Odoriferous Courses....

[Bob_Huntley]

What with all the talk in another thread of "look" and "feel", I was wondering if anyone has experienced an occasion when their game was impacted by a..... pong?

There was a wonderful course in Nkana/Kitwe, Zambia, adjacent to a copper smelter, with the wind in the wrong direction one could almost choke to death.

A recent experience here in Pebble Beach raised the gag level to a red warning. If you are on the fourth and fifth at Spyglass or the eighth and ninth on the old Shore Course at MPCC on a couple of days a year, when the wind is off shore, the smell off of Bird Rock from guano and the detritus of seals and sea lions is truly odoriferous.
 

[Dan Kelly]

Bob --

Is it pure coincidence that you launched this thread today -- or did you get a whiff of the Aerial of the Day?

P-U -- or should I say: C-u!

[A_Clay_Man]

It is as pungent as any oder one would only want to experience once. But as I recall, it happens more than just a few days. There is also the kelp, which gets swept to shore after a large swell, and when it rots, sulphur must be released cause rotten eggs of the smelting order are abundant and long lived.

What was the reported price for that home left of Spy's #5? 24m?

[Lou_Duran]

Firestone CC- South had a problem some 20 years ago with wild garlic growing near the course.  Texas Star in Euless is due north of a garbage dump, Fort Worth's water treatment facilities, and the polluted Trinity River.  My home course, Great Southwest GC, is impacted by various sewer line easements, the waste-dump better known as Johnson Creek, and two Mexican food production plants.  In the south, heat, humidity, still water, and aquatic life sometimes conspire to produce some noxious smells.  We learn to tolerate them, and play fast to get through them.  

[Odd_Job]

The last time we played in Scotland we played Mercer, which has several holes right beside a working landfill.  As you can imagine there were hundreds of seagulls and certainly did not add positively to the ambiance of the course.  When we played Royal Aberdeen (which is adjacent to Mercer), the club members that caddied for us were merciless about the dump next to Mercer.

[David_Tepper]

The recently re-opened Metropolitan Golf Links, hard by the Oakland, CA airport (which is a very nice, very playable course by the way), is occasionally enveloped by "eau de' jet fuel."  

[TEPaul]

Bob:

Yes, the Easthampton G.C. by Coore & Crenshaw in Easthampton LI. Directly to the west of the front nine is a dump or a waste management company of some kind and it pretty much smells bad all the time but when the wind is out of the west it's particularly gross. Thank God I smoke my brains out so my olfactory sense ain't that great which means if I really could smell it'd be even grosser!

But I don't really care that much about things like that and am in fact a big advocate of very old fashioned rugged and dangerous bunkering particularly the kind so famous from centuries ago that really smelled bad too. If you could've talked to old Tom Morris about bunker drainage he would haved looked at you with a blank stare like you were from Mars. Some of the best of those old bunkers had slime and goey crap in them that stunk up anyone who came near them. That's my kind of architecture!

Maybe if I can get as far as convincing my club to setup bunkering with a herd of elephants as Tillie suggested I could go the full boat and persuade them to bring back the slimmy stench in the bunkers too. What could be cooler than to be forced to wade in there and play a shot out of there and to get that crap splattered all over your clothes and face! The only thing I can think of cooler than that is to watch it happen to your opponent as you laugh your ass off.

I didn't really mean that you know? I consider myself a golfing gentleman and far be it from me to ever wish ill upon my opponent!

[George Pazin]

Surprise Tom Paul didn't mention it, but, depending on one's view of mushrooms, Inniscrone in southeastern PA is either odoriferous or pleasantly aromatic.

[Kevin_Reilly]

Shoreline Golf Links in Mountain View Ca is on the site of an old landfill I believe, and there are vents all over the place for methane emissions.  Also a lot of goose crap everywhere.

[TEPaul]

GeorgeP;

Kennett Square Pa, just adjacent to Inniscrone is considered the mushroom capital of the world but it's not the mushrooms that stinks it's the horse manure they load on it. But don't say that smells bad because I live with that horse manure. Every so often the trucks from Kennett roll into the farm here with those big claw booms on them and load up the mountain of horse manure that piles up just outside my barn and take it down around Inniscrone and pile it on those mushrooms. Do you think the next time you order pizza maybe you might forego the mushrooms?

[TEPaul]

Actually George we do things a bit different here in the farm country of Eastern Pa. My mother actually planted her massive vegetable garden almost on top of her cesspool that was about 90% failed and not perking well at all. I pointed that out to her and about ten years later she got around to moving the cesspool!!  

I'm still alive though but just barely.

[Todd_Joseph]

The Phoenix in Columbus, Ohio is build upon a reclaimed landfill.  They did a fairly good job covering up the old garbage with a layer of concrete, so you rarely smell anything decaying.   They did have to build gas release valves throughout the course to vent the landfill so frequently you get a whiff of the natuaral gases escaping


Not the best course to smoke a stogie on.

[cary lichtenstein]

Ironhorse in Palm Beach Gardens, Fl is downwind from a dump. AH!!

In Chicago, Killian and Nugent built 2 courses on a dump, and the pipes that let out the gases leave you with a slimmy coating on your skin when you get filling playing.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Club Compuestre Golf de Matzalan in Sinaloa, Matzatlan, Mexico has 9-holes designd by Percy Clifford that is really a lot of fun to play.

After playing holes 1 & 2, where the caddie disappears lugging your bag into the bushes and ransacking it; this pungent smell hits your nostrils that also has this burning-like sensation to it. As you approach the fourth tee, you see that the locals who have houses (what are essentially 2-story adobe shacks) right on the course, burn their trash or whatever, right off the side of the 4th!

