Golf commentaries love to wax poetic about the links at St. Andrews.
It is the source of the golfing Nile, they say, and for players with a love of history, the penultimate experience.
It’s estimated that sometime in the foggy past (probably the middle of the 15th century), this is where the game originated. Mother Nature was the first course architect – or so the thinking goes.
Yes, it’s a hallowed place, and yes, pilgrimages arrive with starry eyed players eager to pay homage. It was very much on my own bucket list when I travelled to Blighty in the early 1970s and was lucky enough to secure a tee time. I remember the buzz of excitement as I hit off No. 1, and some of the shots I played over the course of my rousing round. After crossing Swilcan Bridge and walking up to the 18th green, I spied a small crowd of curious onlookers hanging off the fence and watching me finish up. I had a three-foot straight-inner for par – which I proceeded to yank left. The embarrassing bogey ended an unspectacular 82. St. Andrews was the first world-famous course I checked off my bucket list.
Next up was Muirfield, Pinehurst No. 2, Royal Portrush (home of this year’s Open Championship) and in Canada, The National, Shaughnessy, and St. George’s. There are still a whole bunch more to √√√√, including Augusta National, Pebble Beach, Bethpage Black, and Teeth of the Dog, the Pete Dye beauty at the Case de Campo Resort, Dominican Republic. I thought I had run out of time – until last month. But it took a strange collision of occurrences to allow me to add another √.
David Wood is a friend and golf-writing colleague, now a director at Buffalo Communications. He’s also author of one of my favourite golf-travel books, Around the World in 80 Rounds, a lighthearted romp from Tierra de Fuego to the Land of the Midnight Sun. He attended the late-January PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando. I was a no-show because I was prepping for a week-long trek to the Dominican Republic with my two brothers (Russ and Ron) and a longtime friend (Pat Differ). We were joining a troupe of friends and fellow golfers from scattered communities around southern Ontario and booked at the Hard Rock Resort in Punta Cana. We had five rounds scheduled at its beautiful Jack Nicklaus layout during our seven-day trip.
Wood ran into Randy McDonald, my publisher at Pro Shop Magazine and Golf Industry Network .ca during the PGA Merchandise Show and asked him if I was attending the show?
“He’s on his way to the Dominican”, said Randy.
Wood had an idea. His company had just been signed up to represent Casa de Campo Resort and its three courses, including Teeth of the Dog. He’d played the famous course recently and was blown away. It was now on his best-of list. He might be able to arrange a foursome for us– if I promised to write a story about my experience. He’d arrange a car to take us there and back. He’d book a tee time on one of our off-days, and we’d tee it up on Thursday, 1:03 p.m.
Randy flipped me David’s email. I couldn’t reply fast enough. “Fantastic,” I said. “You’ve just made our trip!”
We enjoyed the one-hour drive over, had a sandwich on the deck outside the clubhouse, then gathered our clubs early for our tee off. We started on the 10th tee, a par 4, about 350 yards from the white blocks. I hit my drive at 1:04 p.m. and made a mental note to officially √ the course off my bucket list.
Hole after hole went by in dizzying repetition, all played inland. They were excellent, and came replete with the Dye signature add-ons: railroad ties, vast waste areas, peninsula greens and tees, hand-sculpted putting surfaces and a unique assortment of pot bunkers. But it was pretty standard stuff until we rode our cart out to the 15th tee. We found a straight away Par 4 with a water hazard to our right. It was a rather big one, the Caribbean Sea! Yes, anything right would find sand or surf or sea. The sun was still high in the sky and diamonding off the water. It was a lighter shade of blue, and the waves were white-capped and a perfect frame for the tee shot. It was thrilling, but all a bit disorienting.
“The Heaven 7” oceanfront holes (split between the two nines) were astoundingly beautiful, causing Dye to famously quip: “I created 11 holes and God created seven.”
Teeth of the Dog is like Pebble Beach, a mixture of inland and shoreline holes, but the briny ones are oh-so-spectacular. It makes you quickly forget the others.
Ranking a course is tricky, but Teeth is consistently in the world’s Top 50, as low at #27. Some course rankers are impressed by a layout’s subtleties, like the routing and bunkering at St. Andrews, or the tight fairways at Muirfield, even the wicked greens on Pinehurst No. 2. Others like more penal playpens, like Bethpage Black, Pine Valley, or in Canada, The National. Then come the hybrid courses, a mixture of toughness and beauty – Pebble, or Teeth of the Dog.
They can be played easy or in the extreme, depending on the tee blocks. The Dog is considered the best in the Caribbean, and if TPC Sawgrass, and Kiawah Island are other Dye greats, he considers Teeth his masterpiece. It is definitely the prettiest, a rollicking ride. The magnificent seven are hand-carved out of rock and coral and include 15, 16 and 17 on the back nine, and 5, 6, 7 and 8 on the front.
