Golf course restoration has blessed my era of armchair architects. As an Ohioan, I’ve been fortunate to reap the benefits at several notable projects near the movement’s fore, such as Keith Foster’s revealing at Moraine and the Inverness project that made Andrew Green the nation’s most in-demand Ross renovator. At the same time, big names like Tom Doak and Gil Hanse have overhauled municipal options such as Memorial Park (Houston) and The Park (West Palm). It is understandable then that we have set our restorative sights upon the Golden Age’s great municipals. 

I once sat with that audience but, having played Ross’s George Wright, I have relaxed my aims. Wright, a course constructed by the roughest of hands (and dynamite), now sits in the gentle control of a management team that understands the value this land encompasses. 

And oh, how it encompasses. To date, my favorite course – favorite, not best; the course that has spoken to me most intimately – has been Davenport Country Club in the foothills of the Mississippi. George Wright has been the nearest I’ve otherwise come to this topographic experience, where the land billows in great bursts and a great architect must steer his skipper in unconventional directions to reach port; it is easy to imagine Ross’s previous routing attempts lying discarded, the sheets of paper crumbled to resemble the hostile landscape. 

So often the land directs the shot here, such as the speed slot for big hitters down the left side of the No. 16 par five, or the enormous dropoff off the right side of that hole’s perched green, daring the big hitter to go double-or-nothing. The fifth’s wide fairway, collapsing rightward into its dogleg, requires little skill to hold yet utmost skill to master, finding an even lie or visible angle in. No. 10 is perhaps the signature hole, demanding a detonated draw along hope-cancelling bunkers for all who wish to see the green upon approach. Your coward of a correspondent opted for the blind, 220-yard approach from the safer side of the fairway, next hitting down slope that evokes the roller coasters this same coward avoided as a child. 

(As a tourist aside, if you failed to get tickets to a game at Fenway, a notoriously well-attended stadium, simply look backward at any number of holes here.) 

There are, true, instances where perhaps even Ross gave up and just went with it; the fairway at No. 12 chutes an exaggerated bobsled run between steep outcroppings, as much a path for players to walk themselves from upper fairway-to-green as an actual strategic consideration. Hit more than 225 from the tee and cross your fingers.