DUDLEY —  ever hear of Dudley Hill Golf Club? If you’re not from Dudley, the answer is probably no. Heard of Nichols College Golf Club? The answer to that question is more likely to be yes. over the last 15 years, Nichols College Golf Club has been sold and renamed Webster Dudley Golf Club, then renamed Dudley Hill Golf Club, but general manager Jim Siekierski said most golfers still know it as Nichols College Golf Club. Dudley Hill is a semiprivate, nine-hole club run by a board of directors, and it welcomes public play, but it doesn’t get a lot of golfers from outside the Dudley area. “We’re kind of the golf course that nobody knows,” said Paul Veshi, the club’s superintendent since 1998. “Dudley seems to be out of everybody’s thought process.” Veshi believes if golfers visit Dudley Hill, they’ll enjoy it and want to come back. We agree. The course was still soggy in spots from the 10 inches of rain that fell from the past two storms, but it was well groomed and fun to play. Veshi said the course doesn’t drain well, so his crew couldn’t mow for eight or nine days before finally resuming mowing for the three days before we arrived last week. “We lost a lot of work days, so our grooming is way, way down,” he said. “We’re basically starting over again.” but the course was still in better shape than many other courses we’ve played this year. The fairways are generous — we walked off the seventh fairway and determined it to be 43 yards wide — so you can hit driver, but the small greens prevent too many low scores. “Hit the middle of the greens,” Siekierski said, “and you’ll have nothing more than a 20-foot putt. too many people try to go for the pin placements and get in trouble by short siding themselves.” You need to be a good chipper because you’re not going to hit a lot of these small greens. If you’re going to miss a green, the best play on most holes is to be short. If you miss the first green to the right, you’ll have to chip down off a hill. If you miss it left or long, you’ll chip up a hill. Veshi has expanded six of the nine greens, but there’s not a lot of room to expand because many greens sit on hills. The greens rolled well, but the third green had bare spots around the edges. Veshi said he’s had trouble maintaining that green, and he may have to install a fan or trim the trees around the green to increase the air flow. The second and fourth holes require blind tee shots, so golfers push safety buttons to flash red or green lights for the following groups. On the second tee, aim for the flag at the top of the hill. The fourth hole used to have a gong, but the club got rid of it. “It woke up too many people,” Siekierski said. My playing partner’s GPS didn’t recognize Dudley Hill, but it did recognize Nichols College Golf Club. We really didn’t need the GPS, though. We played with Rich Lengieza, a 2-handicapper who has been a member here since 1979, and he told us the correct distances and where to aim. He also pointed out the 175-yard markers printed on the fence post on the right side of the second fairway and a tree on the left side of the eighth fairway. The white tees are 3,007 yards, and the blues are 3,223. The two share the same tees except for the par-3 sixth, where the white tee, which opened three years ago, is located to the left and 20 yards ahead of the blue. You don’t lose a lot of golf balls at Dudley Hill because there’s no brush between the trees that separate the fairways. It’s a slicer’s paradise because the only trouble is to the left along the edges of the property. Devereux Emmet designed Dudley Hill in 1926, two years after he designed Congressional CC, the club in Bethesda, Md., which hosted its third U.S. Open last June. Dudley Hill is an easy walk. Lengieza said he’s walked nine holes by himself in an hour and 10 minutes. but if you want to ride, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays, it costs $24 for nine holes with a cart and lunch and $39 for 18 holes with a cart and lunch. On weekend mornings, it’s $24 for nine holes with a required cart and $42 to ride 18. Nichols students can play nine holes for $10 and the school’s team plays here. The public can call on Thursdays for a weekend tee time. Tee times aren’t required during the week, but the Nichols and Shepherd Hill teams practice or play around 3:30 p.m. most weekdays. Articles Most Read Today