This was Pete Dye’s first course in China and only Chartered Diamond (highest level) members of the Mission Hills Golf Club are entitled to play here. Of course it helps to know a Chartered Diamond member too. We’ve played all the original 10 courses and this is our first time on this course. We heard that it was difficult, but this was stupid difficult. The greens are severely undulating and the holes cut in the most unreasonable places. Can you believe putting uphill and stopping hole high two inches from the cup and have the ball roll back to where you started from, or even further? CRAZY.

Anyway, we managed to squeeze in a birdie on hole 12. This 387 yard (from the blues) dogleg left Par 4 had long and wide fairway bunkers on the left, begging for me to get into. And luckily I avoided them, but instead managed to get into one of the small right hand side ones…R didn’t seem to be very happy though. Nevertheless, we were on a clean flat lie with about 150 yards to the front hole location. A nice clean hit with a 6 iron landed just on the front part of the green, leaving a 15 footer uphill. The greens were much faster than the 8.2 Stimpmeter reading that was recorded. But fortunately after several holes, we managed to get a hold of the speed and after a good read and stroke, in I went.

100525 Mission Hills - Pete Dye, Hole 12 (Par 4)

100525 Mission Hills - Pete Dye, Hole 12 (Par 4)