Virginia Golfer May / Jun 2020 | Page 13

GreatHoles No.8 by WESTWOOD COUNTRY CLUB DAVID PARTRIDGE JON HOOD The 2020 VSGA Senior Amateur Championship is scheduled to be played at Westwood Country Club in Vienna in mid-August. Let’s all pray that the coronavirus will be contained by then and that life will return to some state of normalcy so we can resume competitive sports—including golf tournaments. A par-71 course measuring 6,915 yards from the tips and known for impeccable conditioning, Westwood is an outstanding test of golf that demands precision shot-making and astute course management. A frequent site of state events, Washington Metropolitan Golf Association events, as well as regional championships, the challenge of Westwood is perhaps best authenticated by the results of last year’s Middle Atlantic Amateur Championship. Reigning VSGA Amateur champion and three-time consecutive winner of the Middle Atlantic Amateur, Michael Brennan, shot 6-over par over four days and won the event by 10 shots (so the second-place finisher in this elite field of golfers shot 16 over par!) While there are many excellent holes at Westwood, any one of which would be worthy of being featured in this column, certainly one of the best designs is the par-5 8th. At less than 500 yards, the 8th is not long. However, the hole is a gentle, uphill climb all the way so it plays considerably longer than the yardage. The defining feature of the 8th is a beautiful water feature that runs the entire length of the hole; it feeds the lake in front of the tee, borders the right side of the hole, traverses the fairway, and forms a strategic pond that guards the left side of the green. The dissecting stream makes driving the ball in the fairway crucial—preferably on the right-hand side to create a better angle of play—if the player hopes to clear the water on their second shot and particularly if the golfer plans to go for the green in two. Apart from the adjacent water, the narrow, deep putting surface is protected by three ideally positioned bunkers. If well-played, the 8th at Westwood certainly represents an excellent birdie opportunity and a potential eagle chance. This superb design reminds us that great golf holes are not defined by how hard they are, but by the quality of the shot values they present, the strategic decisions they require us to make, the beauty of the design, and ultimately, the fun of playing the hole. The 8th at Westwood certainly fulfills all the promises in each of these categories. Gold: 483 yards Blue/White: 471 yards PAR 5 YARDAGES Green/Silver: 373 yards Red: 326 yards Apart from being a superb golf hole, the 8th at Westwood also holds a famous spot in the history of espionage. Immediately adjacent to the tee is Foxstone Park, which former FBI agent and convicted spy, Robert Hanssen, used as a dead-drop site to deliver classified materials to KGB and Russian agents for more than 20 years. Codenamed Ellis, the dead-drop was a dark, damp place under a footbridge where Hanssen would leave top-secret documents related to U. S. strategies in the event of nuclear war, developments in weapons technologies, and aspects of the U.S. counterintelligence program. Hanssen was arrested in 2001 at Foxstone Park—immediately after he left classified materials at the dead drop—by FBI agents who had parked overnight in a van in the club’s parking lot. Described by the Department of Justice as possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history, Hanssen is currently serving 15 consecutive life sentences at ADX Florence, a federal supermax prison near Florence, Colo. A five-time VSGA Player of the Year, David Partridge is a member of the Virginia Golf Hall of Fame Class of 2020. He lives in Richmond and works as a mortgage banker. vsga.org M AY/J UNE 2020 | V IRGINIA G OLFER 11