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Derek Dirksen

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Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« on: July 12, 2010, 04:27:18 PM »
I'm back in the States on a 12 day vacation from a job in Korea.  I thought I would head over to Tulsa to play a round at the Patriot GC.  The course is maturing very nice.  It has officially been open for 2 months now.  Superintendent Jeremy Dobsonn has the course looking great.  The greens are putting great and they were around 10 to 10.5.  The myers zoyzia fairways have come a long way since I saw them last.  Tulsa had the coldest winter on record and then to follow that up with the hottest June on record. 

The course is a blast to play.  The course played very wide and is geared for fast and firm play.  A lot of options off the tee and even more options into the green.  Lots of places to use ground game and they have lots of side/back boards.    With all the canyon and tree holes there are places to lose balls but you have to be pretty inacturate (which I am more than I would like to admitt).  The wife and I had the course all to ourselves as we were the first to tee off on Sunday morning.  Most of the photos I am posting were taken late afternoon on Sat as I took a cart out and toured the course and just took some photos. 

If you are new, the course is designed by RTJ II with Jay Blasi being the lead architect.   

Hole 1 - 566 par 5 - great view of downtown Tulsa that is over 20 miles to the SW


Hole 1 -  They added two target bunkers earlier this year left of the 1st IP.


The bunker is some 50 to 60 yards short of the green with all kinds of room to the right of the bunker and green.  Everything 20 yards right of the green funnels balls toward green complex




A look back up the hole towards tees and clubhouse.  I believe there is 10 acres of sod on hole 1.  lots of room


Hole 2 426 par 4 - Lots of room on this dogleg right par 4.  The fairway is split by a creek with the safe play on the left and the more agressive play is to the right of the creek.  There is a massive oak tree that gaurds the direct route to the green. 


Again the bunker is placed about 20 yrds in front of green. 


The green is has good movement and has the entire right side is a side board which can be used to direct balls onto green. 


All the approaches and surrounds are cavalier zoysia which is mowed very tight.


Hole 3 - 494 par 4 - slight dogleft left that works up hill and is a tough hole.  good drive is needed here.


The green sits up high and just fits in great.  lots of movement on the green and it is guarded by 3 bunkers short and left of surface.  Another side board right of green.


Hole 4 - 500 par 5 - A very short par 5.  FW is wide but is split by a creek which winds it way up the hole in front of the green.  The left side of the fw offers a more direct shot onto green but he right side offers an angle to a large back board which can be used to funnel balls onto green. 


a view from the start of the right side of fairway.


view from right side of fw




Hole 5 - 315 par 4 - Short par 4 which makes you think.  Again the hole is split by the creek with the safe play on the left and the more aggressive play is to bite off more creek and go for a narrower right side.  The reward is a better angle to the green which is small in size and guarded by a coffin bunker right.


The green is platau like, the front half of the green is false with 4 "outs" to the green.  going to be a tricky green complex.


A look back down the hole from 6A tee box


Hole 6A - 132 par 3 - there are 2 6 holes.  this is the first.  Green that sits out on a peninsula.  This is a do or die hole that is creek left, front and right.  The green sits in front of a 30 foot high rock out cropping. 

Hole 6B - 119 par 3 - The 2nd of the 2 6's is a green that sits inside a 30 plus foot deep canyon with a creek running down the left and front of the green. 






Hole 7 - 387 par 4 - Blind tee shot to the one of the widest fw on the course. 


The green is good size with a huge side board to the left.  The back is guarded by an old dam that was built for cattle back in the early 1900's.  There is a creek which guards the right side of green.


A look back up the fw from behind the green.


Hole 8 - 499 par 4 - This is a dogleg right hole that plays up hill and into the prevailing wind.  A tough hole for sure.   There is a tee which can make this hole pay as a par 5 as well.  Hole plays a lot longer than the listed yardage.  There is a creek that runs down the right side of landing area.  the closer you are to the creek the shorter the approach.  the fiarway is 2 tiered. 


The approach is a tough one with a cross bunker 30 yds short of green.  The green is well bunkered and has some movement to it.




Hole 9 - 240 par 3 - A long par 3 rounds out the front 9.  Plays down hill into a prevailing wind.  They added a bunker short and left of green that makes you think.  The entire front and left side of green will funnel balls onto surface so the best play here is to run the balll onto green.  to be long here is death as it dops off some 150 feet to a canyon floor (or hole 1 FW).  There is a deep saving bunker back right as well as the bunker front right.


Hole 10 - 603 Par 5 - A long par 5 which is deceptive do to all the fw bunkering.  The bunkering makes the hole look vern narrow but there is plenty of room on the hoel which plays slightly up hill.


