Tallwood Country Club

While the front nine at Tallwood Country Club serves up several excellent holes, it is the back side that leaves, for me, a major impression for its consistency and quality. Three of the toughest par-4s on the course appear here. Twelve crosses a pond off the tee, then climbs straight uphill to a strongly pitched and bunker-guarded green. Both fifteen and seventeen pressure your tee shot with multiple hazards in their landing zones; each of these greens is fronted, as well, by a pond. The par-5s, while not particularly long, nonetheless have distinctive features that seem emblematic of the era in which this course was built. The eleventh sports a narrow, curling green with a big pond on its left flank, tending to intimidate even when you have only a short-iron or wedge in hand. On the other hand, a vast fairway bunker awaits on the fairway’s left side at the sixteenth. About as imposing as a bunker gets, it is embedded into a hillside. But it preys on golf balls much like a Venus flytrap eats insects.

The back nine balances an open feeling on holes eleven through fourteen with the more wooded, tree-lined character of the rest of its holes. Impressive, too, is the emergence of the course’s most scenic holes, eleven and twelve, where a neighboring farm adds another dimension to the countryside aura.

The back is also the inverse of the front because water hazards come into play on all but two holes, while only two holes on the front–three and eight–are watery ones.

In terms of design style, architect Michael and Karl Ovian seemed to have been influenced to some degree by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. (or, at least, by prevailing trends of the 1970s) Think: long tees, big bunkers, greens of considerable square footage, and water hazards liberally used. While Tallwood’s set-up is not as long or tight as some of the more iconic Trent Jones courses, the length of this track does exceed 6,500 yards from the deep tees, and the fairways–especially those with significant slopes–can be hard to hold. From the back tees, you’re certainly facing a modern-day, championship test of golf. What stands out most, though, is the inherent challenge of these greens, which may well be the layout’s greatest attribute. These greens tilt and slope with great variety, and play fast and slippery. Moreover, no two of the green complexes seem alike. The player may face a large dropoff next to a given green and then, on the next, a putting surface tightly protected by a massive bunker or two. Or a bunker, a falloff, and a pond–as at hole eight.

Conditions: Average to good, and about what you’d expect for November. Greens, fairways and tees were good, while the bunkers were weak and the roughs just okay. These are observations rather than complaints: considering that the NFL is finishing week 9, the golf season is now long since over–so no big deal.

Some Conclusions:

Tallwood is among the top courses in that regional quadrant of Connecticut which runs northeast of the state’s geographical center. Suffice it to say that the value here is very high when you play this course in season.

After playing at Tallwood again today, I realized how worthy an adversary this course is; yet it’s not so hard that most of the fun is taken out of the game. Play each hole with a strategy of some kind and you should stay in step with what the course gives you. Combine that with an avoidance of big mistakes and you’ll likely make your score on a challenging track.

We all know that fall is the time that the leaves are troublesome on the fairways and on the greens. This is a great course, but the leaves were a problem on most greens.

This is an excellent course however it was under fall maintenance aeration of the greens and tees. We had to play the front nine twice to get 18 holes of golf in because of the aeration process on the back nine. Otherwise, this is a great course.

Had the best round this year at Tallwood!! The only challenge were the fall leaves on the greens. This is common and the maintenance folks were hard at blowing the leaves around the course.

Nice course. Challenging greens which make it fun. Lots of sand traps.

I don’t understand why golfers are not held accountable for their slow play!

Yesterday should have been a 4 hour round. Instead it was 4:40 and we skipped a hole.

Lovely course, great layout, nice people, good food but unregulated slow pace of play takes it all away.

The course was in great condition for the end of the playing season. My wife and I play the whole 18 holes smoothly. The staff was good and the course was better. I would recommend this course!