So you think youâve âfound it.â Your game has come together and youâre playing really well. You want to know how well? Head to Pine Forest Country Club in Summerville. Area golfers will tell you, this is a place you want to play, if you really want to test your game.
At Pine Forest, slope and course ratings of 141 and 74.1 from the back tees tell only part of the story. You expect a course to be tough from the tips. But at Pine Forest, the slope rating tops 130 from three of the five sets of markers. That doesnât mean that a round here is penance. On the contrary, itâs a pleasure, especially when you hit the perfect drive into a fairway often flanked by trees on one side and water on the other. Or you rifle an approach to a pin cut tight into a corner of a severely contoured green. Either way, this is a course that rewards accuracy, both in the long and short game.
Not that there arenât many good holes here, but two of the best come early in the back nine. At the 428-yard 10th, a par-4 called âDouble Trouble,â your drive must find a piece of fairway inside a U-shaped bend in a creek. And at the 360-yard 12th, called âLittle Augusta,â you can test your precision against one of the better short par-4s in the entire area. Here, the green recalls the 12th at Augusta National, with water guarding the entire front. The horizontal target is only 12 steps â or less â deep, so distance control is a must.
Pine Forest Country Club is part of a residential development of the same name. But none of the holes have housing on both sides of the fairway, and seven of the holes have no development. Best part of all, nowhere on the course is there not another golf hole to either your right, giving the feeling of the great âcountry clubâ courses from decades gone by.