Just as in 2013, Goodboys Invitational weekend will wrap up at Black Swan Country Club in Georgetown, MA. Truth be told, were it not for its location-location-location, you likely wouldn’t see this course in the Goodboys Invitational rotation. Not that it’s a cow pasture or a crappy course – it isn’t – but being in Georgetown just off of I-95 it serves as the perfect get-away venue for the Goodboys South contingent living everywhere from the South Shore down to Cape Cod. What playing Black Swan does is get everyone well below the Hampton tolls when, on a mid-summer late Sunday afternoon, everyone and their cousins will be lined up for miles as they return from their Maine and the New Hampshire Lakes region vacations.

The folks at Cognizant Golf sum up what Black Swan has to offer in terms of the overall golf experience:

Situated forty minutes north of Boston, Black Swan Country Club is an 18-hole, parkland style layout that offers a challenging, but fair test for players of all abilities. The course is routed through two distinct topographies, each nine with a number of holes that play through both. Many of the course’s longer holes are laid out over the flatter, eastern portion of the property and are lined by man-made ponds and mounding. The remaining holes are routed through the hillier, western portion of the property, many of the holes playing through mature trees or over crossing wetlands. The course is generally driver friendly with ample landing areas off the tee. While the greens are generally large, most are multi-tiered with generous slopes, requiring a precise short-game to score well.

The only thing I’ll quibble over as far as this review is concerned is that little “generally driver friendly” comment – with a number of hazards crossing well-protected fairways lined with thick grass and fescue, I don’t consider the course driver friendly at all. But that’s just me. There is a lot of target golf on the front nine, meaning you better be damned sure about your distances if you want to avoid the hazards laid out on just about every hole. And on a Sunday after a raucous Goodboys Saturday night hitting the clubs and watering holes of downtown Portsmouth that’s about the last thing anyone needs. Still, if you can maneuver your way around the front nine without losing more than a couple of balls, the back nine is much more “parkland” type golf where you can pretty much “grip it and rip it” with the best of them.

Returning to the Black Swan will conjure up memories of my final drive of the 2013 Goodboys Invitational, a drive that probably still hasn’t returned to earth, it was hit so pure. Unfortunately, my partner “Killer” Kowalski was too busy texting his wife from the cart and didn’t bother to watch the general location where my ball might have ended up. We looked for ten minutes before giving up. Having to take a drop and a penalty stroke, I finished with double-bogey when a par or even a bogey would have given me sole possession the $50 prize for best weekend number against my handicap that I ended up sharing with “The Funny Guy” Andrusaitis.

There’s a big difference between the white tees and the blue tees at the Black Swan (5,759/67.9/118 for the former, 6,425/71.3/124 the latter) but in the end it really doesn’t matter – come Sunday I would expect all the Goodboys teams to be bunched up with just about anybody having a chance to win. With the kind of risk/reward Black Swan offers, you can bet that the eventual winner of the hallowed Spielberg Memorial Trophy and winner’s jackets will have earned their keep.