Course Breakdown: Kingsley #14

I know I mentioned that 13 was potentially my favorite hole but that was quickly squashed as soon as I remembered how much I loved the 14th. It is a dog leg right par 5 that can be reachable with a good drive. The tee shot requires players to analyze some level of risk/reward based on how confident they are feeling with their driver. What makes this hole difficult is that the left of this hole is out of bounds and comes into play very quickly once you get within 150 yards of the hole. Sadly, the green runs pretty hard right to left so the ideal approach angle is from the left to most pin locations. I have seen some absolutely perfect drives leave golfers with an iron in their hands only to hit a bad approach shot and struggle to make par when they had much higher intentions. The big decision here is what to do with your 2nd shot for most golfers. 

From the tee box, all you can see is the fairway to the left, two bunkers, a bush right of the bunkers. What you can’t see from the tee, is that there is fairway directly after these bunkers. The blue tees bounce back and forth between two different tee boxes but I’ll use the closer box for numbers but the further tee box is ~40 yards further. The left bunker is 190 yards to carry and the right bunker is only 180 yards. For golfers confident with getting over these bunkers, the ideal line is right between the two of them. The right bush is a boundary line that you do not want to be right of. 

Beyond the bunkers, the fairway has a ridge that starts about 230 yards and slopes drastically right to left. The ridge creates a pretty steep incline for any golf ball landing between 230 and 250 yards. Any ball landing around this distance will land and kick dead left, almost leading the ball further away from the hole. A drive that carries the incline of this ridge and lands on the backside, gets a huge kick forward. We call this the “speed slot”. Depending on where your drive lands on this ridge, a 250 yard drive could leave you 200-280 yards out depending on how your shot reacts to the ridge. The more right you are, the less distance your drive needs to carry to get a kick forward instead of left. 

Big hitters need to be careful not to miss too far left because the tree line comes into play. You’ll need a right to left shaped shot to get back into position. Please see the google maps screenshot to determine your best aim point. 

You’ve got two options when deciding where to lay up. You can either stay short of the right cross bunkers or try to get past/left of them. A typical drive will leave you about 280 yards out. The cross bunkers start 110 yards from the green and end at 75 yards. This means that from 280 yards, you’ll either need to hit a shot short of 170 yards to avoid the bunkers or carry over 210 yards to clear them. The left half of the fairway offers a better angle to the green than the right half.

The general slope of the green runs from the back right corner to the front left corner. The entire left side of the green is a false front and is mowed very tightly. There are four pin locations on this green. Much like the 13th hole, each section significantly changes the strategy, affecting how you approach and where to miss.

Right of the green has a chance to kick a ball left toward the green, but this is never the desired miss. You’ll rarely get a favorable bounce if you miss right. However, missing left is generally the best place to get up and down from.

Location 1:

This is the easiest pin location on the hole and offers plenty of options for those who are trying to use some creativity to get the ball close. There is a good sized backboard slope you can utilize if from short or left of the green. You cannot miss right and if you end up beyond the backboard, you’ve got a putt that needs to be aimed well left and just creeps over the ridge. As long as the pin isn’t tucked into the backstop, a 2 putt is feasible. When laying up to this location I try to get as close as possible to the green but there is nothing wrong with staying short of the cross bunkers and having a ~100 yard shot in.  

Location 2:

The left position makes things a bit tougher on golfers because of how small of a landing zone it is to get close to this pin. You have to be short of this pin. Just beyond this area is a mound in the middle of the green that sits a few feet higher than the rest of the green. A putt from above this mound has to be perfect just to stay on the green when putting to this section. Anything from short or a little right has to be aimed well right of the flag because of how dramatic the right to left slope is short of this pin location. If you are left of this pin, you either have to putt up the false front or hit a chip shot into the uphill. Whatever you decide, make sure to remember that a little too long and you’ve got a back stop and anything short comes back to your feet. For my lay up shot, I’m more likely to lay up short of the cross bunkers. I don’t see this as a “birdie” pin and am fine with trying to hit a wedge on the front half of the green somewhere. 

Location 3:

The middle right pin is a tough one to get close unless you’ve got the perfect angle. The landing area is really small and anything that isn’t perfect kicks pretty hard left. From the right half of the fairway, getting a ball to stop in this location is nearly impossible because of those slopes. It really pays off to hit your approach shot pin high and left to this pin. You’ll see that it offers an amazing back stop between the two bunkers. A miss long is manageable, just leaves a sneaky straight putt that breaks left off the middle mound and then banks back right once it slopes down to this section. 

Location 4: 

The back section plays quite a bit differently than the rest of the hole because long is a better miss than short. This is a relative statement because we both have eyeballs and can see that there is a giant bunker long. As long as you don’t carry it all the way to the bunker, there is a nice backstop. Coming in from the right part of the fairway is a better angle than the rest of the pin locations but left isn’t quite as easy. I really like to have a full swing into the green when playing to this pin location.