Why is Pine Valley?

[Mark_Fine]

Almost universally considered the best designed golf course in the world?  With all these ranking discussions going on, I figured if we all can’t agree on this, how could we ever come up with a credible list that is any better than those published today.


So why is PV that good?  It is as penal a golf course as it gets and it is an absolute fact that most golfers would rarely if ever post an unadjusted gross score for 18 holes if they played there.  Most would be putting at least one or two double digit scores on their card and holding up play forcing caddies to look for golf balls (most who played it know the caddies don’t even want to bother looking most of the time). 

[Colin Sheehan]

It has significant terrain and deep reserves of sandy soils with a very attractive pine barren scrub heathy texture that is atypical of American golf.
The routing takes you on a journey.
The classical era Colt-ish greens and bunkering are elegant while being a very SPICY challenge.
And the bunkers have more variety in size and shape that just about anywhere in the US. 
No two holes are remotely the same. The water holes are a great change of pace at the perfect time. 
It breaks rules with things like a forced carries and excessively difficult bunkers. 
The double greens on 8 and 9 are a fun twist.
It isn't too long from the regular tees and there are plenty of short/short-ish holes.
It doesn't suffer fools gladly; refreshing that it isn't trying to patronize double-digit handicap retail golfers...plus who cares in a match play environment.
It's a relatively easy walk for the site (there is always some adrenaline), the caddies are always additive and contribute to a pace of play in four hours or less! The club manages to pull off a busy tee sheet without it feeling crowded. 
Staff are terrific and vibe in old clubhouse is relaxed with great old memorabilia on display.
It is a historic exclusive club & course and you know it prior to arrival and it is only reinforced while on property...you feel like you are very privileged to be playing in such a magnificent private golf preserve.
It isn't seaside so I put it behind a select few others in the USA but overall it is an incredible experience and experience drives rankings.

[MCirba]

When folks ask me the best course in the US, I unhesitatingly answer "Pine Valley".

That's usually followed with a "why", much like your Muccian thread title, Mark.   

I then say, because it as 17 great holes and 1 really good hole and folks differ on which 1 is the really good hole.

That's an oversimplification, but it's true.   The scary part is that with a better tree management program and less zen-garden maintenance of the "natural" areas it would be even better.

But, I understand your question.   The only things I'd contest is that there is plenty of room off the tee and I can't recall a caddie ever losing one of my balls that wasn't under water...in fact they are scarily adept at finding your ball and then you have to try to play it from some really "unique" positions.   

My answer to your question is that the stark, visual, visceral challenge of each and every hole is such that there is almost nothing as satisfying as performing well under such intense psychological and even emotional pressure.   And when you don't, you instantly know why it's so gratifying when you do.

[SB]

Are we going back to partial titles again?   

[Tim_Weiman]

Almost universally considered the best designed golf course in the world?  With all these ranking discussions going on, I figured if we all can’t agree on this, how could we ever come up with a credible list that is any better than those published today.


So why is PV that good?  It is as penal a golf course as it gets and it is an absolute fact that most golfers would rarely if ever post an unadjusted gross score for 18 holes if they played there.  Most would be putting at least one or two double digit scores on their card and holding up play forcing caddies to look for golf balls (most who played it know the caddies don’t even want to bother looking most of the time).

Mark,


It is a good question. I don’t think I can give a great answer other than to say there are only two courses I might prefer playing day to day: Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne.


Tim

[Tommy Williamsen]

Almost every hole is a candidate for a list of the best 18 holes in the US. You can tell that every hole was crafted by an artistic and architectural genius or geniuses. I have played it maybe a dozen times, never once do I leave a hole and think, "They should have done this or that differently."




I have double-digit friends who have played it, and like you said, it kicked their butt. If you are straight off the tee, it is playable. Stray off the tee or be stupid, and you will have a long day.

[Colin Sheehan]

Good comments, Mike.
I should have added: It is as good a reminder as any course of Macdonald's passage that there is no eternal justice to this game! Take the bitter with the sweet, don't cry and move on. The other guy has to deal with the same thing. It's just one hole.

[MCirba]

Thanks, Colin.


The Card & Pencil set must hate Pine Valley deep down, I suspect.


One of my most enduring memories was standing on the 3rd tee at one-under.   One tugged 6-iron later (I'm left-handed) and I walked to the 4th tee at two-over without incurring any penalties.   

[Ronald Montesano]

No idea...never been.

[mike_malone]

Architectural overload on every shot

[Tim Martin]

No idea...never been.

Then why clutter the thread with meaningless posts?

