Fazio's Mirasol and the Honda

[Jimmy Muratt]

It was definitely enjoyable to watch.  It was nice to see marginal or poor shots get punished by running off into a collection area.  This gave the opportunity for interesting recovery shots rather than the usual 50-60 foot lag putts.  

Also, does anyone know why the 18th hole was switched to the other course?  I assume they didn't think it was enough of a test to be a finisher.  Is anyone familiar with the 18th hole there?

[rgkeller]

The real 18th at the Fazio course is a shortish (425) par four with a large and quite severe green  - although not as elevated as most of the others.

The touring pros can drive over all the trouble and be hitting sand wedges into the green.

The eighteenth is very close to the first tee. Finishing on the "real" eighteenth would mean abandoning the sky boxes and bleachers around eighteen.

[TEPaul]

Jamie Slonis:

You have a really good point there---really good. Greens that're pushed up as high as Mirasol's are, particularly in front, really do put a premium on a very good, probably very high and soft and very accurate aerial shot! And you made another excellent distinction that the multi-options that were created by the architecture and short cropped green surrounding areas at Mirasol's greens really only relate to recovery shot options!

These kinds of points and distinctions are what make this website so valuable, in my opinion!

But back to those raised greens and particularly their very raised and immediate upsloped fronts! There definitely seemed to be a ton of those at Mirasol. Greens that ramp right up so steeply off the immediate approach (with nothing but fairway in front) can be played with a ground game approach but that kind of approach, even for a touring pro, is so damned dicey in both trajectory and distance control I can't see even a touring pro choosing something like that unless he absolutely had to.

I think Mirasol and Fazio offered some cool stuff, some different stuff for him and some multi-optional stuff, but, again, you're right, it really did almost completely concentrate the multi-options on the short green-side recovery choices and demands.

It would be great if Tom Fazio was reading this thread because it's giving him lots of kudos he ordinarily doesn't seem to get on here for whatever reason but if he was reading this perhaps a recommendation he might consider architecturally in the future for a course basically designed as Mirasol's greens are is to tie those green approaches into the green fronts much more gradually to encourage that compromise ground game run-in!!

I think there definitely is a place for the kind of immediate green front upslope that Mirasol has so much of but only in very limited doses--like maybe only 1-3 times a round. NGLA has a few of those immediate approach upslopes, particularly #12 but the other two or three are far more gradual encouraging the ground game more.

It took me about 3 years to figure out that upslope fronting NGLA's #12 as I kept slamming a lowish shot right into the upslope until I finally figured out how to take about 2 more clubs and practically chip the ball, even from way out and get the ball on the ground with a real low trajectory about 20-30 yards before the upslope and really running!  

Wayne and I were actually quite amazed at how many of Flynn's greens had this immediate upslope in front to his raised Indian Creek greens but most of the time he reserved them for holes that called for pretty short approaches where the run-in shot is generally not that useful!

Wonderful observations Jamie!

[rgkeller]

ALL of the Mirasol Fazio course's long par fours (2,9,13,14,16) allow the player to run the ball onto the green by landing the ball in the fairway.

That choice is more problematical on the par fives, where the smallish and narrow greens present a real challenge for the player trying to hit the green in two.

Landing short of the green on the par threes will also leave a relatively straightforward chip (or putt). A lower shot than most pros play is a good one for the par threes as many of the holes positions are accessable with less risk with a running shot than with their preferred high and soft ball flight.

The shorter par fours do require an approach than lands into the green.

[Patrick_Mucci]

rgkeller,

How much of the elevated green features are a result of the marsh like surroundings and soil conditions ?

[JSlonis]

rg,

Thanks for the info.  

Unless a course is ridiculously firm, the tour pro's will opt for an aerial type shot on approaches 99% of the time.  While another option may exist, they are so good that they will take the aerial route...fly it and stop it.  While the ground game may be a viable option for some, for the tour player it just adds variables that they would rather not deal with.

[rgkeller]

The entire course is manufactured with all the considerable elevation changes coming to us by way of earthmoving equipment and I suspect tons of fill from off the property although some certainly came from the excavated ponds so common in South Florida developments. These ponds are part of the course and the development's surface water drainage system. The land prior to development was dead flat, scrubby marsh. The greens would have to have been elevated for drainage. The areas that the balls end up in around the greens are also the home of drains. The shapers did a nice job of keeping the ball out of these drains.

