I don't think that using 1/9 of the compass really qualifies as variety in orientation. "Wow, just a few holes ago the wind was into me and left to right. Now it's left to right and into me. What variety!"
Matt,
Don't you tutor Maths? 40 degrees is only 1/9th of the compass when you can say a hole is orientated 320 degrees differently to another one. Which of course you cant.
I'm sure Kelly and Moriarty can comment on the nature of the wind at Rustic and it's tendency to change thorughout the course of the day.
As D Kelly noted above the wind does shift and did shift during our round on Sunday, but my descriptions are more colorful. Someone in our group entered the outhouse behind the back 14th tee in a hot Santa Ana wind. By the time they emerged it was to a cool ocean breeze from the opposite direction. On the same tee we watched J. Spaulding almost drive the green, but by the time we teed off the wind was blowing in our faces. My weak attempt well right of the tree didn't even carry the wash! And to think Jon and I usually drive it the EXACT same distance!
Perhaps more pertinent to the comments above, the wind tends to bounce around in the canyon (especially in the front nine) so it is not at all uncommon to have different winds on consecutive holes; at your back on the 1st tee, your face on the 2nd, and at your side on the 3rd tee, for example, even though the holes all play the same direction. So with due respect to Matt's opinion on the hole configurations, it may be a bit to over-simple to assume that just because holes play generally the same direction, they necessarily play with the same wind considerations.
But speaking of wind, one thing I found unfortunate about Sunday's event was that we had a very similar wind at the last RC King's Putter; a hot Santa Ana day even though we should have been about past the time of year where such days are more common. While I generally enjoy playing in such a wind, I certainly understand why many found the going to be so difficult and somewhat exhausting. While the conditions highlighted many of the Rustic's great features, they also made the going pretty rough, especially for those not used to walking in such conditions. It may be hard to believe, the wind is not always ripping down-canyon at Rustic. The Santa Ana's (which do occasionally get much stronger than what we had on Sunday) are generally a late Fall through early Spring phenomenon, and not every day. The course is also a treat with the wind off the ocean, and the ocean wind is usually milder. As those who played emergency nines found out, the course is a lot of fun in calm and cool conditions as well. Unlike many modern courses, Rustic works in just about any condition, from calm to winds quite a bit harder than we experienced on Sunday.
Also speaking of wind,
my thanks as well to Jeff Hicks and his crew not only for the conditions and set up, but also for taking the time to change a number of the planned pins to make them more reasonable and interesting in those conditions.
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Good and interesting comments about the grass around the bunkers. At this point I am not sure if it is part of the design intent or if it is something that has developed over time since then. There was always tall grass behind many of the bunkers, but not so sure about the fronts. Joe may be right about the visibility issue, but one wouldn't need to have tall grass in the entry side of the bunkers to make this happen. Maybe they were ere they going after a certain golden era California look here, I don't know.
Anyway, I don't mind some of the tall grass (especially on the back of bunkers, where the bunkers are in the rough anyway, and where the tall grass blends into adjoining native) but I agree that it would be nice if the ball could more easily roll into some of the bunkers located on or adjoining the fairways and aprons. Another negative about bunker grass is that it seems to shrink the bunkers over time, thus making it necessary for the maintenance crew to occasionally cut out the bunker back to its intended size and shape. Before they re-cut the "bathtub bunker" on the 2nd fairway some of us had taken to calling it the "sink bunker."
All that being said, I would be remiss if I did not mention that some of the bunkers are maintained to welcome a rolling ball. Two such bunkers are the bunker left of the 4th green and the cut bunker on the right side of the 2nd fairway (also in play by the 5th green) and these are two of my favorite bunkers. TH, I think your ball rolled into the latter bunker off the tee on the 2nd hole. These are more the exception than the rule.
One note on the construction: While I doubt these would be considered "sod bunkers," at least some of them were built with a shelf along their edges, and somewhere between four to 8 inches (approximately) of sod was stacked along these shelves to create the bunker edges. Not sure whether that impacts the conversation, but I thought I'd clarify.