TomD:
You do have a good memory or is it just that I've posted that Ardrossan hole example about ten times over the years?
I wish I could just find one of those in the back pages and cut it and paste it up here but I don't know how to do that, so I guess I'll just have to explain it again, so here goes.
Ardrossan Farm was a potential project to move my own club Gulph Mills to. Ardrossan is just one awesome place---it is the estate on which the lady who the movie "The Philadelphia Story" was made about. The place is big and it was an massive Olmsted land plan maybe a hundred years ago. It looks like one of those massive English Country estates which it was obviously landscape designed to look like. A land planner once said it was the most beautiful place in close to a major city on the entire East Coast.
Anyway we did a bunch of routings on Ardrossan to see if it would be feasible to move GMGC there and there's a landform on that place that just totally speaks for itself when it comes to width or fairway width. Everything is just there naturally on the ground, the entire hole and it is one of the biggest mothers I've ever seen in my life. The green site is just right there looking at you like a sore thumb and so is the rest of the hole when you understand the hole that preceeds it and comes after it. The topography on that landform just talks to you pretty obviously in my opinion.
To use this landform as I saw it is all about its topography period. I don't think you'd need to move a tablespoon of earth on this thing---it's all right there--I'll be glad to show it to anyone any time.
I called it "gravity golf". Frankly i think it could be used with not a single bunker or anything else on it, just the landform exactly like it is now. Just make tees, fairway and plant the green right on the ground as it is.
Width?
In the first half of this hole I measured about 150 yards of completely usable and very interesting optional golf that should be all fairway. On the second half it fans out to almost 250 yards of fairway. I can explain all the interesting options on it from beginning to end if you want.
So, anyway, the most interesting part of the story is I told Bill Coore about it on the phone (I was working with him on this project). I told him it was about 150 yards of fairway in the first half and fanning out to around 250 yards of fairway on the second half.
At first he just said: "Oh My!" Then he said he didn't see how a hole that big and that wide could focus a golfer's eye. So, I asked him why an architect had to focus a golfer's eye, and why he couldn't just give hm something like this and let him move his eyes around and his head around if necessary too and try to figure it out for himself.
SILENCE for about 10 seconds (that's Bill), then he just asked---"Is it all golf?" and I said you bet it is and he said, "Well, then......"
By the way, on this natural landform, when you stepped to the next tee directly behind this green and looked back at this hole, I will guarantee you it would look like a Tsunami of fairway coming at you.
There's no question at all it could be one of the goddamnest holes the world has ever seen and it sure would be one of the biggest ever. But it's all golf---every single bit of it! Don't just take my word for it---if you're in the neighborhood I'll show it to you and you can see for yourself. I don't know if I can do that for everyone but I sure will for you TomD, and then you can appreciate it for yourself or just tell me I'm crazy. Don't worry, I'm used to that by now.
