Thanks Ira.
Since we may have put an end to this exercise, I will go back and address a few of the questions / opinions that came up.
1st hole: It's partly that way because it was a cramped place to start. Some don't like a short par-4 opener, I do like them.
2nd hole: Hardly mentioned at all, and as Kyle Harris says, an underrated hole because it comes so early.
3rd hole: With water left and an unlimited amount of room to the right,
we preferred to give a lot of fairway with a small bunker right center, instead of less overall room and a bunker at the right edge. If anything it sounds like I placed the bunker too well for some folks
4th hole: The abrupt rise in front of the green was one of the most compelling features of the property. Bill Coore had a hole routed here [green was in a slightly different position, but it was up top], where I had originally put two parallel holes running east and west underneath the slope instead . . . we could have crammed in more holes on the main property that way, but
Bill and I agreed that it would be a shame not to use that feature as prominently as possible. In fact, that had a lot to do with how the routings wound up intertwined, as we felt both courses should get a taste of that slope [15 Red is the continuation of it], instead of one course getting all of it. If I were to build it today, though, I might make the green even simpler, instead of having that back tier in it.
One thing that didn't get mentioned much here is that often the best way to address somebody's concern about a feature of a golf hole is not to alter THAT feature, but to alter some other feature to soften the effect of the first one.5th hole: A couple of people mentioned the size of this green and I will happily cop to getting carried away here. Certainly it can play very differently from one day to the next, it's not just a small green with bunkers tight around it. Bill Coore said something near the end of construction that
"it could be your 14th at Bandon Trails" in terms of controversy, which really surprised me, but it hasn't been that, thankfully. In fact it hasn't attracted as much attention as I expected, instead #7 was Matt Ginella's pet peeve.
6th hole: Now this is a truly big green, the very first one we let Mike McCartin design and shape on his own. Someone said they just always play left here and if the flag is on the right half of the green that's a good idea, but the temptation to have a whack at the green is very strong -- even I have done it!
We could have made the green just the right half, too, but then fewer people would get to say they drove it -- and a lot fewer people would complain about having three-putted it [or four-putted].
7th hole: I explained its origin story on a concurrent thread, will have to paste a link here.
8th hole: Very little comment. One of my rare split fairway holes. This hole was also on one of Bill Coore's original plans, though I don't remember if the green site was the same.
9th through 11th: These three holes were on ground Bill had not used in any of his plans, included by me [along with 10-13 on the Red course] in order to stretch the plan to 36 holes.
[Each routing had to use one of those lesser stretches, by design.] The slopes were big and broad with no abrupt features as with the rest of the site; the trees also encroached all the way across #10 to the left side of #9. Usually when I am confronted by a portion of the site with fewer features, I use it to add length to the course, so 9 and 11 are pretty hard. [Bill did the same on 10-13 Red, to some of the same criticism.] I expected the 11th to be particularly polarizing and it has not disappointed.
12th: Surprised there was not more complaint about the green, but perhaps whoever complained before remembers that I said here a year or two ago that the big ridge through this green was natural and we just softened it as little as we could get away with.
13th: As I've explained, this hole was manufactured, although I did not mention that part of the reason for that was to try and avoid having anyone just blow driver right into 13 Red, which would be very dangerous. That's why the green is long and skinny, which made me think of imitating the 6th at Pacific Dunes in other respects. We did succeed in making the right side difficult enough that I haven't heard of that being a problem.
14th: Always thought this was the weakest hole on the course, but lots of people like it. I guess they like water holes more than I do. Was shocked by whomever said they loved this hole and did not like 17.
15th: The fairway contours and green here are pretty much exactly what they were when we started . . .
both Bill and I thought this was one of the most natural par-4's on property. Cutting away some of the left side to create fill for #14 detracted from its visual appeal, and now it just gets lost in the shuffle.
16th: I tried to make this a "ladies' par 4" from 230 yards, which is one reason it has those bunkers well short of the green, but that did not go over well and we had to build another tee for it. Was pleased to hear mostly favorable comments about it, since long par-3 holes are generally not well liked.
17th: Asked and answered. Nobody asked about the green, though -- I really love this green, which is Eric Iverson's work. The little hollow front and left was not there to start with.