The water is in play only for truly terrible shot.

The course does not look at all "natural" to me - pleasant, even attractive but not natural.

[cary lichtenstein]

I don't beleive any of the evelated greens are as a result of the marsh.

I think what Fazio was trying to do is great his own Augusta/Pinehurst #2 with run off that are on mini steriods. I think it was a sincere attempt to do something different than he usually does and make a mark as a architect for pga tour sites.

While it tests a variety of skill sets, the least of those is patience, the severe penalty for well hit shots makes me seriously question how really good his design is.

Numerous shots that hit within 5 or 10 feet of the pins went bounding into the seemingly endless number of severe slopes.

The lack of definition off the tee is another bad point. The fairways are so wide, that you need at times to try of put horse blinders on to try of bring the vastness of the expanse more in focus.

The forced landing areas created seas of divots that the members will not be happy with.

Some of the tees faced to the right and brought the marsh into play. Some of the fairways did not seem to align themselves properly to the shape of the hole if you can understand what that means.

As a members course, I can't understand why a member would want to play this course day after day.

If the touring pros had to play 15 of these courses per year, I think you'd find a lot of guys on Prosac.

[rgkeller]

>>As a members course, I can't understand why a member would want to play this course day after day.<<

The members - even the ball beaters and the ladies - far prefer the Fazio to the Hills course. Assuming one choses the correct tees, the Fazio is much less stressful off the tee than the Hills course.

And the up and downs are a lot of fun and not overly difficult, once the golfer learns to keep the sand wedge in the bag - as the pros finally figured out as the tournament went on.

It is true that well struck shots often do not end up close the hole. But the observant golfer will make the necessary adjustments as he learns more about the course. The unobservant and impatient golfers go somewhere else to play - another good feature of the Fazio course.

[Steve_ Shaffer]

I guess the Fazio interview on TGC did not take place tonight on Golf Central. Here's the article with his quotes from pgatour.com


It's hard to believe. Tom Fazio is famous worldwide for his golf course designs, and has more consensus top-100 courses in the world than any other architect. And yet, his PGA TOUR debut with a newly designed course happens this week at The Honda Classic.
This is a man whose peers have consistently voted for him as the best modern-day golf course architect. He has designed more than 160 courses throughout the world.

"It's kind of like a responsibility," Fazio said. "It's kind of like, gosh, I really want the (players) to like it. I really want them to -- because this is my life, this is golf, this is what I live for.

"It's fun to be doing this. It's exciting. And the best players in the world are coming. They are going to come and tee it up on this brand new golf course. It's going to be very interesting to test them."

Fazio's design for the brand new 7,500-yard Sunrise course at Mirasol will play host to many of the world's finest players -- and it will be the first time a Fazio-designed layout has been tested by a full field of TOUR pros in competition.

Already, there are whispers about this being one of the toughest courses on the Southern Swing through Florida, with tricky elevation changes and devilish greens. Virtually no one is predicting any big under-par scores come Sunday at The Honda Classic.
Fazio himself is predicting the winning score will be in the single digits under par.

"You have to be able to hit all the shots," said Don Beattie, Mirasol's director of golf. "It's certainly difficult. It brings in a whole new scope of the short game."

Fazio said he wanted the new Mirasol layout to test players.

"You want them to be either tested or sometimes even struggle, the way we may even struggle. But I'm not sure you could ever make a golf course too difficult for these PGA TOUR players," he said.
"I think it will be very interesting. I would think that one of the most distinctive things about the new golf course will be the actual green surfaces. There is a bit more contour and elevations on the greens. I wouldn't necessarily call them decks, but there are rolls and contours and pin placement positions that for good players will require a lot of accuracy to get to specific pins."

Only the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass, home to THE PLAYERS Championship in two weeks, has more elevation changes than Mirasol's Sunrise layout.

Fazio pulled all the tricks out of his design bag, based on 35 years experience creating golf vistas. But he's also known for working with the existing natural beauty of the environment, and Sunrise is no exception. The back nine holes are completely built on an area of existing wetlands.

