Unique uses of land for golf courses

[jeffwarne]

What are some courses not of the garden variety 18 holes or 9 holes x 2.

Clever uses of a smaller piece of land, where a property was maximized, or preserved?
Shared fairways, greens crossing fairways or other ways space was conserved , yet the experience not compromised

Shiskine is an interesting 12 holer
Three Ponds is 9 holes with only 4 greens (suposedly 18 but gets a bit repetitive that way)
Northwest has crossing fairways to maximize a small, ever receding space
Otway has shared fairways-very social meet in fairway-disperse to green.
the Old course with double greens and once shared fairways

Other examples?

[Tom_Doak]

The Sheep Ranch, certainly.

Claremont in California has a full 18 holes on about 80 acres, thanks to multiple crossovers, and pretty daring ones at that.

[Jason Topp]

Madeline Island on Lake Superior has 11 or 12 holes that RTJ designed to play as 18.  Several of the holes have two tee boxes and two pins so you play 18 different holes on two loops around.  It works pretty well.http://www.madelineislandgolf.com/course/

Newton Country Club in Newton, Iowa has 11 or 12 holes that work in a similar fashion.  I hope they are surviving despite the shutdown of the Maytag plant and headquarters in the town.

[Phil McDade]

Cullen
Stonehaven (I think is on less than 70 acres, and has 18 holes at a par of 66)

[Tom_Doak]

Cullen
Stonehaven (I think is on less than 70 acres, and has 18 holes at a par of 66)

I should have said Cullen!  It is indeed unique. 

[Phil McDade]

Cullen
Stonehaven (I think is on less than 70 acres, and has 18 holes at a par of 66)

I should have said Cullen!  It is indeed unique. 

Tom:

You mentioned seeing Rosehearty on your trip to northeastern Scotland. Did you get a chance to see Inverallochy, just south of Fraserburgh? I don't know that it's unique (they have one shared fairway there), but it's a pretty nifty routing that somehow squeezes 18 holes out of a very narrow spit of land: http://inverallochygolfclub.com/the-course/

[Tony_Muldoon]

Jeff if only you’d asked earlier. You drove within a couple of miles of this one on the way from Brancaster to Woodhall.

The Victorians built a huge dry dock for ship repairs but It leaked and soon fell into disrepair. Decades later the locals turned it into a 9 hole golf course where most of the interest comes from playing up and down across the level change. The greens are well done but I’m not rushing to get back.
http://www.club-noticeboard.co.uk/suttonbridge/satelliteview.html


Painswick is the answer to most of these Questions! Holes set in the middle of a mediaeval hillfort and so little space at the far end that you take your life in your hands to play the holes that share a fairway. I can’t wait to get back.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

You mentioned seeing Rosehearty on your trip to northeastern Scotland. Did you get a chance to see Inverallochy, just south of Fraserburgh? I don't know that it's unique (they have one shared fairway there), but it's a pretty nifty routing that somehow squeezes 18 holes out of a very narrow spit of land: http://inverallochygolfclub.com/the-course/

Phil:

No, I didn't see Inverallochy, and I'm sorry I didn't, after looking at the photos on their web site.  It looks pretty cool.  Never heard of it at all before.

I stumbled across Rosehearty completely by accident, taking the coastal route back from Cullen after checking out Fraserburgh.  There is good golf around every corner over there!

[Dwight Phelps]

Claremont in California has a full 18 holes on about 80 acres, thanks to multiple crossovers, and pretty daring ones at that.

I have to ask about this one.  What Claremont course is this?  The only Claremont I find is a 9 hole executive course.

[David_Tepper]

Dwight Phelps -

Claremont CC is an Alister Mackzenie course within the Oakland, CA city limits. It was a stop on the PGA Tour way back in the day. Very old school. The Doak shop did a very nice restoration of the course a few years ago.

There has been a least one photo thread here in the past.

http://www.yelp.com/map/claremont-country-club-oakland

DT

[David_Tepper]

Dwight P. -

Here are some photos of Claremont post the renovation:

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,28326.0.html

DT

[Tom_Doak]

Dwight:

Better yet, dig it up on Google Earth and try to connect the dots for all 18 holes.  It's an eye-opener.

[Thomas Dai]

Shiskine, Painswick, Cullen, Rosehearty*, Inverallochy are all terrific choices. In the UK we are fortunate to have many, many smaller scale courses on all sorts of terrain.

Taking a northerly, southerly, westerly and easterly perspective there's courses like -

In the Shetland Isles - on Unst, the most northerly island in the UK, "there's a small, unofficial golf course among the sand dunes and links at Burrafirth, a spectacular, fjord-like inlet at the north end of the island. There are no facilities or clubhouse" - words are from the Golf in Shetland site. Plus, also on Shetland, as well as the course at Lerwick which I've seen, there are interesting courses at Asta - http://www.astagolfclub.com/ - and Whalsay - http://www.whalsaygolfclub.co.uk/.

On the Isles of Scilly - are far south as you can go in the UK, there's IoSGC - http://www.islesofscillygolfclub.co.uk/history

There's Benbecula GC on the far north western Scottish islands, not really that far from Askernish as the crow flies - http://www.benbeculagolfclub.co.uk/ and in south west Wales there is a really scenic course at St David's - http://www.stdavidscitygolfclub.co.uk/

In Northumberland there's the apparently pretty ancient 9-holer at Alnmouth Village GC, which seemed like good fun to me - http://www.alnmouthvillagegolfclub.co.uk/ - and much further south there's a course like Selsey GC, which I was told has a deep WWII bomb crater - http://www.selseygolfclub.co.uk/the_club/the_club.htm

And these are just a few examples picked from points around the coastline. All over the UK there are 'interesting' inland course, the likes of Church Stretton which have been mentioned or profiled here before, or some with passing mentions like Welshpool in Mid-Wales (see the 18th hole photo in particular) - http://www.welshpoolgolfclub.co.uk/pages.php/index.html - or Lumphanan in NE Scotland - http://www.lumphanangolfclub.co.uk/

So many courses, so much variety, so much potential fun.

