Tanglewood Park (Clemmons, NC)

The Championship course at Tanglewood Park was designed in the 1954 by Robert Trent Jones Sr. during arguably his best years as an architect. The USGA was using his services to update the us open courses and this made him very well known. The story after the 1951 us open at Oakland Hills had Ben Hogan telling RTJ's wife "If your husband had to make a living on the courses he designed, you'd be on the bread line." 

Easy bogey, hard par was always Jones strategy. He wanted the player to drive the ball straight, and then be able to control his iron shot with distance and trajectory. He really was the first architect to focus on the aerial game and his sectioned greens with distinct bowls in them was like having two or three greens in one. When you show up at Tanglewood Park, you're playing a classic RTJ sr course. 

A few years ago Ron Whiten wrote an article about Tanglewood Park citing how the PGA of America was the first to take a major, the PGA Championship, to a true public course. Lee Trevino edged out Jack Nicklaus in 1974, with a winning score of 276 (-4). 

I played Tanglewood a few years ago, and it is an absolute brute. From the back tees, it's 7100 yards par 70. The next tee up is still 6650 range. The course just never let's up. Long par fours abound on both nines, and when there's only two par fives, well birdie opportunities are not very plentiful. 

One of the things I noticed us how many of the fairways have a cant to them. The high side usually had bunkers protecting it so the player has to be confident in his line off the tee.

Then as you can see in the next pic, every green is well bunkered, especially at the corners. And this is EVERY green!

So yes the course is a very exacting test. I don't remember many of the holes but I do recall hitting plenty of long irons and hybrids. 

I give the course a 5 (good) rating. It can hold it's own even today against the best players. For the average player, it can get monotonous and repetitive. In the clubhouse they have all the old photos and memorabilia of the senior tour tournament it held for many years.