Reverse Courses

[Richard Phinney]

Doing some research on Montrose and found that in the early part of the 20th century (until 1918 at least) the course was regularly "reversed" in the winter months.

I may have missed a thread on this, but I wonder how common this was practice elsewhere?

 I understand St. Andrews used to do this for several weeks a year until 1970s but that could be put down to the fact that the course was played primarily clockwise for so long.  In Montrose's case, the layout in question was very new in 1918.

Cheers.

[Joe Hancock]

Richard,

I played Hale Irwin's Teton Reserve in Idaho(we called it Teton Reverse), which was supposedly designed to be played in reverse. I only played it once, in the traditional direction, I think. The one thing I thought was a positive about the course was that the greens were likely much more interesting being that they were designed to be approached from different directions. Other than that it was not very well executed.

Which, perhaps brings up a point or another thread. Are courses that can be played in reverse as an afterthought generally better than a course that was actually designed to be bi-directional?

Joe

[Peter Pallotta]

Richard - there's some discussion found here.  Not many other courses mentioned, so apparently not that common. 
Peter

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,5914.0.html