[Michael Felton]

Almost every hole is a candidate for a list of the best 18 holes in the US. You can tell that every hole was crafted by an artistic and architectural genius or geniuses. I have played it maybe a dozen times, never once do I leave a hole and think, "They should have done this or that differently."




I have double-digit friends who have played it, and like you said, it kicked their butt. If you are straight off the tee, it is playable. Stray off the tee or be stupid, and you will have a long day.

Well said. For me, it's got the hardest par 3 I have played (5), the hardest par 4 I've played (13) and probably the hardest par 5 I've played (15) and yet it still seems playable to me. There's also 8, which is only a hair over 300 yards and yet you can quite easily make 10 on it, but you can also make 3 (fairly easily if you hit the right tier on the green). It all fits together so well too. It's hard, but for better reasons than just it's narrow. It's pretty wide open on many of the holes. It's also the only course I've ever played where if you took any hole off of it and put it on virtually any other golf course, it would be a standout hole.


You also sometimes play courses and it's like - if I hit good tee shots, then this course is very playable - others it's more of an approach shot course and some you have to have your short game on point. Pine Valley is everything. You can't score well because one part of your game is good that day. You better bring your whole bag.


I suspect some of it is also that you hear stories about it being so difficult before you go that you're expecting it. It's brutally hard, but it doesn't feel oppressive while you're playing it. I never felt constricted - some courses I feel like there's no way I can hit the fairway. At Pine Valley it was more like I should hit this fairway if I hit a decent shot. It's very fair in that respect. You can't get away with anything, but you also never wind up in a bad spot after hitting a good shot. It's laid out in front of you.


Archie's thread about ranking the holes there was an interesting thought exercise. I went through every hole and in my head I was thinking "well that's clearly in the top half of holes" about almost all of them. I had to rejig my thought processes to push some of them down to bottom half and those holes are still some of the best I've played anywhere.

[Scott Warren]

So why is PV that good?  It is as penal a golf course as it gets

I strongly disagree. Pine Valley is an incredibly severe golf course, but it is only occasionally penal in a penal/strategic/heroic sense.

In fact, it might balance usage of those three styles better than any other course I know and that’s likely one of the many reasons it has been the consensus World #1 for decades.

[Thomas Dai]

Never played it and doubtful I’m ever likely to but given its reputation for severity if playing from the front tees what kind of minimum carry to reach the fairways with a Driver would be needed? Also, what would be the minimum distance needed to carry any large areas of fairway or 2nd/3rd etc shot hazards? Just curious.
Atb

[Keith Phillips]

So why is PV that good?  It is as penal a golf course as it gets

I strongly disagree. Pine Valley is an incredibly severe golf course, but it is only occasionally penal in a penal/strategic/heroic sense.

I'm with Scott here. I've only played PV twice, but both times was surprised how playable the course was.  For me 'penal' equates with lost balls and penalty strokes.  At Pine Valley, I found the landing areas surprisingly generous, and recovery shots playable from the woods. The challenge was unrelenting, but I don't think I made an X in either round, something I do routinely at my home courses!

[Jim_Coleman]

   Because it’s beautiful. “Do you lads play this hole or just photograph it?”

[mike_malone]

I tend to hate penal courses with water parallel and OB or forced carries over junk. I love Pine Valley. I play the senior tees now and have no trouble with carries except 18.

[Mark_Fine]

Well written posts by all.  Some great thoughts and too many for me to respond to each but here are a few comments/ideas to ponder. 


If you play Pine Valley enough you will realize most but not all of the tee shots are not overly difficult (if you are a decent player and aren’t intimidated by the forced carries) as the landing areas are generous.  However, the approach shots are very demanding and PV might be the hardest second shot course in the game. 


When I first played there, the course had a lot more trees and a lot more undergrowth.  If you missed a fairway, you generally lost your ball and if you were lucky to find it, it wasn’t playable.  Over the years, many trees have been removed and much of the clutter cleared out.  There is now sometimes a chance of a recovery shot but they are still very demanding if you are lucky to have one.  I have now played the course a few dozen times and watched scratch golfers get humbled, myself included, and higher handicappers state they were elated for the privilege to experience the course but thankful they don’t have to play it every day as it was just way too difficult for them. I have always felt anyone who plays that course without an X on their card (especially if they are a double digit handicapper) has had an incredible round (and a damn good caddie who didn’t mind looking for golf balls in the scrub/woods)!


As I believe Colin stated, PV breaks some design rules as well like all the forced carries.  Wasn’t it Mackenzie who said “any good hole should be able to be played with a putter”. Good luck with that on most every hole at PV.  I think most of us think Mackenzie knew what he was talking about so how could you give PV a free pass and claim it is the paramount of design?


