Ballyneal Bound - the Summary

[Mark Steffey]

in our foursome the lack of "tees" made for fun games at ballyneal (and dismal as well) where the winner of the prior hole got to pick the tee box.

[Jerry Kluger]

When you get to #5 play a tee shot from the left, center and right tees.  It is perhaps the finest short par 3 I have played. You can play the hole from 3 distinct angles and have 3 very different shots. 

[Bryan Icenhower]

When you get to #5 play a tee shot from the left, center and right tees.  It is perhaps the finest short par 3 I have played. You can play the hole from 3 distinct angles and have 3 very different shots. 

You like 5 better than 3?

I like hitting my tee shot from the far left teeing ground on 5 and then immediately turning around and teeing off from the exact same spot for 6. Then walking to the green to putt. 

[Tim Bert]

When you get to #5 play a tee shot from the left, center and right tees.  It is perhaps the finest short par 3 I have played. You can play the hole from 3 distinct angles and have 3 very different shots. 

You like 5 better than 3?

I like hitting my tee shot from the far left teeing ground on 5 and then immediately turning around and teeing off from the exact same spot for 6. Then walking to the green to putt. 

I like 5 better than 3 but I wouldn't consider 5 a "short" par three.

[Jerry Kluger]

5 can play at various lengths which can be short when you consider how long many par 3s are that have been built in recent years.  More importantly, #5 is very unique considering how many different angles you can play it from as nearly every par 3 only has differences in yardage but not any significant differences in angles. 

[Scott Szabo]

We've had an unusually wet year here in Northeastern Colorado so the stuff off the fairway is quite thick, much more so than normal.  Hope you enjoy our little slice of heaven that is Ballyneal.  It is supposed to be rainy the next couple of days but turn sunny and dry for the weekend.

[Adam Clayman]

Stay hydrated too--I played this same time last year and it was over 100 degrees

This year we have seen 3 digits once, maybe twice.

[Brian Little]

Take a moment on each hole to take in the views. It is pretty stunning.  I regret not taking my DSLR camera. Would have been worth lugging it for one round to get some quality shots of the holes and topography. Enjoy the great golf there.

[Bryan Icenhower]

Take a moment on each hole to take in the views. It is pretty stunning.  I regret not taking my DSLR camera. Would have been worth lugging it for one round to get some quality shots of the holes and topography. Enjoy the great golf there.

Actually, more advice there. Go out late in the day and take in the views with the shadows. Love the view from 9 tee box back down 8.

[Jim Sherma]

Thank you all for the great posts. My plane is headed out this evening and we should be at Ballyneal tomorrow morning. Everything posted on this thread and the obvious love of the place that's been expressed whets my appetite even more. I'll be sure to post my thoughts.

[Jim Sherma]

All right - I am back from Ballyneal and after a couple of days to kind of let the experience settle in I want to share my thoughts to the group.

General Thoughts on the Experience:

Wonderful experience that is easily up there with the other great golf trips/places I have been. We played four rounds across two days with wind that was anywhere from a nice solid 1-club wind to a solid 2+ wind on the first afternoon.

The drive in was something else as they had gotten over three inches of rain the day before. The dirt road had some large deep puddles and luckily the rental vans made it through them without stalling out or getting stuck.

The staff, lodging and food were all of a high level while still being very comfortable and inviting.

The caddies were all quite good and professional. The walk in the park factor was very-very high.

The course played reasonably firm and fast although the relatively wet year and recent rains certainly slowed it from where it could have been. There was no hint of brown in the maintained areas.

The greens lived up to expectations of what I envisioned of Doak greens. This was my first Doak course played. They had very large features but were not silly or over the top like some other modern greens I've seen. I had a very difficult time putting them generally from not being able to get the speed right. In retrospect I think the magnitude of the macro-movements overwhelmed my sense of slope once I was in the cupped area. I felt like I had the read more than not but could not get the speed with any consistency. Also, the speed was very inconsistent given down-hill/down-grain versus up-hill/into the grain and all of the combinations between. I heard that they are working on converting the greens to bent from fescue and this might be enhancing the putt to putt inconsistency although I am not sure of that. At no point did I feel that the greens were architecturally over the top or unfair and there was a great fun-factor through the round.

