Laurel Valley Golf Club (PA)
July 2022 – I bid on and won a round at Laurel Valley through a charity auction to support The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. A great way to play top courses is to look for charity events or auctions. You will pay much more than rack rate but you get access and will support a great cause. Our host Joe, who donated the tee time and into our Miller Lite fund, could not have been a better guy. He toured us around the grounds, had lunch with us and we ended up going to the same college (though years apart) in Pittsburgh and had several mutual acquaintances.
Laurel Valley is a Dick Wilson design but Arnie is given co-design credit as he helped “found” the club and added design assistance. In fact, the ownership wanted him to be the course’s pro and rumor has it that he really considered this before turning it down. The clubhouse is full of Arnie treasures and artifacts.
The club has a lot of corporate members and caters to this – creating a first class experience for its members’ guests. They do an 8:00 and 1:30 shotgun start every day mid-week to accommodate the member/guest play. They even have cottages/cabins to accommodate out-of-town members and guests. This is a top notch club and guests are given the Ritz Carlton treatment the second they step foot on the property. I generally disdain the shotgun start and certainly would’ve preferred to start on one, but enjoyed the course a lot so that wasn’t too bad plus they let us out early and they didn’t have anyone on the holes in front of us so we breezed through the course in about four hours.
The course is in Ligonier, about 50 minutes outside of Pittsburgh and next to Arnie’s birthplace of Latrobe (also home of Rolling Rock). After our round we shot into Pittsburgh and I took my buddy and brother around the Duquesne campus and surrounds. We went on a Wednesday night in the summer and all of downtown was really dead. All the bars were closed and we had to trek to Market Square for some beers. I haven’t really done a Pittsburgh write-up – though made a quick mention of Primanti’s in my Oakmont review here. I’ll only add that if you’re thinking of a guy’s trip to Pittsburgh, you better be connected. The nearby public courses are okay to something-less-than-okay. Nemacolin is supposed to be nice but is a good bit outside the city and Totteridge is supposed to be a step down from that but is again a good ride from the city (it’s actually close to Laurel Valley).
Obviously, if you have the connections, the place to play in Pittsburgh is Oakmont, try to get on here, then my buddy belongs to Edgewood which is about ten minutes from downtown and is a way under-the-radar Donald Ross course with great elevation changes throughout. You get on those three, and you will have a great trip. Then add in a baseball game at PNC Park (one of the best ballparks in the country and your team will likely win) or of course a Stillers game at whatever they’re now calling Heinz Field.
To the course. There is precious little about Laurel Valley on the web. In fact, our host had to call me to give me the rules (it’s very laid back) since the club doesn’t have its own web site. For the scrapbook, I lifted the copy from the Golf Digest site (in its top 200 feature – ranking 122 which seems about right to me). I’ll try to do some semblance of a write-up of the holes but since we started on 14, I’ll probably fuck it up. Loved the elevation changes here. Conditioning was great however the greens were a little slow for a course of this caliber. Not sure if that was because it had rained or whether they keep it that way for guest play. I shot a perfectly mediocre round of 92 (mediocre for me, sucky for a good golfer).
We played the whites (about 6,400 yards) so all yardages are from there. There are generally two ways to go with an opener – super dramatic or ease golfers into the round. Wilson/Palmer chose the latter here. There is a ton of sand on the course and traps pinch the fairway here on your drive. I believe I put my drive in and took a bogey. The hole’s just 360 yards so if you avoid the sand, you should have a decent chance of getting an opening par here though the green is very well protected.
Two is an even shorter par four with the green hugging a little pond – see photo above. It’s only 340 yards and as you see from that same photo, my drive was in the fairway with about 80 yards in. So how the fuck did I get a seven? Well a super wimpy gap wedge flailed off to the right, a duff into the bunker, a flying skull across the green, a short chip still in the rough, but at least I got up and down from there! Click. Click. Click.
Three is a long par five where you’ll deal with sand on your drive, sand on your approach, and a whole lot of sand around the green. Click, click, click and another seven. This was actually the middle portion of the round for us and I was struggling big time through about a six-hole stretch.
Four is the number three handicap and tees off at the furthest point from the clubhouse. Make sure you check the pink tees which make the hole a 455-yard monster. The pinks measure 7,400+ yards and would make an incredibly tough test for the pros. Another double for me, but my partner was now playing hot and we won all three of our six hole matches. So that was nice.
Five is a long par three (love the variety of threes on the course). Another double but caught my second wind from this point on. The sixth is a short par five and the #17 handicap on the course. Lipped out a par putt for bogey. Seven is back across Peters Rd. You want to drive to the end of the fairway here (big hitters should not hit driver but your caddie will guide you). Then you clear a pond on your approach and a hidden pond to the left of the green swallows any hooked (or even slightly off line) approach. Avoided it all but again missed the par putt.
Eight is another par three that plays much longer from the back than the 170 yards we played it from the whites. Was in the sand (surprise) but put it within gimme range for the par. Nine is another signature hole. Left on your approach is wet. Keep it right like I did if you’re gonna miss and a chip and two putt for a satisfying bogey.
The back nine starts with a 375-yard hard dogleg right with a pond gobbling up anything right or long. I had a great drive around the corner. Nice approach and two putt par. Eleven is another 500+ yard par five which doglegs left for your approach. Twelve was a 390-yard par four with a lot of sand but pretty straight and 13 takes you back across Peters Rd. and was our final hole of the day where I had another great drive (which saved me from an otherwise shitty short game). Bogey. Bogey. Bogey. Which is not bad for me.
We started on the par-three 14th which is a watery carry playing to about 160 yards. Bogey. Fifteen is another great short hole with a pond left. I avoided the pond by pushing my drive right and into the sand. Then found the pond out of the sand. Double. Grrr. Though I was able to grab the ball (OK my caddie did) and didn’t lose a ball all day! I bogeyed the 16th and 17th which are a four and three respectively. Then 18 is one of the great holes in golf. You need to position your drive and second shots carefully to give you a shot at the green which is across the pond. I did that and drilled my 150-yard approach for my only birdie of the day.
In all this is definitely a course to put on the bucket list and rightfully is counted in the top 125 courses in the country. Definitely try to get your way on.
Golf Scrapbook 