Course Breakdown: Kingsley Club #8

Kingsley #8

This is one of my favorite golf holes because there’s no “faking it” — you have to hit a good approach shot. Most of the holes at Kingsley offer plenty of relief if you know where to miss, but this hole doesn’t follow that pattern.

The tee shot is the easiest on the course. The fairway is over 40 yards wide, and the hole is only about 350 yards long. There’s a bunker about 250 yards from the tee that covers more than 50% of the fairway until it ends at 280 yards. The best strategy is to hit a shot of about 220 yards to ensure your ball doesn’t reach the middle of the fairway, avoiding the bunker.

From there, you’ll have a 100-120 yard shot to a perched-up green that plays about 5 yards uphill. This is where the fun begins, because the green slopes off left, right, and short. With a bunker short-left and a tightly mowed false front protecting the front and right portions of the green, you need to focus and execute a good shot.

There is some relief long. The green is cut into a hillside, which creates a natural backboard behind the green. However, because the area is so tightly mowed, a ball can gain too much speed and race towards the front of the green or, worse, into the left-front bunker. When I play this hole, my main goal is simply to find the green — I can live with whatever putt I have left.

Not factoring in any wind, my philosophy for yardage on this hole is to aim for the back edge of the green, with a miss left being better than right. This strategy eliminates the bad miss of short/right and allows golfers to use the only relief on the hole, which is a little long.

This hole is a great example of finding the “good” miss and ensuring your club selection is based on that information. By targeting the area with the largest margin of error, you can exploit the relief and improve your chances of success.