Your fine at the 5th, until you take a break for a cold "Sidral' Agha" which is a delightful and refreshing carbonated apple cider. Out of respect to your caddies, you buy them one too, and then try to communicate to them that you know that they have stolen something out of your bag, and they better put it back.......

It's then back to the course, and the.........breath-taking.......6th, which has been called by my group of friends, "The Cess Pool Hole."  Right off of the tee is a rather large pond, which loks to beslightly lower then normal, in evidence of the exposed banks, and literally hundreds of golf balls sitting right there on those shores! Youthink to yourself, "why are those golf balls there? Yes, it is obvious that the person that put them into play, did n't make it over, but, hundreds of them? ? ?"

You tee off, and continue this majestic walk right alongside the lake, and then it hits you.....It is in fact a cess pool, filled and unkept, and.......of course, that smell you first experienced at Club Compuestre, only stronger. I highly recommend the course not for the smells, but for the experience.

If you I had to go through it, so should you!  And the funnier thing about it is I have played the course about six times!

[peter_p]

Up in the Northwest, anything near a pulp and paper plant.
Orchard Hills in Washington and two courses in Albany OR-Golf Cluib of Oregon and Spring Hill come to mind. The plants had about a five mile range depending on wind conditions, but have become a lot better with EPA regs.

Anthing near a pig lot or farm. I read something of a problem in Florida with them, and driving thru Kansas I smealt one feed lot from miles away.

[TEPaul]

TommyN:

Fabulous! Now I'd like you to use all your considerable powers of architectural knowledge and observation and tell me either with a straight course comparison or better yet a hole by hole match play comparison which golf course RANKS higher in your opinion--Club Compuestre or the "Bridge"?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Tom, I would had enjoyed to match play the two courses IF my driver and tour guide had taken me by there. Instead, I was forced to endure Maidstone.

But, if it helps at all, I do think Matzatlan is much closer, yet, I can smell the Bridge from here!:)

This should start a flurry of posting!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Bob Huntley,

Ironhorse, in Florida.

Read "Driving the Green" to learn more about the creation, design and building of this golf course.

It's an interesting and quick read.

[Brad Swanson]

Murphy Creek GC in Aurora CO has a spectacular view of a large landfill on the front nine.  If that's not distracting enough, the F16s doing touch and go take-off drills over the course at the military base across the street will certainly get your attention.  

Cheers,
Brad Swanson

[B. Mogg]

I played a course in India that had some pungency!

The streams comprised of raw sewage flowing in from the slums surrounding the course (used for irrigation mind you - they had to have big bores on those sprinklers to get the chunks through).

A second feature comprised of a pile of dead people heaped up just outside the walls on one of the holes - a popular dumping ground for those short of a quid to conduct the proper burial rites.

The final feature consisted of a popular tree on one hole called for obvious reasons the suicide tree. They cut down about one person a week from this tree - sometimes if the staff werent around to curt the body down, play would just go on while the body swung to and fro gently in the breeze.

One of India's top 10 courses I believe!!

[Buck Wolter]

Gateway Nat'l on the Illinois side of Metro St. Louis is near a rendering plant. When the wind's just right on a hot humid day it'll coat the back of your throat and make your eyes water. Only really hits you on 2 & 3 but nothing stinks like bloating carcasses!

[Forrest Richardson]

Our Olivas Golf Links project in Ventura, CA is built adjacent to a mushroom plant.

To grow mushrooms you gather horse shit from nearby race tracks and stables and pile it in 15-ft. high mounds. The shit is brought into a yard via large trucks — covered and sealed tight during transit. These piles are allowed to sit in the California sun and just before they begin to burn from decomposition you use Catepillar loaders to carry the hot shit into buildings where people with extra thick gloves hand place the shit in trays and add mushroom spores. These rooms are then darkened and about four days later you have tiny mushrooms growing. Spray nozzles keep the shit fresh. After another few days people with even thicker gloves pick the mushrooms after which they are casually sprayed with water to remove any especially thick shit. The mushrooms are then hand packed in cardboard boxes where they then make their way to produce brokers who represent Safeway and other grocery store chains. My wife then buys a few flats of these tasty morsels and we serve them to unsuspecting visitors. You know, for salads and shish-ka-bobs. Stuff like that.

Fortunately the plant has made strides to control the odor. However, it is still a problem in the early hours, especially if thre is no breeze from the sea. I time my visits to walk this part of the site after lunch.

[Patrick Hitt]

One of the true great public links in Evanston, IL - Peter N Jans National Golf Course winds it's way around the scenic Sanitary Canal. The odors can be unusually pleasant after a hard rain has forced the sewer overflow into the canal the night before a humid windless August day.

Harborside International was built on a capped waste site but the industrial sludge doesn't seem to create too much methane. Much of the oderiferousnees of the course eminates from the nearby industrial area.

I'm sure the Sentry World flower hole or the Hershey Park Golf Course are a little more pleasant than any of the above.

[ForkaB]

I absolutely HATE the smell of a links course in the early morning in the early spring.  Freshly cut grass mixed with wafts of peat fires from the town and the nectar of the budding gorse and the salt and freshness of the gently breaking sea.  It tempts you into thinking that golf is something important, rather than just another bloody game.......

[TEPaul]

"To grow mushrooms you gather horse shit from nearby race tracks and stables and pile it in 15-ft. high mounds. The shit is brought into a yard via large trucks —"

Forrest;

Excuse me---but here in Eastern Pa which is obviously far older and far more cultured than the wet-behind the ears only six generation old California we try not to call what one puts on mushrooms "horse shit"! Here we call it "horse manure" and consequently it's more acceptable to all and does not smell nearly as bad.