TKP-V: Event Report, Course Impressions, Next Year?

[Tom Huckaby]

Ryan:

That's a good point.  A shot with no penalty as you describe would be too benign.  Just remember also that what George describes is normal dispersion for the higher handicapper.  Sure it seems huge to you... but believe me, it's normal.

So do you really want them punished this much?

Thus I still think the surrounds at Stone Eagle are too severe - and here's why:  even the BETTER place to miss side to side can still mean lost ball.

Think about #1... easiest hole on the course.   Better to miss right, true.. but too far right is still gonna mean rocks... left is death...

That to me seems to be the case on every single hole.  No?

TH

[George Pazin]

But, even a 15-20 handicapper can plan for a miss and that's where the strategy and mental game comes in for this or for any decent course.  I found that most of the green complexes had defined bail-out or at least "not as bad" spots to miss.

Maybe you can help my golf game out.

I have never understood the concept of a planned miss.

If I had to make up guesstimates for the results on any given iron shot for me, this would be it:

15% on the green (less than 5% stiff )
35% within 5 yards of green - 20% pushed right, 15% hooked left
15% pushed greater than 5 yards right, with the majority of those 10-20 yards right
20% hooked waaaaay left (I've hooked 9 irons 30+ yards)
7% completely chunked
3% bladed on a rocket over the green
5% other

How the heck do I plan for a miss?

I'm serious about this question, and I don't think my experience is that much different from other high handicappers, at least to the best of my observation.

(Incidentally, these numbers are why I think most architects don't understand high handicappers. Or, maybe it's just that they pay lip service to us.)

[Tom Huckaby]

I will definitely keep reading.

I hear the event is usually in April and during that month is my spring break, which would be the time I can go, if time does allow.  I hope I will be available to go because it sounds great and I would very much enjoy meeting some fellow GCA'ers on some nice courses!

Well Jordan, since several regulars here still think you're a fake, you will get the first invite, that's for sure.  These posts during school hours are being noted as evidence....

[rjsimper]

Very well said re our hosts at the courses - we couldn't have possibly received warmer welcomes.

Now re Stone Eagle... make that firmer and faster and sure it could defend itself... it would be unplayable.  I'd say it would be neat if the aprons were cut a little closer, but outside of that, we saw it as firm as it ought to get (imo) unless the idea is to prevent the Jeff Fortsons of the world from shooting 66... in which case of course the rest of us never finish the round....

 

100% agreed - I thought the course was playing at an absolutely perfect speed - appropriate for the severity of the site, and challenging enough for most.

Any faster and it might prevent Fortson's 66, but it also sends the rest of us north of Eric Lindros.

[Jordan Wall]

I will definitely keep reading.

I hear the event is usually in April and during that month is my spring break, which would be the time I can go, if time does allow.  I hope I will be available to go because it sounds great and I would very much enjoy meeting some fellow GCA'ers on some nice courses!

Well Jordan, since several regulars here still think you're a fake, you will get the first invite, that's for sure.  These posts during school hours are being noted as evidence....

I guess you could always ask Tom Doak right??

I also retain almost straight A's which I have said before.

I would love to come, as would my dad.

[Tom Huckaby]

George:

It's good players who plan to err on one side, not high cappers.  The concept is you aim at something and allow for a miss to remain OK.. That is, left pin with trouble left, you aim for the middle and try to draw it, figuring if you do, great it's close, if not, it's still on the green.  Aim away from trouble, play percentages.  Of course these are all things good players can do, lesser players can't, as they're just trying to make solid contact for the most part.

There are places at Stone Eagle where the good player can do this.  I found that it's usually on the right... that is, more trouble was left than right.  Aim for the right side, miss a little it's either on the green or otherwise OK.  Aim for a left pin, miss left, dead.

BUT... the huge kicker is that even misses to the better side can still get punished if too much off-line... your 20 yard push would mean death if you try to play the percentages like this...

TH

[Tony Petersen]

  Hey guys - Just wanted to say thanks again for everyone for a great weekend! Finally got to put some names to faces, and had a really, really fun time. I will be sure to post later, but just wanted to say that it's hot in Palm Springs, the courses were fantastic (more on that later), the company was keen and the event was everything I imagined it would be   It looks like the South has risen again  

[Tom Huckaby]

Jordan - some think Doak is in on the deception.

But hey, since if it's true I'm among the biggest fish of all to be hooked here, I remain very eager to have it proven one way or the other.

 

[Jerry Kluger]

TH:  The guys I was playing with on Monday were bombing it out there so far that they rarely were hitting more than 8 iron, and often wedge, into those greens.  With those clubs the greens were holding so if they were dialed in on distance, they had no trouble shooting at the pins.  This was even more so with the downhill shots.  The greens had some very signifcant contours to them but they really weren't that much of a factor to the strong players if they were using a short club.  For a guy like me who honestly flies the ball 230 yards, the greens were far more challenging as I was hitting longer clubs and often leaving myself with some very difficult, although fun, recoveries.  

