"Easiest" GREAT courses...

[Phil_the_Author]

Looking at the other thread about ESPN's most difficult courses I was wondering if there are any courses that one would consider both great and EASY...

[Mac Plumart]

No course is easy for me!!   

[Paul OConnor]

Shoreacres

[Matt_Ward]

Phil:

Define "easiest" ?

For low and high handicaps that answer can be vastly different.

[Mark Pearce]

TOC?

[JNC Lyon]

No course is easy for me!!   

I agree totally.  Golf is tough, plain and simple.  There are harder courses and easier courses, and there are courses that are just plain brutal.  However, there are no golf courses that are "easy." 

If by easy you mean "fun" or "possible to score on," I would submit that no course can be considered great unless it possesses these two things.

[Brent Hutto]

I can only speak from a high-handicapper's perspective but I'd have to mention Cypress Point Club. At least when accompanied by members of their excellent caddie corps even a 20-handicapper can play the entire course with one golf ball and a good score is definitely within reach. I'm not trying to say it's a pushover because certain shots are quite challenging but it's about as un-penal a course as one could hope for given such a spectacular ocean-side site.

[Sean Leary]

North Berwick and Jasper Park and Capilano of ones that I have played come to mind...

[Mike Benham]

St. Andrews, The Old Course ... par 72, 6,572 yards, rating of 72.9, slope of 129

Cypress Point Club ... par 72, 6,509 yards, rating of 72.1, slope of 140

[Tom Huckaby]

I can only speak from a high-handicapper's perspective but I'd have to mention Cypress Point Club. At least when accompanied by members of their excellent caddie corps even a 20-handicapper can play the entire course with one golf ball and a good score is definitely within reach. I'm not trying to say it's a pushover because certain shots are quite challenging but it's about as un-penal a course as one could hope for given such a spectacular ocean-side site.

Brent - might it not be easy as you see things due to your approach to the game, stated in here, that you basically quit caring after you reach double bogey or whatever?

I ask because outside of the ocean holes, I'd agree it's tough to lose a ball.  But also on darn near every hole, there's a place or three a ball can get to which will allow the ball to be found, but also require some chopping out or other score-ruining effort.  Think dunes on 1, 2, trees on 4, 5, 6, bunker on 7, dunes on 8, 9, trees on 11, dunes on 12, 13, trees on 14....


I  think the course can be pretty darn penal.  And thanks Mike - those numbers don't scream "easy" to me.

[Brent Hutto]

I dunno, Tom. I was trying to put it in the mindset of a scorecard-keeper. After all my day there was several years before my recent "epiphany". I was hitting the ball about like normal, putting badly and generally just a bit short of what I'd consider being on my best game. Yet take away the 13th and 14th holes and I played the other sixteen exactly to my handicap of 22 at the time.

And the big number on the 13th was a 4-putt from the fringe (!!!) while the big number on the 14th was due to two topped shots and an ill-advised attempt to bend a ball around some Cypress trees. Those are hardly the most daunting, danger-filled holes on the course (although I'll be the 14th sees its share of doubles or worse).

There was even a club or so of a breeze that day and the weather was on the cool side.

In all seriousness, those caddies walked straight to the ball on a couple of occasions where I'd have had a 1-in-10 chance of finding it on my own. And I only had to take one unplayable-lie penalty all day, with no other penalty strokes. So maybe I just got off extremely lucky that my errant shots were generally playable. After all, it was the luckiest day of my life to be there in the first place so maybe that charm followed me into the rough!

P.S. I laid up on #16 and lipped out about a ten or fifteen foot par putt. So no, I was not playing boldly at all by most reckoning. But as a 22-handicapper whose driver shots carry about 180 it was an easy decision.

[Tom Huckaby]

Brent - you played well - good job!

Most do not do as well as you.  Most lose lots of strokes in the dunes, the trees, the water... and that's after the caddie finds the ball, in the first two instances.  Then as you also saw, strokes can be lost on the greens.

But maybe it's me.  Maybe I suck.  But I have been very fortunate to play there quite a few times, and I have never scored what my handicap would indicate, not even once.  77 is the best I have ever done, and the wreckage of many high 80s rounds is in the record as well.  I've been a 3-6 handicap each time playing there.

So I do have a hard time with those who call the course easy.  I guess it's my bias.

But then again, 72.9 and 140 on a par 72 sure does not scream "easy" to me.  I'd say that those numbers might be on the low side of "great" courses, but that would make this course among the least difficult of such, which to me is a lot different than the "easiest" which necessarily mean some must be "easy" to begin with.

So maybe it's also just the language here.

[Brent Hutto]

I also have a fairly short list of "great" courses to compare with. Just to take a stab, here are courses I've played which are notable for either hosting PGA Tour events or major champinships or are simply "great" by general acclaim. I will list them in descending order of the difficulty they posed for my game, mostly during a single round of play.

1) Royal Dornoch

2) The Ocean Course

T3) Spyglass Hill
T3) Royal Birkdale

5) Cypress Point Club

Among those the three last are far from "easy" courses but for all three I have certainly played tougher courses that weren't great or notable in any way, just tougher. At the top of the list I did have one decent round at RDGC out of four attempts but even that was played very well yet resulted in a score ten or more strokes above my handicap.

