[Kyle Casella]

Joe, I haven't played Sterling Hills in many years either, but I remember it as a housing project course with numerous long walks across or along public roads and with a number of holes where there was little reasonable way to get to the next tee because of natural and/or man-made features.  I quick look at their website and at google earth confirmed my memory.


It may well be walkable for some (I think I also walked it, years ago) but it is laid out like a cart ball course for convenience of cartballers, not walkers. At best it is a cart ball course that tolerates walkers who don't mind long treks through neighborhoods.  I also did a quick count on walking distance between the previous green and next green (using the approx. equivalent of the blue at each) and the distances to and from the clubhouse, and I don't think your speculation that Rustic is a longer walk holds up.  

This is spot on I think. I used to play Sterling in a college tournament every year and we walked but had shuttles for long transitions. I would say that walking the holes was relatively easy because the course is pretty flat, however it is not set up well for walking. Rustic is a better walking course even if there is more elevation change, which can make the walk more tiring.

[John Kavanaugh]

Even your avatar is angry.  It sets the tone for everyone of your posts.  You might as well type in all caps.

[DMoriarty]

If it wasn't for carts I couldn't play golf, and I'm sure that many other ardent golfers are in the same boat, so I don't understand the anti-cart angst.

Patrick,

I think the "anti-cart angst" has been drastically overstated.  I think carts are great for allowing ardent golfers to continue to play golf when they otherwise wouldn't be able to play.  I have no problem with that whatsoever.   My concern is with architecture built for the exclusive (or near exclusive) use by those in carts.
_____________________________________________________

Bogey,  

I am not sure it could properly be called a whizzing contest, since it is really just just one guy standing there trying to pee on everything.
__________________________________________________________

It would seem that the biggest issue is that it is very hard to get the acreage you need to build a new course in the LA/OC area. To the extent that you can get it, the odds are that it will either be hillside (and thus tough to walk) or the acreage will be part of a much larger development (fostering the  necessity lengthy transitions) or feature some other challenges (flood control, power lines, environmentally sensitive areas, freeways) that will also make it hard to design a compact lay out.

Jon Nailed it.

Pete and Jon,

I agree that there are challenges to building a walking course in LA today.  Even at Rustic there are the walks necessitated by the environmental areas.   But at the courses in the list above, I don't think they were even trying.  Most those courses were set up from the beginning to be cart ball courses, by design.   Take Angeles National, for example.  A pretty flat site in a similar setting to Rustic, but it was always intended to be nothing but a cart ball course.  Or take Tiera Rejada. I wasn't there so I can't confirm the veracity, but the story is that they passed over the site that eventually became Rustic in favor of the site which became Tiera(ble) Rejada.   They weren't looking to build a walkable course.  The business model was for a cart ball course.  

It is true that some of these courses might have been tough walks even if they had tried to make them walking courses, but as it is I don't think they even tried.  
__________________________________________

Lou,  Even when I used to be among the thousands of nomadic LA golfers driving long distances to find courses, I rarely ventured into Orange County to play.  Golf can be a real challenge in the Los Angeles area, especially for those who prefer to walk.

[Garland Bayley]

Even your avatar is angry.  It sets the tone for everyone of your posts.  You might as well type in all caps.

John,

Who exactly do you think you are fooling?

I can't imagine it is anyone other than yourself.

[John Kavanaugh]

Even your avatar is angry.  It sets the tone for everyone of your posts.  You might as well type in all caps.

John,

Who exactly do you think you are fooling?

I can't imagine it is anyone other than yourself.

If you understood what I was talking about you wouldn't use Elmer Fudd.  He does not help your credibility.

[Jason Thurman]

My avatar is a South Park rendition of myself and yet there are still at least five people taking my posts in the "Let's all Cheer for Adam Scott!" thread seriously, including Elmer here. I've just accepted that it's not fair to ask the average person operating the Internet in 2014 to understand tone.

[Peter Pallotta]

J-man - you have only yourself to blame, my friend, what with your modern hipster take on pop-culture and your meta-level approach to discourse and its perceived content. Just think of it - the average age of the gca.com member is probably 103, and most of us learned just in the last few years that a computer was more than a typewriter and that there was such a thing called the internet! What do we know from the meaning of South Park and related avatars?  It'd be exactly as if my tag-line was: "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!" and I expected you to accept the fact that the Horta, despite its frightening silicon-based life form, is actually a highly intelligent and sophisticated creature, and that it was only killing miners because it was protecting its young. Hmmm? Did you ever think about it THAT way?

Peter
 

[Garland Bayley]

... I've just accepted that it's not fair to ask the average person operating the Internet in 2014 to understand tone.

And you thought the selection of funny faces above the posting pages was just abstract art of some kind?
 

[Jason Thurman]

Smileys are for girls. I guess people over 30 don't know that.

James Joyce knew that he had to make a choice between dumbing himself down so the average reader could understand, or flexing his intellect and accepting that only the intelligent would be able to follow along. He chose the latter. He and I have a lot in common, when you think about it.

[Bill_McBride]

Smileys are for girls. I guess people over 30 don't know that.

