Where other courses plant tidy flower beds for visual interest, Tobacco Road has rusting farm implements. Grass on the fairways and greens feel as though they are hanging on for dear life against encroaching wastes. Mike Stranz’s design is a reclamation project in a wasteland. Blasting, bulldozers and dump trucks scarred the landscape. The whole of Tobacco Road has a bit of a post-apocalypse feel. Stranz’s design is not seaside or prairie raw, though. Holes are routed between towering shoulders of sand, across vast wastes, past steep craggy faces and through labyrinthine canyons. Tobacco Road is built on the skeleton of an abandoned sand quarry. Tobacco Road Review: The first at Tobacco Road is a 558 yard par 5. It is hard to describe Tobacco Road, for Stranz bends and breaks so many of the norms of golf course design language and design. Tobacco Road is always included in the major magazines’ Top 100 lists. Tobacco Road is one of just nine course designs by Mike Stranz before his untimely death at age 50. There is a fine line between the two and Tobacco Road teeters on it. Tobacco Road Review: A view of the fifth from the fairway.
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