I think 1/4 of all the bunkers on the course are on hhole 10.


The green complex falls away from the hole and is well guarded to the front left.  The place to miss is right and back as there is some 30 yards of chipping area all the way around this green.


Hole 11 - 172 par 3 - A redan like green with a well bunkered front left.   There is a huge recovery area right and back of this green.


Hole 12 - 433 par 4 - Hole plays slightly left to right and down hill.


The green is guarded by two bunkers left and right and has a recovery area behind it.  The front half of the green is sloped to the front and the back half fall away.




Hole 13 - 190 par 3 - This hole has lots of options starting with the tee boxes.  2 different tee angles are possible.  The hole sits right on the edge of ravine.  One tee angle is across the ravine and the other is parallel to the ravine.  The green is the largest on the course at over 10,000 sq feet.  Green floor runs right to left away from the tees.  Lots of contour on this green as well.  Misses can cost you dearly here.  There is a 40plus foot side board here to help the player. 


Hole 14 - 474 par 4 - Big time tee shot to a canyon floor below which is decpetively harder to hit than it looks.  Hole bends from left to right.  Very mellow green floor is guarded by bunker left and a creek behind.






Hole 15 - 567 par 5 -  1st of back to back par 5's.  Elevated tee shot to a hard right to left dogleg.  The dogleg is guarded by a creek so the paly to miss this tee shot is right as holes 15 and 16 fw are connected here. 




The creek splits the first landing area and the 2nd landing area in two and daylights to a native wetland area to the right of the hole. 


The green is guarded by 2 deep bunkers right.  Green is very small in size and has a big sideboard to the left to help players. 


Hole 16 - 559 par 5 - this hole can be played as either a par 5 or 4 depending how course is set up.  from teh back sets of tees it is a r/r type tee shot over the wetland area and a grouping of bunkers.  The more you bite off the shorter the green is. 




The 2nd land area is guarded by a centerline pot bunker that makes you think.


The approach shot is an interesting one.  The entire slope back and above the green can be used to funnel balls back onto green.  The green slope is devided down the center by a huge hog-back some 5 foot high.  There is a ton a options when chipping around this green complex.




Here is a look at holes 15, 16, and 2 from behind 17 tee.




Hole 17 - 171 par 3 - A very narrow green that is guarded by along bunker short and left of the green.  Anything left of the bunker is history as it is some 150 feet down to the the bottom of the canyon.  Right of the green can be used to funnel a ball onto the green. 






Hole 18 - 430 par 4 - A great finishing hole in my opinion.  The hole runs a long the top of a canyon that on the your 2nd shot you must cross to get to the green.  R/R on your first shot as the fairway is two tiered and the idea place to be is on the bottom tier but you run the risk of cutting it to close and having your tee shot go into canyon.  Much shorter shot across to green from the bottom tier. 











Greg Krueger

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #1 on: July 12, 2010, 05:42:51 PM »
Derek, thanks for the great photos and commentary. I know most Zoysia turf is pretty corse or sticky, how does this cavalier zoysia do?

Derek Dirksen

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #2 on: July 12, 2010, 06:03:07 PM »
I found it to be great to chip off of.  It has a little finer blade of grass than the meyer.  They are mowing the approaches and surrounds at the same height as the tees.  In fact there are a couple holes where the surrounds bleed right into the next tee complex. 

Jason McNamara

Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #3 on: July 12, 2010, 07:44:49 PM »
Derek, looks like a lot of fun.  Is it just a camera angle, or do a couple of those greenside fans seem more in play than they could be?

Now that you're done working there, can you give us a bit more idea what it was like?  Is there a feature you shaped, then thought "I hope it plays like XYZ," and sure enough it does just that?

Derek Dirksen

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #4 on: July 12, 2010, 10:08:28 PM »
Good questions, on some of the holes the fans are awfully close to greens.  Some of this is do to the extreme conditons on site.  As far as working there and features.  I loved my time there and really enjoyed working with Jay Blasi.  He was very hands on and it was fun to work with him.  He was most involved in the green complexes as he should be. Jay also gave Ed and I a lot of freedom to take his general idea and run with it.  Jay took a lot of care to insure the ground game would be a vital part of the course.  Almost every hole has that option and many holes in my opinion, thats the best way to certain pin locations.  I have never been involved in a course that had so many back and side boards and it was fun to be able to use them in my one round I have played.  Most supers and course mgrs want as much of the surface water away from the greens as possible.  to do that that means in most cases you can't have long or large slopes leading to the green.  You got tot give credit to Jay and Dan Rooney for sticking to the plan of having a ground game.  I know Jeremy (course super) probably wishes they wouldn't have and if he had his way a lot of different things would have been different.  Because so much water drains onto the greens the grow in was very difficult process for Jeremy and his crew. 