I fully expect Royal St. George's next week to shoulder aside Royal Dornoch on that scale. But as you can see, my commendation of Cypress Point Club on this thread is highly suspect due to limited candidates for comparison.

[Tom Huckaby]

Brent:  fair enough.

I have played all 4 out of the 5 of those, and I'd agree that CPC is the least difficult (Ocean course I can base on the numbers).

I just really have a hard time with calling it the easiest though.  Can we change the thread title?

 

[Carl Rogers]

I would define this as what to which 'great course' you have a reasonable possibility of shooting your handicap.

Pinehurst No.2 might be a candidate.

[Mark Chaplin]

Brent - are the caddies at CPC good swimmers?

Sandwich is only tough from the tee, although some of the bunkers are deep the greens are pretty easy and generally up and down isn't too hard. All 3 links next week will be tough if you're spraying the ball as it has been warm and wet for a couple of weeks and the rough is thickening up.

[David_Tepper]

On the few times I have played it, I have found San Francisco GC to be far more "playable" (assuming you stay out of the fairway bunkers)  than the OC Lake or Lake Merced. Others have told me the same.

[Sean Leary]

On the few times I have played it, I have found San Francisco GC to be far more "playable" (assuming you stay out of the fairway bunkers)  than the OC Lake or Lake Merced. Others have told me the same.

David,

The first time I played it I thought it was pretty easy. Subsequent rounds have made me reconsider. But it is pretty easy off the tee....

[Roger Wolfe]

Delete

[Brent Hutto]

Mark C and David T bring up a good point. It may be a somewhat flexible criterion depending on just where the trouble lies on a given course. One reason CPC and Birkdale for instance played somewhater easier than they might for myself is that they give you a bunch of room to aim at off the tee. Sure there's severe trouble on some holes but it isn't just a (relatively) short distance away from the safest line into the fairway.

So a person might find a boatload of fairway bunkers SFGC with shots that are good enough to be playable at CPC for instance.

My recollection of Sandwich, maybe less so of Deal, is that a lot of the tee shots are fairly stringent regarding the line your drive follows. The difference between "good enough" and "that's going to be in some tall rough" is often a fine one at Royal St. George's (at least when set up for a big-time tournament) while Royal Cinque Ports probably needs the shot to go another 5-10 yards offline to reach the real gunch.

For my own game, I am very poor at being accurate enough to hit a 30-35 yard wide playing corridor but fairly good at keeping my tee shots in a 40-50 yard one. Some other people I have played with are going to encounter long rough often on virtually any course narrower than TOC.

[Tom_Doak]

Phil:

There are some people who discount a course from greatness if it could not host a championship and keep the scores from getting too low ... although, the real truth on that score is that very few courses would qualify under that standard, and most of ones that did are so hard that nobody enjoys them.

Here are a few courses which I think are great, but have heard people dismiss as being too easy:

1.  North Berwick
2.  National Golf Links of America - which I've heard dismissed as "too easy" by everyone from Shinnecock fans to Jack Nicklaus and associates
3.  Royal Dornoch
4.  Lahinch
5.  Pacific Dunes
6.  Ballyneal


I do not mind one of my best courses being at the bottom of this particular list.

[Phil_the_Author]

Tom,

That's exactly why I wanted to discuss this topic. For far too many golfers the words "Difficult" and "Greatness" go hand-in-hand.

[john_stiles]

If the wind isn't blowing on trips overseas to GB&I,    first time visitors often talk about how easy  <insert many of the great links courses here> is easy.    And if you travel in the summer, play for 3 or 4 days, it isn't unusual to get a number of calm days.  

The Old Course comes to mind when the wind stops, and the first time visitor has a few favorable 'misses' around the greens. Then they may shoot a memorable score and think how easy.

Lahinch in a breeze can be difficult.

Some say the same about  Lytham and St Annes and Hoylake (believe it or not) for the courses often do not have the usual high grasses seen at other Open venues.

On some of the courses listed on the other thread,   it is apparent how easy it is to make a course difficult with narrow fairways and high grasses and water.

[David Whitmer]

Camargo.

In my opinion no golf course is "easy," but Camargo will yield a low score if you are on your game. Contrast that with a course I played two years ago, Butler National. No way I could shoot as well at Butler as I could at Camargo. Butler is tougher, but in my opinion, Camargo is better.

[Mark Arata]

Pinehurst #2 might be the easiest course from tee to green, you could land a 737 in those fairways..... but the greens are more than enough to make it far from easy....

I would rename this thread "Most Comfortable Great Courses"

There is no such thing as an "easy" course to a 22 hdcp...there are "comfortable courses" where you wont lose a ball, but they are not easy...

Old Mac is a great course, and extremely comfortable (I played 5 rounds there and only lost 1 ball), but it isnt easy, especially if the wind is blowing the wrong way or you put yourself in a bunker that you have no earthly chance of getting out of.

I wouldnt really call North Berwick "easy" either....I played it in consistant 20mph winds.....it aint easy with the wind blowing!