Long thought of as wide-open and easy, the Auburn course offers many new challenges.
AUBURN – This is not your father’s golf course.
Any myths perpetuated for generations about Prospect Hill Golf Course – that it’s not challenging, that there is no rough, and that it is wide-open with no penalties for bad shots – should stop immediately.
“We have rough now,” said George Gendron, who took over ownership in 2004. “People are surprised a bit to come back here and see that. Our rough is about 2 inches high right now, and that’s where we mow it. You really do have to keep it in the short stuff.”
The rough is one of the many changes in the last year at the South Main Street course.
Gendron has also continued the installation of an irrigation system, the addition and extension of several waterways, and the renumbering and remeasuring the course.
“As an example, the first hole used to be listed at 460-yards and was a par-5,” said Gendron. “It’s actually only 410 yards long. That’s a big difference.”
Because of the length change, the hole now plays as a par-4 for men.
“We wanted to change it a bit, to make people play smarter golf out here,” said Gendron. “Before, all of the fairways here were one-cut, and now the fairways have definition, there is deeper rough and we have a different cut on the approaches, too.”
Changes aside, though, the course itself, even before the improvements, was and is a study in contrast.
“The front is pretty much wide-open and kind of easy,” said Gwin Gendron, George’s wife and co-owner of the club. “The back, though, the back will eat you up. It’s so peaceful and quiet back there. It’s like two completely different golf courses.”
Holes 12 and 13, the two jewels of the back nine, are secluded on the opposite side of a dirt road, and offer a quiet buffer from the rest of the course. The 12th hole is a par-5 that snakes from right to left around a grove of trees, and 13 is a narrow par-4 that returns slightly uphill along the right edge of the 12th hole.
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