[Jason McNamara]

Easy for me - Pacific Dunes about a three months after it opened.  It was a euphonious event.

Dan, I am intrigued by the idea of a (typically) mostly visual experience being euphonious.  Crashing of waves?  Crunching of spikes on gravel?  Look fwd to more on this.

[Chris Wirthwein]

Helfrich Hills muni in Evansville, Indiana -- a 1923 Tom Bendelow design that rambles up and down steep hills and valleys in that city's old west side. Bunkers, water, severe uphill and downhill approaches, blind shots, par threes both long and short -- even an out of bounds inside the course -- Helfrich has it all.

It's been many years since I've played it, but Helfrich opened my eyes to what a golf course could be. I'll never forget being medalist there in a high school match about 35 years ago. I think I carded a 76 on a course that everybody in the area considered a beast. To this day it's my fondest competitive memory.

Before seeing Helfrich, I just assumed every course was flat, tree-lined and had one, maybe two bunkers greenside. (I'd played most of my prior golf on Bill Diddel's 1945 Fendrich GC muni in Evansville.) Helfrich gave me a new appreciation not just for the game, but for the golf course itself.

Tom Bendelow also designed the 18-hole French Lick Valley course in 1907.  (Now it's a 9-holer). The Valley was the first course I'd seen where #9 ended up at the furthest point from the clubhouse. As a kid, it seemed very odd to me -- and it was many years before I played another one of that sort (Turnberry in Scotland). Too bad a hotel Casino gobbled up part of Bendelow's sporty little Valley course. It had an old feel that I don't see much today. Not sure if anything of the old track is left in the new 9-hole incarnation. Progress?


Seems like yesterday...

[Scott Warren]

Easy for me - Pacific Dunes about a three months after it opened.  It was a euphonious event.

Dan, I am intrigued by the idea of a (typically) mostly visual experience being euphonious.  Crashing of waves?  Crunching of spikes on gravel?  Look fwd to more on this.

There was a chap who followed his group for the full 18 playing show tunes and TV themes on a euphonium, breaking to play a comical "bah bow" every time someone missed a three-footer

[Raphael_Larson]

Pacific Dunes and Bandon Dunes.

It was the summer of 2001 on a golf trip to Oregon/Washington.  We flew into Seattle and played Gold Mountain then drove south to Oregon and played Sandpines, followed by Pacific and Bandon, then drove back to Portland and played Pumpkin Ridge (Ghost Creek) and The Reserve (Fought).  I will never forget walking up to the old clubhouse at Pacific Dunes for the first time and looking out over the 18th hole and being overwhelmed by what I saw.  I had never seen a golf hole or place that compared to Pacific ... and after playing Sandpines the day before I was beginning to worry that the cross country trip was not worth it.  The next day we played Bandon and I was similarly blown away.  Ever since I've been a GCA fan and a devoted Bandonista.  Consequently, in my mind, all courses are compared to the Bandon courses (i.e. the Bandon scale).  Regardless of whether I play courses that are equal to or better than the Bandon courses (which is extremely rare), the resort will always hold a special place in my heart because it turned me on to a passion that I otherwise might never have had. 

[JC Urbina]

The National Golf Links and St Andrews - The Old Course

Two golf courses I would tell anyone who asked,  go walk and play as many times as you can.

[Jerry Kluger]

I was lucky enough to play Pine Valley more than 10 years ago and I really enjoyed it but I don't think I really understood all of it.  What really opened my eyes was when I played Wild Horse.  We were on a trip to play Wild Horse, Dismal River, Sand Hills and Ballyneal and Wild Horse was the first.  Here we are in the middle of some farms playing a public course with a minimal clubhouse, a metal basket filled with 20 brands and colors of range balls and what happens - poof, just like that, we go out on the course and I get it.  We had so much fun on this funky course with these funky greens that all I could do was walk around with this stupid grin on my face.  It made me really appreciate the fact that good architecture means great fun and you can't wait to play it again. We went on to Dismal River and I realized that it was just too much architecture meaning it just tried to do too much.  Sand Hills was everything I heard it would be and then we went to Ballyneal which had just opened.  We arrived in the afternoon and took a few clubs and walked about 6 holes - it was a bit rough around the edges and the greens were slow but all we could say was wow!  I really think that seeing the courses in that order was really an enlightening experience.  It made me open my eyes to what is really good architecture and I have a feeling that if we had seen Sand Hills first it might not have been the same.

[Dan Herrmann]

Easy for me - Pacific Dunes about a three months after it opened.  It was a euphonious event.

Dan, I am intrigued by the idea of a (typically) mostly visual experience being euphonious.  Crashing of waves?  Crunching of spikes on gravel?  Look fwd to more on this.

To me, Pacific Dunes was a lot more than the visual experience of being by the Pacific.    But, its proximity sure adds to the experience.

Playing PD was probably the first time I really "got" what golf course architecture was all about.   I could see how the flow of the holes added to the sport.  The cut of the bunkers, the firm conditions.  The way wind was as much, if not more, of the course's design than trees on other places I played.

