tee. The green is also completely surrounded by bunkers. They're not quite as deep as others on the course, but getting up and down is complicated by that infernal circular ridge.

The final par 3 is #17, Biarritz, a 201-yard monster patterned after the original with that name in France. The long, narrow green can have pin positions ranging from about 160 to as much as 240 yards from the tee and the need for distance control is magnified by a Grand Canyon-esque swale that divides the green into three parts.

The Banks Course at Forsgate was the last design on American soil for Banks, who died at the age of 48. The one-shotters on the course combine to form a perfect tribute to the talented earth mover.

In addition to writing about golf, Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.