The Institute Golf Club

Probably the most mysterious and exclusive golf club I have ever heard of. It opened in 2002 and was built by Jon Fry of Fry’s Electronics as his own private golf course for himself and his executives. Initially having no members it really got hardly any play at all, but had around 49 ground-staff keeping the place pristine. All play was walking only (no cart paths) and caddies (single bagging) only. Several of the local university golf teams, such as San Jose State and Santa Clara State, provided caddy services. They tell me they would have to be on-site in-case someone decided to helicopter in for a round. Often they would just spend the day raking bunkers and helping with maintenance, and were then allowed to go play after their morning shift was done. A great gig if you could get it.

The course broke several permitting laws when being built and the main clubhouse has still not been built, with a big empty lot by the 18th green. This put a damper on Fry’s plans to hold the PGA Tour stop that used to be at Silverado and CordeValle. Since Fry’s went defunct in 2021, the course has become less exclusive, opening up to membership play and some tournaments. They now have 42 members, which are mainly the Silicon Valley C-suite golfing elite, for which there is no initiation, but around $55k a year in dues. They are currently hosting the NCAA regionals, which I attended. They used to make guests sign an NDA that they wouldn’t post pictures to social media, but with this tournament that was not really possible, so this is probably the first time the course is going to get some wider attention and come out of the shadows. They built a wall of trees surrounding the perimeter which made it very hard to even get a glance from the outside.

I walked the entire course today with Matt Cohn, who has caddied there and played it around 15 times. There are lots of tribute holes, and some great original holes. Spyglass 4th green, Augusta 12, 13, 15, Pebble Beach 17. None are exact replicas, but they are close enough that you can immediately see the resemblance. I also think there is something that is template of Bandon Trails 14. The whole course tips out over 8000 yards, as there are a couple par 3s around 250 yards, and a couple of par 5s at 660 and 680. The college kids were playing from 7500. We started on the back nine, so I’ll present the holes in the order we saw them.

Hole 10

404 yards - par 4

Spyglass 4

Almost 90 dogleg right. You hit an iron off the tee down a massive hill keeping it short of the bunker you see in the distance. Then it’s a 90 turn and hit a wedge into a green that falls away from you and is styled similar to Spyglass 4. The green isn’t angled like Spyglass, and plays straight down the length of the green which makes it fall far short of the Spyglass 4, which is a tough one to beat.

Hole 11

554 yards - par 5

Augusta 15

Modeled after Augusta 15, the straight par 5 plays to a wide bunker-less fairway, and then a second shot over a lake with and lake waiting for you if you go long and a bunker short right. This one looks fairly similar to Augusta 15, but is probably much flatter than the original. Pictures from fairway, short right of the green, level with the bunker about pin high left, back right of the green, and from the other side of the water behind the green, where you can see one player who went long and had to chip back. He landed that approach about 15 ft short of the pin but failed to stop it on the green. He tried to hit a flop shot, but he couldn’t really stop it by the pin. We were thinking you really had to bump it up the hill to get that chip close.

Hole 12

417 yards - par 4

A drive over an angled lake with the long carry being up the left, with a slight dogleg right with just a wedge into a green with some leftover farm building very close to the green. You can see the 15th green and the climb up to the 16th tee in the distance.

Hole 13

158 yards - par 3

Augusta 12, Amen corner

Holes 13 and 14 are modeled after Augusta’s famed Amen corner, with copies of 12 and 13 at Augusta. Pics from the tee, short of the bridge front left of the green, behind the green looking back down the hole, and another looking a little left down the 14th fairway (which is Augusta 13).

Hole 14

511 yards - par 5

Augusta 13

While less of an exact replica of Augusta 13, it is similar in style. You can hit your 3w short of the trees straight down the fairway, or try to cut off the corner with a Driver. One player did and got rewarded with a short iron in, but it looks very risky and is about a 290 carry over some trees to a small landing area, you could also try and draw it around but the fairway is quite narrow if you cut off the corner and they were still getting there with a long iron if they laid back with a straight drive. The layup is actually in 2 sections with a larger lake short and then 50 yards of fairway before the famed creek in front of the green. Pics from the tee, where you can see the pines you aim at straight up the fairway, and the smaller pines you have to carry on the left, with large pines if you run through the fairway. Next pic is from the player who played straight up the fairway with a 3w, where you can see the advantage the other player got from bombing his driver over the trees. Two pics from short left of the green and another from the right side of the green.

