"If you measure "hard" as being difficult to keep the ball in play, then I don't think Sebonack is that. But having played it twice, it is certainly one of the toughest courses to score on that I've seen. If your usual means of putting together a good round is flying iron shots close to the pin, then you're going to have a long, hard day out there. As of a few weeks ago the course record was still level par, and quite a few local pros had been around it by then."
Eamon:
I'd say precisely.
I've never played Sebonack, and I probably never will, but my gut feeling about what might constitute "hard" on that golf course just could be perhaps ultimately the neatest thing of all about some really good, challenging and interesting architecture. By that I mean that golf couse just may have a huge wide spectrum of "variability" depending on the degree of firm and fast they put on the course at any time,
particularly "through the green".
Some might say that should be true of most any golf course but I do not believe that at all.
I would say if they have 40-50 yards of roll-out on the course off some tee shots, maybe 20-30 yards of roll-out on some of the approaches (if one wanted to try that option on the holes that architecturally allow it) and green surfaces where you couldn't just "stick" aerial approaches that golf course just might be one of the most interesting to play one could find. I don't know whether that's true on all the holes but it looked to me to be true on maybe up to half of them.
I could see even a tour pro hitting some technically well executed shots on that course but not thinking well by not "reading" the course well and getting pretty well screwed score-wise while another good player who could read the course's complexities might make out just fine.
I hope you know what I mean by that.
I have no idea if stuff like that is basically Doak or Nicklaus or a combination of the two (or some of their crews). I don't know Nicklaus architecture that well but I do know some of Doak's and that particular aspect is on some of the holes of Stonewall (the original one).
Even a really good player the first time out there (if the course is firm and fast) may look at that course and just completely miss the best and most effective way to play some of those holes, even with hitting what are technically well struck shots.
I've always been amused by that woo-woo-woo remark of "Be the Ball" but Sebonack (if firm and fast) looks to me to be a golf course where it might help a lot to sort of feel in your gut what it's like to "Be the Ball"----eg otherwise you just might hit a technically well executed shot and find yourself in a world of hurt.
If my sense about that---about Sebonack that way, is correct---that to me is what really good architecture is basically all about.
The flip side of that coin, though, is some, at first, might think that kind of thing is unfair or boarderng on it----at least until they figure out how to "read" the course's complexities.
I can't wait for the next couple of years to see if my sense about this is true of Sebonack, and to the extent I think it may be.