In the spirit of Charles Foster Kane ("I think it would be FUN to run a newspaper") ...
I think it would be FUN to design a golf course containing all of these, my GCA-related ideas of FUN (not a Comprehensive List -- but gettin' there!). Many of these have been mentioned earlier in this thread, and they're here in no particular order, except for the order they're in (or, as my English teachers would have preferred -- and did, in fact, prefer: except for the order in which they are):
** Wide fairways (mostly). Not because I'm a wild driver (I'm not), but because (1) blasting away is FUN, and (2) wide fairways tend to offer more strategic/tactical options, which are FUN.
** Greens with bunkers and pin positions designed to favor tee shots from one side of the fairway or the other. (Lesson: Man does not live by blasting away alone.)
** Blind shots (at least the second time, and henceforth -- and possibly even the first time, as at the forget-which-hole totally blind par-3 at North Berwick West).
** Recovery shots, between/under/over/around trees. Trees get a bad rap here, it seems to me. So long as they're discrete, with enough separation that a sideways play isn't the only play, trees offer some of the best fun you can have on a golf course. For my money, there's NOTHING more fun in golf than working a big low slice or a big high hook to miss the trees and find the green. Bonus: those awesome Autumn colors. Drawback:the Leaf Rule.
** Greens with front openings. Essential for those recovery-from-the-trees shots, but FUN always. I love seeing a ball bounce up from the fairway to a front pin position -- or to a back pin, for that matter. I love the option of hitting a knockdown bouncer or a big high dart -- an option that green-front bunkers too often deny the player.
** Beautiful, big-skied vistas -- as well as self-contained, tunnelish holes. (I really like Jeff Brauer's analogy of walking up the tunnel into a football stadium.)
** Wind, in various directions during a round, and at various speeds from day to day.
** Severely uphill and downhill shots -- both offering the FUN of uncertainty. My ideal course would have at least one extremely downhill tee shot (par-3, 4 or 5; doesn't matter), where the ball would hang in the air more or less forever. It would have one severely uphill tee shot, to a par-3 where one could see only the top of the flag from the tee.
** I would have one very short Par-3, with a tiny green. I would have one very long Par-3, with a huge green.
** I go along with Monsieur Goodale in finding fast-and-firm and humps-and-hollows and challenges FUN. Linksland is nice, if that's where you are, but it ain't strictly necessary for FUN. (What do you expect, from a guy more than a thousand miles from any ocean?) As for weather: I can play golf very happily without rain, if not without wind, and without excessive heat, if not without manly cold.
** Enough rough to rob a shot of spin, but not to swallow balls. Thesis: As much as environmental laws will allow, a ball on a golf course should be clearly lost or clearly findable. Searching for balls is not FUN.
** Deep greenside (emphasize SIDE) bunkers, with enough sand to make a shot problematical, but not so much that every shot is a wild guess.
** Pot bunkers. They're just so ... cute! I like them in front of greens -- so that that bounce shot I favor might have to be a draw-bounce or a fade-bounce to avoid the pot and find a center-of-the-green pin.
** Small bunkers, in general -- just large enough to create their strategic challenge. Bunkers that punish HORRIBLE shots are over-large, in my view, and NO FUN. A much more FUN shot, to follow that horrible shot that would have ended in an over-large bunker, is a pitch shot over a reasonably sized bunker. (And it goes without saying that raking those Saharan bunkers is NO FUN.)
** Carry bunkers, just carryable with a fine tee shot from the appropriate tees.
** At least one bunker -- CLEARLY VISIBLE from the tee -- right in the middle of a wide, wide fairway. The FUN here would be watching the head-shaking and cursing and turf-smashing of those who hit the ball in there, anyway, and then blame the architect!
** Greenside and greenfront and greenback chipping areas.
** A relatively easy Hole No. 1; a relatively hard No. 18.
** Angled carry hazards, w/ bailout options.
** Some big rolly greens, and some little flat tilty ones.
** A series of tees that (a) offer tee shots with similar challenges to people of different lengths; and (b) are not in a line on the same axis -- so that shorter hitters can prepare to play from the shorter tees even as longer hitters tee off from the longer tees, without putting their lives on the line.
** VARIETY: Variety, IMO, is the bottom line, at the end of the day. (Someone, stop me before I cliche myself to death!) I think it's FUN to play as many different kinds of shots, on as many different kinds of hole, as it's possible to play on a single golf course. If that makes my ideal FUN course a "collection of holes" rather than a "course," so be it!
Amen.
P.S. Either all of what I've said above -- or just let me play Sand Hills for the rest of my life. That would be FUN enough.
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Rich --
In re: "Qu'est-ce que c'est qu'un tete du pipe?"
Very funny.
And even funnier: Not a tyop in sight! Maybe you should stick to French!
Or maybe not: On second thought, shouldn't that be "qu'une tete de pipe"?
As they say in Fife: C'est la vie!