As many of you know I am not a big fan of water, but in this case there was no way around it, the water authorities had stipulated that this part of the site had to have a big lake. That meant that I had to weave a number of sequential holes around the lake, which meant that there was a real danger of sameness to creep in unless I made the playing strategies quite different. In the end I decided to have two long holes in there, a medium length par 5 and a very long par 4.
The par 5 seventh hole hugs the shore line continuously from tee to green, showing all the hazards one will encounter on the way to the green clearly. The strategy is formed by a number of things. First the width of the fairway varies between 30 and 70 meters, with the narrow bits at the locations the best players are most likely to hit their balls and the wide bits where I hope most average to poor players will end up. Second is the bunker positions, which make it hard for the better players to try to go for the green in two. And finally the pin position on the green makes a big difference, with by far the hardest positions on the right hand side.
The main dilemma is what to hit off the tee. In the times I have played it off yellow and white so far driver has not been a very good choice for me, leading to 70% ball in the water hazard. I therefore mostly will hit 3 wood on white and 2 iron on yellow.
If you would play a safe shot left of the first bunker this would be the view you would have towards the green. If you hit a lay up shot there is a lot of space both left and right of the bunker at 120 m in front of the green, although the left is much more preferable than the right side.
The green is slightly raised and gently undulating. Originally I had planned to have a bunker left in front of the green, but opted not to put one there when we were building the hole because I felt the green did not need more defence. Also I was keen to get players to try to hit the green with their second shot and thought that by leaving them more space to run a ball on the green I would give back some of what I took away by making the tee shot so hard.
Looking back over the green to hole 7 it shows how much (fear of) water dictates the strategy on this hole