[Tom Huckaby]

Jerry:

Agreed, the greens would need to be firmer to hold back those blokes given the short approaches.

BUT... do the high handicappers need them any firmer?  I'm thinking they'd never finish the round.  They're hitting pretty long clubs in, even from the middle tees... Jeez make it firmer and they never hold a single green from a long approach, rarely do with pitches, take forever to hole out their 5th and 6th putts....

Please tell me you're not that sadistic.  I have no problem with Jeff's 66... my problem is more with some high cappers not even wanting to play the course as it is... Make it firmer?  I don't get that.

[Jordan Wall]

Jordan - some think Doak is in on the deception.

But hey, since if it's true I'm among the biggest fish of all to be hooked here, I remain very eager to have it proven one way or the other.

 

*sigh*

What can I do, if people do not believe me I guess I will have to come to an event sooner or later...
I hope KPV is the one!

[rjsimper]

Jordan - some think Doak is in on the deception.

But hey, since if it's true I'm among the biggest fish of all to be hooked here, I remain very eager to have it proven one way or the other.

 

*sigh*

What can I do, if people do not believe me I guess I will have to come to an event sooner or later...
I hope KPV is the one!

You're about 4 days too late for KPV...  

[Jordan Wall]

Ryan,

I have already started saving for next year, say I have school off.

I think I can manage though, or at least I hope so.

[George Pazin]

Huck, I understand the theory for low handicappers. I thought Ryan had addressed the comment to me, which implies I should give it a try; maybe I misunderstood him.

[cary lichtenstein]

I'm kind of surprised by the comments here. Bette and I played Stone Eagle in April and we loved it. Granted we are better players, but not that good.

I think the heat was a major factor and you don't realize it. We played in Arizona 3 years ago in late August at 7am everyday as a 2 some in a cart, and by 10 we were baked thru and thru.

How someone didn't get really sick playing 36 holes is a miracle.

I thought the landing areas for the tee shots were very generous and I loved the bunkering and the recovery shots around the greens. I don't think the higher handicaps would find it too difficult on a day in day out basis.



Heck, I've seen higher handicaps go thru 20 to 30 balls in a round, and what always surprised me, was that they had that many balls in their bag.

[Tom Huckaby]

Huck, I understand the theory for low handicappers. I thought Ryan had addressed the comment to me, which implies I should give it a try; maybe I misunderstood him.

He did address it to you.  I'm just trying to explain for him that high cappers can't do it, and for you if you didn't even get the theory.  You're very perceptive, my bad for even wondering that.  But LOTS of high cappers would be clueless about even the theory.

The point in this case though is that even if the high capper did try to play smart and err on the "good" side, his misses will still get punished far more than at other courses.

Which again is no fault of Doak's, it's just the nature of the mountainous site.

Stone Eagle makes Black Mesa look pancake flat.

TH

[Tom Huckaby]

Cary:

The heat was a factor the first round, for sure.  But the second round was comfortable.  And my take remains as is.

Again, the tee shots left lots of room, which is one hell of a feat given the site.  But absent moving gazillions of tons of earth and rock on a scale befitting the pyramids, even the Pharoah himself couldn't have made green sites playable for the higher capper over the long term - not at that site.  That's the point.  Perhaps you and Bette are better players than you let on?

 

[rjsimper]

Huck, I understand the theory for low handicappers. I thought Ryan had addressed the comment to me, which implies I should give it a try; maybe I misunderstood him.

George,

I will admit first and foremost that I am not a high handicapper so anything I say here is presumption on my part.

But-

High handicappers do it all the time - they just don't know it.

Let's say golfer 1 is a 28 with a wicked slice.  He aims well left of the fairway, even if that means aiming at the trees, and slices it into the fairway or possibly into the right rough.

Change the setting from a tee ball to the green with desert to the left and long, and a chipping area and shallow bunker to the right.  One can aim at the flag here, knowing that they shouldn't hit it left, and if they pure it they're on the green, and if they cut it they are in the bunker or bail out area.

Sure, there are limitations to this, and often a high handicapper can only hit one shot shape, so a mirror image of this scenario might prove catastrophic, but I think that's just pointing at the limits and challenges inherent in design - how do you make something ideal for all skill levels.

The theory holds together far longer with a low handicapper, but I think that the high handicapper has a better shot at implementing the planned miss than he/she would otherwise think.  Even if they can only make use of it half of the time (holes with death left, for example)



Jordan - I was not commenting on your attendance, but rather pointing out that if you are planning ahead, you should be planning for KPVI, not KPV, lest you find that the latter ship has sailed.