Our afternoon round promised to be the highlight of our trip to this wonderful Caribbean island. It would be golf as it should be played, on pristine land, with Mother Nature as the co-architect, and the seaside as a constant companion. The ocean holes promised plenty of daring-do, and to be honest, playing them conjured up images of books from my favourite childhood author. Robert Louis Stevenson knew all about golf on links land. As a child, he played along Scotland’s briny shores in East Lothian. He captured its feel in his gothic novella, Pavilion on the Links. “On summer days”, he wrote, “the outlook was bright and even gladsome; but at sundown in September, with a high wind and a heavy surf rolling in close along the links, the place told of nothing but dead mariners and sea disasters.” That’s Teeth of the Dog, and its water holes. I could almost picture a ship of buccaneers sitting in anchor, watching us play. It was an image of high romance, where old seafarers would have a hundred-salty tales to tell.
We teed off on the back-nine first, and like all great courses, it unraveled slowly, with five straight inland holes: 10, 11, 12 13 and 14. They were fine, but not to underplay their impact, from the whites they were not as challenging as they could have been. We walked back to the blues and blacks and decided, no way. From way back, the course takes on a more malevolent nature. I couldn’t imagine Fred Couples firing a seven-under par from the blacks, but he did when the revived Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf came a-calling a few years back.
After putting out on 14, we drove our carts to the 15th tee. Before us was a shortish Par 4, with a water hazard on the right – the Caribbean Sea! Yes, the whole Sea!
The warm afternoon sun was intense and diamonded off the waters, and it was our first look at a tooth in the dog. I won’t bore you with how our foursome scored, but No. 16 was a perilous Par 3 with a green that sticks out like a finger into the sea – the bailout is left. The 17th was another Par 4, longer, and pinching into the water up near the green. On the front nine (our back), the sun started to run out, sinking slowly into the Caribbean. We had to rush a bit to finish and got to No. 7, playing three out of the four water holes – all spectacular, really without parallel. Hole No. 5 was a fulsome par 3 with water left. Yes, the course had doubled back so the water was now on our other shoulder, a nice change. We got through No. 6, a twisting par 4, and then finished on No. 7, another Par 3. The green sat out on a peninsula, over a thin intrusion of sand and sea. What a hole to finish on! I use one exclamation point here, but it could really use three. Three of four balls found the green, one the water. Mine was closest, a sneaky downhill six-footer. I wanted to finish with a birdie, my only one of the day. I missed on the low side and threw my Titleist in the water. It was my gift to the sea dogs.
Every April, golfers in the cold climes await The Masters, and the reverential tones of CBS’s chief golf commentator, Jim Nance. He calls the action from Augusta National as if delivering a sermon from the Church of the Sepulchral. It’s a Jim Nance aria. Some like the way he refers to the fans as patrons, or his descriptions of each hole, almost delivered sotto voce. It’s as if viewers can smell the azaleas that surround many of the pristine greens. The opening credits are delivered in hush tones, a libretto – with accompanying piano. For some, it’s too much. The prose too purple.
Still, I tend to sentimentalize when I think back on our round at The Dog. The grass was as green as the first day of creation, and the water and unique blue. The air coming in off the sea was constant and salty and a bracing refresher.
There was a charming duality at work there, a cross-weaving between design and nature. The movement as we played along the shoreline holes was magical. I tried to grasp it at the time, and now, in retrospect, it made it such a pleasure to play. Teeth of the Dog was a distinct experience, almost symphonic.
With the sun plunging into the sea and our time on the shoreline holes was at an end, we drove back to the clubhouse and placed our clubs in the car that was waiting to take us back to our resort. We broke the seal on a few beers after our round and replayed some of the shots and the scenery we had just drunk in. We got in16 of the 18 holes, but missing the 8th, a spectacular Par 5.
Every great course has a distinct personality, and Teeth of the Dog is no exception. It starts with its unique name, and told hold of you when it connects to the sea. It more than deserves its high ranking, and playing it made our trip to Dominican even more memorable. Golf is the most fun when played in harmony with nature.
It was Mother Nature that made St. Andrews. She lent a hand to give Teeth of the Dog its special bite.
Thanks, David Wood, and organizers who gave us the opportunity to play there. We’re looking forward to our next trip back so we can take a full bite out of The Dog. This time we hope to finish what we started and do the full 18.
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The course is now offering two “Unlimited Teeth of the Dog” stay-and-play packages, perfect for spring golf getaways, and starting at $349 per person, per night through April 20th. In addition to “all day” play on Teeth, guests can tee it up from dawn to dusk on the resort’s two additional Pete Dye gems: Dye Fore (27 holes) and The Links (18). For more information on Casa de Campo Resort & Villas please call 800.877.3643, email golf@ccampo.com.do or visit: www.casadecampo.com.do/
Rick Drennan is senior writer with Pro Shop Magazine and Golf Industry Network. ca. Rickdrennan51@gmail.com
