Weirdest feature on a golf course?

[Thomas Dai]

Gun emplacements, eg Royal Jersey.


Tommy,
There are also some spiked sea rushes across the river at Saunton. Holes 9, 10, 11, 12 on the East have some although nothing like the amount as RND/Westward Ho!


Atb

[Mark McKeever]

Morefar has statues placed in some of the bunkers. 

[Jim Nugent]

Manufacturers in Philly

Tommy, at the Ike course at Industry Hills you take a similar lift after you finish the ninth hole, to get back up to the clubhouse and back nine. 

Hitting your drive over a hotel, like you do on TOC's Road Hole, would jump out at any other course.  So would rebounding your chip shot off a wall along the green, 180 degrees opposite to the direction you're standing.   

[Ken Moum]

Weirdest?


Some of these aren't all that weird.


But in South Dakota I have played four golf courses where there's an "in-the-air" out of bounds.


IOW, regardless of where your ball lands, if it flys on the wrong side of a flagpole, it's OB.  In all four cases it's designed to prevent someone cutting off a dogleg.


On two cases it's just about making the hole longer.  In one, the shortest route to the green is over the top of the previous green and backwards up the fairway.  In the fourth, the hole doglegs around a school playground and it's aimed at child safety.


Then, of course, there's Medicine Creek GC in Presho, where they've solved the problem of cart paths being visible and in play by putting them in the middle of the fairway.


K

[Jon Wiggett]

Richmond Golf Club used to have a copse of trees completely obscuring the green on their final hole par 3. With only the yardage and a red disc nailed to one of the trees as the player's only guide the clubhouse which was literally feet of the back edge of the green was frequently hit.


Another that comes to mind is a series 3 squarish humps running across the sixteenth fairway of Howley Hall Golf Club are the vaulted cellars of the club's namesake which remains still stand in the rough to the left of the excellent short par four seventeenth. Having been inside them once I was always a little how few members were aware they were walking over a 12 foot void.


Jon

[Garland Bayley]

How about a dynamite bunker in the middle of the fairway? The Home Course, which was used for medal play in the US Am in 2010 used to be known as The DuPont Dynamite Works Golf Course has a dynamite bunker buried in the middle of the fairway on perhaps 13. It has an unburied one next to 9 fairway I believe. A certain precocious Seattle teenager hit his tee shot into it when the GCA group visited.

PS A dynamite bunker is a cement structure for storing dynamite, not a really great bunker.

[Dave McCollum]

Drop shot holes are generally weird the first time played, particularly when it’s a big drop.  We have one at a neighboring course.  A par 3, one literally tees off a cliff to cape green surrounded on three sides by water/wetlands (depending on the height of the river).  Very exposed to the wind, the card says 200 yards, but often plays like 145-160.

For many years I played in a tournament.  The format was called “Ship, Captain, Crew” around here, but is often known as “Wolf.”  Played in 6-somes with the stakes $2/man per hole if the Captain or Wolf takes 2 partners, $4/man if he takes 1, and $6/man if he “wolfs” and takes everyone on before anyone plays.  Full carryovers, so the stakes can build dramatically.  One time when the wind was howling we got to this hole when I was the Captain with a healthy amount of carryovers.  I hit yet never saw the ball or where it went.  I turned to my playing partners, said I didn’t see it, and asked where it went.  I got five completely different answers.  Got to love this game.   I believe this is the tournament when I acquired the nickname “added money.”

[Thomas Dai]

Iron (bronze?) age hill fort features in play at the likes of Painswick, Minchinhampton Old and Cleeve Hill.


The deep sided croc pit on the Lost City course at Sun City.


Atb

[Tommy Williamsen]

Iron (bronze?) age hill fort features in play at the likes of Painswick, Minchinhampton Old and Cleeve Hill.


The deep sided croc pit on the Lost City course at Sun City.


Atb

Leopard Creek has a few exotic creatures as well. Most of them are off the course, hopefully.

[Brad Tufts]

The ski ramp (NLE) that once ran down the middle of the 18th fairway on the Dartmouth College course.


Another: The Stationmaster's Garden.


Bob

The ski jump at Hanover CC actually was between today's 14th and 15th holes...there's a plaque that talks about it in the right rough after you hit your tee ball on 15.  NLE c. 1980s I think.

[Keith Durrant]

Martello Towers on the 15th at Royal Guernsey:

[V_Halyard]

The ski ramp (NLE) that once ran down the middle of the 18th fairway on the Dartmouth College course.

Another: The Stationmaster's Garden.

Bob

The ski jump at Hanover CC actually was between today's 14th and 15th holes...there's a plaque that talks about it in the right rough after you hit your tee ball on 15.  NLE c. 1980s I think.

