TEEING OFF: Clear Lake perfect venue for match play, Tamarack

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This article was published 25/08/2023 (950 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASAGAMING — Earlier this season, a playing partner told me about Georgia’s Ohoopee Match Club, a golf course built specifically for match play.

One thought immediately crossed my mind: He’s describing Clear Lake Golf Course.

Whether it was Stanley Thompson’s intention when he carved the 6,300-yard track out of Riding Mountain National Park in the 1930s, he built the perfect venue for the province’s biggest match-play event.

Now the Tamarack hasn’t been running for 90 years purely because of that — it’s everything around the week-long tournament that makes it special — but it sure helps add to the excitement.

Clear Lake is dubbed a par-72 with four par-3s and four par-5s, while Ohoopee has a handful of “half-par” holes and doesn’t list a total par. Why? Par doesn’t matter when you’re just trying to beat the player across from you or get the ball in the hole as fast as possible.

Half-par holes are, for example, one that could be a short par-4 or long par-3; a reachable par-5 or a lengthy par-4.

Let’s walk through Clear Lake, which has a bunch of them. The first hole is drivable at 288 yards but can punish even small misses with trees and bunkers around the green.

The second is long enough to demand two good, full shots.

The fourth doesn’t quite count as a half-par but is reachable in two only with a pair of terrific strikes. Three mediocre ones can manufacture a birdie look and avoid the creek in front of the green.

The fifth, at around 470 yards with a fairway as wide as an American football field is long, is essentially a par-4 for stronger players — a five is seldom good enough in a Tamarack championship flight match.

Then you have a reachable eighth hole that once again punishes left and right misses with trees and bunkers on both sides. Many experienced players will tell you laying up is the best way to score if you know the contours of the front-to-back-sloping green.

So that’s three or four half-pars in nine holes, then you head to the back, which starts with some tricky and demanding shots. A hard right-to-left ball can shave distance off the par-5 13th, though most players settle for an iron off the tee and make it a three-shot hole.

The real fun comes on the 15th, which tips out around 450 yards and plays uphill with a blind second shot. It’s tough enough that the Tamarack draws chalk lines on both sides in the trees and graciously gives golfers a drop in the middle of the fairway for one penalty stroke. Even the best of the best are happy with a par there.

They’ll try to get it back with a birdie or eagle on the 269-yard, downhill 16th. It’s another hole where par isn’t good enough to win most of the time. If a match gets that far, it’s anyone’s game.

The course closes with the little signature par-3 17th — around 100 yards but plays 15 less due to the elevation change with trouble surrounding the green — and a diabolical 18th green.

Everyone around here has watched or heard about a match when one player was 6 up with six to go and lost in a playoff.

It’s never over until it’s over, and it’s rare to see a match with a bunch of halved holes.

I barely mentioned the trees there, even though many Tamarackers have seen their qualifying rounds go up in flames with lost balls in the thick forest, or four-putts on the tricky, undulating greens. The course is a different beast in stroke play since big numbers hurt a lot more than simply conceding one hole.

Most of the time, players at this tournament walk off a lot happier following matches than qualifying rounds, even if they lost.

Maybe that’s a lesson. Sometimes it’s best to forget about par or your score entirely because beating your buddy is all that matters, right?