James Joyce knew that he had to make a choice between dumbing himself down so the average reader could understand, or flexing his intellect and accepting that only the intelligent would be able to follow along. He chose the latter. He and I have a lot in common, when you think about it.

One of the major problems with Internet discussion is that it's difficult to ascertain tone just from what's written. 

That's why face to face is better.   You're also much less likely to outright flame somebody over a beer.   Happens every day here in online Dodge City!

[Sven Nilsen]

Smileys are for girls. I guess people over 30 don't know that.

James Joyce knew that he had to make a choice between dumbing himself down so the average reader could understand, or flexing his intellect and accepting that only the intelligent would be able to follow along. He chose the latter. He and I have a lot in common, when you think about it.

Is this one of those times where you're saying something so stupid it has to be a joke?

[Sean_A]

I think the "anti-cart angst" has been drastically overstated.  I think carts are great for allowing ardent golfers to continue to play golf when they otherwise wouldn't be able to play.  I have no problem with that whatsoever.   My concern is with architecture built for the exclusive (or near exclusive) use by those in carts.

That about sums it up for me except I would go further and say that paths are nearly as bad as the influence of carts on design. Hell, I could care less if lazy folks want to ride, but I want design to be about golf, not carts, where they travel and how much revenue they generate.  

JT - tone guessed from an avatar? 

Ciao

[Peter Pallotta]

Smileys are for girls. I guess people over 30 don't know that.

James Joyce knew that he had to make a choice between dumbing himself down so the average reader could understand, or flexing his intellect and accepting that only the intelligent would be able to follow along. He chose the latter. He and I have a lot in common, when you think about it.

Is this one of those times where you're saying something so stupid it has to be a joke?

Of course, the other way to address that would be to note that The Dubliners is Joyce's best and most effective and most affecting work, and it endures in memory for countless readers both intelligent and 'dumb', while Ulysses - though a tour de force - is relegated to the remainder bins in university campuses all over North America, the intelligent able to follow it along well enough, but soon realizing that it leads them absolutely nowhere.

[Jason Thurman]

Come on, Pete. It leads them home to a crazy wife. It's life summed up in 1000 pages.

I wrote a 25 page paper in college that reduced the entire novel to the paragraph in the Lotus Eaters where Leopold walks by the gelded horses eating oats. It was utter nonsense that got an A, and one of my prouder moments as a student. The section discusses how horses with their nose embedded in food and endowed with nothing but a limp gutta-percha are so content that it's infuriating, and the worst thing in the world is to hear them make noise about it. Replace the word "horses" with "golfers" and you've basically described how the rest of the world sees our game - breeding bizarre contentment and conversations that no one else wants to listen to. Case in point right here. I'm sure that if my wife recorded her thoughts when I turn on the sounds of The Masters next month, they'd look a lot like Molly Bloom's in "Penelope" (click if you dare: http://www.online-literature.com/james_joyce/ulysses/18/ ).

[JMEvensky]

Peter,I disagree a little. If you want some Joyce which truly leads nowhere,we're talking Finnegan's Wake. Ulysses will take you a lot of places--and not just a stroll around Dublin.

Is The Dead the greatest 40 pages ever written in the English language?

[Peter Pallotta]

Ha ha - good one, Jason. Just having some fun. (When I was at school, I once wrote a paper on Ulysses in which i first made up a musical scale based on vowel sounds and then gave the notes various values/lengths dependent on the number of syllables in the words, and then wrote out the 'music' to try to find differing patterns of speech/music from one character to the next, arguing that the 'sounds' Joyce was using, the music of his characters' speech, was more important than the content. I got a D.)

Jeff - lovely way to put it; as a stand alone, from nothing to nothing, 40 pages, The Dead is breathtakingly good.

Peter

 

[Nigel Islam]

Uh you people are on the wrong site. I think you want www.literatureclubatlasforsmartpeople.com. Golf is for people that count to 100.

[Bill_McBride]

Uh you people are on the wrong site. I think you want www.literatureclubatlasforsmartpeople.com. Golf is for people that count to 100.

Hopefully not that high. 

[Joe Perches]

Joe, I haven't played Sterling Hills in many years either, but I remember it as a housing project course with numerous long walks across or along public roads and with a number of holes where there was little reasonable way to get to the next tee because of natural and/or man-made features.  I quick look at their website and at google earth confirmed my memory.


It may well be walkable for some (I think I also walked it, years ago) but it is laid out like a cart ball course for convenience of cartballers, not walkers. At best it is a cart ball course that tolerates walkers who don't mind long treks through neighborhoods.  I also did a quick count on walking distance between the previous green and next green (using the approx. equivalent of the blue at each) and the distances to and from the clubhouse, and I don't think your speculation that Rustic is a longer walk holds up.  

That said, as you know Rustic is far from a perfect walking course.  Most the tees and greens are close, but there is a 110 yard walk from 4 to 5 and longer walks between 9 and 10 (about 275 yards), between 12 and 13 (about 200 yards), and between 17 and 18 (about 200 yards), plus an annoying uphill 80 yard walk between 15 and 16. Three of these cross the environmental area.  While it'd be nice if these walks weren't necessary, the course was obviously designed with walking in mind and as modern courses go it is a nice walk.  I think we agree on that.

