Putting the 'Muscle' in Muscle Shoals

[Jason McNamara]

The RTJ Golf Trail is adding three new courses over the next six months, and two of them will be ~ 8100 yards.  One's immediately south of Birmingham, and the other is in Muscle Shoals (or maybe right across the river in Florence... anyway, extreme NW corner of the state).

http://www.rtjgolf.com/trail/news.htm#shoals

To give you an idea of what this might entail...

4 par 3s avg. 230 ea. plus
4 par 5s avg. 620 ea. plus
10 par 4s avg. 470 ea. equals 8100 yds.*

First time I've seen something like this at sea level (though I have played that 840-yd par 6 monstrosity at Meadows Farms).  I assume these new RTJ courses are Rulewich tracks.

Play hard,

Jason

* Yes, I imagine tees will be set to match wind conditions.  But I'm guessing the courses won't be pushovers at 7700 yds either.

[Tim Taylor]

Given that they'll probably never host a tour event here, who the hell will ever play the course from that yardage?

TimT

[Gary_Nelson]

My regular foursome bitches about playing anything longer than 6500 yards.  This is a bunch of 30-somethings with fairly new technology drivers.  What kind of masochist wants 8100 yards?  Surely not me.

[BCrosby]

An 8100 yard course is not so long today. It will play roughly to the same effective distance as a 7100 yard course in 1980. That was a long course in 1980, but not crazy long.

It is just an sign that golf architecture is catching up with club/ball technology. There will be more courses like it soon. Probably many more.

Bob

[Joel_Stewart]

An 8100 yard course is not so long today. It will play roughly to the same effective distance as a 7100 yard course in 1980. That was a long course in 1980, but not crazy long.

It is just an sign that golf architecture is catching up with club/ball technology. There will be more courses like it soon. Probably many more.

This is sad but true.  Pete Dye and WS just proved it true at the PGA.  Dye's theroy is the ball travels 30 yards farther on the drive and 20 yards farther with irons, thus 500 yard holes really play 450?