ALAN BLONDIN

ON GOLF

Golf Digest has selected the toughest golf courses in the nation for the first time since 1966, and the Legends Resort's Moorland Course is ranked No. 37.

The listing of America's 50 Toughest Golf Courses appears in the magazine's March issue, which becomes available on newsstands today.

Moorland is a par-72 P.B. Dye design that doesn't kill players with its overall length of 6,800 yards but features a handful of long and tough par-4s.

The course also boasts rolling hills, some extreme mounding and elevation changes, deep and penalizing bunkers, waste bunkers, wetlands, lakes, areas of natural vegetation, railroad ties bordering many water hazards and waste bunkers, and large and severely undulating greens. Adding to the difficulty are a number of blind shots and elevated greens. It has a course rating of 72.8 and slope rating of 135.

The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island is the only other South Carolina course on the list, and is No. 1. According to the United States Golf Association, the Pete Dye-designed Ocean Course has the highest combination of slope (155) and course rating (79.6) of any golf course in the country.

Thirty-two of the 50 are open to the public, Pete Dye designed eight of them, and 26 states are represented on the list, which was determined by a collection of Golf Digest editors who have played all the courses in the ranking.

North Carolina courses on the list are No. 7 Tot Hill Farm, No. 10 Tobacco Road, which was designed by Caledonia and True Blue designer Mike Strantz, and No. 32 Pinehurst No. 2 - which is far more difficult when the USGA prepares the course for a U.S. Open with fast greens and tightly cropped green surrounds.

Other Strand courses that could make a case for the list of torturous layouts are True Blue, with a course rating of 74.3 and slope of 145; the Dye Club at Barefoot Resort, with a course rating of 73.3 and slope of 149; and Grande Dunes Golf Club, with a length of more than 7,600 yards, course rating of 77.3 and slope of 142.