Sunriver: Woodlands

Published 5:00 am Wednesday, August 6, 2008

The view from the green on the 549-yard, par-5 tenth hole at Sunriver Resort's Woodlands Course.

SUNRIVER — The Woodlands course at Sunriver Resort looks from the clubhouse as if the average golfer might be overwhelmed by ponderosa pines.

Indeed, the 27-year-old golf course has plenty of trees to make an amateur wary.

But Woodlands is not as difficult as the view would suggest, and those trees are not as easy to hit as they sometimes appear.

“You have to hit it pretty good off line before you are in the trees,” says Scott Ellender, Sunriver Resort’s director of golf. “So it’s a very playable golf course. It’s not like your average golfer is going to be in the trees all day long.”

Woodlands is a drastically different golf course from the fairly open Meadows course at Sunriver.

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The trees frame and shape the golf course, giving the Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed track subtle doglegs rather than hard turns left or right.

In true Jones fashion, most of the corners at Woodlands are protected by large fairway bunkers, which brings a risk-reward component to the tee shot at most holes.

For example, the 530-yard par-5 sixth hole — which boasts the sharpest dogleg left on the course — features a large fairway bunker to protect the left corner. The downhill fairway disappears from view behind the trap, which is 250 yards from the black tees and 210 from the blues.

A big hitter can carry the bunker and let the downward slope funnel the ball to about 220 yards, giving a golfer a realistic chance to reach the green in two shots.

But landing in the trap kills any chance at birdie.

The greens at Woodlands offer generally smaller targets than the Meadows course. They are speedy and often tiered, but they lack severe undulations that force unfair three-putts.

“They are not diabolical,” Ellender says of the Woodlands greens. “They are subtle and yet they have two or three tiers on some greens, but not to the point they are ridiculous.”

The front nine starts and finishes well.

The opening hole on the front nine is a solid 503-yard par 5 that allows a golfer to go for birdie out of the gate. But the seventh, eighth and ninth holes are the strength of the golf course.

The 394-yard, par-4 seventh hole is a slight dogleg left with a tough bunker on the right side that could be dangerous for a slice-happy amateur. And the green is well protected by three bunkers.

No. 8, a 177-yard par 3, is surrounded by water on three sides and fronted with a greenside bunker. Golfers who overshoot the slightly downhill green are doomed to find the water.

The ninth, a 437-yard par 4, brings water on the right side of the fairway into play from the tee, and a large tree prevents golfers from cutting too much distance on the slight dogleg right.

“The course has a lot of character,” Ellender says. “There’s not a straight hole out there. They all curve one time or another.”

The most enjoyable par 5 on the course, the 542-yard No. 15, is reachable in two shots and has a long, narrow green on which a fairway wood can land softly.

But a massive bunker protects the right side of the green to punish aggressive golfers who drift right.

The 403-yard, par-4 18th hole features a hard dogleg left with water on both sides. Approach shots after good drives could be stymied by a tree positioned in the middle of the fairway, about 125 yards from the green.

It’s an awkward finish to a good golf course, and Sunriver Resort might be well served to switch the nines so a golfer can play the best holes last.

But playing position golf is a big part of Woodlands, which offers a stark contrast with Sunriver Resort’s Meadows course.

“They are definitely different golf courses, and I think that is good,” Ellender says. “Meadows might have nicer views (of Mount Bachelor) because you are not in the trees as much. But then again, the Woodlands course probably has a little bit better character from a true golf-course standpoint.”

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