Apache Stronghold - An Opinionated Review

[Tim_Weiman]

Rich Goodale:

I'm disappointed you joined the crowd fueling the golf technology arms race. It really shouldn't be that hard for people to understand that when it comes to length, relative - not absolute - length is what counts.

You are being misled by Titleist and the rest of the crowd spreading this foolish worship of absolute length.

Ninety plus percent of the golfers don't need more than 6,500 yards. If we could just get professional quality golfers to start using appropriate technology, they wouldn't need much more.

For an interesting perspective, you should check out the comments of Peter Thomson - a man who knew a thing or two about championship golf - in Tom Ramsey's "Great Australian Golf Holes".

It reads like an essay on what's wrong with the golf technology arms race and the foolish emphasis on absolute length. If Peter Thomson can get it, surely we should be able to as well.

[David Kelly]

I started at 9 am(that's the first allowable tee time!) and finished at 4 pm.

A 7 hour round!!!  WTF?

[Thomas_Brown]

DavidKelly - 9 am - 4 pm - 36 holes.

I'm actually against the 8000 yard course.
I'm in favor of reeling in the ball to where Kuehne hits it 290.
But, I don't think that's going to happen.

Dan_Belden - Pine Valley and others played the same way in 1960 and 2003?  I don't think I could have gotten around many short courses w/ just a 2i & 3w then.  Is Pebble Beach #18 a 2 shot hole or a 3 shot hole?  By denying that length makes a difference, I think it insults golf course arch. by saying that only the greenside hazards and undulations matter.  Drives and quality of approach shots are immaterial?

Tom

[Dan_Belden]

Thomas I think you are missing my point.  Certainly length matters, but I disagree that AS needs more length.  From reading your review of AS it seems that you  were  mainly concerend with adding more length.  Most of the faults you found with the course were concerned with length, and making the course more severe.   I came away from the several times I have played AS, not with a concern about the length, but about some of the shots Tom Doak asks you to play.  
 Length is always an advantage, but I feel that the last thing AS needs is more length.   That is where I disagree with you, and feel that you have negelcted the architecture that is present there. I think it was very telling that in your review of AS, you never mention the greens.  They are certainly one of the better sets of greens that you will find most anywhere.
  Tim:  How far do you think we need to back the ball up for the tour?  
 

[Tom_Doak]

Thomas:

I'm not trying to pick on you.  It just seemed that with the distances you were using as a standard, most older golf courses wouldn't stack up either.  You'd never hit anything but a wedge into the par fours at Pine Valley; but I wanted to see if you still thought it was a good course, so I could tell who I was dealing with.

Those ravines at Apache occasionally have a lot of water going down them ... the 12th once had a great deep natural bunker in front, but it was washed away, and is a shadow of what it was.  I probably could have chosen to get closer to the wash with the second green, or at least made the green smaller, so when the flag was on the left you couldn't just bail 30 feet to the right of it and two-putt.  As for the 15th, it might have been interesting with the green shorter as you describe, but that ravine in back is way too active to push it back that way.  (Same with putting #17 green close to the cliff edge at the front.)

Interestingly, the back tee on #3 was built before I extended the green so far to the left.  I wanted to tear out the tee because I thought the hole was way too long for the shot value, but it was cheaper to irrigate it than to restore the desert.

You may also be surprised to know that we thought more about the long hitter at Apache Stronghold than at any other course we'd done to that time.  Kye Goalby, who once played at Wake Forest, did a share of the shaping there, and he was always asking me about what the long hitters would do because he knew there were guys a lot longer than him [which was frightening enough to me at that time].  Kye wondered if guys might not try to cut straight across the washes blind toward the greens on #2 or #7, for instance, and I remember I kept telling him the same thing -- I hoped they tried, because it was the lowest-percentage shot I could imagine!

All that said, it is a daily fee / resort golf course and not really intended as a venue for the Tour qualifying school.