Hole 15

496 yards - par 4

A very long par 4 with a straight away drive followed by an uphill approach to a very large green cut into the hill with epic fronting bunkers. The pictures can’t really capture how uphill this second shot looks and how big those bunkers look. This gave me Bethpage vibes. The second shot is a very long shot and probably plays an additional 15 yards uphill. The green is very deep which you can’t see from this angle, which can can see from the next tee after you climb the hill up and to the left from the green in this picture. This means you have a reasonably chance of stopping the ball on the green. Even so, of the 3 long hitters here, only 1 managed to stop it on the green to a back pin, but the other two were left with a relatively simple chips back. Coming up short in those bunkers would leave a terrifying bunker shot, even for these players. Pic of the approach and the next tee looking down on the 15 green and 11 green in the distance.

Hole 16

356 yards - par 4

Bandon Trails 14?

While Matt did not mention this was tribute hole, it had similar vibes to Bandon Trails 14, and Matt agreed. After a tiring climb to the 16th tee (I wasn’t even carrying a bag, good luck to the guys pushing a cart), You are rewarded with view of the valley and a neat little short par 4. Big hitters can take on the bunker down the left and downwind can potentially get a good kick onto the green (first pic). Left is dead though and the green in narrow, so it comes with great risk. You can layup short of the bunker and slightly to the right onto a plateau and are left with a long wedge with not much uphill and a reasonable view of the green (second pic). If you try to get further down there and miss the high plateau on the left it will run off down to the low plateau to the right and are left with a very short chip uphill to a narrow green (third pic). A couple of pics from behind the green show you the plateaus and the green. The greens are not as firm as Bandon though and the guy who hit it down to the right actually stuffed it close, while the guys who hung back on the short plateau had a harder time getting it close from further away. So many options!

Hole 17

262 yards - par 3

(they were playing it up around 200 yards today)

No pictures but a very downhill par 3 with an enormous bunkerless green, which is over 10,000 sq ft in size and is meant to be the same size as the first Fry’s store that opened. Even though it is downhill, it is into the prevailing wind and Matt says he has hit Driver into that hole from the tips.

Hole 18

517 yards - par 4

A long par 4 to finish with bunkers that are in your driving range of the tee, and a creek that runs the length of the hole to the right. A large bunker defends the front left to catch those steering clear of the creek on the right. Coming in with the long iron or hybrid for most players today, and we saw many of them having to aim near the bunker and hope to carry it onto the green and feed it down to the hole.

Hole 1

451 yards - par 4

The starting hole with a tree lined uphill drive where you can’t see the green. Upon reaching your approach you are left with a long approach into a green cut into the hill with large bunker front left and back right. The green is quite large, but the scale of the hill and the size of the bunkers makes the target look smaller than it is. Matt was saying how that lower first cut of rough is new for the tournament, and it is usually at the longer length down to the green. Seem to be giving you some option to bounce it in from the right.

Hole 2

413 yards - par 4

Matt’s favorite on the course, and could be mine too if I could play it. This hole looks the most natural hole on the course, with native trees and rolling hills. Looks like what they would build if they weren’t trying to build tribute holes. A short par 4 with a blind tee shot over a hill with a large camber from right to left. It looks like you want to hit it straight down the middle and let it run down to the left. Which if you hit it short enough, it probably would, but if you go too far on that line you end up blocked out by the trees as you see the guy on the right did in the first pic. He had to chip sideways and wedge onto the green from there. The others took it down the left tree line off the tee and were in the middle of the fairway with a wedge in through a narrow gap in the trees to a green perched on hill. The second pic shows the large run-off left of the green if you go for that left pin and miss it left (which the guy with the purple bag did). Looking back down the hole from behind the green in the third pic you can see the large hill you hit over off the tee.

Hole 3

681 yards - par 5

The longest hole on the course starts off with a drop-shot tee shot, which you just want to keep short of the bunker. These guys were hitting irons off the tee on 681 yard hole! One guy hit driver and ended up in the trees beyond the bunker. You can’t really cut the corner with a driver and shorten the hold as there is a ditch running across the fairway in the landing area. So you are forced to just hit it straight towards the bunker. The rest of the hole dog legs left around trees and the hole is so long that they just hit another iron to the corner and had wedges into the green, which was very large and relatively unguarded for such a short shot into the par 5.