Ironically, I had played Bandon Dunes about 3 years earler.  I love BD, but for me it was PD that was that moment where you just go "wow".

And I know when it happened too.  The stretch from 9 thru 13 really struck a chord with me.  I don't need to review the holes here - Ran did a much better job on his reiew - but they just hit me emotionally.    I also remember sitting on a bench for about 10 minutes up on the back tee on #17 looking over the property at about 7:30PM thinking it just doesn't get better than this.

The cool thing about PD was how I started looking for character in a golf course where before I'd been mainly concerned about conditioning and playability.   Fortunately, character manifests itself in many ways - whether it's the cunning genius of Pine Valley, the sublime greatness of Merion East, or the wonderful Journey I experience every time I tee it up at my home club, which is chock-full of really wonderful architecture.

[Jay Flemma]

Public - bandon/pacific, (america's st. andrews) knoll club west, (poor mans national) black mesa, (high desert drama with great greens) tobacco road, (give us something we've never seen before or since)

private - ballyneal, (wow!)  CC charleston, (so that's what military fortifications look like...) oakmont, (the greens and fairways run in any direction!) oakland hills...(I now get Ross)

[Tom Huckaby]

I fail to see why every golf course one plays should not exert SOME influence on how one looks at all of this.. does one really play with his eyes closed?  Oh whoops! Forgot who started this.  He DOES play with the hyperfocus which amounts to eyes being closed, so it's not surprising at all he would ask this question. 

Quite seriously, for me it started at the first course I ever played (the venerable par 3 course at Van Nuys GC, Van Nuys, CA) and continues at each new course I play, to this day.

Oh, some influence me more than others, for sure.  But all do exert some influence.

[Scott Sander]

Mine are admittedly quite a bit lower-brow than most.

I'd played 20 years and countless rounds under the impression that golf courses were good when they were pretty and pointed you in a specific direction.  "Choices" were limited strictly to shot shape and heroics.  The thought of shades of grey options was completely foreign to me.

Not until 2000 did I finally have a "Eureka" moment.  I was standing on the third tee at Murphy Creek in Aurora, Colorado - already spent from the mentally and emotionally exhausting task of making CHOICES on each of my first 4 full swings.  I looked out and realized that there were at least 5 reasonable places for me to direct my tee ball and those 5 places set up a second that offered at least 3 reasonable choices.  I was dumbstruck and thrilled and terrified and irritated all at the same time.  The course never let up, either.  There is ONE full swing (in my mind anyway) at that course that does not demand a decision - the 16th tee.  (By then, frankly, you've earned a mindless blast.)  Other than that, it's thinkthinkthink your way around the course.  What a cool concept.

Since then a few other courses have shaped specific areas of appreciation:

The greens at Broadmoor (Colorado Springs) showed me that a golfer's head and heart must be in the same place to succeed.
Broadmoor (Indianapolis) showed me why Donald Ross -when on his game- could make you laugh out loud... in a good way.
Sahm and Coffin in Indianapolis taught me early that EVERY course has something to savor.
Cherry Hills talked me off my munis-only high horse.
Castle Pines made me realize that I can admire a course without enjoying it.
Arrowhead made me realize that I can enjoy a course without admiring it.
Crooked Stick showed me that if I ever settle down and play most of my rounds at one course, I want it more than anything else to have 4 very different, visually interesting par 3's.  And good cookies.

[Dan Herrmann]

Scott - low-brow is good too.

When I think back to my early golf days in Buffalo, I often think fondly on memories of Sheridan Park.  It's a muni that hosted the '62 USGA Publinx.  I didn't know it at the time, but it has really good architeture, considering it's a town-level muni. 

Best of all, when I went back and played it a couple of years ago, I could see what made it such a fond memory - great ground movement, clever (but simple) green complexes, and a big fun factor.  Nice to see it at a course with weekly industrial leagues.  Blue collar golf at its best.

[Kari Haug]

The Old Course
North Berwick
Kingsbarns

[Josh Stevens]

Royal Worlington and Newmarket. How the hell they managed to create a wonder of a course out of what is little more than a small cow paddock.  Supurb use of every single bump and undulation on the property and a healthy disregard for the rules in in having several  tee shots being hit over the middle of the previous green and playing approaches over a public road.  And from only 9 holes in about 50 acres of land, they managed to create possibly the best par 3 in the uk (the 5th)

[Jay Kirkpatrick]

Without a doubt, "Old White" @ Greenbrier was the first course that really intrigued me architectually.  I've grown up around old Ross courses and they are generally pretty interesting, but "Old White" just blew me away.  Around that same time, I really loved Caledonia the first time I saw it.  It was probably the first modern golf course that caught my eye.

[Ryan Farrow]

NGLA. Helll yea.
Oakmont. Yes.
Friars Head. Yes.
Riviera. Yes
Paxon Hollow CC. Yes
FLYNN!


Seminole negatively influenced me.

[K. Krahenbuhl]

NGLA
Merion

[Dave Falkner]

it was the honeymoon in ireland that did it

walking Lahinch alone at 6:30 on a glorious late may morning

it was kind of like the first time I saw the Dead play morning Dew

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