October 2024 – Dupont Country Club in Wilmington, DE is a massive private club featuring three golf courses, a full gym, like 20+ tennis courts (both indoor and out), pickleball, state-of-the-art short game area, indoor hitting bays with Trackman etc. all covering about 800 acres in northern Delaware. First exclusively for Dupont employees, it is now open to anyone who wants to join. Of the three courses there, the Dupont (or Championship) Course is the premier course on the property and formerly hosted an LPGA Tour event through the 90’s and early 2000’s. It was formerly like the 7th or 8th ranked course in the state but since there are so few “rankable” courses in Delaware according to Golf Digest, they have pared the recent rankings down to just five ranked courses. While GD says there are only 15 “rankable” courses, Golf Link says there are 49 – 28 public, 5 municipal, and 14 private courses in the state.
The Dupont course (discussed here) was designed by Alfred Tull in 1949 – the end of the first decade of the dark ages of golf course design. Only 16 courses are ranked in GolfWeek’s top 200 Modern + Top 200 Classic courses from the decades starting in 1940 through 1970 and 9 of those are from the 1960’s – mostly RTJ designs and an early Fazio and Pete Dye thrown in. I kind of get why as courses I’ve played from this era were either of the early planned residential course ilk or the bland “Tournament” course ilk. While there is an odd course I like from the era, most land squarely in the middle to bottom third in my personal rankings and Dupont is right there in the middle. It’s a good course, just not a great course, like a turkey hoagie from Wawa.
All that said and since I haven’t planned any upcoming trips, figured I would do a review of the course so I can recap the 2024 golfing year. To the recap. 2024 was a down golf year for me when it comes to populating my top 100 and number of different courses played. The year started slow while I recovered from hernia surgery and while I started the year with several work trips, the whole “working thing” wore on me and didn’t want to leave the office as much to meet with franchisees or I simply made quick trips without golf. So I retired (kind of) in September and since then I have had several trips and played some great courses but a lot of those were repeats (not a bad thing) and not adding to my list of different courses. The top courses I played this year were Pinehurst #10 and Black Desert in Utah – both top 100 IMO – plus the Concession and Apogee in FL, and Colorado Golf Club. The biggest surprise was probably Longboat Key which took on some water damage from Hurricane Milton and closed up for a few weeks after we played. Biggest disappointment was Old Hickory in TN which was a blah design and was in bad shape for a private club. The theme this year ended up being Utah (where I played two courses on a work trip earlier in the summer and took our annual trip to St. George and played three more) and playing new courses just opened. In all I played 23 new for me courses.
My road game/golf trip to Tampa was washed out by Helene and didn’t catch any road games this year save a Pirates game at a college reunion in the ‘Burgh. My daughter got married in July which was great and saw a bunch of great concerts this year: 10cc, ELO, Neil Young, and Band of Horses. I got fitted for clubs at Club Champion but besides adding some distance to my drives, my craptacular golf game managed to get worse! Now that I am retired, I need to get on fixing that!
So far I don’t have a lot planned for 2025. I have started putting together our annual guys trip. Looking at Indiana for golf – French Lick, Victoria National – and Louisville to fly into and out of and hold a bourbon tour (though not for me, not a fan, I’ll bring Miller Lites). I will work on some local/regional privates through Thousand Greens (like some leftover rounds to reschedule at Hollywood and Applebrook) and talked about a Bozeman trip with my buddy Donnie!
Finally then to the course. As noted, I liked but didn’t love Dupont. Conditioning was good and as noted above there are a ton of amenities but the course really didn’t stand out and I can’t remember any holes that wowed me. I rank it around 30th in the 100+ courses I’ve played in the Philadelphia market which is in the good not great range of local private clubs with the likes of Whitemarsh, Cedarbrook, and Radnor Valley. We got on through a GAP member play day event which my brother won while my golfing woes continued! We played a shot gun which I hate and started on 8 so the sunsetting on the first seven holes below is because we played those last into the Fall setting sun. Also a ton of leaves and spent way too much time looking for golf balls.
We played from the white tees that measure sub-6,000 yards as we were in the Senior category for the GAP match. One from those tees is a short 317-yard par four with a creek crossing up right before the green. It is definitely driveable.
I skipped the 500-yard 2nd which is a straight-away par five and here is the third which is another short (314 yards), left dog-legging par four. Below is from my pathetically short drive.
Four is a long (playing 180 into the wind when we played) par three. Actually the only par I had all day (greens were pretty slow compared to where I have been playing and left everything short all day).
Five is a 340-yard, pretty straight par four obviously westward heading. Second trap on the left is reachable.
My best drive of the day put me about a nine-iron out on five but would three jack on the slow greens.
Six is a bear (the number two handicap). It is 380 yards with a creek along the right which you have to cross diagonally on your approach.
The approach on six.
Seven is a 453-yard par five which should be easy unless you find the sand (like I did) and sucked in the sand (like I did). We all agreed that there is a ton of sand at DuPont and you can take the photo below and repeat it for me on just about 2/3rds of the holes.
We opened and closed the round on the 8th. The easiest hole on the course – 125-yard par three.
Nine is a funky hole. It’s 374 yards and the aiming spot is the tree in the middle. Hit it straight toward the trees on the right and they are driveable. Just right of the tree is creek. Left of the tree (safely) still requires a hard draw. Dumb IMO.
I missed 10 (slight dogleg left, 364-yard par four) and this is the #1 handicap 11th. Again the tree is the place to aim but if you can’t drive 250+ from the tees, you’ll be blocked out. It’s 355 yards from the whites. Our buddy Dan hit a great shot but hit the tree and bounced into a clump of high grass. I guess if you play often and know your distances, you’d avoid fading it.
Still the 11th. See above.
This is the 12th. Hard dogleg left protected by the bunkers which I was in. Burned a shot in there. Then leaf rule (Fall golf is beautiful but frustrating looking for balls). Another double in a day full of them.
Thirteen. 340 yards. Par four. This is in the “Marching Army” portion of the course. Right-left-right-left. The photo at the top of the page is the approach on 13.
Fourteen is a benign par three, just 126 yards and an easy par, unless you’re in a bunker or an easy bogey if you’re halfway decent out of the sand. Double for smacked asses like me who skulled one out of the sand.
Fifteen is a straight-away par four, just 337 yards from the whites.
Fifteen approach from my drive. You see the sand dilemma. I avoided and a GIR but a fucking three putt bogey. S-L-O-W greens.
Sixteen is the see-saw hole to 15, back up, straight and almost identical yardage as 15.
Approach on 16.
Seventeen. 145 yards. Par three. Sand protecting green on all sides.
And 18. Par 5 doglegging right but if you aim just left of the tree you better be able to pound the ball as the hazard extends out toward the fairway, Go straight and you outdrive the fairway. It’s a 500-yard par five so I get it can’t be a higher handicap than it is (7) but I think it is the toughest on the course and ended up in my pocket. All in all my captions are harsher than the course is. It’s a nice play and if it is your own club, I’m sure you’d learn where to hit it safely to avoid the hidden hazards and traps.
Golf Scrapbook 