Any Castle Stuart Reports?

[Mike Leveille]

I believe Castle Stuart has now been open for 9 days and I have not yet seen any reports/photos from GCA members who have played the course.  I thought I saw where one or more GCA members were playing the course during the opening week and would love to hear their thoughts.

[BCrosby]

Mike - I too am curious. So here's a bump of your post.

Bob

[Tom_Doak]

Mike Keiser went around it the other day with Mark Parsinen, and said that it was very good.  Wish I had time to get up there before I leave Scotland, but it'll have to wait for another visit.

[Alan Carter]

I was able to play it last Wednesday.

I think it's very good! 

A very nice mix of holes, with incredible views of the sea from almost every hole throughout the property.  It's also very fair and enjoyable for players of all skill levels.  Well thought out green sites, with a great job moving you throughout a property with a reasonable amount of elevation change, without creating holes that are out of character with the rest.  Generous fairways, interesting green complexes and wonderful vistas make for a very dramatic and enjoyable round of golf.  The average players that were part of my group thought it was amazing.  The better players enjoyed the variety of options that each hole presented and were very impressed by the desire and care that Parsinen went through to make the course look like it had been there for years.  I think that he took a lot from what he learned developing Kingsbarns and created a course that fits in very well with the land and offers a wonderful links golf experience.

I was very impressed!   

[Mike Leveille]

Alan:

Thanks for the report.  Have you played Kingsbarns and The Castle Course?  I'd be interested in how people think Castle Stuart compares to some of the other recent big projects in Scotland, especially Kingsbarns.

Mike

[Kyle Henderson]

Alan:

Thanks for the report.  Have you played Kingsbarns and The Castle Course?  I'd be interested in how people think Castle Stuart compares to some of the other recent big projects in Scotland, especially Kingsbarns.

Mike

I didn't get to play Castle Stuart, but I did get a tour of it days before playing the Castle and Kingsbarns. Castle Stuart looked to be the class of the field.

[David_Tepper]

Alan -

Thanks for the report. Glad you got to play the course. I am hoping to do so myself next month.

Did it look like the course was busy when you were there?

DT

[Colin Sheehan]

Opening day was Monday July 13th. The sun blasted the course that day, and the breeze was virtually nil. It's been a very dry spring/summer so the course was especially fast and the atmosphere was festive. I took a team from Bayonne and we had a great time. The trip included: Nairn, Skibo, Brora, Dornoch, Tain and Lossie as well. They loved CS for a variety of reasons, but it cannot be overstated how beautiful the setting is. "Kingsbarns may have the ocean, but Castle Stuart has the sky," to quote an astute spouse of the project manager. A late afternoon sunset over Ben Wyvis is something every golfer should see in his lifetime.

[David Kelly]

Meanwhile, a few of us made it down to Mac Dunes. If CS is an eight or nine, Mac Dunes may very well register as a Doak 0. Including Pound Ridge, I've now seen two zeros in the six weeks. Now that's an unusal feat.

That's a very interesting statement.  Care to elaborate?

[Tom_Doak]

Colin:

Since you were involved in the project at Castle Stuart, I don't think it's fair for you to trash Machrihanish Dunes in this thread, especially without identifying your obvious conflict of interest which many people here don't know of.

And for God's sake, don't use the phrase "Doak 0" when describing a new course by someone I know.  The only one who can give it a Doak 0 is me, and I haven't been there.

[Brian Phillips]

I played it on Monday and took about 100 photos and will post soon.  Is it good? Yes, very good.

I also played The Renaissance Club the last few days thanks to an invite from Tom D.  That is a wonderful golf course.  The first nine is subtle yet superb (the more we played the front nine the more Graeme and I fell in love with it).  The back nine is dramatic due to the topography.  If Tom does not mind then I will post a couple of photos if they are any good.  If the light does not show the movement then I will not bother as the shaping is very clever around greens and especially fairway bunkering.

Colin,

I find it hard to believe that any new course can be a "0" especially by the Kidd team.  Shit, if a course has tees, fairways and greens then that is a 1 to start with...

Cheers.

[Chris DeNigris]

Whew- I'm glad Tom clarified Colin's rating criteria. I'm booked at Mach Dunes in September and was getting nervous after I read that.

From what I've read and seen in limited pics it looks like it has flaws, but that location by itself with just some mowed landing areas would probably be a 5.

