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