[Jamey Bryan]

I had an interesting high/low round today......   Four birdies, three pars, one double bogey, and ten bogies (with six three putts).  Our greens are dormant (painted) and super-slick downhill-downgrain.  Former DixieCup players can attest that the traditional "Ross" advice of keeping your ball between you and the hole at Camden is good, but I've never personally experienced this extreme (and I've played this course on and off for 40 years!).  For what it's worth, I didn't really putt badly.....  (I did miss a couple of short ones that I shouldn't have missed, but they were certainly not "gimmies").

Is the possibility of such a round a characteristic of a very good golf course?

Jamey

[Scott Warren]

Great thread Jamey.

I have wondered the same thing many times, but often on a course I've only played once or twice, so it was hard for me to tell if it was a function of the course or just the way I played that day.

New Zealand: four birdies, two doubles, three bogeys, nine pars.
Valley Club: six birdies, three pars, eight bogeys, one double.

[Bill_McBride]

I think it's called being a 10-12 handicap!

[David Mulle]

Great thread.

I am going to go out on a limb and say, it depends. 

I had two courses that immediately came to mind when I read this topic.

The first is Ballyneal.  The risk-reward calculus is so prevalent on many of those holes that if you take an aggressive line, birdie is a definite possibility but if you miss, you'd be lucky to get a double.  I am blanking on what hole it was, but Adam Clayman had us play a par four from the way forward tees (about 270 yards) and he goaded me into taking driver.  That brought birdie into play.  After I mishit my drive, it only got uglier.  We were both still laughing when we walked to the next tee after I had given up without managing to hole out (or even get it on the green). 
I believe that type of risk-reward calculation is absolutely the sign of a great course.

The other course that came to mind is Anglebrook. It is a RTJ course which I think has some serious flaws. However, for some reason, I always manage to get at least three birdies when I play there (which is a lot for me).  But I also always get at least an equal number of "others".  In contrast to Ballyneal, the strategic options are much more limited and the score is strictly a function of how well you carried out the prescribed strategy.  Just as with Ballyneal, the penalities can be severe if you fail to execute but since your options were limited to being with, it is less interesting.

[RJ_Daley]

I think the possiblity of having those high/low highlight rounds is mostly tied to great greens, well contoured, firm and fast.  5-6 3 putts makes me think you had some very hard edged horseshoes where the ball drifted away because the holes were cut on significant sloped areas, or near misses run quite a ways by.  I often find that the better the course, the more I have a birdie or two, or 3 if I'm playing out of my mind, but several doubles and worse with several 3-4 putts.  So Jamey's high low day compared to mine is relative to a very different skill set...

The only other think I can think of Jamey, is you might have gone to bed way too early, got a great nights sleep, and bypassed a proper nightcap or three.  So., you may have played the tough holes at your best because you were alert and on your toes, and you might have played those bogeys and doubles because you were too much at your best, and were running dangerously low of aiming fluid.

[Doug Siebert]

Tied to great greens if you are not a great putter, I suppose.....while demanding greens like say Pinehurst #2 can certainly lead to this type of situation I don't think it is great architecture if that's the ONLY thing getting you there!

I still remember a 78 that included 10 penalty strokes I had 4 or 5 years ago as the "high" point for me in terms of beta.  It wasn't because the course was terrific, I was just penalized severely for a half dozen unfortunate shots (though I'm sure I must have got away with a few bad ones that didn't result in penalty strokes )

I think GCA has many times identified that holes with a high standard deviation, where you might get 3 but might get 8 are a great thing.  I don't think anyone is going to argue however that such holes are great if they gain that deviation by having OB super tight on one side or a heavily sloped green kept unfairly quick so 4 putts are not uncommon.  Its relatively easy to get a high standard deviation with such tricks, but harder to do it through quality architecture where a simple mistake of missing the fairway or even playing on the wrong side of a wide fairway can lead one from bad to worse to disastrous.  You can score an 8 on a great hole where you can't really point to one shot as costing you more than a shot, it just seems once you get out of position you never catch up, you just get more out of position.

[Bill_McBride]

It could also be one of those days on a course with a lot of half par holes in both directions, and you score on the unders and are torn up by the overs.  This could be the result of over aggressiveness brought on by a couple of early birdies.  Sometimes it's all about managing your own expectations as well as the course!

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