"I like the challenge of working on different sites in various environments and locations," Fazio said. "If they were all the same, it wouldn't be nearly as challenging. I try to create custom, unique golf courses that don't have any sameness to them."

He predicts the new course will be considered a "second shot course," meaning that the crucial shotmaking required of The Honda Classic winner will be approach shots into the tricky, multi-elevation greens.

It's hard to say length isn't an issue on a course 7,500 yards long, but the way PGA TOUR players bomb it today, that's exactly what Fazio is suggesting about his new course.

"You thought you hit a good shot to the green, hit it on the green and rolled off to the edge and you have to chip back, again based on the pin placement. It's pin placements and it's angles to get to those spots; that's really the classic part of the golf course. I think that will be the issue. Length is not the issue," the famed designer said.

The fine line he walked when designing the Sunrise course at Mirasol, Fazio said, was creating a test for PGA TOUR players, without setting up conditions players consider unfair.

And at the end of the day, he hopes players want to come back to The Honda Classic's new home.

"I would hope that they would say: 'I've really enjoyed this round, it was a fun course to play, challenging. I like playing it. It's the kind of tournament course I'm going to come back and play.'"

 
   

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Here's more on this course from Gary Van Sickle at SI:

The Honda Classic hasn't been the luckiest tournament on the PGA Tour.

 
No one came close to Justin Leonard's tournament record 24 under par at this year's Honda Classic.
It has moved around to five different courses during the last 10 years, and none of them have been totally satisfactory. Serious windstorms have interrupted the event on a several occasions, twice blowing down some of the grandstands. The event had to change venues one time because its site, Weston Hills, had already been booked tournament week ... for a bar mitzvah.

Another year high winds made the golfers look silly, as Kenny Knox won despite shooting an 80 in one round. Greg Norman stigmatized the event when he ripped the TPC at Eagle Trace and called it "carnival golf," an image the tournament is still trying to shake.

The Honda Classic the only tournament to bail out on two TPC courses built by the tour -- pros couldn't remember the holes at the featureless TPC at Heron Bay. And it was made to seem smaller last year when players lit up the Country Club at Mirasol's Sunrise Course as Justin Leonard shot a tournament-record 24 under par, one of 13 golfers to reach the 20-under mark during the weekend.

So it was with a mix of optimism and trepidation when the Honda Classic moved next door to Mirasol's Sunset Course, which features a tougher layout designed by Tom Fazio, for 2004. The new venue was the topic of conversation all week until the tournament's end, when the drama provided by winner Todd Hamilton, a journeyman who'd spent the last 12 years playing in Japan, Davis Love and other contenders finally overtook the controversy.

Controversy? Yes, the course featured a lot of wavy ground, especially around the greens, many of which had false fronts, false sides, raised tiers, deep bunkers and shaved fringes. The lasting image of the tournament was of slightly missed shots and balls rolling down slopes into collection areas.

The PGA Tour staff did a great job of setting up the course carefully in order to avoid making this tough track unplayable even for the world's best players. For instance, the third hole is a 246-yard par 3 that has a huge but warped and mounded green with water left and a bunker right. Due to breezy conditions, the Tour didn't use the back tees and played the hole anywhere from 148-160 yards.

The easier setup led to modest scoring. Carl Pettersson managed an opening-round 63 but the winning score for the week was Hamilton at 12 under par, half of Leonard's winning total last year.

Anyway, here's what some were saying about the difficult Sunset Course:

• Fred Funk, who missed the cut: "It's like Pinehurst on steroids."

• Tour rules official Tony Wallin: "On a lot of courses, the only way to defend this is to hang the pins on the edge of the greens. That's not necessary now because it's a tough test, anyway. We're not going to go crazy."

• Paul Azinger, who missed the cut by one stroke: "I don't hate it as much today (Thursday) as I did yesterday (when the pro-am was played in strong winds). We players fuss and moan and complain that all the courses on Tour are the same and when somebody finally builds something different like this, what do we do? We fuss and moan and complain."

• Leonard, who tied for 25th: "The third green is pretty severe for a 245-yard par 3. The right side of the green goes up and down. It looks like something I skied down a coupled of months ago."

