Cypress Course
4th hole / 573 Yards / Par-5
Architect: Tom Fazio (1997)
Updated: Tom Marzolf (2022)
Among the most challenging to design is par-5 holes. Why? The need to balance the test provided for low and high handicap golfers can prove to be a vexing matter.
Make the hole too difficult and high handicappers will struggle to avoid bogey or worse. Make the hole less challenging and it becomes a feast for accomplished players sensing a quick birdie is at hand.
The Cypress Course is one of five layouts at the Bonita Bay Club, a private facility located roughly halfway between Fort Myers and Naples along Florida’s southwest coast.
The private facility recently completed a major renovation of Cypress which opened in 1997 and was designed by renowned architect Tom Fazio. In October, 2022 the course re-opened after a major renovation by senior Fazio architect Tom Marzolf.
The 4th is the first of four par-5 holes encountered at Cypress. The landing zone for the tee shot is quite wide but longer hitters need to give pause because the deeper down the fairway one attempts to reach the more constricted the space available becomes.
A penalty area encroaches from the left and pulled tee shots can find the water on that side. Longer tee shots not only face a narrower landing area but a pesky fairway bunker inserts itself into the process.
From the championship teeing area the carry over the bunker is a hefty 314 yards. While carrying it may be possible for the strongest of players when aided by a following wind, the smarter play is to finish just left of it.
Higher handicap players will opt to play to the generous landing zone to the far right on second shots. Any attempt to get nearer to the green faces a smaller landing area pinched with fairway bunkers. Ideally, leaving 100-125 yards for the third shot is the best of situations.
For stronger players the distant green invites the bold play with one’s second shot. Two frontal bunkers guard the putting surface and if one opts to play for maximum safety with a play to the right it’s likely they will find a closely mown area which will propel one’s golf ball even further away from the hole.
The green possesses a number of internal riddles needing to be solved. When the flagstick is placed in the deep far right-hand corner it takes a skilled putting stroke to avoid a three-putt or worse.
The 4th at Cypress provides an essential elasticity worthy of challenging varying handicap levels in equal manner. Par-5 holes need not be easy fodder for some and a beast for others. The updating of the hole by Marzolf has been smartly refreshed and only yields to those who have both planned and executed with care.
Those playing the Cypress Course encounter an engaging series of holes that require players to adhere to the words famously uttered by Clint Eastwood in the movie Magnum Force —-
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
Golfers realizing that and executing in kind will be the clear beneficiaries.
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Schematic rendering: courtesy Bonita Bay Club
Photographs: courtesy Evan Schiller
