As usual, I got to this topic late and was only half way through the discussion before feeling the urge to shoot off my mouth. The urge is based on an interesting experience I had while playing DM Kidd’s Huntsman Springs (Driggs, Idaho). Playing in my group for this outing was a club pro playing with his superintendant. Quite a few times the two of them would critique the hole standing on the tee or looking at an approach. Mainly it was the pro “mentoring” his super about bad features that were unnecessary or even the dreaded “unfair.”
I have played or looked at a couple of Kidd courses before (Bandon, Tetherow) and expected a lot of visual deception: tee shots that looked much more intimidating than they actually were and very tricky, undulating greens, etc. For the most part, I was amused by what I overheard because I thought that the pro was really missing the crucial points about the design. I won’t go into a full description of the course, but one must understand that the course was totally manufactured on a really difficult site, a swampy mountain cow pasture as flat as a pool table and essentially a vast wetland. I think there was some form of water on at least 16 of the 18 holes, maybe all 18, and venturing off the course into the native often felt like walking on a grass waterbed. That Kidd could build a playable course on such a site is a pretty impressive accomplishment and perhaps a hydraulic engineering marvel. That it could also be aesthetically pleasing, fun to play, and strategically very interesting is a testament to his talent. There was a lot of eye candy (bunkers in front of tees), a lot masterly visual deception, and many options and choices on almost every hole.
As this pertains to width, frequently it didn’t look like there was much and sometimes there were surprises hidden behind mounds, bunkers, and other features, but there was plenty of width to the playing corridors. We were playing the middle tees, so, as an average player, I looked at the yardage book, calculated what I could handle if I made a good shot, ignored the safe bail outs, and whaled away with aggressive lines over the sand pits and gnarly features. It was like I was a scratch player playing the tips on a difficult, testing course. I’m not and it wasn’t because when we got out to our drives, there was invariably a lot more width than it seemed from the tee. For the most part it worked all day and was a blast to play.
The pro kept complaining to his mate all day about how the course was so impossible to play for the average golfer, and here I was, the old, overweight, average 12 capper, having a ball and playing the course reasonably well, even giving him a bit of a game for most of the round. Basically, I got the strategy of the bunkering and slopes, expected the deceptions, and, using a yardage book, could fairly easily decide what was within my powers to challenge or go around. He didn’t and could only see the intimidation factor.
I finally couldn’t stand listening to his whining any longer and bet him a beer there was a lot more room beyond some fearsome bunker than it appeared from the tee. When we got to our tee shots, at first he didn’t agree that he had lost. “Look where my ball is. It barely missed getting in that deep bunker up there.” He relented when I said that he’d be right beside me if he hadn’t been playing the ladies tees. Oh yeah, right.
For the pro this was sort of a revenge round. He’d played the course a week before from the tips with his son, a top amateur player. It had humbled them both. He played well this time and probably played around even par (in a 2-man scramble format, but his partner wasn’t much help). Even so, I think he still saw a completely different course than I did. For me, it was a very interesting lesson in both playing width and visual deception. And lots of fun.