Tom Watson - The Architect

[Dan Herrmann]

PS - Did you know that Tom was a part of Dixie Cup '05 down at Bulls Bay? 

OK - he was playing the front nine while we were playing the back nine, but he was there!

[Matt Bosela]

If you search the archives, you'll find a couple threads about the Conservatory Course at Hammock Beach, a Watson design that will be hosting the Ginn event on the PGA Tour in the autumn.

It's not everyone's cup of tea but I had a lot of fun playing it earlier this year and still plan to do a writeup (with accompanying pictorial) of the course.  Lots of earth was moved here, no expense spared. 

Minimalism, it ain't!   But it was still fun to play.

I'm one of those who started one of the previous threads and I think my biggest complaint was that it wasn't that fun to play and was just too dang hard for most golfers. Its one of those courses where the back tees are 7700 yards, then the next was still 7200, and even the third set where we played was 6800 at sea level. With significant water and lots of bunkers, its a resort course with some teeth! It will test any of the pros that play it, but I'm not sure how well it works for the rest of us.

You are right - this course is difficult but while the yardage is obscene, it definitely plays quite a bit shorter than its length, at least in my opinion.  That is due to the fact that they used paspalum grasses, which don't grow out much but can withstand the Florida heat without dying off.

The fact that they can't grow rough out there meant that Watson had to build a longer golf course.

But you are right - the course is extremely tough around the greens as well and with all of the waste areas.  Maybe I'm a bit of a masochist but I enjoyed my four games there, including the one game I played from the tips (Played once from the backs @ 7776, twice from the second deck @ 7300 and once from the third deck @ 6792).

[Carl Nichols]

I played the Independence Course at Reunion in Orlando last year with 8 guys.  The general consensus was that there were a few very good holes, a bunch of decent holes, and 2 or 3 absolute head-scratchers.  But because there seemed to be a correlation between head-scratchers and encroaching condos (and vice versa, i.e., the best holes were those with the fewest, or at least most distant, houses/condos), it seemed plausible to think that the design was constrained by the developer. 

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