Number 1: Pine Valley Golf Club

Ceiling: 99

Rating: 97.5

Trend over Time: 8.5

HOT TAKE ALERT!

I, like many others, am fully on board with Pine Valley being the best effort any architect has ever put forth. George Crump’s masterpiece is exactly that, a masterpiece. You can read about it (like you’re doing), you can watch the flyovers, you can see the photos, but until you experience the magic of PV, you can’t fully understand how brilliant it is. We talk about House Theory at The Tie Podcast. Our concept of a golf course and its holes being like a house. The exterior, décor, flow of the rooms, feel, size, purpose, and all other aspects of a house need to be in harmony with each other and the setting in which it sits. A golf course is just the same. The strategy, green sizes and challenges, lengths of holes, bunkering, aesthetic, and all other facets of a golf experience need to work together to create the best stuff and by this metric, it doesn’t get better than Pine Valley. Each hole is its own resolute entity, or house, if you will. But the sum of the parts is better than any other 18 holes I have ever played. 18 houses of different sizes and styles, but the neighborhood they make up is the world’s finest zip code.

Culture:

Pine Valley is not just a golf course. It’s a borough of New Jersey hidden back in the woods of Clementon behind a waterpark. Population 21. When you arrive at Pine Valley, you feel like you are driving across the train tracks into Narnia for what will be the best day of golf of your life. And the feelings end up being substantiated. I would describe the feeling of playing Pine Valley as having a mild intimidation factor not at all due to its exclusivity or because there are a million rules in place. More so due to the fact that you know it’s a real day of golf you are getting into and you don’t want to show up with your B or C game. The club is littered with great players. The caddies are some of the best you’ll find. The golf course follows suit. And no one wants to be that guy/gal who lets their nerves take over and lets the golf course play them rather than the other way around. It has a strong tendency to do that…

Competition:

Pine Valley hosts the Crump Cup, a (the) mid-amateur competition, annually and has held just one Walker Cup in 1985 and most significantly was recently announced as the site of the 2034 Curtis Cup. After announcing it would allow female members as of 2021, this is an awesome step in the club’s history and stewardship to the game. I’ve yet to the have the pleasure, but one day hope to tote a pencil at PV. From what I’ve heard there is regular PV, and there’s tourney time PV. At face value, the course is a challenge. You have to drive it well to quite well, and the irons must be on point. But when the gun goes off the word is that the greens take on a new personality type that can described as ~punishing. ~

Architecture:

Nothing about Pine Valley is *overly difficult. It’s supremely fair, but stern from start to finish. Now, if you are loose with dog, forget it. The beautiful forest that the course sits within is unrelenting towards poor tee play. But, if you’re a >7/10 driver of the ball, you’ll have a shot to the green all day. However, that doesn’t constitute being “out of the woods” on avoiding bogey or more. Many courses really just challenge you off the tee but once you’ve passed that test, you let your guard down as there’s not much to go wrong. PV keeps coming, and coming, until you hole out. And this is why it is not only a, but the supreme golf experience. Few shots on the course stand apart as being particularly hard nor easy. It’s a 4 hour assessment of your ability to hit well informed, well struck shots. Short holes have smaller more exacting greens that you approach with a wedge where if you miss will lead to a discerning short game test. Long holes have larger greens that will lead to a challenge with the putter and your ability to avoid 3 or more rolls. Simple, classy, timeless ways of testing golfers on each hole. The elegance and charm of a great cabin in the woods, but the moxie of a mansion. Great golf. Great houses. Great stuff.

Thanks for following along for my Top 25- we’ll see you next year!

Cheers,

HS