Ballyneal and Dismal River

[cary lichtenstein]

Bette and I played these courses this weekend and thought the Treehouse would like to hear our take on these:

Ballyneal: I may still be stuffering from some sunstroke from the 100 degree temp, so here goes: Ballyneal is absolutely brilliant and it ranks up there one of the all time bests. Doaks routing in the choppy, hilly sand dunes shows how good he really is. This course is fun, thrilling, and a virtual eye candy 4 hour Playmate of the year.

The holes are unusual, never repeat and the land, greens and fairways are crumpled like a piece of paper.

I could go on raving about this beauty, but out of fear of being called a Doak butt boy, let me just say it is a good as it gets and Ran's write up is excellent and if someone will bring up that link, he does great justice to this course.

Negatives: I'm too old to play in 100 degrees and it is in the middle of nowhere. I only played the front 9, got heatsick after 8 holes, and Bette made me quit playing. So we just toured the back nine, but it looked amazing.

Bette could not play the course with her knee problems, so if you got a bad hip or knee, this course maybe too tough for you.

Dismal River: This is Nicklaus pushing the envelope as never before. While Ballyneal is walking only, DR allows the use of carts and takes alot of liberty with its routing to take opportunity to differentiate itself from the others.

We saw everything there: #10, an uphill par 3 with and giant bunker in the middle was the most unusual hole and we know it works because Bette made a tap-in 2.

We saw an abundance of uphill greens, blind shots, greens with unbelieveable natural contouring. Not a weak hole in the 18, more resistant to scoring than Ballyneal.

While Ballyneal uses the bunkering and land in an intimate way, Dismal uses the bunkering on the sides for the most part. I never was in a bunker at DR and only oce at BN, but threw several balls in different bunkers and found the sand to be terrific at both places.

While you could use the land at Ballyneal to run your shots up, you could not at DR.

Negatives: Some will feel this is a Steroid Golf with just no let up, inspite of the fact that no land was moved.. While Bette and I are relatively decent players, the higher handicaps may find this course a tad ego deflating. The blowing sand and high tempatures make afternoons undesirable.

The Dismal RIver 17 mile drive is not like the one at Pebble Beach . It is a one lane road with blind uphill spots that scare the shit out of you , but they are going to widen it.

Sundry Comments: DR has a wonderfully attractive all sports plan to spend your days in this moonscape desolite part of the world. It clubhouse and other buildings have a general store, bowling, billiards, lazar tag, indoor state of the art golf on computers, card rooms, meeeting rooms, spa, workout room. They seem to have thought of most everything PLUS, they have routed a 2nd course and a par 3, plus 4 fishing ponds.

BN is less elaborate in its extras, but it has a first class lodge , restaurant to open soon and pro shop. BN is 3 hours from Denver airport.

We drove back to Denver from Dismal RIver and it is 6 hours with a heavy foot on the gas petal.

Predictions: BN will win best new course or I'll eat my shirt and the top 3 Golfweek Modern will be Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes and Ballyneal without predicting the order. Ballyneal will crack the top 100 Golf Digest on its eligibilty year and be somewhere in the top 20, too political to rank where it should properly rank, in my humble opinion.

[grandwazo]

Received an email today from the plus 1 former Nebraska University golfer I played with at Sand Hills earlier this month, and he played Dismal River the day following our rounds at Sand Hills.  His email says that DR was the hardest golf course he ever played.  Can't provide any additional details, but I did play 36 with him from the tips at SH and he shot 2 over in both rounds.  SH is hard, but always "fun".  I wonder if DR is "fun" while its beating the s**t out of you?

[Adam Clayman]

Cary, For gawdsake my man, what the heck were you doing out there? It's too gawdaweful hot.

With the wind blowing, it's like a convection oven.

Perhaps this will be some help to others who might find themselves in similar situations?...

... Hydrate the day before, during and after your rounds.

As for people with ailments. I am the poster child for a condition known as Pelvolumbar Instability. I have more aches in my lower back and extremities than a man should have. Yet, I have not not finished a round. I've even carrried my own bag several times. So, it is a very doable course even with some ailments.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Any updates on Cary's Top 25 List?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Cary, thanks for the update. I am looking forward to playing Ballyneal much more than DR. However it seems both need to be seen as the world in the Sand Hills get richer with great golf.

[cary lichtenstein]

Mike:

DO you want top 25 World Wide or US? My WOrld experience is pretty much limited to Scotland and Ireland and I haven't played much in the North and east of Ireland

Cary

[cary lichtenstein]

Adam:

Bette's knee is pretty bad, bone on bone, so the angles hurt her, and so her disability properly limits her more than most.