The gunch was up and missing the fairway was essentially a lost/ball unplayable unless you happened to stop in the strip of primary rough or be in the bottom of one of the defined bunkers, the vast majority of which allowed for no more than an explosion shot back up and into the fairway. The fairways were very generous but if you missed them there were no real chance of recoveries. I would assume that during drier years the native areas would allow for at least some chance at a recovery.

While playing I realized there was a significant asymmetry in how penal the left side of the driving zones were compared to the right side. Hole after hole slight misses left had the potential for disaster while many misses right turned out ok or at least not nearly as bad. There was much more hidden/unseen fairway on the right side of the course and the primary rough on the right tended to be wider 10-15 yards in many areas versus 3-5 yards on the left side. I am very interested if this asymmetry was intended architecturally.
   
Since I've played I've realized that I do not have the individual holes stuck in my mind like I have with many other courses even after only a single play. I do not find this a negative however since I've had the same experience with some links courses including TOC. I think the fairly significant amount of blindness (many of the tee shots reveal a very small amount of the fairway at best) from the tees is what creates this for me and certainly does not diminish the experience of playing the course.

The lack of tee markers and making sure to play many of the options was very cool and the changes really did make the holes play quite differently from round to round.

The course easily moves into the upper regions of my personal lists and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience it.

I'll include some thought on the individual holes over the next few days as time allows.

[Tim Bert]

Interesting about the lost ball / lack of recovery comment from off the fairway. If be interested to hear from a member or two if it is thicker than usual this season from all the rain you mentioned or just a different perspective. I have been out on 3 or 4 occasions and spend a lot of time off the fairway and find a high percentage of my balls. Sometimes it might take two shots to get back to the fairway but other than the random shot that lands in the middle of a yucca I have never found the recoveries to be too bad.

If it is that severe this season that is definitely a difference. Have you played a number of courses with that type of terrain and vegetation off the fairways for comparison?

[Tom_Doak]

While playing I realized there was a significant asymmetry in how penal the left side of the driving zones were compared to the right side. Hole after hole slight misses left had the potential for disaster while many misses right turned out ok or at least not nearly as bad. There was much more hidden/unseen fairway on the right side of the course and the primary rough on the right tended to be wider 10-15 yards in many areas versus 3-5 yards on the left side. I am very interested if this asymmetry was intended architecturally.

Jim:

That's the first time I have heard anyone make that observation.

While we do aim for "asymmetry" in general, I was not consciously favoring giving more room off the tee for left-to-right players.  It's possible I did this subconsciously, because of my own tendency to hit a fade, but I do not remember thinking about it directly when we were building the course ... as a whole, anyway.  Certainly, there were holes like 7 and 13 and 14 where we gave a bit more room on the right as we built them.

I will have to think whether I've done the same on other courses.  Interestingly, there are several holes at Ballyneal I think of as right-to-left tee shots [1, 6, 12, 16, 18], but even on those, there is plenty of room to the right and trouble on the left.

I'm sure the native roughs are thicker this year, it's been the wettest year in that part of the country since we built the course.

[Matthew Sander]

Tim,

My first visit was in June and all of the members I played with kept commenting on how uncommonly thick the native areas were at that time. I've heard it's been even wetter since and they've thickened up a bit more. I found it more than my fair share of times, but I didn't lose many balls. Recovery options from the junk were limited though - just get the ball back in play. When the fairway widths were taken into consideration it didn't seem overly penal.

[Brad Isaacs]

In general, the approaches are easier from left side. 1, 4, 6,  7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17 , 18 .  But if you miss your drive left.......... It gets hard quickly.. That seems to be a reasonable trade off.

[Jim Sherma]

Tim,

My first visit was in June and all of the members I played with kept commenting on how uncommonly thick the native areas were at that time. I've heard it's been even wetter since and they've thickened up a bit more. I found it more than my fair share of times, but I didn't lose many balls. Recovery options from the junk were limited though - just get the ball back in play. When the fairway widths were taken into consideration it didn't seem overly penal.

