Blackwolf Run The River Course - Introduction

In the world of golf, it is far too common to hear how a course is great.  However, in reality, there a lot of average golf courses.  Most of the courses that we get to play on a day-to-day basis are mediocre to good. Some can even be considered bad.  Many courses suffer from bad layouts, poor topography, or insufficient budgets for maintenance and upkeep.  Some receive too much play or are clogged with laboriously slow players.

But every once in a while you get to experience a truly transcendent course.  These are the courses that can change a golfers entire perspective on the world of golf.  They set the bar that other courses are measured by, and become the blueprints that architects emulate in one form or another.

Very few people are lucky enough to get to experience these courses commonly. I have had the great fortune to have played a handful of such courses, and just recently added one more to the list, The River Course at Blackwolf Run.

Blackwolf Run's The River Course in Kohler, Wisconsin is the finest example of a resort style parkland course I have ever played.  

On a beautiful fall day I finally had the opportunity and headed out to Kohler with Paul Seifert of http://wiscogolfaddict.com.  This was my first time meeting Paul.  He is a great guy and organized our round for the day.

Honors have been heaped on Blackwolf Run since its inaugural version opened in the summer of 1988.  That summer there were only 2 nine-hole layouts (which now are split among the current River and Meadow Valley layout). The Meadows course added another nine holes in 1989. The introduction of the fourth nine in August 1990, lead to a reconfigured routing into its current two 18-hole layouts of The River and the Meadow Valleys.

From the beginning, it was hailed as the best new public course in the Country by Golf Digest.  Since then it has been consistently ranked in the upper echelon on top golf publications "best of" lists.  It currently ranks as the 91st top course in America by Golf Digest (as of 2015) but has been ranked as high as 31st.  That list contains all courses public and private.  As far as courses the average Joe can actually play, it currently ranks as the 16th best public course in the Country (having been as high as 11th).

The River has a pedigree of great tournaments and champions as well.  Some notables are:

• 1998 and 2012 U.S. Women's Open - played on a combination of the River and Meadows courses.
• Andersen Consulting World Championship of Golf 1995-1997 - won by Mark McCumber, Greg Norman, and Ernie Els.
• Wisconsin PGA State Open (1991, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2009, 2011)
• USGA Mid-Am Qualifier 1989

Both courses at Blackwolf Run offer 5 sets of tees marked Red, White, Green, Blue, and Black. The Reds offer a benign 5,115 yard experience with a rating of 70.3 and slope of 125.  Moving all the way back to the Blacks you suffer a masochistic 7,404 yards with a knee bending 76.2 rating and slope of 151.  From the tips The River plays as one of the hardest golf experiences in the world.

Paul and I played from the Blues which are still a bruising 6865 yards and 73.7/144.  Here are the stats for the tees:

Tee	Yardage	Slope	Rating
Red	5115	125	70.3
White	6110	132	70.3
Green	6507	139	72.1
Blue	6865	144	73.7
Black	7404	151	76.2

All of the courses at Blackwolf Run and Whistling Straits were designed by Pete Dye.  His overriding design principal of The River course seems to encourage risk taking but severely penalizes you for missing on those risks.

The greens, tees, and fairways at BlackWolf Run are all Bentgrass, while the second cut is thick Kentucky Bluegrass.  The course was in absolutely splendid condition when we played with immaculate fairways and primary rough.  I am not sure how many rounds the course gets annually but the conditions seemed more befitting a private course than a high volume daily fee course.  The greens were also stupendous and in great, great shape.  They are almost all uniformly enormous and almost consistently undulating.  The one thing that got into my head while playing:

"no matter if it looks straight or not, this putt is going to break somehow..."

This caused fits for me as I often mis-read the subtle breaks to the consternation of my scorecard.  I have read comments about the greens being unfair, but I didn't find this to be the case at all.

Given, simply hitting onto the green here means very little.  Again, another Dye design philosophy seems to be that a lengthy putt should not be easy and simply hitting onto the green should not guarantee a reward.  This makes playing your approach shots much more strategic than many golf rounds, where hitting the green in regulation almost guarantees a par.  For me this was part of what made this round so special.  Not just having to hit a good golf shot, but having to think about where exactly you need to hit that good golf shot.

One last thing to note about the conditions.  For having so many trees on the property, leaves on the green (or fairways) were seldom ever experienced, a real pleasant surprise given the Autumnal season in which we played.

Before staking out onto the course we went to the the practice area.  The driving range and chipping/bunker areas are just a short distance from the clubhouse and are sandwiched between the 4th and 12th holes.  The range is double sided and offers plenty of targets to warm up with.  The chipping and sand area is just to the right of the range.  Neither of us spent any time there but it looked to be a great spot to get used to the tight lies you'll encounter around the greens, as well as a chance to practice sand shots that you WILL use during your round.

As you leave the practice area you get a great view of the 4th and 14th holes, situated on either side of "Swan Lake".  A pair of large swans were swimming tranquilly unaware of the treachery facing us golfers on these two holes because of their swimming hole.

Back closer to the first tee, the putting green is a large circular shaped affair.  It is located just in front of the clubhouse's front door.  It offers plenty of variety in undulations and represents fairly accurately the size and speed of the greens you'll face on the course.  The practice green may have
been just a touch slower than the actual greens, perhaps because of the moisture still present in the early morning.  After draining a surprisingly high number of long putts during practice I felt pretty good.  Unfortunately those were the only lengthy putts made by me all day.


Let's get onto the course itself!

Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 1-3
Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 4-6
Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 7-9
Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 10-12
Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 13-15
Blackwolf Run The River Course Holes 16-18