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<\/a>I suppose I should be proud that my pouch in one came at Hooper, a nine-hole course that is one of 25 that Anthony Pioppi calls, in his The Finest Nines<\/em> (Skyhorse Publishing, $19.95) subtitle, one of \u201cThe Best Nine-Hole Golf Courses in North America.\u201d<\/p>\nHe actually calls Hooper the seventh best of the 25 and, as is the nature of such rankings, let the arguments begin. (I know Tony, and know he wouldn\u2019t mind debating while our feet rest on a bar rail.) Hooper may well be, as Pioppi notes, \u201c\u2026a challenge to the highly skilled while remaining eminently enjoyable for the less adept.\u201d But I refuse to believe it\u2019s a better course than another in New Hampshire, the Dublin Lake Club, which does not get a nod.<\/p>\n
The latter club dates from 1901 and the finished course from a few years later, with no architect of record. It\u2019s a real prize, though an exclusive private course. But Pioppi makes no distinction between public and private in his choices, which are based solely, he says, on the architectural merits of each choice.<\/p>\n
Pioppi has been down this road before in an earlier volume called To the Nines<\/em>\u00a0(reviewed here<\/a>). So he knows his nine-hole courses. This is a far more attractive volume, with splendid photos of the various picks. And it\u2019s loaded with intriguing historical notes on each track, 18 of them old-timers built before 1960. Twenty of the courses are in the U.S., five in Canada.<\/p>\n It gives little away, since it\u2019s revealed in Chapter 1, that Pioppi ranks the Whitinsville Golf Club in Massachusetts as the best nine-hole course in North America, and says, \u201cIt can be played and enjoyed by golfers of all talent levels.\u201d<\/p>\n He writes these as entertainingly as anyone, but they nonetheless become collectively wearying if reading the book cover to cover. Solution\u2014don\u2019t read it cover to cover. Dip into it as the mood arises, until the call comes from a member at Whitinsville. Then let the deep study begin.<\/p>\n This piece first appeared in the April-May 2018 issue of <\/em>Golf Oklahoma<\/a> in slightly different form.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/a>But not really, since this, as many of those listed in the book, is a private club. It\u2019s not always crystal clear which courses are open to public play and those that are not, which would have been helpful to know. Otherwise Pioppi\u2019s hole-by-hole descriptions of how a course plays won\u2019t much help.<\/p>\n