Hello All,
Long time no talk...
These superb discussions are really not for wet blanketing, especially in regards to a classic, well-enjoyed course like Quaker ridge, but I have never been an enthusiast in my 8-10 playings and dozen Caddie gigs there. I have derived satisfaction from playing the course for decent scores and fair outcomes in matches, yet there is something not quite on par with the greatest of courses I have played in relation to the reverence many hold for the course.
Like Fenway (the next most highly regarded Westchester Co. AW design after WFE&W and Quaker) the holes I love at Quaker, I think are spectacular and unique...#s3 4,8,9,11,14 and the restored 17th hold different varieties of all the great architectural traits we discuss...bold incorporation of natural contour, camouflage, heroic demands, notes of quirk and interesting beautiful thought-provoking putting greens. and i'm not limiting one or more of those elements to just the holes I love...holes I do not love have a hint of these features too...it's best put this way in bulleted form:
1. I don't know if you call it a layout or routing issue, but the idea that you start with a three shot hole and do not encounter another until the 14th, in concert with the fact that are back-to-back one shot holes on #9 and #10 (a quirk that would normally add to my esteem of such a course) leaves vast stretches of two shot holes that can get monotonous.
2. #s 6,7,8- coming as they do after #2,3,4 - are a most unpleasant and unwelcome reappearance of demands already made...OB/Lost Ball/Trouble Hard Right...Trees or Broken Ground Left...signature deep bunkered greens, wavy green pitched back at you. You will note that even in this critique of repeated demands, I'm citing holes (3,4,8) that I genuinely enjoy...in a vacuum. But my zest for what they offer is dampened by the fact that the same ol' punishment is doled out and I have to repeat straight hitting, as on the lousy holes of this stretch.
3. Of those, what I consider, the "lousy" holes (2, 6, 7) of these "monotonous stretches" 6 and 7 are, after what you experienced on 2,3 and 4 (I'll get to #5 in a minute) simply the most torturous iterations of the dog-leg right that the course has to offer. #6 is often called a signature hole there...but where in God's name do you miss...left in the grassy brooklands?up on the slope of the right in the midst of mature trees and sparse rooted ground, near the OB fence? No, you must hit straight...and long to boot if you want a friendly iron and not be shut down by the right trees. #7...should just be blown up, you don't know where you're going, which tree to aim at and how far it is or when precisely a tee shot hugging the line is safe or in trouble. Due to drainage, the ground is constantly splashy and damp in the "A" and "B+" drive zone which makes the next uphill iron (you just played one on six) an anxious exercise. Another wavy green pitched back at you...and this green site surrounded as it is by the adjoining neighborhood feels choked and wedged-in - both holes seem to owe too much of their design to the property line.
4. In between these two shot stretches is the one shot water hole 5th. Another straight hitting exercise, don't miss right, left, short or long. OK, i'm not saying the green is a postage stamp (though a tiered terror again, back to front) and that such an aerial demand can't be part of the fun...it;s just that you are so desirous of "something else" besides "straight or double" that even this one shot hole (which thankfully breaks up 6 consecutive two-shotters) doesn't get you hungry to play, just anxious that either your gauntlet is no where near passed and/or here comes another double. and as downhill-over-the-water holes go...the 13th at Century, the 17th at Sunningdale (NY), the 10th at Sleepy Hollow are all superior models of the prototype. It's pleasant to look at and has a peaceful, stoic ambiance but it's only so-so on a front nine that has always demanded straight hitting or sixes. why must the green be bunkered, how about a massive, huge, multi-hummocked, bunkerless green that's easy to hit but cunning as to score...why couldn't that be the variation in demand at this point in between the two shotters.
5. I enjoy the stretch of the round from 8 - 15 the best (12 being a short of bowling alley drag, though i enjoy the approach shots there).