18th: A difficult hole to get right, because if you try to get everyone to the crest of the landing area, it's still very difficult for most players, but driving over the hill and down is quite uncomfortable for first-time visitors.* In that respect, I probably should have made the hole shorter, but I had fallen in love with this green site, which is very close to the way we found it. Kyle Harris mentioned offline that he is always afraid of blocking his approach up onto the tee of #7 Red, and the proximity of the two holes was indeed a concern early on, because that's one of Bill's best holes and I did not want to do anything to mess it up! Ultimately, though, fear of going right is what brings the slope at the left of the green into play for more people. You'd be better off missing short right in one of those front bunkers, than missing the green left, but nobody sees that until they have played it a bunch.
* also, on 18, I was very concerned that we were going to be staring at an awkward half-cut-off view of the clubhouse from 18 tee, depending on what the architect chose to do there.
So, I deliberately aimed the tee shot a bit to the left of it, so the second shot would play down and to the right of it, instead of straight at the building. But my concern about it led me to get to know the architect for the clubhouse, Albert Alfonso, who became a friend, and he did build the clubhouse four or five feet lower than originally planned in order to address my concerns. And that interaction is what prompted me to get more involved with the clubhouse architect for Tara Iti, where I think the marriage of the building to the golf course is one of the big reasons everyone loves that golf course so much.
In general, which almost nobody talked about:
Width: Others have observed in the past that the Red course is more difficult because it takes on the outer edges of the property, and there is a lot of lost-ball bush in play on the perimeter, whereas the Blue gets little of that. I think that's true, but also we went extra-wide on the Blue course to keep the Cogan grass out of play . . . when in doubt, I'd make the fairway wider, and then we did a lot of clean-up around the margins when we were finished, as well. The discussion of the 3rd fairway is a good example of that: going with a right-center bunker and fairway to the right of it gives the slicer much more room; if you built a normal fairway with a bunker on the right edge, it would be stupid to build it that wide. There were similar decisions on holes 2, 8, 9-11, and 14-15.
Greens contouring: When the course opened, I heard from a million people that the greens were too severe, including Ron Whitten and Mike Keiser [who seemed to think I should always build flat greens, and not just for him, even though Rich Mack had no problem with the greens on the Blue]. When the Black course opened, people's opinion of the greens on the Blue suddenly softened, and Mike Keiser stopped talking to Gil about new projects and started talking to me again.
So, nobody loves the Black course more than I do. As for greens contouring, I am used to complaints by now, but the rationale was the same as for the Black: when you build a hugely wide course where it's hard to lose a ball, there ought to be more challenge around the greens on balance.
Routing:
For the record, the holes on the Blue course that were part of one or another of Bill Coore's original 18-hole routings were the 1st tee [but a different hole from there], the stretch of the 3rd - 4th - 5th [but he didn't have the 5th green on the edge of the bluff], the 8th, and the 15th. I think he had a hole where #1 went out toward 17 Blue and #2 came back toward Blue 18th green, to hook into #7 Red as the third hole, but the 2nd hole was substantially different than Blue 18; my memory is fuzzy on those details now.
When we started to stretch the routing to 36 holes, the Red course incorporated some holes I had routed at the far east end [10-13, though Bill made 12 & 13 from what I had as three holes] -- and then when we were still short of holes, Bill went and found holes 2-4 on the Red to get us up to 36. Prior to that we were thinking of going across to use the land that is now holes 12-16 on the Black course, but that would have entailed at least a couple of long holes across unappealing ground in between the courses, and we were grinding for a way to avoid those.
It's likely that in putting two courses on the site, we sacrificed having one course that was even better. But Mosaic's goal from day one was to build two great courses, and we both felt that the best solution for that was to squeeze them both into the site we used. And besides, neither one of us wanted to get stuck with using an alternative site, instead.
I remember Rich Mack trying to get me to waver on that, asking if I thought I could take one of the other sites and make as good a course as Bill would make on the first site, and my response was "it could be good, but it could not be as good unless Bill screws up, which he is not going to do." So, kudos to Gil Hanse for building a course over there that anyone thinks is as good as the first two, because I didn't think he could.[/color]