I imagine we've all played a lot of bad holes. I know I have, and none of them was in Southern California.
Do you mind if I suggest a subthread? Here it is: What's the most misbegotten hole you've seen or played? By which I mean: What hole represents the biggest waste of good terrain? In still other words: What hole represents the biggest gap between its potential and its actuality?
I nominate No. 8 at Inver Wood Golf Course in Inver Grove Heights, Minnesota -- a course I have played several dozen times over the past four years. (It's a municipal course, always impeccably groomed, with a slew of fine, tough holes and a few real stinkers. Ten minutes from my office -- and with a very fair price, all things considered: $28.)
No. 8 is a long, long par-4 -- by the card, 450-something from the back tee; 430-440 from the whites. It plays much, much longer than that, up the hill, and usually into the wind.
This is a really, really pretty piece of ground -- reminiscent of one of the holes at Princeville, late in the back 9. You'll remember it if you've played there. (I can't remember the number.)
At Inver Wood No. 8, one drives over a deep valley (not in play except for a foozle) onto a fairway that sweeps from left to right, up and up and up a hill -- up all the way to the green.
The driving area doesn't quite require a fade, but it encourages one, as there are a couple of really big trees (oaks, I think) that hang over the right rough and maybe over some of the fairway at about 150 yards off the tee. The left side is built up; a drive hit to the left edge of the fairway, or even in the edge of the left rough, will bounce right into the fairway. So a draw will work, so long as you don't pull it too far up the hillside.
So far, so good. Now, having busted a drive, a player of pretty decent but not newsworthy length, such as yours truly, is facing a very well-struck 3-wood or 1-iron to the green, which sits right at the top of the hill.
Fun shot, right? Should be. Isn't.
There are two bunkers short and left of the green. One big bunker short and right. There's a ramp maybe 10 yards wide (at the most) between the bunkers, up which one could conceivably thread a running 3-wood. But it's a dumb shot to try, as I learned after a couple dozen tries, almost all of which bounced to the right into the right-front bunker.
Conclusion, at last: The ramp is too narrow. The bunkers are nasty. One is much better off laying back 80 yards.
If one does, somehow, get to a position where one could hit a ball that would fly over the bunkers and land on the green (I've been in that position a couple of times, downwind), one will quickly discover that the green is really a pair of quite small greens in a PB-17-like shape from front right to back left -- and that neither one of them is prepared to accept a 3-wood. You'll go over every time.
In my humble opinion, the hole would be a gem if they'd get rid of the bunkers and make the green considerably rounder than its current sideways hourglassy look -- so that one could hit a heroic bump-and-run 3-wood and actually have it end on the green. The hole would be the highlight of a day at Inver Wood (particularly if one managed to hit two crisp shots up the hill and onto the green) -- rather than a horrible three-shot par-4 that one plays for 5/maybe-4 in order to avoid 6/maybe-5.
I went into the clubhouse after a round there one day and said: "You know, I like your golf course a lot, but there's one hole that's SO bad it almost ruins the whole day. And you could fix it so easily."
"Which hole is that?"
"Number 8."
"Number 8?"
"Number 8. It's a terrible hole."
"Number 8," said the young man behind the counter, "is one of the Top 10 Par-4s in Minnesota."
"No, it isn't," I said -- wondering, with a bit of horror, if it had been my own newspaper that had thus anointed it. "In fact, there are nine better par-4s on this golf course."
What a waste.