I very much like the one Bobby Weed course I've played -- the alluded-to Minnesota course, called StoneRidge, located just east of St. Paul near Stillwater. Here's a link to some decent photos of the place (wish I could post one or two the best, but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. Tommy N?)
http://www.stoneridgegc.com/golfcourse.htmStoneRidge is billed as a "heathland" course, featuring lots of natural-looking bunkers and wild native grasses. It was built on a combination of two sites: the front nine was a horse farm, and the back nine was a gravel pit. Not surprisingly, the front nine is, in my mind, the better nine, but there are several challenging and entertaining holes on the back, as well.
Standout holes include:
#3, a short par 4 (370 yards) with a cross bunker guarding the right two-thirds of the fairway at about 210 yards. You don't want to lay back and leave yourself a five-iron into the narrow, two-tiered green that falls away on three sides, but it takes a real blast into a non-helping wind to clear the bunker, or a very precise shot to hit the fairway left of it. The left side of the hole is almost all waste area.
#4, a 565-yard dogleg right on which the proper line off the tee is over waste bunkers all down the right side. The green is extremely and abruptly elevated, even moreso that #9 at Augusta National, so your second shot is almost always going to be a mid-iron layup to a narrowing fairway. It would take a phenomenal second shot to reach and hold the green, but there is a bank behind it, thick with prairie grass. (The photo from behind this green on the above link does not adequately reflect its elevation.)
#5, a pure power 460-yard, humpbacked par 4, played into the prevailing wind. There's a waste area on the left side, but plenty of room right; the second half of the fairway is slightly downhill, the green is open in front and the fairway is generally firm enough to run a low shot onto the huge, four-club green.
#8 (the last hole on this side before the clubhouse, interestingly), a 359-yard uphill teaser that curls to the left around a series of bunkers. The bunkers can be carried, leaving a very short pitch, but if you go right of these bunkers with a driver, you run the risk of hitting it through the fairway and into a bunker or deep grass on the right side, leaving a sidehill stance to a green you can't see.
#10, a downhill, 410-yard dogleg left that plays much shorter than its yardage, unless the prevailing wind is really howling. Your drive will either end up at the top of a drop-off, leaving a very steep downhill 7-iron or so to a green guarded by a pond on the left side, or your drive will roll to the bottom of this hill, leaving a lob wedge.
#11, the signature "Barn" hole -- a slightly uphill 495-yard par 5. The game here is to fit your drive between the old white horse barn on the left side of the hole, about 160 yards off the tee, and a couple of oak trees in the right rough, about the same distance off the tee as the barn. (I played a round here with Dan Kelly -- he bounced his tee shot directly off the barn, and it bounced backwards into the rough about 40 yards. He made par from there.) The green is definitely reachable if your first drive finds the fairway -- and probably a better option than laying up, because the fairway is lined and interrupted by waste bunkers that limit your layup area; but the green is on an elevated shelf and difficult to hold. Most second shots run through the green and up the hill behind it, leaving a very scary chip back to the hole.
#13, a short, uphill, dogleg right par 4 (310 yards) around the former gravel pit, kind of the mirror image of #8; if the wind is with you, you might consider going for this green, but finishing short will leave you in a pot bunker, a blind, grassy uphill lie, or in the pit. An iron off the tee to the small fairway and a wedge into the green is the easier way to play the hole.
#14, a great par 3 (come to think of it, the other par 3's are not among the best holes at StoneRidge -- target golf without much charm); this one requires a 180-yard carry over the corner of the former gravel pit. If the hole is cut on the right side of this green, and you fire at it, you risk all kinds of grief on your second shot, from a hillside bunker to some kind of funky recovery shot from the bottom of the pit.
#17 is a decent straightaway par 5 that requires some study of the yardage book to avoid the bunkers and waste areas, and #18 is a 456-yard dogleg right par 4 into the prevailing wind that kind of beats up a tired player -- it's got a long waste area down the right side, which will surely grab a weak fade. If you bail out left, however, you run the risk of hitting it through the fairway and into the tall grass. Even your best drive is going to leave a long iron into the green -- which is guarded about 30 yards out by a trench of thick rough across the fairway to discourage a running approach.
The first 12 holes are easy to walk; once you get to the gravel pit holes, however, the remaining hikes between green and tee are difficult and confusing. That's about all I found not to like about StoneRidge, however (that and the background hum of traffic along I-94, which you don't see because of the man-made earth barriers along the south edge of the course.) It's a very eye-pleasing course, with a number of different strategic approaches available on most holes.
StoneRidge is charging $72 per round, which is a great price compared to many of the nation's newer CCFAD's (and cheaper than the other CCFAD's in the Twin cities Tom Lehman's Troy Burne, Weiskopf-Moorish's The Wilds and Cupp and Fought's Rush Creek), but it's meeting consumer resistence here because local golfers aren't used to paying that kind of money to play. It's an extremely well-maintained course, and I hope the officially-declared golf course glut in Minnesota won't affect that.
Put me down as a fan of Mr. Weed.
Rick