• Love, runner-up: "These greens remind me of a combination of Winged Foot and Pinehurst No. 2. A lot of them are up high and have a lot of roll-offs. They are not as big as the greens at St. Andrews but they have a lot of severe dropoffs like the ones at St. Andrews. If you don't get the ball in the right spot, they want it to run away. And the fringes are so fast that the ball is getting away from the greens. So you see a lot of guys playing shots like we saw at Pinehurst, when the ball would roll off the green and they'd take a 3-wood or putter and scoot it back up the hill. It reminds me of the severity of the U.S. Open at Pinehurst.

• Jesper Parnevik, who tied for 30th: "I would say it's like Pinehurst but maybe that's giving it too much credit."

• Andy Martinez, who caddied for Aaron Baddeley: "This is one of the most severe courses I've seen, but these guys are getting so good. I would've lost a lot of money betting on the scores the first day. They blew my mind. I guess these guys can get a score no matter what the course is. I couldn't believe somebody shot nine under. I didn't think anybody could shoot six under."

• Brad Faxon, who finished eighth: "If Alister Mackenzie built Augusta National in 2000, what would the players' comments be? How similar would they be to the comments we've heard this week? You accept it about Augusta because of its tradition and the greatness of the course, Bobby Jones and all the champions there. Now, whenever anything new is different, it's radically criticized, fairly or unfairly. I thought the more you played this course, the better off you were. Do I like hitting the shot in to the third green at Augusta when the pin is to the left? I don't know. I know it's a challenging shot. There are just some severe greens here and severe places to miss. Would you play a course like St. Andrews and say every shot is fair into the greens? I don't think so. We are so accustomed to everything being the way we want that when it's not, we complain."

• Fred Couples, who tied for 25th: "It's hard. It's very, very hard. If we went and played Pinehurst next week, it would be a piece of cake after this."

[johnk]

Here's the money quote from the article above that tells you everything you need to know about PGA Tour players and architecture:

• Paul Azinger:
"We players fuss and moan and complain that all the courses on Tour are the same and when somebody finally builds something different like this, what do we do? We fuss and moan and complain."

Brad Faxon's quote is a more architecturally thought-out version of the same.

At least those two guys are self-aware

[Doug Wright]

Someone who "gets it...":

• Brad Faxon, who finished eighth: "If Alister Mackenzie built Augusta National in 2000, what would the players' comments be? How similar would they be to the comments we've heard this week? You accept it about Augusta because of its tradition and the greatness of the course, Bobby Jones and all the champions there. Now, whenever anything new is different, it's radically criticized, fairly or unfairly. I thought the more you played this course, the better off you were. Do I like hitting the shot in to the third green at Augusta when the pin is to the left? I don't know. I know it's a challenging shot. There are just some severe greens here and severe places to miss. Would you play a course like St. Andrews and say every shot is fair into the greens? I don't think so. We are so accustomed to everything being the way we want that when it's not, we complain."

[TEPaul]

"p.s.  TEP, you missed my compliment to DLIII altogether."

Bill:

No I didn't, I saw it. That was an excellent and exciting finish to a pro tour tournament. Love came from pretty far back on Sunday and Hamilton's finish on #17 and #18 is the thing that little kids dreams are made of. It was good stuff really on an interesting course (primarily for the single reason of the extremely raised greens and their recovery interest). If some on here pooh-pooh the course and tournament for some reason I'd simply tell them to lighten up and learn the art of enjoyment a bit more---Mirasol sure looked to me to provide a lot more interest and excitement than the standard tour pro weekly tour stop course!

I always pull for Love and basically always have but last week I really was pulling for him because we stopped in his office in St Simon's Island Thursday morning and sat down and talked to all those there for a couple of hours. Great guys, and interesting, and again our thanks to Paul Cowley for it all.

Mirasol was reputedly going to be super hard to score on but Mark Love just happened to mention on Thursday morning that Davis was -4 through his first five holes so obviously I had high hopes for him at the Honda.

I know you like to joke about Davis Love, sometimes calling him a wimp or whatever, but you should take a tour of his office and you might get a different opinion. I liked how all the bags of things such as Walker Cup, Ryder Cups, President's Cups were lined up along the wall of the corridor to the conference room--a pretty long line of bags indeed. You can call Love a wimp if you want, Bill, but I'm not listening to you as there are probably about 2-3 guys in the world who wouldn't trade their career for Davis Love's!!