Jason McNamara

Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #5 on: July 13, 2010, 01:51:27 AM »
Derek, thanks for the answers.  Only reason I really wanted to mention the fans is because they looked to really impinge on a couple "go-for-it" holes.  That short par 5 and par 4 on the front...  how many great second shots / tee shots on those holes have taken a screwy hop off those fans?  But if that's what's needed to ensure circulation, I get it.

Mike Cirba

Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #6 on: July 13, 2010, 10:05:51 PM »
Derek,

Thanks for the superb pictures.

What seems to me most striking about The Patriot is the incredible width of the fairway cuts, which despite the nuances of terrain, seem to go way wider than almost any course I can think of.

In other words, each hole's "avenue of play" is almost always wall to wall fairway, even in the case of a bowled cut through a forest.

That to me is striking, original, and seems very exciting to play.


Mark Saltzman

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2012, 11:58:55 AM »
This received almost no discussion when posted 2 years ago.  Looks very good from the pictures and is now top-50 modern in the latest Golfweek rankings.

Anyone been out to play it? Thoughts?

Andy Troeger

Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #8 on: March 24, 2012, 01:59:01 PM »
Mark,
I think I asked the same thing either before or after I played it last October. The Patriot has some really fantastic holes--there are a few different split fairway holes with tons of options that are pretty unique. You play 3 in 4 holes at one point that are bisected by a creek, but they all play in very different ways. I loved that part of it. Most of the transitions from greens to tees are very good as well--some all short grass as was done by the same design group at Chambers Bay. The first seven holes are about as good as it gets, truly.

The downside is that parts of the course are very severe which would make walking pretty tough, especially on a hot Oklahoma summer afternoon. The canyon(s) running through the property are deep and you do go in and out of them a couple times during the round. Those transitions make parts of the course a bit disjointed (especially from 13/14 where you have to backtrack significantly). I also thought the middle of the course (9-12 approximately) was a little bit of a lull compared to the rest. That second part is nitpicky, however. The last hole is pretty much unplayable for anyone who can't make a 100+ yard forced carry, as well. There is no way to play around that canyon and the walk around it is very long.

Overall I think that puts it somewhere in the top tier of Oklahoma courses and I won't argue with GolfWeek's placement in the Modern listing. My Oklahoma listing goes Oak Tree National, Southern Hills, Patriot, Karsten, but I don't see much gap between the four.

Matthew Petersen

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #9 on: March 26, 2012, 05:42:34 PM »
Looks pretty good to me. I really like features like the long par-4 third followed by the short par-5 fourth, both holes right in the range of 500 yards. It's been years since I've been to Tulsa, but I'd sure try to stop by there if I was back in town.

Tiger_Bernhardt

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #10 on: March 27, 2012, 10:20:51 AM »
Jay Blasi did a great job here. Oklahoma is a strong golf course state. I am impressed this course has stood tall with so much good competition in the area.

John Kavanaugh

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #11 on: March 27, 2012, 11:26:20 AM »
I can't understand why a new course would open with fans around the greens.  What is the point of turf research if this simple problem can not be eliminated from day one?  I have to say that in all but one picture I can't take my eyes off the fans.  Horrible.

Craig Van Egmond

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #12 on: March 27, 2012, 01:50:49 PM »
Well John, even though Oklahoma is considered a windy state, in the summertime it is brutally hot and there is almost no wind. I'm guessing the greens don't like that. It is very common here.

Tiger_Bernhardt

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #13 on: March 27, 2012, 03:40:27 PM »
Summer heat is why they need the fans.

Derek Dirksen

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #14 on: March 28, 2012, 04:29:47 AM »
The course has both sub air and fans.  I believe they take the fans down during spring and fall play.  Believe me Jay didn't want the fans but for the good of the greens he was over ruled.  A lot of the holes sit in canyons and have restricted air flow as well as it can be just plain nasty in the dead of summer.  I never made over to Karsten Creek but I know Southern Hills has them.  When we did the front 9 greens remodel at Oak Tree (2003) I didn't recall seeing them there but we did it in the middle of winter so they could have been taken out.  Oak Tree is quite a bit more open compared to the Patriot. 

Craig Van Egmond

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Re: Patriot Golf Club, Pictures
« Reply #15 on: March 28, 2012, 08:18:13 AM »

Karsten Creek has them.. As does Forest Ridge.. Golf Club of Oklahoma.. etc... etc.. 


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