Cheers Scott - I pretty much concur with your thoughts. I can understand bunkering on the left to try and keep one away from the driving range but they are a bit over the top. I also agree that the shelves / shapes on the green are a bit excessive compared to the rest of the course. I'm not a huge fan of #18 and will be interested to hear Mark F thoughts after he plays it today.
Kevin,
Yes indeed, this Mexican did venture North for only the second time in his life.
NSW is a fairly expansive canvas for a golf course, but the 9th, 10th and 18th are unfortunately hemmed into a reasonably narrow strip of land. All three holes would scarcely be one fairway at St Andrews Beach or Lost Farm. (insert emoticon that, like insert quote, doesn't want to insert here).
I didn't mind the first set of bunkers on the left, but felt the rest of them were over the top, since no other hole on the course has that many. I didn't mind the left to right slopes that ran throughout the fairway to the green, as they provide some interesting shotmaking given the best line into the green is on the left.
Looking at the green from above, it does appear to be out of proportion and shape with the rest of the greens, but it didn't appear so bad "on the ground". Another example, I guess, of an architect wanting to impose themselves on a course instead of fitting in with what is there.
As for the rest of the course... I had an interesting day yesterday. I was expecting to like The Lakes a lot, and NSW perhaps not so much, since some friends of mine from work refused to give me their opinion on the course for fear of clouding my judgement.
I actually found The Lakes to be quite dull and uninteresting, despite the presence of some well contoured greens and the savage beauty of the waste areas.
NSW was much better than I thought it would be. As I commented to Scott in an email this morning (hope you don't mind Scott), the course isn't classically strategic in the sense of what the Sandbelt embodies, but there is plenty of strategy there depending upon the conditions and your own game and what you want to accomplish.
I also don't understand those who believe the course to be penal. Although there are some obvious no go areas, there is on most courses, and I thought the fairways were plenty wide enough. Many of them are wider than anything at Kingston Heath, and no one calls that course penal. There are perhaps a waste bunker or two in the wrong spot, but even RM and KH aren't perfect in that regard of having hazards or features that aren't where they should be, or are perhaps a tad excessive.
I also don't quite get the argument made over the first three holes being terrible. The bunkers on one don't really need to be there, but my objection to them would be more from a slow play perspective than otherwise. They don't work in that classically strategic sense, but NSW is very much about control and precision in the conditions, so in that sense they are fine.
I also didn't mind the second green at all. It is possibly a little too wide and shallow to totally fit in, but there is enough room to the right, behind and in front to miss without getting into too much trouble.
The third hole was a lot of fun. Overhead perspectives of the hole make it look like something you would expect to see at some cheap public track as opposed to an exclusive golf club, but it played fine. The shot up to the green is excellent, as is the green itself.
I know Andrew Summerell likes to test people's Architectural street cred with their opinions on the fourth hole. I quite liked the fact that you could see everything from the tee, but once down in the landing zone you only had your memory to rely on, but, as a famous literary creation said some years back, "Memory... is what we have instead of a view". I thought it was ok, but might need to play it a few times more to get the gist of it.
Cresting the fifth for the first time actually wasn't the orgasmic experience I had been expecting, probably because I have seen it written about so often I was inured to it. The size of the hill on the eighth was what astounded me the most, it was at least twice as high as I had been expecting. It played into a strong crosswind from the left, and I thought it was a pretty good hole.
Otherwise, I also quite liked all of the rest of the holes, with the exception of eighteen.