The 12th hole I just played.

[Lloyd_Cole]

I wonder if any others here share/suffer with this ailment? Much as I live and breathe GCA and love to play the game I cannot picture, in my mind's eye, specific holes with the seeming ease that many I have met/debated here.
In fact after a round at a course I haven't played before I'd be hard pressed to visualise the 12th hole unless I was given a clue - eg. the short dogleg left.. I can reconstruct a round hole by hole and thereby remember them all, so long as too much time hasn't passed. But I do feel somewhat handicapped at times. Here's a few courses I enjoyed and cannot visualise the opening shot - Cruden Bay, Maidstone, Brora, Pacific Dunes..
I'm suspecting that I'm a club with one member. Anyone else?

[Tim MacEachern]

I remember well the first hole at Cruden Bay.  Just don't get the hooks early is all I can say.  And yes, gorse is nasty stuff.   But it's all worth it when you see the green site for the second.

[Bill_McBride]

To me, being able to clearly remember every hole is the hallmark of a great golf course compared to an everyday course.  Without a doubt.

[Kevin_Reilly]

Lloyd, it is in large part a natural talent like many others.  My wife can walk quickly through an open house, and hours describe the layout, decorating and fixtures, room by room, to a friend.  Always amazes me.

You can help yourself by taking notes after the round, or as you are walking the fairways talk about the holes to your playing companions.  Talking about features aids retention.

But, keep in mind that some of the folks here have an "eye" for recollection of detail that you likely can't match...no reason to feel bad about it.  You're the guy with the 650 GMAT score at Stanford business school...no slouch but surrounded by talented folks.

[Michael Kennedy]

Lloyd - I agree with Bill, that one tends to remember truly great courses and to forget (or repress?) average or poorly designed courses.  

I've also noticed my recollection of a course can be influenced by the context in which the round was played.  For example, if the round was rushed (e.g. trying to squeeze in 18 before dark) or if I am really playing well and am not taking extra time to look at approaches from different angles or different quadrants of a large green, then things can get foggy.  

Of course, if the course is terrific, it really doesn't matter if my kids kept me up the previous night!  

As I have grown more appreciative of solid golf architecture, I have tried to approach each course more slowly and "smell the flowers", so to speak.

[Sean_A]

Lloyd

I suffer with the same disease.  Given time, I can recall much of a course, but not on demand.  Often I am forced to run through each hole in my mind (two loops of nine make this a bit quicker!), sometimes backward before I reach the hole in question.  I wonder if these guys with great recall can name the order number of particular letters of the alphabet.  In my experience, guys that can say "g" is the 7th letter without hesitation have highly honed memory banks.

Ciao

Sean

[Andrew Summerell]

Lloyd,

Do you think in pictures or words?

I've been a professional musician for probably as long as you have. When you need to learn a chord progression (whether someone elses song or an old one of yours that you haven't played for many years) how long does it take? Probably not very long. What methods do you use to learn a chord prog?

You said recently that you don't listen to other music when you are writing because you lose focus & end up writing something that sounds like what you were listening to. When you are on the golf course you are probably thinking about your game & not so much about the course.

One of my problems is that I think too much about the architecture when I'm on the course & not enough about my game. I have friends that play much better than me, but I can describe every hole with approx yardage of courses I haven't played for 20 years. (I did this only last week for a friend) Even courses that are not that great.

If you want to remember courses better, give yourself a memory trigger for each hole. If you think in words, associate each hole with a lyric or give each hole a title. If you think in pictures, make mental images of each hole.

I was in Scotland about 5 months ago & played 14 rounds of golf. Fortunately, I can remember every hole I played, because I had my digital camera stolen at Heathrow.

[ForkaB]

Lloyd

If you are talking about "12th" holes, the club is a large one, and I am a charter member.  For example, I've probably played Brora as much as anybody on this board (~50 times over 25 years), but I still couldn't walk you through the entire course from memory.  I'm always gobsmacked by the GCA idiot savants who talk in the 19th about the different grasses in the right rough to the left of the 3rd, or how that little knob to the right of the 12th green is "classic Colt."

However......if you really can't remember the 1st hole at places like Pacific Dunes (or even Brora, for that matter), I think that you are in a very excusive club.  However, look at it in a positive way.  To you, golf courses, whether or not you have played them, are like Forest Gump's box of chocolates--there's always something different!

[Andrew Summerell]

I think that you are in a very excusive club.

I didn't think he was making any excuses

[ForkaB]

Neither did I, Andrew.

[Lloyd_Cole]

I think it's the playing golf that does it.. focusing on that.  I recently bought a little digital camera to try to start cataloguing Wayne Stiles' work in New England, but I can't bear to take it on the course when I'm playing. Some friends and I walked Pinehurst #2 shortly before the Open last year, and I was struck by how much more there was to the course - great stuff - that I hadn't noticed 10 years before when playing it. I think to study a course I should walk it. But more often than not I only have time to either walk or play, not both. I guess I'd rather be a player than a designer.