Furthermore, I think it was Davis Love who once said he loves PV but it really doesn’t require a Driver on any hole?  How can a course that doesn’t test a Driver for the top players be the best in the world?


So now you have a course that is irons off all the tees for most pros and is absolutely brutal for higher handicappers and yet it is considered #1!


Also match play vs medal play was brought up.  Without question, PV is an exceptional course for match play.  But for medal play?  So how important is one vs the other?


And one more point to ponder, the course doesn’t even have rakes and there are foot prints in many of the bunkers! What kind of conditioning is that!


If nothing else, maybe this thread points out that even the consensus best course in the world has a number of controversial aspects that make course rating a very subjective and personal exercise.  We all will never agree on the “right” criteria and what is most important for a golf course to be great but that is just fine.  Every list has their own methodology for how they arrived at their conclusions just like those who posted here for PV.  They are all just lists.  Let’s embrace them and talk about them but not bash them. 


By the way PV is a 10 

[Keith Phillips]

Agree about the demanding approach shots, the 'thinned out' wooded areas, and the great caddies.  When I hit a wayward shot that I feared was lost, my caddie would march right to the location of the ball and I was able to punch out and scramble for bogey or double (okay by me!).  Not sure 'irons off all the tees for most pros' matters much unless PV were to host a major, which doesn't seem likely.  Could be an issue if the Walker Cup returned, as the young guys are LONG.

[Mark_Fine]

Keith,
If you played there enough, you know the course had gotten overgrown and the loss of sand was dramatic compared to early on.  They have done a good job thinning out the growth over the past ten years and exposing more of the sand.  It definitely helped the playability because there was often no chance of even pitching out until this work had been done. I remember missing right or left on #2 and the caddie just handing me another ball.  He would say, what are you going to do if you happen to find it?  You will be walking back to the tee if you are playing by the rules. 


The beauty of golf is there are so many different playing fields that can be totally different.  That is what makes rating courses so hard.  There is no perfect ideal golf course design and PV (being the best in the world in the eyes of many) is such an excellent example.  How is it even remotely possible to determine the exact order of the best golf courses in the world?  You can’t. 

[Adam_Messix]

There are so many reasons why Pine Valley is considered my many to be the best course in the World:


1.    Variety in the par 4s.  The short par 4s are probably the best anywhere but holes like 11 could be argued as the best holes of it's distance anywhere.


2.  The two par 5s oppose each other.   7 gets easier with each progressive shot.   The tee shot is incredibly tough, the second shot is  bit less difficult despite the long carry, the pitch is pretty straight forward and the green is pretty simple.   15 has a massive fairway that  progressively narrows on the 2nd that leave a difficult 3rd to a severe green where recoveries are rare.


3.  The variety in par 3 holes from the short 10th to the monster 5th.


4.  It's an extreme challenge but yields to a great shot.


5.  There is plenty of strategy and heroic moments like the tee shot on 6.

[Tom_Doak]

Architectural overload on every shot

I don't know how to use the like buttons [and probably won't learn after 25 years], but this is the most accurate answer so far.

[MCirba]

Even C.B. Macdonald said it was the best course in America.

[Tom_Doak]

Furthermore, I think it was Davis Love who once said he loves PV but it really doesn’t require a Driver on any hole?  How can a course that doesn’t test a Driver for the top players be the best in the world?

Actually I think he did not hit driver on any holes [or maybe even didn't carry driver] when he played on the Walker Cup team in the 1985 Matches at PV.


But, Davis was very long before he tuned his swing down to be more consistent with his distances, and PV didn't have any of the back tees that Tom Fazio has added.  So I'm not sure that your implication is correct that he wouldn't hit any drivers today.  By the same token, it IS correct that he sure wouldn't have to hit driver on any of the holes, but that's probably the case for every course nowadays.

[Tom_Doak]

Never played it and doubtful I’m ever likely to but given its reputation for severity if playing from the front tees what kind of minimum carry to reach the fairways with a Driver would be needed? Also, what would be the minimum distance needed to carry any large areas of fairway or 2nd/3rd etc shot hazards? Just curious.
Atb

I think Bill Shean told me back in the days before the course was lengthened that the longest carry from any tee was the 16th, which was only 165 yards at that point.  The carries from the tee really aren't the problem . . . but when you miss a couple and you start gripping the club more tightly, it all goes downhill fast.


The most severe carry on the course for a short hitter is Hell's Half Acre at the 7th.  That is only a bit over 100 yards across, but you have to do it from the fairway or rough, and if you are trying to get over in two, it's about 380 yards from the old back tee to do it.