Tom H.
No hard feelings here either.
I guess it comes down to just how much room a course needs around the greens to be playable for the higher handicapper. Maybe when you are considering this you should keep a few things in mind . . .
1. High handicappers very rarely miss long. The vast majority of their mishits are short, not long, especially on uphill holes. George Thomas writes about this fairly extensively.
2. Along the same lines, higher handicappers arent necessarily as directionally challenged as they are often portrayed. When they miss, the ball often doesnt travel far enough to get really seriously offline and pin high. This is why, on approaches, most hacks end up short and a little offline. This is also why your father never met a bunker that he couldnt go around. In contrast, I'll bet he has met a few he couldnt go over.
3. Higher handicappers aren't necessarily idiots and are quite capable of figuring out that they ought to be aiming for the middle of safety, rather than taking dangerous lines to the pin.
4. Perhaps most importantly, to a high handicapper rocks aren't necessarily any worse than water, extremely high grass, trees, the ocean, or other hazardous conditions. Whether it be, hazard, lost ball, or impossible shot all are pretty much dead.
Undoubtedly, there are some greens at SE narrower than the ones pictured, but there are also quite a few that are as wide or wider. It seemed that many of these holes had a 50 + yard wide corridor of safety at the front of the greens! Looking at these photos and thinking back on the course
just how wide do the corridors have to be before they are wide enough??Granted, the greens often have serious trouble on one side . . . but at what great course is this not the case? Bob mentions CP below . . . CP has very serious trouble in close proximity to the hole on at least one side on many if not most the holes, especially the best ones. Start at 18 and work your way back and tell me when you get to a hole with the kind of forgiveness you expect at SE. How about Sand Hills? Can the hack golfer spray it 30 yards left or right of the green and not be dead? They cant at Pebble. Or how about Rustic, the poster child of forgiveness? Most of the greens have one side that is near or complete death.
Is it possible that the dimensions and the contrast have tricked you? Is it at least possible that in your limited exposure the approaches looked much tighter than they actually are?
Bob Asked:
What is about you guys that refuses to accept Huckaby's point that certain features of Stone Eagle might not be perfect? Why the reluctance to accept his precis?
From what I am reading I get the impression that we are finding the successor to Cypress Point. Please educate me, what am i missing?
I wholeheartedly accept Tom's point that certain features at Stone Eagle might not be perfect. At the same time, I disagree with him regarding whether the approaches were too tight. I guess the reason I care enough to discuss it with Tom is that after a half dozen plays I came away with the opposite impression on this particular issue.
Perhaps if we ever get past this one issue we can have a more productive discussion on some the other provoking features.