Mill Creek Golf Club (Mebane, NC on 11/10/12)

For the last week to 10 days the forecast for this weekend (10th and 11th of November) has looked wonderful, about 70 and sunny. I figured that this might be the last really nice weekend for golf in quite some time so I thought that I would try to head out of state if I could do it cheaply. I have really been wanting to play Tot Hill Farm, a Mike Strantz design. I found a cheap place to stay on hotels.com and it turned out being a decent place. Since I was headed towards Greensboro to play Tot Hill Farm I needed to find another course to play in that area. Most of my research about golf courses in North Carolina was in the Raleigh area from my last weekend trip but Mill Creek came to mind as it is between the Raleigh and Greensboro areas. I did some clicking on the computer and my trip was set with Mill Creek as the Saturday play and Tot Hill Farm for Sunday’s place. I booked a noonish tee time on Saturday and a 9am tee time for Sunday so that I could get back to Charlottesville before it gets too late. The drive going was pretty easy, not much traffic early on Saturday and there was not a cloud in the sky. It took 3 hours and 15 minutes to get to Mill Creek which naturally included a few of my notorious wrong turns. I had never driven south on Highway 29 from Charlottesville before and it turned out to be a decent road. It is not an interstate but it was a divided two lane highway and then I split off onto the back roads for a bit. There were quite a few twists and turns and hills so it is not something that I would want to drive in the winter, at least in my little car. I finished up at Mill Creek, checked into the Red Roof Inn near the Greensboro airport and headed out for some dinner. I mention this because I decided to hit up Chipotle for only the 2nd time in about two years. I am glad to report that I did not get food poisoning! It was an early morning to get to Asheboro on Sunday (where Tot Hill Farm is located) and a long day as it was about 3.5 hours in the car back to Charlottesville. The drive back was uneventful and turned out to be really scenic. Apparently headed north allows you to view the Blue ridge Mountains to the west and apparently the southbound lanes do not allow for a good view. Anyway it was good weekend with a perfect amount of golf, driving, and it was done without paying an arm and a leg. Like always I look forward to my next trip which hopefully should be to Florida for Thanksgiving

Mill Creek Golf Club (Mebane, NC):

Mill Creek turned out to be a very good course and those in the Raleigh/Durham area are spoiled to have so many nice courses to pick from, including this one. The course is a little out of the way from the area but it is a good stopping point for golf if traveling along I-40 or I-85 as it is not very far off the interstate. A small bonus was driving through the town of Mebane, where the course is located. The town had a very homey feel to it and seemed like a desirable place for someone to live. The first thing I did when I got setup on my cart was figure out what tees I wanted to play. Right away I noticed that the course has a combo set of tees to fill the 600 yard gap between the blue and the black tees. I love combo tees as it gives so many options to golfers. This would have been my preferred set of tees if playing alone but I got paired with a couple other people and I could tell that it was confusing them about the combo tees so I ended up playing the black tees. The blacks play 73.2/137/7004 yards and while I could have a chance to put a decent score at similar rated Diablo Grande (in CA) I fizzled to a poor score here for reasons which I will get to later. I had read good things about the course and the came away impressed. The course was in outstanding condition and the greens were as quick as, and rolled about as well as, anything that I have putted on this year. If this course was in the Bay Area it would cost $75 to $100 to play. As a side note the greens are T-1 greens. I am not familiar with all the different grasses but website says that T-1 greens have many advantages over the usual bermuda greens that are on most courses in the South. The greens looked fake, like something that would be found on a practice green someone builds in their backyard and the grass looked long too. Really it looked like all the putts would bump off line, but nothing did. I never got a feel for the greens myself and my putting was the poorest part of my game here but someone who can read putts well could make a few. The green complexes had a lot of little slopes and ridges plus they, like the rest of the course, were firm. This kept me putting defensively. The course, while a community course, is set in the woods for the most part with homes surrounding on only a few holes. The layout was very compact with holes close together considering it is a community course. Many times these community courses are so spread out that a cart becomes necessary, but Mill Creek could be walked if someone wanted. The course had some minor elevation changes but nothing extreme. I thought it was sneaky tough on the approaches and a couple times I got to the green only to find a bunker or hazard nearby which i did not see from the fairway. I did not think that the course was overly penal off the tee as it gave some room to spray a driver and there were some very large fairways. The trouble off the tee was forced carries, with many holes requiring a tee shot over water or long grass, and other times hazards cut across the fairway. These are not my favorite design features and were on maybe a third of the holes. Something else that I did not care for was that I had very similar clubs in on every par 4. Seven of the ten par 4s were 384 to 417 yards and none were shorter so there really was not much variation in the distances. The 18th, a long par 4, was a good closing hole as it had a split fairway and gradually rose up a small hill. Overall I thought the course was a very good course (a great value for sure as I paid $33 on a weekend) but I also think the designers missed a chance to make it a great course as I think it is a bit tough for the average golfer even from the correct tees.

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