Probably irrelevant, but this thread made me think of two playing anecdotes.
On a yearly guy’s trip to play Old Works in Montana, we stay at a friend’s wonderful cabin on a lake. The friend, Ray, always insists that we play the 6800 yard tees. (There are like 6 sets of tees all the way back to 7,700 yards). The other guys bitch and moan and then relent for one round before moving up where we belong for the other rounds. Ray is a short hitting 16 cap. However, he’s a wily player and always seems to play better from the longer tees. Eventually, I figured out his MO. He is just long enough to make the forced carries from longer tees, but short enough to avoid all black slag hazards. When he moves up, the more the hazards come into play for him. He matches his game to the best set of tees, in this case tees that would seem too long for him, and just keeps the ball in play while longer hitters find their troubles.
Another time at Huntsman Springs, a remarkable David Kidd design, I played a two-man scramble outing with a local pro and his partner, his superintendant. The course had just opened and we were one of the first to play it. The whole round, the pro kept pointing out what he considered flaws in the design or poorly sited bunkers. Granted, the course is awash in eye candy bunkers, has water on 16 of 18 holes, and is totally manufactured on a dead flat, swampy mountain meadow (sits at the foot of the Tetons). Once you realize that the design is totally about visual deception, however, the course is very strategic, has many classical features, and is fun to play. In fact, given all the water, it is an engineering marvel that it is playable at all. I was having a good day playing the middle tees and taking on all of the risk/reward lines of play. Good shots were rewarded and the hazards seem perfectly placed for my game from the tees we were playing. Everything the pro was bitching about seemed wrong to me. Finally, when we got to one of the final holes, I spoke up. He was complaining to his partner about a fairway pinching down to a narrow LZ bordered by a wetland. I pointed out to him a nasty looking bunker in the face of a dune that looked like there was no place to land a drive if you took on the bunker. I ended up betting him a six pack that if I took that line over the bunker, there would be an ample landing area hidden behind and it would provide a good angle to approach the green.
We both hit our drives as intended. My drive ended up as I expected and was rewarded. His ended up in the pinched neck, so he said “see, I told you that was crap design.”
I said “Duffy, you’re a freaking pro playing the ladies tees. If you had been playing the tees you should, you’d be right where I am. You own me a six pack.” Unfortuanately, they didn’t sell beer there.
I’m not a very good player, maybe a bit above average and bit longer than most guys my age. However, I really enjoy playing a course that presents me with some of the same challenges and rewards that it presents to good players from the back tees. So, I guess my point is about creating options, something the ODG’s were good at.