PAR 4 - 395 Yards

The ideal tee shot is a slight draw from right to left for this dogleg left par-4. Although some players may be able to cut the corner & shorten the hole considerably, the safer play is to the middle of the fairway.

"The course begins with a short par-4, dogleg left with a tee shot over a valley to a rather generous fairway surrounded by bunkers. While this tee shot may be intimidating, be advised this is about as easy as it gets for a while. The green is also guarded by huge bunkers & sits among a stand of mature oaks - and is blind from most of the landing area."
--Course Architect D.A. Weibring

History

Grand Detour, located 70 miles upstream from the TPC at Deere Run, was named by French explorers for the oxbow bend taken there by the Rock River. Blacksmith John Deere settled in Grand Detour after moving to Illinois from Vermont & he soon learned that farmers were encountering problems with the cast iron plows they had brought from the east. Those plows were designed for light, sandy, New England soil, but bogged down in the rich, midwestern prairie - forcing farmers to stop every few feet to scrape the thick soil from their plow.

Deere became convinced that the sticky soil would fall off a highly polished & properly shaped plow. He fashioned such a plow in 1837, using the steel from a broken saw blade, & provided the solution farmers needed farm the "new west."

This 1st hole, with its dogleg bend to the left, honors John Deere and the business he began at the oxbow bend of the Rock River in Grand Detour, IL.