Atlantic City Country Club
I first played Atlantic City Country Club in 2003 and have been back at least ten to a dozen times since. Why Top 100? History: The term Birdie was coined here as was Eagle. A former pro from here, John McDermott, won the US Opens held here in 1911 and 1912. Conditioning: While this has varied from when I first played through the final casino years to now it has fluctuated but it went from about the best I’ve ever played when just the high rollers could get on to okay when the casinos opened up play to everyone (at a pretty steep price) to pretty nice now when it is owned by the Ottinger Group. PGA majors pedigree: OK it was before World War I but still. Memorable: Absolutely, several tees are out on the marsh, blind par threes, views to Atlantic City, awesome clubhouse, and more. There are no homes (well two that are like in the middle of the course and the driveways cross through the fairways on the front nine but they won’t bug you), a great variety of holes, it’s fun to play and though only about 124 slope from the whites, when it’s breezy this is not a pushover.
ACCC has all the chops for a Top 50 course. Why don’t I rank it quite that high? Greenheads, no-see-ums, and greenheads. I talk about greenheads in my Galloway write up. No-see-ums (AKA midges, sand flies, biting gnats, ceratopogonidae) are just super small versions of greenheads. They both bite (literally and figuratively), love the taste of OFF, love snacking on human flesh, and on a hot still day make ACCC a miserable experience. You really need a jam boy for here on July and August afternoons.
ACCC is one of maybe ten courses that I can walk through each hole by memory. I talked earlier about conditioning well the practice green IS the first tee. Yeah the tee boxes are that smooth. The first is one of if not the hardest hole on the course. A long par four. While the pond is a pretty easy carry, if you’re hitting into any breeze I rarely see anyone get home in regulation. You follow up with two short but well bunkered par fours, a great par three and the first tease of a hole into the salt marsh. Nine is the number one handicap but you usually get a tail wind here so I don’t find it as hard as one. It was here that the term birdie was coined (I think).
Ten is a short par five that even a mortal can get to in two but a menacing pond swallows anything left on your approach. The twelfth is a great redan par three then you need to negotiate a pond on one side and the marsh on the other on the long par-5 13th. Fourteen is a cape hole cutting off marsh which the tee box is set well into. Sixteen similar but longer and less to cut off. Seventeen is a blind par three and eighteen is a nice dogleg right that brings you back to the clubhouse.
As I also said in the Galloway write-up, AC is a great underrated guys golf trip. You got golf, casinos and even beaches and shopping if you bring the ladies. The casinos have some pretty good restaurants and bars and I recommended Chef Vola in the Galloway write up.
For as many times I’ve played here, I rarely have brought the camera or pulled out the phone so I don’t have a lot of photos. It’s in the scrapbook here and am not sure if they’re my photos or not but if you want to see, go there. The one above was for one of the Mass cousins’ bachelor parties. I pulled together what I could find below. I included the layout from the club’s website (because it’s nice) and one from OpenTable of the bar. I am sure I’ll go back and when I do, I will update the page.
Golf Scrapbook 