Everywhere, though, the Jamaicans we met were garrulous and likable. Noticing my pregnant wife, a man named Clinton nudged me knowingly and asked if it was our first. He looked impressed at the affirmative answer. The Half Moon's course, a Robert Trent Jones design that opened in 1961, the year before Jamaica gained independence from British rule, contrasts nicely with Tryall. At 7,119 yards from the blue tees, it's longer, flat and consistent on front and back nines.
Wind is often a factor, as is an irrigation ditch running through parts of the course.
The fairways are generous in two ways. Most are wide, and because they'd been deprived of rain prior to and during my visit, they had a lot of bounce, giving me tens of extra yards for free. At least 280, maybe 290. Unfortunately, what the fairways gave, the greens took back, because the same hard, brittle Bermuda-grass surface made them fast, and a properly assertive approach shot would hop up, over and off the back of the green like the proverbial Gingerbread Man. Scattered across the island, the Great Houses are the English-style manors once inhabited by sugar plantation owners and now open for tours.