Pine Valley Short Course

First opened for play in 1992, the ten holes of the Pine Valley Short Course were designed by Tom Fazio and Ernie Ransome to take some pressure off the popular 18-hole Pine Valley course and to emulate some of the approach shot situations that golfers will find when playing the main layout.

Ransome, the club’s former president, remarked: “I always said I would never build a second course at Pine Valley to compete with the original, but I did get the idea of doing this, and thought it would be nice to duplicate some of the original holes. Tom took it from there and did a wonderful job.”

Only a few of the copied holes are identical and one of those is the 1st hole on the Short course, which is modelled on the 10th hole of main course. The elevation change from tee to green on this replica is within a foot of the other hole.

“It’s an excellent solution for the club,” wrote Tom Doak in The Confidential Guide to Golf Courses, “because no original design was going to be good enough to get regular use; but it’s hard to know how to grade something so derivative.”