Now this is a thread I can enjoy..... I've never come close to playing a top 100 course, but this.... this I can do
1. A public course in Marlowe, Oklahoma whose name escapes me. A group of six of us played and we had four golf carts break down between the two groups over the course of 18 holes. I'm pretty sure the fairways were mowed by goats.
2. Sun Prairie Country Club, Sun Prairie, WI. It pains me to think that they actually held competitive high school matches here. Except for the actual greens, there was never a single blade of healthy, living grass anywhere on the property. Surrounded on four sides by barb-wire fences which separated the course from cornfields. Smelled like cow flop. Uphill, blind first hole. 17th hole had OB about five feet off the left-hand side of the, ahem, fairway. Doesn't help that I made 10 there once in a school meet.
3. Thorncreek Golf Course, Thornton, CO. As Murphy's Law says, the golf course closest to your house is usually the one you least want to play. That would apply to this abomination. This one has a couple of incredibly stupid holes. There is a 600 yard par-five on the front nine which has a creek cross right at about the 270 mark, so you are either forced to lay up, or you can try to hit the second landing area, which is literally the size of a large tee box and is guarded by the creek and a big bunker, or you can carry it 320 yards to a completely blind third fairway. The other really dumb hole is #11 which is a 460 yard par four and requires another forced layup due to an "environmentally sensitive area". And the worst part is, they built a fence on both sides of it because you can't go in there. But the fence is 5 feet high and is DIRECTLY IN THE LINE OF PLAY. That's right.... WOODEN FENCES directly across the line of play. I believe that happens on a couple of other holes too.
The one time I played the course, on that hole, I hit a perfect drive... only it was a little too perfect and ended up at the end of the fairway, with the WOODEN FENCE about 10 feet in front of my ball. Since I was 200 yards from the hole, I had to hit a hybrid..... I think you can guess what happened next. BANG. What a stupid, stupid golf hole.
4. Yahara Hills (East and West), Madison, WI. A 36 hole complex which consists of the exact same par-four hole 20 times, the exact same par-five hole 8 times, and the exact same par-three hole 8 times. Actually 7 times.... the other one has water. Boring, symmetrical perfect par routing. I put these two courses in as a single unit, mainly because the only way you can remember which one you are playing is to look at the sign. Otherwise, they are basically identical and indisguishable from each other. In fact, there are two par threes on the same course that are right next to each other that play in the exact same direction and are basically the exact same hole. They even share one stupidly large common teeing area. I dare anyone to find a 36 hole complex in America with less variety than this one.
5. Hyland Hills, Gold Course, Westminster, CO. Of course, the next closest facility to my home. I wish I'd played these courses before I bought this house.... this isn't really that bad except for the last two holes, which are stupid, ridiculous attempts to make it look like some kind of half-baked TPC layout. Two par-fours, which both have had original greens on the near side of a creek scrapped and replaced with two really tiny, really shallow greens placed hard on the other side of this creek, with ugly railroad tie frontages and Pete-Dye like pot bunkers, juxtaposed against what is otherwise a fairly benign parkland layout. It's a shame they added the third nine here, because the 9-hole Blue course contains the best holes on the property, and the ones they added (#7-15?) are much less interesting.
6. Pleasant View Golf Course, Middleton, WI. Pedestrian 18 (now 27) laid out in another cornfield with nothing of note around it. On a course that had maybe 10 trees on the entire layout, two of them were right smack in the middle of fairways. Only played here again because of a high school match. I aced the par-3 13th hole (which was a blind shot so I didn't see the ball drop) and broke 80 for the very first time here on my one and only loop.... and yet I never really had any desire to return there.
7. Robina Woods, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia. Was profoundly disappointing.... stupid, overly penal, overpriced swamp in Australia's equivalent of south Florida. Can't remember a single hole. Played it on the recommendation from a tour guide.... fool me once...
8. The International Golf Club, Orlando, FL. Boring, bland Joe Lee cookie cutter. Pretty sure it has been plowed under and re-christened some other moniker.
9. John F. Kennedy Golf Course, Aurora, CO. On this list solely for the 6th hole on one of the nines, which is a par-four that must be played 4-iron, 3-wood and no other way, thanks to the presence of a 70 yard wide gulch that splits the fairway from 240-310 yards out. And you get a lovely view of Interstate 225.
10. Legacy Ridge Golf Course, Westminster, CO. Arthur Hills at his diabolical worst. Three of the four par-fives are almost unplayable.