Yes, the ski jump was past what was known as the old 9th Hole. It's stairway was used for cardio and hypervintilation punishment by a number of Dartmouth sports teams. (Ski,CC,Soccer etc)

[V_Halyard]

I recall attempting to tee off and get through a set of open barn doors of a barn at Stone Ridge in Minnesota.

[Joe_Tucholski]

Playing a number of military courses I've experienced features that others probably consider pretty weird.


At Andrews AFB one of the holes is close to the flight line and there is an air defense site setup just left and OB of the hole.  You'll regularly have an audience with the military member on duty staring you down.  Just before I left in 2009 they roped off all but the tee and green, stopped mowing and posted a sign indicating the area was OB due to danger cause my potential missile fire.


Here's a picture from a course in Korea (not my photo)


You can see the razor wire in place preparing for the potential invasion.  Also a turret position near the 800+ year old giant ginko tree.


The course also has manned and usable weapons positioned elsewhere on the course.

[V. Kmetz]

As the conversation is far-ranging I'll add these tidbits -


Brae Burn CC - (NY) - Brae Burn was Frank Duane's first solo design coming out of the RTJ shop...the property he was given was nearly bisected by an abandoned rail line, which had various remaining features...stone tressels, steel bridge works and raised rail beds.  A good portion of these remnants were"built-in" to playing features - in the water-filled stone trestle that concerns shots on #15 and #17 and most prominently in the creation of the fifth tee, a J-shaped snake with a width of nearly 100 yards built directly atop a northern section of rail bed before it exits the property. Though it;s been broken into smaller sections by contemporary maintenance practices, in its original presentation, it had to be the widest tee in all of golf...like Guinness Book stuff.



Newtown CC (CT) - classically awkward local nine-holer which has that "Flight OB" pole that Ken M. mentioned between the right sides of its 9th and 2nd fairway.


Ardsley CC (NY) - like Tom W, posted on Manufacturers, Ardsley had a mining cart-style transport between the 18th green and the clubhouse. I can't remember if any vestiges of it remain, but the 18th hole/green site was shortened and brought closer in elevation to the clubhouse some time ago...making use of the transport obsolete.


Rockrimmon CC (CT)- from 1949 - 2003, Rockrimmon had an elevator "tram" to ferry players from the 9th green to the 10th...once a part of Rockrimmon's logo, it had also been advanced as the world's (nation's) shortest interstate railroad. However that is a myth as the CT/NY state line was still some 40 yards away from any intersection with the tram-railroad. It was originally installed and then maintained by Otis Elevator for many years...but when it was having a big repair in summer 03, it came off the brake when the cable itself was being repaired, flew down the 80 yards of track...hit the up-sloped endrails and exploded in a shower of plank splinters and bent iron frame parts, tumbling almost another 50 yards to the water's edge in front of the 9th green...


In the modern administrative perspective, it was too costly to repair or re-insure and so was grassed over by the end of 03. It's removal after failing to restore it was controversial...to the extent that an expensive monument plaque was budgeted to mollify the opposition and mark the tram's little history, but when purchased and installed was removed after one weekend for it inflamed debate about why the tram had to go at all... Like an $8000 thing vaporized in contentious politics.


A last tidbit is that Rockrimmon is originally an RTJ 1949 design (tram and all), whose 18 hole plan was, however, executed and altered by Orrin Smith fou years later . RTJ's plan was to have not the one, but TWO trams...the other was to be between two uphll par 3's (roughly, the current 7th and the 17th) but the idea abrogated when Smith changed the RTJ plan.


cheers   vk

[Nigel Islam]

Marion Golf Club in Massachusetts has rock walls surrounding a couple par 3 holes. A wild course that I thouroughly enjoyed.

[Rich Goodale]

A bit OT, but last week I played a RTJ track in Spain called Los Naranjos.  If you rented a cart, the GPS was programmed to disable the cart if you ventured into  certain sensitive areas.  OK so far, but given that none of these sensitive areas were signed or marked out, you could be driving up the middle of the fairway when the cart was disabled.  In all such cases you had 15 seconds to get out of the danger zone, only by reversing the cart and pulling up the accelerator by you hand.  If you couldn't master that procedure in the 15 seconds you were f***ed and had to call into the pro shop for a re-boot.  It took us 25 minutes to "play" one of the most "sensitive" holes.....

[Tom_Doak]

A bit OT, but last week I played a RTJ track in Spain called Los Naranjos.  If you rented a cart, the GPS was programmed to disable the cart if you ventured into  certain sensitive areas. 

Those are pretty common now.  They are a real pain in the ass when you are jumping around a course in Australia or the Carolinas late in the day, trying to take photos or come up with a new routing ... so I have learned how to turn off the GPS on most models.

[Tom_Doak]

Manufacturers in Philly

I am actually trying to figure out if we need something similar to this to get DOWN a hill on a new course we're designing in California.  It's a very steep transition from tee to fairway.