It is and you're right.  The longest green->tee (9->10) distance at Sterling is ~400 yards and there are 3 others at about 100 yards.  Everything else is adjacent.  So, maybe Rustic is shorter.  I didn't remember the 9->10 distance being so long.

Anyway, Sterling was/is a surprisingly nice golf course with some interesting holes even though it's wrapped around a housing development.

When I played there, the other father in my fathers and sons foursome pull-hooked his drive on 12 and broke one of those plastic like windows facing the course.  A guy came out from the house, shrugged, and said "no worries, it's a rental".

And I agree the Tierra Rejada development is not something I'll voluntarily play.

[DMoriarty]

Joe,  Funny story about the window. I don't remember too much about Sterling outside of what I said above.  I vaguely remember some likable holes, but I also vaguely remember mounding work around the greens which added to the awkward walk.  But as best as I can recollect you are right that it has some decent holes.  I think Neal Meagher had something to do with the design.

Tierra is one of those courses that is just jaw-droppingly bad, although again its been so long I hardly remember the details.  Likewise for TPC Valencia.  Creating that quick list of Rustic's contemporaries reminded me how lucky I am to get to play Rustic regularly, and what a breath of fresh air it was (is) when it came on the scene.

[Mark Pearce]

Brian,

I think (hope) it is intended as humour.  If not, I worry.  If it is, then it's fairly pseudo intellectual self-aggrandizing humour, but humour nonetheless.

[Lou_Duran]

Smileys are for girls. I guess people over 30 don't know that.

James Joyce knew that he had to make a choice between dumbing himself down so the average reader could understand, or flexing his intellect and accepting that only the intelligent would be able to follow along. He chose the latter. He and I have a lot in common, when you think about it.

One of the major problems with Internet discussion is that it's difficult to ascertain tone just from what's written.  

That's why face to face is better.   You're also much less likely to outright flame somebody over a beer.   Happens every day here in online Dodge City!

How true.  I find it amusing that some folks appear to trade on their self-assessed horsepower.  Brings to mind the Fredo dialogue with his brother Michael: "I can handle things! I'm smart! Not like everybody says... like dumb... I'm smart and I want respect!"  Isn't that the bottom line?  Don't many of us mostly yearn recognition and respect?  Probably an unrealistic expectation in a hardened world of over 7 billion people.  One damned big Bell Curve.
 

[Patrick_Mucci]

If it wasn't for carts I couldn't play golf, and I'm sure that many other ardent golfers are in the same boat, so I don't understand the anti-cart angst.

Patrick,

I think the "anti-cart angst" has been drastically overstated.  I think carts are great for allowing ardent golfers to continue to play golf when they otherwise wouldn't be able to play.  I have no problem with that whatsoever.   My concern is with architecture built for the exclusive (or near exclusive) use by those in carts.
_____________________________________________________

david,

I'm not familiar with or can't recall any courses built with architecture for the exclusive or near exclusive use of carts.

It's hard for me to visualize a substantive difference

Do any course come to mind ?

[Bill_McBride]

If it wasn't for carts I couldn't play golf, and I'm sure that many other ardent golfers are in the same boat, so I don't understand the anti-cart angst.

Patrick,

I think the "anti-cart angst" has been drastically overstated.  I think carts are great for allowing ardent golfers to continue to play golf when they otherwise wouldn't be able to play.  I have no problem with that whatsoever.   My concern is with architecture built for the exclusive (or near exclusive) use by those in carts.
_____________________________________________________

david,

I'm not familiar with or can't recall any courses built with architecture for the exclusive or near exclusive use of carts.

It's hard for me to visualize a substantive difference

Do any course come to mind ?

Virtually every course on the Robert Trent Jones courses has at least one half mile trek.  I've never seen anyone walk an RTJ Trail course.

Ask the Northern California boys about The Bridge. 

[Tim Bert]

If it wasn't for carts I couldn't play golf, and I'm sure that many other ardent golfers are in the same boat, so I don't understand the anti-cart angst.

Patrick,

I think the "anti-cart angst" has been drastically overstated.  I think carts are great for allowing ardent golfers to continue to play golf when they otherwise wouldn't be able to play.  I have no problem with that whatsoever.   My concern is with architecture built for the exclusive (or near exclusive) use by those in carts.
_____________________________________________________

david,

I'm not familiar with or can't recall any courses built with architecture for the exclusive or near exclusive use of carts.

It's hard for me to visualize a substantive difference

Do any course come to mind ?

Virtually every course on the Robert Trent Jones courses has at least one half mile trek.  I've never seen anyone walk an RTJ Trail course.

Ask the Northern California boys about The Bridge. 

I've walked a RTJ Trail course.  It isn't the preferred route and I agree that they were built with carts in mind.  I'm pretty sure I walked whichever of the Links and the Lake that we played in the morning though I can't distinguish one from another any more.  Might have walked the Senator as well.  I really don't remember any more.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()