[ForkaB]

tonyt

The reason that TOC can get away with it is that NOBODY gets to play the tips unless it is in the Open, or some other elite competition.  Even the R&A play their medals from "medal" tees which are only 6600 yards or so.  Can you imagine what would happen if in daily play people were allowed to play the Open tees?  It would be carnage like the Homecoming Day parade in Animal House,

Tim

Touche!  You got me sussed!  I'm a sucker for any product or service hawked by any of the Pythons and I just LOVE John Cleese as Ian McAlister, GCA!  Before I fell for the Titelist marketing hype I used to be a pretty rational observer of the GCA scene.  Now, however, I'm just a completely biased shill for Wally Uhlien--a shell of my former self.

All that being said, I am a happy man.  I sleep with my ProV1x's (it keeps them warm and bonds them to my pheromones) and we have a lovely life together.  Even when I thin one of the many approach wedges that I now hit, they take the punishment with a stiff upper lip--none of those goofily evil smiles that my Balatas used to give me!

Pray for me, if you are so inclined.

[A_Clay_Man]

Rihc- I just have one question about your ProV's. Have you even gone through a dozen, yet?

[ForkaB]

Adam

I've played about 100 rounds with various sorts of ProV's and have lost only one ball--that on a 360 yard "horizon" green that I airmailed by forgetting to feather my brassie.  I've found about 25 others while searching for my various partners' balls, so I'm up 2 dozen so far.

Rihc

Oh, yeah, I also believe your 14 handicap.........

[Norbert P]

Drives and quality of approach shots are immaterial?

Tom

Tom, could you please elaborate on what you mean by this?  
 Are you speaking generally?

Why do you play with a driver off the tee every time if you want to play long irons to the par 4 greens?  

Thanks, Slag
 

[Thomas_Brown]

Bandoon - I'm a bit suspicious of your angle here.
I'm worried this thread might turn into the Darren_Kilfara anger management thread until I cry "Uncle"!  

To elaborate:
  "Drives and quality of approach shots are immaterial" in the context of unlimited distance off of the tee.

To elaborate further:
  Golf course architects use fairway bunkers, creeks, ponds, even unsanctioned GCA trees which they use to impede a player's drive into risk/reward.  If Rich Goodale's ProV1x is carrying all of those hazards, then golf course architecture is reduced to greenside features(bunkers, undulations, lakes, ...).  I like greenside features, but I also like tee shots.

Why not skip hitting driver off of the tee?
I did that at TOC when I first played it 1990.
I just brought a wedge and putter.
If you belly the wedge off the tee, you can get quite a bit of distance.  However, the 17th road hole tee shot really doesn't allow for the ground game off the tee.  I asked my caddie, and he said God(the TOC architect) was foreshadowing the demise of the American aerial game.
This epiphany has reduced me to bombing my 975J & ProV1x off of the tee here in the States.  I think I've gained 20-25 yards since 1990 despite losing some of my game due to lack of practice.

I've been known to indulge in money games on the course. What fun would it be w/o trying to outdrive your adversaries?

Look at the Winged Foot thread yesterday.
Sadly, that's wasn't my decision.

Tom

[Norbert P]

"Drives and quality of approach shots are immaterial" in the context of unlimited distance off of the tee."  Thomas Brown

Thomas, I wasn't setting you up for a haymaker.  I just didn't understand what you meant with statement.  Thanks for the clarification but does this mean that the approach just turns into a yardage calculation for the aerial game and not an invitation to dance the land?  

  I don't have a drive that your granny would want but I still theorize on the best approach and whether a long drive really helps.  My shotgun drive forces me to strategize for "playable" second shot, not just where from but "IF" I'll have one.  Thus, my 4 iron gets some fresh clay pasted to its face regularly.  

  I guess my question is, if you find the drive landing areas immaterial, then why not play another club to make it more interesting?  Maybe it's time to throw away the scorecard for the sake of the land.   Maybe even play with a Dunlop DDH 110 compression ball that has knuckleball spin and bounds along like blind rabbit to unknown reaches of the nethergreens.