Cary

[Jerry Kluger]

I too had the opportunity to play both courses this past week along with Wild Horse and Sand Hills and I must say that not one of them was a disappointment.  There is no need to go over how great WH and SH are so I won't say much other than SH is still the standard of greatness and WH could be the best value in the U.S.

We arrived at BN in the afternoon after playing SH in the morning and really weren't up to walking 18 in the heat so we waited a couple of hours and took a few clubs and did a loop of 4 holes in the early evening - very cool and made us look forward to our round the next morning.  Ballyneal is simply a whole lot of fun with a great variety of holes with each par 3 growing in length and par 4s of all varieties.  You even get a Friar's Head feeling as you transition from the top of a hill/dune down into the valley.  The holes feel natural and work well into the surroundings.  You look at the bunkering and think it is all quite natural but then we were told that in fact some of the bunkers were created.  The ground game is clearly the way to go on many of the holes and the greens have a good deal of contour but not as much movement as I've seen in some other courses such as Friar's Head or Hidden Creek.  The greens were also on the slow side and should be much more interesting after they have matured and they can bring up the speeds.  I enjoyed the course every bit as much as I enjoyed SH.

Dismal River was a pleasant surprise to me as I really didn't know what to expect.  The greens have a great deal of movement in them, in fact as much as I've ever seen. The bunkers are completely natural and need some work in order to have playable sand in them - a low bounce wedge is an absolute necessity.  The holes all appear to have been created with a minimal amount of earth moving but Nicklaus has a different vision from Doak or C&C.  JN has a great deal of up and down movement to his holes which creates a great number of elevated greens which some may not like.  I found the course to be far more difficult than BN or SH.  The only part of the course which I did not like was the routing - when you left a green you had no idea where the next tee was and you surely would get lost without a forecaddie - this also made the idea of walking the course out of the question.  

I would love to go back and see BN and DR in about two years when they have matured and the architects have tweaked them to where they are completely satisfied with their work.  

[Adam Clayman]

Cary, Jerry, How did you choose to play the seventh @ BN?

[Steve_ Shaffer]

Wasn't there a previous thread about someone hearing through the grapevine that Dismal River was a difficult course? Now Cary and Jerry have real life experience. Although the sample is small, must one be a single digit handicapper to enjoy Dismal River?

[John Kavanaugh]

  The only part of the course which I did not like was the routing - when you left a green you had no idea where the next tee was and you surely would get lost without a forecaddie - this also made the idea of walking the course out of the question.  

Jerry,

Given that Dismal is a private course...how long do you think it will take the members to figure out where the next tees are...

[John Kirk]

Jerry and Cary,

Thanks for all your kind comments about Ballyneal.  Sorry I could not join you out there.  Check that, it was in the low 70s all weekend long here in Portland.

Ballyneal will be best utilized in the shoulder seasons, and I will begin organizing my golf life around late spring and early fall visits to the sand hills.

[Jerry Kluger]

Our forecaddie at DR said that some of the members had gone out on their own and figured out the routing so it can be done with time; he also had only been there for about two weeks and had figured it out.  I wouldn't say that you need to be a single digit handicap to enjoy DR but you definitely will need to play the right tees or be a straight driver of the ball.  The startup problem they have is that the watering system is causing the vegetation just off the fairways to grow and thicken so you either lose the ball or take an unplayable with a shot that is just off the fairway.  They said that they will be adjusting the sprinklers to stop this from happening.  You will also be able to play the course better when you know the greens and understand where to miss a shot, i.e. is long better or short and so on.

[Matt_Ward]

Cary:

To piggy-back on what Mike S asked for -- when are you going to place on GCA your top listing. Would love to see where you place your emphasis / likings, etc, etc.

Thanks ...

P.S. I'll be at Ballyneal and Dismal River soon and can't wait to see what they offer.

[Jerry Kluger]

Adam: I was out there with Mike Policano and as I recall we both took driver off the tee but we were hitting into a 35 MPH headwind, just kidding; I know I hit driver and I believe Mike did as well and we did not reach the green and we did bank it off the slope on the left side.

[DMoriarty]

Given that Dismal is a private course...how long do you think it will take the members to figure out where the next tees are...

Barney,

Is this your sole criterion for identifying a quality routing on a private course?   Solid routing, because eventually the members will be able to figure out how to find the next tee!
________________

Cary, thanks for the review.

Your "Negatives" list for Ballyneal is not really a criticism of the course, is it?  Or are you actually saying that your opinion of the course is diminished because of the "no carts" policy?  

