Moderately long par 5 with interesting defenses

The Par 5 third hole at Avery Ranch Golf Course starts intimidating the player straight off the tee with a daunting carry over a small gorge with a flood-destroyed concrete dam to the left. Beyond the broken dam, the left is lined with trees and prickly pear cactus scrub land and the right is lined with slice attracting OB back yards. Inviting indeed! In reality, it’s only 120 yards to carry the gorge from the blues so the layout is more of a mental trick to quake the knees. The architect, recognizing that good long players don’t get intimidated by carrying pesky gorges, placed a fairway bunker 250 yards straight away from the blues. A gentle draw would place the long hitters nicely in the fairway away from that bunker. Too much left, though puts the ball in a couple of deep grass mounds that require muscle to advance from.

The hole viewed from Google Earth

The long tee fairway bunker defense is augmented by an additional fairway right bunker again designed to trap the unwary long ball hitter. A deposit on that beach would require a 100 yard shot to make the green and of course, the architect plopped large green side bunker complex between the green and said fairway bunker. A less than perfect fairway bunker escape shot is likely to spoil the player’s day with the dreaded beach to beach ball transfer.

But, let’s just say for fun’s sake that from the blues you hit a sensible 240 yard drive avoiding the first bunker. Then, wisely, lay up with another conservative 150-160 yard iron shot slightly left to avoid fairway bunker 2. You might start feeling pretty good about showing off your strategic chops if you didn’t know this course. However, as you walk up around the dogleg, the image below greets you – the diabolical architect’s last defense – a copse of trees deliberately left in what should be fairway fronting the green.

Depending on your length and left-ness of your shot, you may face having to hit a high shot to clear these trees and make the green. The two aforementioned distances would leave you needing to loft a wedge over the copse but if you happen hit your ball a bit too far you won’t be able to clear the copse. Then you will have to “bend it like (a pro)” around the trees or punch the low bump and run between the many trunks. Even as I took this picture a member’s ball thwacked in the canopy which promptly spit the ball straight down to the tree’s roots. I and my friends have witnessed all manner of tree rejections from this copse. The pain of frequent rejection though, makes the occasional lovely green bound lofted shot all the more satisfying!

The green complex on this third hole is shown in the title picture and itself is reasonably tame with gentle back-to-front slope. There’s not much room behind the green and the rocky scrubland is difficult to chip from so it’s best not to go long. The bunker sand, the last time I played it, was the typical Avery Ranch dense, somewhat rocky, texture that when wet requires finesse, not muscle, to extract your ball to the green.

Playing this hole from the whites with my Scoring method strategy, I plan in advance to put the ball on the green in four because my distance doesn’t allow me to approach the copse short enough for a high shot to clear. I therefore, shoot my 3rd shot to land to the right of the copse leaving me a clear sand wedge to the green and escape with my desired bogey with two putts. I have parred this hole twice – once when I hit a solid 3W, 4H, and a lucky copse skirting 6-iron to a GIR & two putts. My last par here was on a nice one putt after wedging to the green for my fourth shot.