I personally did not lose a single ball during the four rounds although I did see some lost by my playing partners. The caddies were very good at finding the balls it was just that there was nothing to do with the balll once found. Even hacking back to the fairway was impossible way more often than not. There certainly was no chance for a more skilled player to differentiate himself with a recovery shot from the likely outcomes.

I attribute this to the weather and I think that this type of weather dependent variation is fine and not a statement about the underlying merits of the architecture. The course is not what I would call penal in general given the width that is available.

[Chris DeToro]

I found the native areas to be quite penal last summer as well when it was much dryer.  But I totally agree that, given the width in general, it's not overly penal at all

[John Cowden]

As for shots from the native, I think it's just a matter of luck, "the rub of the green".  I would say I'm about 50-50 with a decent recovery shot this season, and as with many recovery shots, they can be inspiring.  A decent lie, once found, is really not that rare. 

Thanks for the thread, Jim.   It sounds like "you got it".  It's not generally known but some members play the course year round.  A solo weekend in January, say at 50', takes the experience to a whole other level.   

[Jerry Kluger]

I have been to Ballyneal many times and never experienced it when the native areas were so thick that you could not play a recovery shot.  I do remember going to Dismal River just as the Nicklaus course was opening and they had not yet adjusted the sprinkler heads and the gunch was so thick that you could not find balls that missed the fairways so I would guess that the wet summer is what caused your experience at Ballyneal.  I would suggest that with a few words nearly every hole would be easily remembered.

[Jim Sherma]

There are many pictures of Ballyneal available through the search feature that my few pale in comparison to. Therefore, I'll limit my thoughts to words.

1: Played three of the four rounds from the left tee above the putting green. Much more intimidating tee shot due to the blindness compared to the right side under the bar. From the left tee there was so much fairway to the right that was unseen that it allowed for significant margin for error on the right side. The right tee is a much more straightforward tee shot visually.

The first day the pin was right by the back bunker on the left and this was a very cool spot. I missed the green once on the right and once on the left. The left miss hung up in a yucca plant above the lip of the back left bunker leaving a hack back into the bunker as the only option. The miss on the right was very difficult knowing all of the trouble if you run through the green to the left once the ball gets past the humps/movement.

2: Good long par-4. Played all four rounds into the wind. Front pin was very fast coming back across the ridge downwind. I found the back pin on the second day much more demanding. 

3: Awesome short par-3. The green is everything. I had the ball funnel to the saddle point between the two dominant ridges a third of the way back all four rounds. On the first day when the pin was there I made two routine pars from very make-able birdie putts. The second day saw the pin in the back right leaving me tough putts over a ridge. Much tougher shot to get back there in the cross wind. Really a good hole.

4: The view from the tee makes the hole. I can't imaging hitting that shot into either a straight on or quartering-into heavy wind. I am very glad that it was left as a driver and not used for a drop-shot par-3. Visually my first thought upon getting up to the tee box was that this was in a class with the tee view on Kingsbarnes' 12th. After the tee shot the rest of the hole didn't thrill me. Good par-5 all in all but it did not really offer me any real special stuff.

5: I liked the use of the front pin right over the pot the first day. The prospect of using the slopes to work the ball around the pot was fun. The back pit the second day was not as interesting in my opinion.

6: I really liked this hole a lot. This was another hole that I felt like the right side played much more forgiving than the left. There was something about this green and how it accepted shots that really did it for me. If I played the course a lot I think this would be a shot that I looked forward to in a good way. The right side tee left a much easier visual for the tee shot.

7: Wonderful, wonderful golf hole. We played it from a few of the tee areas and I found it absolutely compelling from all of them. Drove the front right of the green right by the bunker from the front tee box and got to play the banking to a middle right pin. One of my playing partners dropped a ball and used the backstop to chip over the bunker and bring the ball back to the pin from the same spot. One round I chipped back from the 4th fairway long left using the side board to hold it up in the top bowl. Hit one in the crossing bunker and made five after taking two to get out to a back pin. So much fun, really a special hole and the green works very well for something that extreme looking.

