What is the name of the course? Excited as well - this thread is paying off more than I ever thought it would thanks to lack of actual golf in our lives.
I haven't published it yet. Will complete the 11th and then will publish a test version so that anyone here can do a play through and give feedback. I have never really been in a hurry to finish it because it is so fun working on it and there is always more refinement than can be done.
One other thing that I find really interesting is how wild the course looked in the early days and how it became less so over time. It didn't actually look anything like what I think of as a CBM/ Raynor due to the fuzziness. By 1940, it looked more like what we're used to their courses looking like. You obviously see the same thing with Augusta, Pebble, Pine Valley, and most other courses too. But this was really a beast when it was constructed. It was long and brutally difficult. It was hard to find your ball in the sand, the long grass was punishing, and the sand was soft so that the ball would sit down in it. In the version that I've built, I've tried to tie it to the shape that it was in by the 1920s. That was the earliest point in time in which the good aerials started to be taken.
Here are a few images that I de-oldified to give a feel for it.
This was in a tournament on the 8th hole and he supposedly played this shot off of a piece of a shipwreck (had to have been staged though- looks like a pose and he is hitting parallel with the water)
On a windy day, even the best players were likely to have to execute the recovery blast from time to time. From what I've read, you were lucky to even get back to the fairway on these and there was really no hope of going for the green.
Not that it matters, but my best guess is that this is on the 6th hole, judging by the telephone poles that ran along the road. And it was a par 5, so this guy probably sliced his driver.
In case you can't read the caption: It's Gene Sarazen in the Metropolitan Open teeing off on the 11th.
Here is a passage from an American Golfer article in 1920 regarding the waste areas there:
"In addition to the water hazards, there is the loose sand of the fairway and the countless bents. These latter push their roots deep into the sand and are as tenacious as a bulldog in their holding power. when your ball nestles among them, it requires all your skill and a very tight grip of your niblick to enable you to get clear of them. They are however, a splendid form of hazard. These bents or rushes grow a few inches apart, and when your ball stops in the light colored sand, in which they flourish, it is a matter of considerable difficulty to locate the ball. An eagle eyed caddie will prove an asset of great value to you. it would be a strange innovation to paint the golf balls a bright orange color, but they would show up splendidly in the whitish sand."
And here is the counterpoint from a British perspective (J.S. Worthington). After he lauds it, he adds this:
"Really I have only one criticism and I will get it over at once-- I do think that the rough is in a good many places too thick. Not only is it tiresome to have to hunt for a ball but it is a little monotonous to play always niblick shots when you fin it. In England, where we are, I suppose, a softer run of golfers, we have generally a kind of purgatory for the moderately sinful player while the genuinely infernal regions are reserved for the outrageous hook or slice. Out of the purgatory a player who has skill and some fortune may be able to play a forcing mashie or iron shot and so lose something indeed but not a whole stroke. In Lido rough, an error of but a few feet, nay inches generally mean digging the ball out with a niblick and then my best can do no more. This is, I think, too severe for pleasure and perhaps for justice as well."