#8 has the visual interest and quirk of the central mound and the sweep of the green plaza,
#9 is almost the perfect front-ender...that sliver of green in sands nearby the quaint Tudor clubhouse,
#10 offers the surprise of a second one-shotter and the green appears as a target oasis in the meadow (here a longer, straight shot is demanded but it is balanced by the availability to create threes by controlling your miss for that day's pin)
#11 offers both an aesthetic and strategic look unlike anything else at Quaker. A reasonably distanced hole with an approach guarded by diagonal water carry that hectors less from the straighter A tee line but more from the safer B line to the right. The green's orientation to play also plays a just and proportionate role to these strategies.
As I said 12 is a bit of an uphill drag, but I like the greensite quite a bit.
I'm not as effusive about #13 as others are, but I appreciate the hole plenty; it;s fun to play and its usually at this point in the round, that I've forgotten about the monotony of the 2-7 stretch and really feel like i'm making shots and playing to sides and controlling positions on the green and all that true "play" stuff.
I'm imagining and trying to execute the idea with my wits and self-knowledge...the dominant context that surrounds me on 2-7 is the prison of what will happen if I do miss. There is no strategy to execute besides hit it on the fairway, hit it on the green...hope you don't three putt...I don't have to imagine what will happen if I miss; i know - and itsa large number, perhaps joined by other large numbers if I have more than one miss that day or come out the gate cold as ice with the "rights." I'm not a card and pencil guy - I like matches and wagering much, much better where i don't care if i make eleventy-two if my oppnenet made eleventy-three - but no one likes being +7 thru 5 and it can happen in an instant at Quaker...a par, a bog', three doubles, - one ball lost, one ball OB, one ball in the water...and you haven't played 6 and 7 yet...it'snot like your making up ground on those holes. They certainly deflate what medal sensibility one might have.
Not so with this stretch of 8-15 and if you realize it on #13, you fully embrace it on 14 (which vies with #9 a smy fave) - What a magnificent hole and such a unique iteration of the "'Long' with 'Hell' bunker complex to blind green" that has been deeded from the Old Course throughout the years.
After Bethpage #4, it's my favorite three shot hole in the Tillinghast canon of which I have any experience. It is an "elegant" version of that style of which Tillie's closers at Baltusrol Lower could be said to be "brawny."
I last played Quaker 26 months ago, so I don't know if I'm experiencing the Hanse changes reported on 15. Hanse is one of my favorites of the current designers. I like the hole i played; it had a plain and straight forward beauty to it...down and up in a broad dale to a quiet simple green site.
Yet just as you think, with the experience of 8-15 tallied and the eradication of 2-7 complete, that you have somehow wired into the charms and quality of Quaker...the routing takes you back into "formula land" with another set of upand back two-shotters - that taken alone, in a vacuum, are not such bad holes, but suffer from ending on the same note what I think is the worst stretch of the course, for the above listed reasons.
There doesn't seem to be any "mystery" or "concluding drama" to the last four holes beyond that which your match may generate. Like I believe the outer loop, "right bad" stretch of 2-7 is an unimaginative routing dictated more by property lines that innovative vision, so too does this last stretch of 16 -18 "feel" like merely a means to get you back and forth to the end...very much like "well, there's three holes left so we'll go out and back and out to the home green.
It doesn't "feel" like Tillinghast was just licking his chops on those holes, going "oh boy" wait'll they experience these last three!" The feel pedestrian. 17, alone, however, is a superb hole - love playing it, wish i had just played a three shot or one shot hole before it - that might improve 18's standing with me as well. As is, it's a decent hole, but not a unique one,I believe I've played a similar hole 50 times.
It's not exactly a nutshell, but there it is anyway...Quaker is for me, a course that will have individual interest and two or three outstanding holes, but a surfeit of similar strategic presentations that limit options and creative tee to green play and appear in long multi holes stretches at the beginning and end of the round. There's too many deficiencies of this nature to put it in the class of the very best...
cheers
vk