8: Absolutely loved this hole. Set up visually very well for me and I played it very well. All of the slopes on the fairway worked well for my drives and the way the slopes short of the green interact with the visual intimidation of the fronting bunker is great. Hit the green in two twice with a 5 and then a 6 iron, drawing it around the fronting bunker with the five and carrying over it with the 6. Also had two balls end up pin high down in the swale right of the green and chose to putt both of them. Did not play a back pin but those must be something else. 

9: I felt that this was a pretty straightforward hole for a good ball striker but could be very difficult for someone who wasn't. There really is no choice from the tee other than hitting something to get up to the top of the hill. Laying back and leaving yourself blind up and over the ridge looked like a no-where decision. This was another hole that appeared to allow more freedom to misses that went right than those to the left as long as you stayed short of the pinch-point. I liked the three-wood to the top of the hill option that for me kept it short of the fairway bunker that comes in from the right. Missing the green short right is bad as everything runs away from the green leaving an awkward chip up and over the knob.

I'll leave some thought on the back nine for another time.

[Scott Szabo]

Interesting about the lost ball / lack of recovery comment from off the fairway. If be interested to hear from a member or two if it is thicker than usual this season from all the rain you mentioned or just a different perspective. I have been out on 3 or 4 occasions and spend a lot of time off the fairway and find a high percentage of my balls. Sometimes it might take two shots to get back to the fairway but other than the random shot that lands in the middle of a yucca I have never found the recoveries to be too bad.

If it is that severe this season that is definitely a difference. Have you played a number of courses with that type of terrain and vegetation off the fairways for comparison?

The native off the fairway is much thicker than normal, probably due to the heavy rains. 

[Mike Hendren]

It's been several years since I played Ballyneal in the company of Adam Clayman.   I still have trouble remembering individuals holes, something I'm typically quite good at.  Perhaps this is a high compliment as the golf course is seamless from the first tee through the 18th green.  It's among a handful of courses I'd like to visit again.  Given what I've been fortunate to see in the interim, Ballyneal's stock has continued to climb in my mind's eye. 

Bogey

[Jim Sherma]

Now I will finish my thoughts on the back nine. This nine was really spectacular in my opinion. While the front was very good I just thought there were more standout holes on the back.

10: Good hole all in all. Challenging and clearing the right fairway bunkers really gives a huge boost to the drive versus getting stuck down in the depression on the left side of the fairway. The back left pin was very challenging to make recoveries to.

11: This is one of the standout holes in my opinion. We played it from both the left tee as well as from just off of 10's green. The different angles and the skyline nature of the green really did it for me.

12: Another hole that I thought was really special. The way the slopes of the green worked from different angles was something special. The second day the hole was cut left-back. From the right side of the fairway in the morning round the slopes worked to make the shot really gather nicely into the bowl with the backstop perpendicular to the line of play. From the left side of the fairway in the afternoon the slopes on the green were more across the line of play and even though the shot was less blind visually it did not set up as straightforward. The back right pin was used the first day and was a really neat feature in the bowl.

13: This is the third cracker in a row. Great movement in the fairway and the center-line bunkers work beautifully. The back-right pin position in the valley is something else.

14: I liked the green here but felt that the hole mandated a lay-up short of the centerline bunker. Challenging the bunkers and trying to slot the gap on the left was not worth the risk since it was likely to just leave you in the depression past the corner with a funky shot up to the green. Long left on the short grass is not a good miss at all.

12, 13 and 14 all are examples of holes with much more forgiving right side DZ areas compared to the left.

The run in from 15 on is a great stretch of golf and very challenging.

15: A stunning par 3 - I really liked the angle and length from all the way back on the right. We played all four of the defined teeing areas and the green worked very well from all of the distances.

16: Very solid hole that was fun to play. Knowing the severity of the front greenside bunker makes having to really think about being too aggressive. 

16 starts a run of three holes where the greens appeared to me to be somewhat more demanding as there was not an obvious gathering feature on the green sites to try to play off of.

17 and 18 are simply great demanding golf holes. These played into the wind both days and I would really like to experience the course in some different wind directions. I felt that 17's green was just brutally demanding given fairly slight misses while 18's green just baffled me with how much back to front slope it had when compounded with the wind.

Ballyneal is simply a very special place that I am very glad to have had the opportunity of playing.