Course Breakdown: Kingsley #11
From the tee, this hole looks as simple as the last. The designer, Mike Devries, does a great job of disguising what is really happening around the green for newcomers. The hole plays slightly downhill (about 5 yards) and the prevailing wind is right to left. Full transparency, the wind on this hole confuses me more often than any other hole on the course. I rely on my weather/wind app to see what the wind is doing that day and commit to that, rather than trying to determine what the wind is doing in every little moment. I was taught that you can’t trust a gust. The percentages say to trust the general direction and stick with it, rather than evaluating the wind on every single shot.
Sadly, it took me 10 years to flip that rule on its head for the 11th at Kingsley. The hole faces southeast, while the general wind direction is from the southwest. My brain always wants the wind to be slightly hurting from the right, but year after year, I noticed more people missing long rather than short. Eventually, you have to accept you’re wrong and change your perspective!
The green is oval in shape, but as mentioned, the right side of the green is a mirage. Because the front-right bunker sits slightly higher than the front of the green, most players can’t see that there is a giant false front along the right side. The left side of the hole tends to kick everything hard left to right toward the green. Last year, I had a player smooth a hook onto the hillside short left of the green. The ball landed and kicked dead right toward the hole. It’s a good thing the pin was in the way because I could hear the ball clang into the flagstick from the tee box, and it ended up about 5 feet away for birdie after an awful swing. The point is, miss left!
The back tier of the green makes this hole at least half a stroke harder than the lower tier. With the right side of the green being a mirage and a terrible place to miss, you have to play very defensively when the pin is back here. Check out the picture in the yardage book to better understand what I mean. The miss is left, but you cannot be left and pin high. That will leave you with an impossible chip shot, with a high chance of rolling off the backside of the green to the area you were trying to avoid in the first place. You have to play to be short and left of the pin.
Let’s say I’m playing the hole. From the gold tees, this hole is about 175 yards to the middle, with a back pin at about 185 yards. Without factoring in the wind, I’m playing my shot around 165-170 yards and aiming slightly left of center. This gives me a great chance to find the front-left part of the green and have an uphill look at two-putting for par. One last pointer for this back pin: the back tier is incredibly flat. Generally speaking, a putt on this back tier will never be more than a ball outside the hole.
