Gentlemen of the Tree house - I recently returned from a 25 day trip playing 25 golf courses in the Heartland - and trying to learn a little more about GCA. With recommendations from many of you, I saw many different kinds of courses - Everything from Perry Maxwell, Donald Ross, Art Schaupeter, Pete Dye, BP Dye, Keith Foster, Jeff Brauer, Tom Doak, C.B. McDonald, Nicklaus, Palmer and Faldo. Quite an education for a guy who is just beginning his journey in the understanding of GCA.
I took hundreds of pictures along the way - many of them just to help me remember what I've seen. However, there are a few short of a dozen that may demonstrate an architectural point or two, or show off a course a little or are just nice to look at - take your pick.
#10 at Art Schaupeter's Old Hawthorne is a 3 shotter with options on the 2nd shot - go for the green right of the tree or play a safe lay-up to the landing area on the right and chip over the stream - or, hit it under the tree like I did and punch a low 7 iron to the green.
#14 at Keith Foster's Harvester has two set's of tees for this one shotter - there is another set 90 degrees to the left of this picture that gives the hole an entirely different look.
#13 at Jeff Brauer's Colbert Hills is a 2 shotter with two lines to the green - the tempting route to the right of the hole for longer hitters and the safer route that I took to the left which gave me a 9 iron up to a blind green.
#11 at Whistling Straits Irish is a devil of a par-3 with no room for error - this picture was taken down the hill left of the tees. Miss left and you're in the tall grass on the hill - miss right and you're in the sand well below the green. Hit it on the green and you're happy for a 2 putt. I enjoyed the Irish more than the Straits - and this was one of my favorites.
#3 at Tom Paul's newest favorite course - Faldo's Cottonwood Hills. I am standing at the end of an uphill fairway - everything in the picture is blind from the green except maybe the top of the tree line. Hit a great drive and it will go thru the fairway and into the natural waste area with a crappy lie for 2nd shot into the green. Ugh!
#5 at McDonald's St. Louis CC is the par 5 Punchbowl. The bunker is blind from the fairway, but there is a wide fairway ramp to the right where you can run the ball to the green. There is even a "Principles Nose" that comes into play on the 2nd shot. This classic course was truly one of the highlights of the trip for me - #16 is a reverse Redan and #2 has a Biarritz - like being at No. Berwick again.
#6 at Irish is a short (160 yds from tips) par 3 with a very small island green - visually impactful with a relatively flat putting surface.
Tournament Club of Iowa was carved out of heavily forested rolling hills by Arnie Palmer. #16 is 231 yards from the tips into a large green - I found this course to be a nice change from all the prairie grass I had been playing for the previous few days.
#17 at Harvester - a nice, big green with about 30 yards of safe landing on the left. With the wind coming off the lake, this hole is not as easy as it looks.
Lawsonia #6 - I played here about 4PM after driving all day from Des Moines - what an interesting surprise! Greens that looked like someone pushed them up out of the ground...and bunkering everywhere. And I was in many of them, including the cross bunker you see here. This was a firm and fast golf course - much drier than in the 2003 photos by Ran. I can't say I loved it, or even understand it, but I'd go back just to figure it out.
Whistling Straits #7 - Hit it on the green or Dye! I found this to be one tough golf course - get a little bit off line or off the fairway, and take a double/triple just like that. This picture kind of sums up what to expect there.
I did leave out some interesting courses - Shawnee CC in Topeka, Waveland in Des Moines (they say they are the "Oldest Municipal Course west of the Mississippi"- so does Normandie in St. Louis), Tom Doak's Black Forest, Gateway National and Dornick Hills - I was there at the wrong time of the day to get good photos - or, as Tom Fazio is quoted "We don't find many memorable photographic scenes on the older, classic designs......it is not dramatic in appearance because it was designed to be played, rather than photographed."