The reason I ask is that I found one of your coments about Dismal River similarly puzzling.   You wrote "While Ballyneal is walking only, DR allows the use of carts and takes alot of liberty with its routing to take opportunity to differentiate itself from the others."  Are you saying that Nicklaus intentionally routed the course loosely to appeal to the cart riding crowd?  

Whether a course allows carts or not, I'd hate to think that anyone-- rider or not-- would actually prefer loosely routed courses with long distances between greens and tees.  But maybe I am misunderstanding you.


You predict that "BN will win best new course or I'll eat my shirt and the top 3 Golfweek Modern will be Sand Hills, Pacific Dunes and Ballyneal without predicting the order."    That is some statement considering there must be at least one high-end Jim Engh course out there this year.

Seriously, do any these great courses you have seen this year shed light on the skepticism your "Top 10" list provoked?

[Jerry Kluger]

DM: The issue with the routing of DR is that it makes walking the course very difficult. It is not an easy walk as the holes do go up and down quite a bit and when you add in the distances between holes, it makes it even more difficult.

We had dinner with the owner of Ballyneal and he toured golf courses throughout the U.S., the UK and Ireland and was absolutely convinced that he wanted a walking only course and as the owner, that was his choice to make.  Certainly that limits the number of people who might join the club.  However, the course allows for some loops of less than 9 holes which are easy walks and fun when you want to just go out and have some fun.

[cary lichtenstein]

Adam:

I hit driver to about 25 yards and hit flip wedge to about a foot, however, I would never hit driver there again. I would lay up and hit sand wedge in, risk is too great v the reward.

Cary

[cary lichtenstein]

To address the question about how hard Dismal River, I shot 82 with 7  3putt greens. Bette shot 88. The reason I had so many 3 putts was they put all the pins in the very front of the greens, so there would be not ball marks for this coming weekend which is there grand opening. JN will be there and his staff requested this.

On the uphill greens, the front pins are not accessible, as the greens are new and hard and it could not 2 putt from 70 feet very well, especially on these wildly undulating greens and the possibility of putting off the green and the ball rolling 40 yards down the fairway.

Re the difficulty of the rough, they are cutting it back shortly and assured me it will be like the rough at Bandon which is very manageable

[DMoriarty]

DM: The issue with the routing of DR is that it makes walking the course very difficult. It is not an easy walk as the holes do go up and down quite a bit and when you add in the distances between holes, it makes it even more difficult.

I understood this.   But unless I am reading him wrong, Cary seems to think that loose routing and difficult walk are actually positive attributes of the course which distinguish the course from the competition.

We had dinner with the owner of Ballyneal and he toured golf courses throughout the U.S., the UK and Ireland and was absolutely convinced that he wanted a walking only course and as the owner, that was his choice to make.  Certainly that limits the number of people who might join the club.  However, the course allows for some loops of less than 9 holes which are easy walks and fun when you want to just go out and have some fun.

Ballyneal is a pleasure to walk, and much less strenuous than one might think when first viewing the choppy dunes.

[Mike Policano]

The seventh at BN is pure fun.  I could have spent a half hour chipping around and putting on that green.  The green blends into a small hill on the left side of the green which effectively makes it an extension of the green for chipping purposes.  It looks remarkably natural with the bunker blending into a dune on the right.

[John Kavanaugh]

Given that Dismal is a private course...how long do you think it will take the members to figure out where the next tees are...

Barney,

Is this your sole criterion for identifying a quality routing on a private course?   Solid routing, because eventually the members will be able to figure out how to find the next tee!
________________

David,

I think the comment from Jerry about not knowing where the next tee is is simply an example of hit and run reviewing.  One thing I hate is to play a course on a Tuesday before they get the outing signs taken down...a second thing I hate even more is unnecessary signage put forth for hit and runners.  If all play is accompanied-as all play should be-signs are not needed.

[DTaylor18]

Any updates on Cary's Top 25 List?

Cary, we are interested in your top 25 in the U.S. list!  Don't hold back on us.  

[John Kavanaugh]

Personally, I'm more interested in the next 25 courses C&B are going to play...

[Jerry Kluger]

JK: The issue is whether the course routing works well not only for finding the next hole but does it lend itself to walking and that is the main problem I had with the routing at DR. At Sand Hills you take a cart over to Ben's Cabin and then walk down to the first tee while at DR you would still need to take a cart to the first tee but the walk between green and tee would add significantly to the round and it would not be over flat terrain.  I must stress however, that DR is still an excellent, if not outstanding course, where the holes feel natural, the greens have great contours, and challenge the golfer to use every club in his bag and be innovative in his shot selection,.