Gold 191 Yards, Blue 177 Yards, Silver 153 Yards, White 138 Yards, Red 120 Yards
Very attractive hole. And very tricky. Just like some women (or men, for you ladies, and others) in our lives whom we will never forget.
Palmer 5, with an average Par 3 length of between 150 to 170 yards, has a wide enough fairway, and with a beautiful pond between the tees and the green, it is a wonderful, postcard-pretty golf scene.
The easy but gutless play to this hole is to deliberately use a club that will not reach the many bunkers surrounding this green. For most, this would be a pitching wedge or a 9 iron to land your ball safely to the widest, trouble-free area, which is right before the green. From there, a deft pitch to the pin would be routine, and par or bogey would make for a drama-free score.
The heroic try at this uphill hole is to go for the pin, normally against strong, gusty winds, between two rows of large, sloping bunkers that tend to catch careless blasts from one side into another. The green and fairway is also surrounded by out of bounds picket fences.
The putting surface declines from back to front and from all the sides with subtle gradients and the whole thesaurus list of banks, ramps, drops, slants, inclines, rises, etc.
It’s not an easy hole, no matter how marvelous and eye-catching it looks from the tees.
This will not be the last time you will regret taking on a looker without thinking first.
