My review is up on my website.
Redux = OK, OK its not minimalist or natural looking, but so what? God loves wonderous variety.
Jim built a really affordable course with a solid deisgn in a really pretty natural setting. There are saome excellent holes. Here's some thoughts.
Instead it’s Engh’s now familiar sidewalled fairways, bowl-shaped green settings (both of which give player-friendly bounces and help keep play moving) and squiggle-shaped muscle bunkers, this time filled with black slag, a burned coal by-product instead of sand.
As usual, Engh had to move a goodly amount of earth to accomplish his now trademark look and feel, in the range of 300-400,000 cubic yards. Engh is not a minimalist and his trademark rounded contours will never be mistaken for “natural,” but so what. He derives the basic themes for his holes from strategies and designs he imported from Ireland and Scotland. Even though the holes look different from anything you’ve ever seen before, they still test the same proficiency at golf as any other course. Sometimes the sidewalls keep a ball in play that would have been lost on another course and sometimes the sidewalls of the muscle bunkers are more severe than at classic layouts, but the variety is refreshing. Besides, people tried to sit on Mike Strantz’s originality when he first broke out and we all know how that turned out.
Engh has some other recurring themes in his work regarding routing that are present at Hawktree, as well as almost every other Engh course. He loves ending on a par-5 to increase the potential 18th hole swings in fortune and he loves giving players five par-5s and five par-3s in a round. As usual, the par-5s at Hawktree are all showstoppers. The fifth looks right out of Sanctuary with it’s squiggly fairway contours and severe uphill approach which tapers as you near the green. Seven features another Engh staple of the design repertoire, an expansive water hazard at the green ringed by a sunburst shaped bunker to “save” balls so they don’t bounce in the water. Engh has used this hazard successfully at Redlands Mesa (13) and Sanctuary (13) as well. At the closing hole, Engh tucks the green behind left sidewall mound. Approached from the left are blind and uphill, approaches from the far right will be clear.
Except for 3, you don’t get any break on the par-3s. Two are particularly long and all carry over scrub brush (the 8th, 180 yds. and 13th 208 yds.), another is all carry over water (the 15th, 150). Only the drop shot third, which plays to a green framed by four trees with an expansive view of the hills beyond provides a breather. Otherwise, the par-3s are “survive and advance.”
After the fifth, the long par-4 12th is the best hole on the course. 430 yards long, the downhill drive will reach one of several staggered landing areas. The hole then bends gently to the left and reveals a figure-eight green set on the edge of the hill over looking the vale of most of the rest of the back nine, and with the Northn Dakota hills beyond. It’s a singularly beautiful hole that requires your best drive and crispest fairway-metal or long iron to reach on regulation; a stout par-4, yet a charming one as well.
Engh gives you plenty of room off the tee to hit driver all day. The only exception might be the short, narrow par-4 16th. A fairway-metal or long iron will be played to an island of fairway between two brooks.
P.S...this reads like a possible headline from that comedy paper "The Onion..."
"Lunkhead Golf writer recommends North dakota for golf vacation..."
I also like "US to Canada: trade you North Dakota for Hockey pucks."
Next up I guarantee a future email from Tim Hartnett, "Jay, Jim says he's on the first plane to La Guardia with his rusty tools and a blowtorch;)
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