Hole 4

478 yards - par 4

(there was another tee back over 500 yards which wasn’t being used)

Dogleg right with a very large bunker guarding the inside corner. Seemed like laying up short of the bunker or hitting driver past the bunker on the left, left you with similar yardage approaches, but with a green that once was around 100 yards long (which has now been reduced to around 80 yards), and is angled over a lake, the pin position plays some role in where you might decide to hit your tee shot. Once again the sheer size of the green and green side bunker really throw off your perspective, and the approach shot over the lake has more green to work with that it looks. But all you can really see from the approach is the lake in front and the enormous bunker behind, and it’s a long approach of around 180-200 yards.

Hole 5

196 yards - par 3

Pebble Beach 17

(there is another tee at around 250 yards which they were not using)

This long par 3 through a shoot in the trees to a green (first pic) which resembles the 17th at Pebble Beach. They were playing this up at the 200 yard tee box which makes it more similar to its tribute hole. There is some short grass front right of the green for bouncing it on to the front pins (when hitting driver from the back tee), which you can see in the second pic, and in the third pic you can see the contouring of the green which has the ridge running through the chokepoint of the hourglass green.

Hole 6

423 yards - par 4

(the tee went back to around 480 I think)

Uphill par 4 climbing back up the hill you descended on the 3rd hole. This had to be the most intimidating drive on the course, which is probably why there were playing it up. The picture from the tee is from the front of the tee at about 420. The tee went back another 60 yards, and they were playing it from the back of the tee up from here. From the tips we estimated about 250 yards to the top of the hill on the front of the fairway, which was uphill so was playing longer. The landing area was so narrow from back there. Hitting it anything short of that did not look fun. From where they were hitting they could get towards the end of the fairway and just wedge it in to an uphill green. They all hit it close, but this green had a lot of slope to it and none of them made their short birdie putts. The last pic from behind the green looking back down the fairway.

Hole 7

672 yards - par 5

Another double dog leg, long par 5. While this one was slightly shorter than hole 3, it was uphill most of the way before dropping down to the green. The hole starts with a dog leg left up over the corner of a hill. You then continue with a long shot up to the left continuing up the hill until a sharp drop down to the right to the green. We caught up to Chase Sienkiewicz from Arizona University, who is from Sacramento and knew Matt. He then just hit his little fairway finder cut up the hill about 300 yards. He then hit an iron (because he doesn’t have another wood apart from a driver) to the top of the hill (left person in the picture) and wedged it to a foot for a simple tap in birdie. The other guy hit a normal full driver as far as him and cut the corner with his second shot and got it down just short of the green and has a short chip to a few feet for birdie. The third guy in the group hit it probably about the same distance as me. He was about 40 yards back from their drives, hit 3w to the top of the hill and looked like he still had a mid-iron in, slightly blind and was so far away he couldn’t see if his ball ended up on the green with his 3rd shot into a par 5. It’s long but a pretty cool hole with lots of sweeping slopes.

Hole 8

203 yards - par 3

Big sweeping green that looks kind of like a redan but isn’t as the slope just isn’t there to feed it round the corner on the green. With the pin tucked left, most were just bailing right and trying to 2 putt from long range. The picture is from short right of the green.

Hole 9

369 yards - par 4

Worst hole on the course. Tee shot into a plateau fairway which then drops down to the green. Cross bunkers all the way across the fairway force you to lay up and then just a short wedge down onto the green, with a stinky pond right of the green.

While it’s a good golf course in immaculate condition that I think has many interesting holes and challenges, it would never be a top 100 course. I would love to play it, but it would be exhausting, not only from being a hard walk up and down the hills, but also just the sheer length of some of the holes. The Augusta holes look out of place with dense pine trees that will need thinning out if they are to remain healthy. The more original holes up in the hills are better and look more natural for the area. The short par 4s, 2 and 16 are my favorites, as they were the holes that fit best with the landscape and weren’t trying to be like something else or test you in length. The hills are extreme and yet the holes down at the bottom are completely flat. It just feels a little disjointed overall. Felt similar vibes when I played the Donald Ross Memorial course in Boyne, Michigan. (edited)