[Mike Leveille]

Colin:

I'd be curious as to what about Mac Dunes you so strongly dislike.  I have played two Kidd courses, Bandon Dunes and Castle Course, and my feelings about the two are at opposite ends of the spectrum - a strong like of BD and a lack of appreciation for CC.  I find this unusual, in that if I like one course by an architect more often than not I like (or at least do not strongly dislike) that architect's other courses.  As to BD and CC, I found BD to be a straight-forward but interesting course in a beautiful setting, while I found CC to be too tricked up for my tastes (especially the greens).  Curious as to whether your negative feelings about Mac Dunes are similar to my take on CC, or if it is something else that you disliked.

Mike 

[Rob Rigg]

Colin,

You made a similar statement about CS and Mac Dunes on a thread that was going around on New Years Eve.

Of the 13 posts you have made on the site I think most of them have been crapping on Mac Dunes without a lot of substance.

A "Doak 0" is a pretty bold statement to make offhand without anything to back it up.

I think you clarified your opinion eight months ago so please do the same for us now.

The Doak Scale 
0. A course so contrived and unnatural that it may poison your mind, one I cannot recommend under any circumstances. Reserved for courses that wasted ridiculous sums of money in their construction, and probably shouldn’t have been built in the first place. 

This is really your opinion of Mac Dunes? I thought it was supposed to be very natural with almost zero movement of dirt. Construction costs should have been reserved only for tees and greens, along with some bunkering with little done in the fairways but cutting grass because of the ESAs (or whatever they call them in Scotland - SSIs?). Maybe they could have done more with the site but do you not think something could have been done there of value?

[Anthony Gray]

Colin:

I'd be curious as to what about Mac Dunes you so strongly dislike.  I have played two Kidd courses, Bandon Dunes and Castle Course, and my feelings about the two are at opposite ends of the spectrum - a strong like of BD and a lack of appreciation for CC.  I find this unusual, in that if I like one course by an architect more often than not I like (or at least do not strongly dislike) that architect's other courses.  As to BD and CC, I found BD to be a straight-forward but interesting course in a beautiful setting, while I found CC to be too tricked up for my tastes (especially the greens).  Curious as to whether your negative feelings about Mac Dunes are similar to my take on CC, or if it is something else that you disliked.

Mike 

  I would like to secound this. I have the exact same opinion. Does Mac Dunes lie inbetween the two.

   Anthony

[Colin Sheehan]

Matter dropped.

[Tom_Doak]

Colin:

I have heard some bad reports about Machrihanish, too, but not from anyone whose opinion had any weight with me.  Yours is the first.  And I don't have any problem with you having such an opinion.

But I still don't think that you should be posting that opinion on a competitor course, and ESPECIALLY NOT on a thread that wasn't even about Machrihanish Dunes but about Castle Stuart.

[Tom Dunne]

Adam Lawrence from GCA magazine in the UK seems to echo some of Colin's comments, though perhaps in more of a glass half-full spirit:

http://www.golfcoursearchitecture.net/Article/Stormy-opening-at-Mach-Dunes/1576/Default.aspx

(I apologize for continuing OT here, but there is a second thread on Castle Stuart on page 1 at the moment...)

[ANTHONYPIOPPI]

Colin:

I'm in Machrihanish right now and have come across no one in the last week that shares your caustic, obviously-biased view of Machrihanish Dunes.

The media day was Tuesday and the combination of howling wind and driving rain drove most players off the course after nine holes, including all the R&A members in attendance. Writer David Desmith, however, played all 18 and carded an 8-over par. I think, he's about a 10-handicap. No one I have talked to who has played the course has said, "bring lots of golf balls." Maybe you and your friends just had a bad day. That happens.

The members of the media to whom I talked all enjoyed the course; they played the other nine upon arriving the previous day and all said they look forward to returning when the course is more mature.

One BIGGA bigwig said repeatedly he could not believe what a wonderful job head greenkeeper Keith Martin is doing with the turf. He didn't add a caveat about the unbelievable restrictions that includes no water or pesticides on the fairways or rough, he just said the turf was wonderful.

I had dinner with Adam Lawrence Tuesday night after playing Machrihanish Golf Club, Monday and he talked about how he liked the course.

This is the final paragraph of his online piece:

"Those who venture to Machrihanish Dunes at the moment will need to abandon their preconceptions as to what a modern golf course looks like: it is nothing like that. Nor is it much like an old course nowadays; I suspect actually it has much in common with what new courses might have looked like towards the end of the nineteenth century. But the location is phenomenal, the project admirable, and the golf memorable. The course has many hurdles to overcome, of which the opening is really only one of the first, but it deserves to succeed."

Sounds like praise to me.

Maybe, just maybe, all these people saw the course for what it is while you were blinded by an obvious bias (and maybe even an unhealthy worship of Gil Hanse) and are unable to give a honest opinion. In the process, you've made yourself look incredibly ignorant.

Anthony