What Are the "Dozen Most Strategic Courses Built in the Past 60 Years?"

[Matthew Mollica]

Thanks for bumping this thread Mark.

Not sure I will be launching a broadside at Ran, but I am indeed surpsied as you said.

I've played Hope Island several times now, and it is an important course.
It was probably the springboard in recognition for Peter Thomson's firm.
The course, along with The Dunes, represented a shift in design seen in Australia.

No doubt a great transformation of an ordinary site.
Yet I'm surprised that it garners such praise from Ran.

I found the par 5s over-bunkered.
Why bunker the inside of 18, along the water line for example?

The need to play hopscotch between expanses of sand with the second shot gets tiresome when it is repeatedly presented on the 3 shot holes. I don't deem this challenge overly strategic.

I feel the par 3s are a little uninspiring.
I think the 17th is silly. An unrealistic carry for many members.

Several of the par 4s are very good, but the proximity of the freeways as mentioned before does indeed detract in aesthetic terms. I also accept that the site is subject to great amounts of water, but the consistent presentation of pushed up greens also grated with me after seeing more than a dozen of them.

As far as a top dozen strategic since WWII -

I would think that Australia's entrants would have to include at least

St. Andrews Beach, Barnbougle Dunes and Kennedy Bay

before The Links at Hope Island were considered.

[Mark_F]

I've played Hope Island several times now, and it is an important course.
It was probably the springboard in recognition for Peter Thomson's firm.

I am positive every time you play National Ocean Matt, you are so wishing he didn't get the Hope Island gig, then.

As far as a top dozen strategic since WWII -
I would think that Australia's entrants would have to include at least
St. Andrews Beach, Barnbougle Dunes and Kennedy Bay
before The Links at Hope Island were considered.

Two out of the above three are lucky to still be in existence. 

Capital has to be at the top of that list.  It has been called a masterpiece of design, after all.   

[Steve Salmen]

Though I am not a huge fan of Butler National due to the difficulty off the tee on pretty much every hole, it does have one neat feature.

I recall several, if not all the greens being kidney shaped, elevated and running at diagonals from the fairways.  Players must be precise.  If you come up short, there's a good chance of winding up in a very deep greenside bunker.  Conversely, going long results in a very fast downhill chip.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Not just 17, isn't there an all-carry, water par 3 on the front, too?  We can beat on Ran all we want and put words in his mouth in the confidence that he won't see this, much less post!

In fairness, he wrote this pre Barnbougle and St. Andrews Beach.  But let me ask you, is the bunkering at SAB more "strategic" than at Hope Island?  Doak had better terrain to work with and didn't need to bunker...

Now let us praise Hope.  2, 9, 10, 11 (that's the driveable one, yes?), 12, 13 -- those are fun and thoughtful holes.

I didn't mind the push-up greens, either.  They are designed to frustrate low handicaps like you Matthew!

Mark

PS Can you tell us more about Kennedy Bay?

[Matthew Mollica]

Mark,

Kennedy Bay was owned by the same company that owned St. Andrews Beach.
The course is less than 20 years old, and sits close to the coast, south of Perth.

Here's a link to a review I penned (you may have to join the forum to read it)-

http://www.thegolfforum.com/index.php?showtopic=1590

MM

[Doug Siebert]

Tom Doak's comment about most people not noticing features they don't encounter in their play of a hole intrigued me.

I admit I do not always notice all the ways a particular feature will affect someone who plays a hole very differently than I do.  I think the thing that's helped me the most in this regard is playing with my dad fairly often, as he's aged (he's in his mid 70s now) his game has changed quite a bit from when he was younger and it makes me see aspects of a hole in a way I wouldn't have realized so clearly before.  So that helps at least to a certain extent, but its hard to do.  I think anyone can think about this from the standpoint of distance, but that is only one small component.

I think this is a highly underrated skill, and probably one few are able to truly develop.  Guys like me might see parts of it here and there, but its like seeing the night sky through a break in the clouds compared to how someone who had a real talent at it must see things.

[Mark_F]

Mark,

Kennedy Bay was owned by the same company that owned St. Andrews Beach.
The course is less than 20 years old, and sits close to the coast, south of Perth.

Here's a link to a review I penned (you may have to join the forum to read it)-

http://www.thegolfforum.com/index.php?showtopic=1590
MM

Nice review as always, Matt.  And no, I didn't have to join.  Such fascinating commentary about the reasons for it's lack of success and eventual demise, too. Clearly St Andrews Beach should have hired Tony Titheridge instead of Henry Cussell. Amazing how two people who are bankrupt can still have a hand in running Kennedy Bay and are presumably pocketing some coin for doing so.

We actually had reciprocal rights at Kennedy Bay, as well as Bass Coast.  Wonder if that one will get up.

[Shane Gurnett]

C'mon, Mark, there is no strategy at St Andrews Beach because the greens are too small and its the same approach shot day after day especially when you can just smash it anywhere into those wide open fairways and still be in the hole...

[Mark_F]

That lack of strategy is clearly why it failed, Shane. 

Why blow $50,000 on an unthinking goat track when you can drop $15,000 at The National and have the strategic masterpiece that is The Moonah course to confound and thrill you for the rest of your golfing days?

St Andrews Beach was doomed from the moment Doak got the job ahead of the dream team of Hartley/Cashmore.

[James Bennett]

C'mon, Mark, there is no strategy at St Andrews Beach because the greens are too small and its the same approach shot day after day especially when you can just smash it anywhere into those wide open fairways and still be in the hole...

Sounds like Augusta circa 1986 Shane.  Nicklaus did just that on #17.  Tee shot way left (was it onto #7 fairway), then recovery to the green and a great putt for a legendary birdie.  Of course, Augusta was more of a strategic course then, but the more recent tree plantings have increased the penal element, so penalising the wayward shot (penal) as well as the slightly off-line shot to an otherwise valued line (strategic).

Perhaps St Andrews Beach will become a nursery for a while, then return to a golf course with the fairways cut through the new plantings.  The golf course will be re-opened and its conversion into a strategic cum penal, arbourists delight course (a ka Augusta) will be complete.  Then again, pigs might fly.

Interesting issue though, the transformation from a weighting towards strategic into a heavier weighting towards penal.  The Augusta Masters has become such a 'fairer' but less interesting test through such a process.

James B