Dan Kelly and I had a very fine twilight round of golf east of the Twin Cities at a Bobby Weed designed golf course called Stone Ridge. It is a highly manufactured site with little in the way of natural greensites or fairway corridors/grading. But, I am totally impressed with Weed's design in offering a wide array of design features that bring to mind many of the classic features that seem to be a trend these days (perhaps as the result of our vanguard of GCA afficianados) towards renewed interest in things like; midfairway bunkering presenting real choices of clubs off tees, optional strategies for some ground game or aerial approaches to greens, and clever use of fairway grading to offer real placement incentives, many and intricate greens surrounds hollows and hummocks that also offer many shot styles to accomplish ones desire to get up and down or play safe and take your medicine to avoid worse disaster with a variety of shot choices. Weed's green designs at Stone Ridge have frequent and dramatic internal movement and excellent tie-ins to surround features.
Maintenance was as good as it gets in the northern Great Lakes region with firm greens running true and at appropriate speeds to the contours, expansive surrounds cut at puttable heights, and firm fairways of excellent turf quality. Rough heights and density are also varried appropriate to their location.
Stoneridge is a perfect walk, although we crapped out after 9 in 90*/90humidity and opted for the mercy of a cart.
The routing is superb and has just enough quirk to make it distinctive (like 9 being a par 3, and some vigorous uphill marches to greens, and some interesting plateaus in LZs.
I would like to know if Weed was ever under the tuteledge of Pete Dye. His 18th, par 4 that we played at 453 and sets up at 473 screems of Pete Dyabolical, and is called "Curtains" and all the holes are named in a Dyelike style...
My only critique is similar to the one I had at Barona Creek where par 3 redans were constructed that don't quite get the classic kick bank right and in my opinion need the slightest of alteration on the high right green and collar grade.
Interestingly to me, 'Stone Ridge' and a course near my area of Green Bay and Fox Cities called 'The Creeks at Ellingson' -designed by Bob Lohmann, both look as if they were designed in collaboration for golf feature creation. Both were built at the same time (about 3 years ago) and they seem to be a departure from the 80s and 90s era, and back to the future of classicism.
I'm not into the Doak scale and all that, but I would say, if you are anywhere near the Twin Cities and able to play, it is an excellent choice.