I'm sure other parts of the globe must have similarly interesting and intriguing courses.

All the best

* Ever seen the film "Local Hero", the one where the oil folks try to buy the Scottish town and beach for an oil terminal/refinery? The film with the Mark Knopfler/Dire Straights theme tune. Well the hotel and village scenes were filmed in Pennan, which is the next village just along to the west from Rosehearty, not that far from 'The Broch'.

[Andrew Buck]

Dwight:

Better yet, dig it up on Google Earth and try to connect the dots for all 18 holes.  It's an eye-opener.

I just did that, very cool indeed.  

I assume the 10th is the par 3 behind the clubhouse?  If that is the case, it appears there is a green sitting between the 11th and 13th green.  Is that just a maintenance green, or does that come into play?  

[Matthew Essig]

Dwight:

Better yet, dig it up on Google Earth and try to connect the dots for all 18 holes.  It's an eye-opener.

It sure is!  
100% unique!

[Bill_McBride]

Painswick, as Thomas mentioned, might be the coolest use of a VERY small site, deep worked out quarries, and a VERY cool Iron Age hilltop fort anywhere in the world!   Most of the par 4 fairways, and the only par 5 fairways, are shared with the fairway of an inbound hole.  The inbound players have the right of way over the outbound players, but the hikers, dog walkers and bird watchers have the right of way over everybody, as the course is on common ground in the Cotswolds.   The greens are tiny   but putt true.  The course is a blast to play.  

[Phil McDade]

* Ever seen the film "Local Hero", the one where the oil folks try to buy the Scottish town and beach for an oil terminal/refinery? The film with the Mark Knopfler/Dire Straights theme tune. Well the hotel and village scenes were filmed in Pennan, which is the next village just along to the west from Rosehearty, not that far from 'The Broch'.

Thomas:

Parts of Local Hero -- well recommended, by the way -- were also filmed at the beaches near Traigh Golf Club, another nifty 9-holer on the western coast of Scotland.

[David_Tepper]

www.scotlandthemovie.com is a excellent website that shows where various scenes from various movies & TV shows were filmed in Scotland.

http://www.scotlandthemovie.com/movies/flocalhero.html

[Garland Bayley]

Astoria CC used its deep parallel dune system to run the holes down the valleys. Fairways 12 yards wide. Before settling on this scheme they had proposals to cut through the dunes.

[Dan Kelly]

Madeline Island on Lake Superior has 11 or 12 holes that RTJ designed to play as 18.  Several of the holes have two tee boxes and two pins so you play 18 different holes on two loops around.  It works pretty well.http://www.madelineislandgolf.com/course/

Newton Country Club in Newton, Iowa has 11 or 12 holes that work in a similar fashion.  I hope they are surviving despite the shutdown of the Maytag plant and headquarters in the town.

Jason,

A friend of mine is from Newton, and files this report:

You are correct the Newton CC was my home course and my Mom still lives there. �It is really a 10 hole course with 11 greens. When you make the turn #10 (hole 1) has an extra green. 11 is a separate hole. �You then rejoin the original 9 -starting with 12 through 18. �We always called it the newton 11.

It has a pool, club house, cart barn, maintenance building�and pro shop. �It will auctioned in October. �Believe it or not the current owner bought the whole place for 225,000. �It will likely sell for less. �My friends and I were thinking it needs 500,000 to 750,000.

There was huge house that borders the property that would make a better club house. �

Difficult to make it work despite the prices.

[Thomas Dai]

Painswick was Tony's suggestion, so credit to him not to me.
Good call on Traigh by Phil. I knew the films beach scenes weren't from the North East but I hadn't realised they were filmed were near Traigh.
Thanks for the weblink David. To be explored.

I earlier mentioned Welshpool GC. Designed by James Braid. I wasn't able to get any photos to come up on the screen directly but here are weblinks to a couple of photos worth viewing:

the 8th - 160 yds - http://www.welshpoolgolfclub.co.uk/pages.php/course_hole.html/29403bc8-553d-11e0-b40f-001ec9b331b2/8.html#hole_top - a contender for drop-shot hole on the other thread running at the moment

the 18th hole - 450 yds - http://www.welshpoolgolfclub.co.uk/pages.php/course_hole.html/29403bc8-553d-11e0-b40f-001ec9b331b2/18.html

All the best.

[Niall C]

Jeff

A lot of the older Scottish/UK courses are on fairly tight sites of c.80 acres and in that respect the likes of Painswick isn't unique but it is very well done. In a similar vein, I've been championing Forfar of late which I think is a course that makes terrific use of the natural terrain.

Inverallochy is similar in some respects to Cruden Bay but without the Dunes in that the home holes and the starting holes are laid out on a broad expanse of land near the clubhouse and the and the middle holes along a narrower spit of land further away. There is a pinch point between the two where they have managed to make the transition with par 3's. Really nice course, good vibe even if it doesn't come into the great category. I played here straight after Fraserburgh, and if truth be told it was Inverallochy I enjoyed most.

Cullen - if you like Cullen, try Covesea, a nine holer next to Moray GC at Lossiemouth that plays on similar ground with holes played over sea stacks. Great fun but not a course to keep a scorecard.

Niall