[Tom Huckaby]

Ryan:

Good caveat re not presuming to know how the high capper plays.  I don't make the same, because I was one for a long time, and still am too often even now.  

But anyway, that's a great explanation for George.  But it's of course not gonna work for him, because he has no one particular shot shape -as his percentages show.  And of course there are many types of high handicappers... but he's representative of the norm as he describes his approach shots, wouldn't you say?

In any case, let's translate this back to Stone Eagle.  How can he plan his way around the approaches there?  He can't, because even the good side also has death, just a little farther away.  Sure there's sometimes less death than the more obvious other side, but death it remains.  And if one really does have no particular shot shape and is just trying to hit it solid, well... there's not much that can be done.

Again, it's just the nature of the site.

[George Pazin]

It's my experience that people who only slice, to some sort of controlled degree, are usually not high handicappers. They've been playing long enough to work with their game and can score okay with their short game to end up mid handicappers.

I think my percentages are far more representative of the "normal" high handicapper. The biggest difference is that I generally hook or push my misses, as opposed to slice or pull.

But even the guy who learns to play with his slice is going to occasionally square up that club face and pull the heck out of a shot every now and then.

For a course to be truly forgiving for a high handicapper, that means it needs a lot of width everywhere. I know that means it's virtually impossible for a desert or mountain course to be playable for a high handicapper; I was just curious to see if a Doak mountain course was different.

In other words, I'm looking for a course that is really difficult to lose a ball. I don't care if it is super hard like Oakmont (though I obviously would struggle if faced with that sort of difficulty on a consistent basis), I just can't stand the "reload till you get it right" approach.

[rjsimper]

It's my experience that people who only slice, to some sort of controlled degree, are usually not high handicappers. They've been playing long enough to work with their game and can score okay with their short game to end up mid handicappers.

I think my percentages are far more representative of the "normal" high handicapper. The biggest difference is that I generally hook or push my misses, as opposed to slice or pull.

But even the guy who learns to play with his slice is going to occasionally square up that club face and pull the heck out of a shot every now and then.

For a course to be truly forgiving for a high handicapper, that means it needs a lot of width everywhere. I know that means it's virtually impossible for a desert or mountain course to be playable for a high handicapper; I was just curious to see if a Doak mountain course was different.

In other words, I'm looking for a course that is really difficult to lose a ball. I don't care if it is super hard like Oakmont (though I obviously would struggle if faced with that sort of difficulty on a consistent basis), I just can't stand the "reload till you get it right" approach.

Fair enough - from this perspective I would say that this course, while still punishing to the high handicapper with an inconsistent shot tendency, was about as playable as you are going to find on any mountainous golf course.  

I'm really curious to compare Stone Eagle to Apache Stronghold.  KPVI sidetrip if it's in PHX?

[Tom Huckaby]

Ryan - cool that you get George's explanation.  That's how it goes for high handicappers.

But the key is this...

I'd agree that Stone Eagle is as playable for the high handicapper as you're going to get from a mountain course.  Doak did do one hell of a job, and one can see that the fate of the high 'capper was considered.  So George, Doak did try, for sure...

BUT... it's still a mountain course, and it's still too severe around the greens.

That's the bottom line.

From what I hear Apache Stronghold is not mountainous at all... but I too sure do want to see it.  If any event gets done anywhere near, damn well we need to factor it in.

I gather you haven't been to Pacific Dunes... well... it has none of the issues that Stone Eagle does, and it ain't easy by any means.  Again, it's the nature of the site.  Tom Doak might be considered a god by many, but he's not THE God.

 

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I too want to thank Tommy, David M, David K and our hosts at the three clubs for making the event really nice. To the victors go the spoils and seeing Huck moaning is part of the thrill of victory. The heat did make or impact ones views of the respective courses a bit more diffivcult. I am going to sleep on it before making any comments.

[PThomas]

I too want to thank Tommy, David and our hosts at the three clubs for making the event really nice. To the victors go the spoils and seeing Huck moaning is part of the thrill of victory. The heat did make or impact ones views of the respective courses a bit more diffivcult. I am going to sleep on it before making any comments.

"seeing Huck moaning is part of the thrill of victory"...Tiger, I think I owe you the beverage of your choice for that one!

[Tom Huckaby]

To the victors go the spoils and seeing Huck moaning is part of the thrill of victory.

You know me far too well, JB.

GREAT to see you again, great to play with you again - and apologies for going into angry frustrated la-la land parts of that day.  It happens, even to generally happy boy me.    Best to Wendy, see ya again soon....

BTW your Wendy wins good sport of the century award!