Pro's Advice: Our "signature hole"! Overlooking an almost-island peninsula with a shamrock shaped green, four tees are up the hill, the purple tee down below where water is less of a hazard. Shooting long or right will see a splash! There is nothing tricky about this hole: what you see is what you get! The wind above the sheltering trees will determine your choice of iron.
Naturalist's Advice: Remnants of a beaver lodge are behind the green. Before the golf course was built, this peninsula was wooded until it was denuded in two years of hungry beaver. The beaver first took all the white birch, but then came in to cut oaks. While the U.S. Forest Service said beaver will cut oak, the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources said the beaver would never fell an oak (we had already lost two oaks on the right of this pond, and only just saved a third by girdling it with chicken wire which you will still see as you leave this green, on the right of the path to #16.) For years, this pond was stocked with trout each year, but as the beaver cut the shade trees, the temperature rose and one day the whole pond went "belly up". As the humans discussed how to clear up this stinking mess, Mother Nature put the word out on her internet: within 48 hours of announcing the smorgasbord, the animal kingdom arrived. Otters, eagles, blue herons, skunks, fox. Within 72 hours the party was over and the pond surrounds were totally clean! It was quite a tourist attraction, but not one we could announce, or would ever wish to repeat. |
