One week after the U.S. Open comes the second women\u2019s major of the year: the LPGA Championship.\u00a0 After being played for years at mid-Atlantic venues like Bulle Rock Golf Club and DuPont Country Club, the tournament lost McDonald\u2019s as a sponsor at the bottom of the economic downturn.\u00a0 Wegmans, the Rochester, New York grocery store chain that had sponsored an LGPA tour stop in Rochester for many years, stepped in.\u00a0 The LPGA Championship picked up Wegmans as a sponsor, and it shifted venues to the longtime host of Wegmans\u2019 tournament, Locust Hill Country Club, in the Rochester suburb of Pittsford.<\/p>\n
The change was a good one for many reasons.\u00a0 Wegmans has been very supportive of the Rochester event for many years, and it is a prominent and popular company in the region.\u00a0 The Rochester tournament has produced many great champions through the years, and the trend continued last year with Cristie Kerr\u2019s 8-shot victory.\u00a0 More importantly, Rochester is a tremendous golf town that has supported at men\u2019s major championships at nearby Oak Hill Country Club, two U.S. Women\u2019s Opens at Country Club of Rochester, and a Nationwide Tour event at Irondequoit Country Club.<\/p>\n
All of the Rochester golf courses that have previously hosted a big tournament have one thing in common: they are Donald Ross designs.\u00a0 The legendary Ross laid out six golf courses in the Rochester area and many nationally known layouts, including Pinehurst Number 2, Seminole, Oakland Hills, and Aronimink.\u00a0 Because of Ross, Rochester can claim a very high quality of golf for its size.\u00a0 The problem now is that Rochester\u2019s most visible golf course is Locust Hill, which is neither a worthy major championship venue nor a good representation of Western New York golf.<\/p>\n
Seymour Dunn, an architect with no well-known layouts or apparent architectural talent, designed the original course at Locust Hill.\u00a0 Robert Trent Jones later renovated the course, but seemed to make little improvement.\u00a0 Locust Hill suffers from many problems common to mediocre golf courses.\u00a0 The issues start with the routing, which is confusing and sliced in half by a busy suburban road.\u00a0 The golf faces multiple road crossings and several long hikes between tees and greens.\u00a0 As a result, the course lacks flow and jumps from hole to hole without any direction.\u00a0 The course is overpopulated with trees and water features, most of which are artificial.\u00a0 These hazards are used poorly to create holes that are narrow, boring, and entirely devoid of strategic decisions.<\/p>\n
Take the 2nd<\/sup> hole, a short par four where the golfer will face a second shot over, I kid you not, a blind, elevated pond.\u00a0 Or try the 4th<\/sup> hole, an uphill par five that features water left and out of bounds right off the tee.\u00a0 The golfer\u2019s only goal is to bash two shots and try to get as close to the green as possible.\u00a0 This theme of boring, one-dimensional golf holes continues throughout the course, from bland short par fours like 12 and 16 to the slogging uphill finishing hole. The golfer is not encouraged to shape the ball at Locust Hill, and he will definitely not be encouraged to think.\u00a0 Although the golf course is meticulously manicured, Locust Hill drains poorly and is perpetually soaked.\u00a0 The combination of boring architecture and unsatisfactory maintenance produces a bland golf course that falls well short of being a legitimate major championship venue.<\/p>\n Locust Hill is most embarrassing because it does not represent the great golf that exists in Western New York.\u00a0 Courses like Oak Hill, Country Club of Rochester, Monroe and little-known Brook Lea are phenomenal Rochester-area layouts that are miles beyond Locust.\u00a0 Moreover, Locust Hill is a poor choice of venue because, in addition to being thoroughly unexciting, it is a private layout.\u00a0 The tournament would be better served at a public venue, where the course would be more accessible to both local and national viewers.\u00a0 Rochester layouts like Ravenwood, Greystone, Deerfield and Bristol Harbour are several notches above Locust Hill in quality, as are Buffalo layouts like Arrowhead, Hickory Stick and Links at Ivy Ridge.<\/p>\n Overall, Locust is a poor representative for golf in Western New York and the LPGA tour. \u00a0Both can do better than Locust Hill when it comes time to host a major.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One week after the U.S. Open comes the second women\u2019s major of the year: the LPGA Championship.\u00a0 After being played for years at mid-Atlantic venues like Bulle Rock Golf Club and DuPont Country Club, the tournament lost McDonald\u2019s as a sponsor at the bottom of the economic downturn.\u00a0 Wegmans, the Rochester, New York grocery store […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lyons-den"],"yoast_head":"\n