The 9th is one of my favorites at Kingsley, because first of all it's a great hero setting with a chance to make a 1 or 2 with a great shot, it can cause a wide range of opinions on ways to play recovery shots if the green is missed, it's so dramatic, and the scores can have a wide range with no penalty shots or lost balls involved (all the drama off the tee of #17 at Sawgrass with a ton more thrown in for all the recovery shots). It's at most about 160 yards from what I recall, and is like no other shot I've ever played.
That wide range of scores and slim margin for error seems to be the beef most of the critics have with this hole. But if you miss the green, who says a direct line at the flag and the hero route must be played as your recovery? Is there anything wrong with missing your tee shot in a bad spot and playing one of the conservative recovery options for a four?
As an example, I played it with the rest of the staff from Greywalls last year and one of the guys was cruising along at two under when we came to the 9th. The flag was front right, and we played from the southern tees. He boldly went right at it but knocked it into a really difficult spot behind the green on the right. Instead of surveying his conservative options and playing for a four, he elected to hit a Mickelson flop and try to save three. And a Mickelson flop is just what he did - three times in fact - and ended up walking off with a 7.
Afterwards we all tried different strategies from the position he'd been in to see what else could've been done. It was one of the funnest moments of the day as we took about 15 minutes to try out every option and figure out what worked best. In the end we thought the two best options he had were to play to a location short of the hole to give himself a backstop on his third shot (from the bunkers or rough in front), or take a slightly more aggressive route and play a running or low pitch shot up to the high elbow of the green (at a 90 degree angle from the hole), and let it trickle on down toward the hole. The flop shot he tried was nearly impossible. Every degree of risk was available, and even the overly courageous were given an option, as a flop shot could work (and did a couple times when we tried it), but was extremely risky. Those who preferred to take that chance could do so if they wanted, and others could debate and discuss the merits of all other options depending on how risky they wanted to be.
To me, that was a blast to try to figure out, and is the kind of thing that to learn on a particular hole takes several repeat plays. And to me, that is exactly the kind of thing I look for in a great hole: the need or at least strong encouragement to abandon the first heroic instinct, survey all of the options available, and then have at least a few very reasonable options left that good players could disagree on based on their own degree of aversion to risk. In short, it's the kind of hole you remember, and can't wait to play again - at least in my eyes. The great courses have them, and the bland ones don't.