Strong start or finish?

[Frank Kim]

Yes, Ed is right.  That is the question.  Of course it would be nice to have both.  But if you had to choose one...

[Jon Wiggett]

Sorry, I thought this was a discussion group where threads are started with an idea or question and the participants expand the original idea and develop it wherever it goes and not a question and answer test. Sorry, my mistake

How about if I am just starting the round then I prefer an easy start followed by a hard finish but if I am close to the end and have a good score going then it is the other round

Jon

[Frank Kim]

The Banff Spring course is a good example where the sequence of the holes do matter.  The original Stanley Thompson routing had a strong start and a strong finish starting and finishing near the Banff Springs hotel.  The old #1 grabs your attention right from the start and the course finished strongly heading toward the hotel next to the Bow river  in the original routing.   The current routing has those holes in the middle of the back nine.

[Pete Lavallee]

Generally speaking there is a reason the architect picked the starting and end points of his course. Jumping in the middle somewhere to start your round is never a good thing. I'm always a bit let down when the only chance to play a special course is in a shotgun and I'm not the lucky group on hole #1! Banff is a perfect example of screwing up a fabulous routing. I don't think the original opening tee shot was that difficult there and 2&3 eased you into the round. The finishing stretch was fantastic.

[Carl Rogers]

Beechtree, sadly NLE, was a course that had a deliberate (my opinion) soft landing, from a degree of difficulty perspective, on the last 3 holes to contrast the difficulty of holes 12-15.  It would also be reasonable to conclude that the first three holes offered an easy start. Beechtree was an interesting course in how it changed gears, holes 7 & 11 offered a respite in between holes that would give the golfer as much as she/he could handle.