Golf Course Review: 5 Bay Area Golf Delights
Site of Hitchcock’s The Birds, Bodega Harbor offers a breathtaking round of golf.
The Links at Bodega Harbor was the first course I ever played in the Bay Area and it has remained one of my favorites.
This Robert Trent Jones, Jr. track takes full advantage of the rugged Pacific cliffs environment to provide a modified Scottish links experience that’s well worth the drive from San Francisco. And the drive, itself, is time well-spent.
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I like just about everything about Bodega Bay, from the dramatic tee-to-green changes in elevation to the challenges of putting surfaces with some wild undulations and multiple breaks to the smooth-as-silk bunkers and the punishing natural grass areas waiting just beyond the short grass to snatch an errant shot.
My favorite hole is the par-5 5th. It’s a double dogleg with a short tee shot that requires considerable precision, followed by a full blind second shot off a cliff and then, if you’ve done it right to that point, an easy approach to a huge but very undulated green.
Bodega is the kind of track that has built-in problems waiting at each shot. On the 5th, the cow pasture beyond the tee shot is OB and it’s easy to overestimate the distance because the shot is slightly downhill. Then, off to the right on the blind 2nd shot there’s a large natural grass rough that runs the length of the fairway and can cause considerable trouble. But once I figured out my tee shot distance and found the courage to give my 2nd shot everything I had, getting to the green in regulation was a fairly easy accomplishment.
Now I always feel a little adrenaline rush when I come off the 4th green and head for the 5th tee. It’s going to be me against the golf course again and on this hole I stand a very good chance of coming out even, so long as I play carefully and take it one shot at a time. I can’t make that claim for other holes at Bodega. I’ll leave the final three-hole stretch for another post, but I will share that I’m still trying to master the finish to my Bodega round.
Some words of advice for playing Bodega: take a sweater, even in mid-summer, because a day that starts out hot and sunny can turn cold and wet and foggy in an instant. I also prefer an early to mid-morning tee-time, even though it means getting an early start for the drive up from San Francisco, because the breakfast burritos — which are of the to-die-for quality — generally are gone by 10:30.
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