Whistle Bear Golf Club - Ontario

When you first get a good look at Ontario's Whistle Bear Golf Club, you think something along the lines of, This'll be cake. Nary a tree, and look at the width of those fairways. But, as with many links-style golf courses, trouble slithers around the edges and in the corners, just out of sight, rearing its head with the slightest error.

Pick your poison. The golf course has water on 10 holes and fescue pretty much everywhere that isn't fairway or green - wiry, nasty stuff that takes some muscle to get a club through. The 103 sand bunkers are "strategically placed," which usually means the architect (John Robinson, in his case) calculates where most drives that don't go down the middle will end up and sticks a bunker there. If you play Whistle Bear, bring your sand wedge.