Golf Club Atlas
GolfClubAtlas.com => Golf Course Architecture Discussion Group => Topic started by: Jim Colton on April 06, 2011, 03:39:38 PM
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In your walk as a golfer and golf-course architecture aficianado, is there a golf course that completely changed how you viewed all courses before and since?
I'm guessing my answer is shared with many: St Andrews. I played my one and only round there back in October 2000. Prior to that, I had enjoyed challenging, bent-grass, tree-lined parkland courses (Blackwolf Run River was my nirvana). St Andrews opened my eyes to so much - ground game, firm-and-fast turf, quirk, width and angles. I can honestly say I haven't been the same since. Funny what one round can do.
I have some numbers-crunching idea related to this in mind, as usual, but before I share that, I'd love to hear some other examples of courses that flipped your script.
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For me it was Royal County Down. Admittedly, I played almost exclusively parkland courses for tweny five years before taking a couple of trips to Ireland. While I immediately liked the look of the courses, I think I spent more time trying to figure out how to get the damn ball in the hole rather than study the golf course. On my second trip to Ireland I got to play RCD, and I was blown away. The use of the dunes, the turf, the gorse, the incredible blending of colors (differing shades of yellow,green, brown and splashes of purple) just blew me away. I stopped worrying about my score and just enjoyed the surrounds and the conversation with my caddie.
Of course, the side story is that is I played the round as a single and really hit it very well. So every group that saw me coming waved me on through, which was very nice, but resulted in a round that lasted only 2 hours and 10 minutes. I wanted to scream: "NOOOOO, this can't be over!"
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Jim,
For me it was Merion. When I played TOC several years ago I had zero interest in GCA. When I played TOC I enjoyed it, loved the history, but was one of those guys that simply didn't get why it was so good. I only wish I could go back there today and get another look at it...
When I played Merion, I was fortunate to have played with a past club champion who knew every inch of the golf course. He really opened my eyes to how much strategy there could be on any single hole. Since then, whenever I play a golf course, I ask the question "why" on every hole. Why was the hole routed as it was? Why were the hazards placed where they were? Why is the green the size it is and why was it shaped the way it is?... Of course, my answers to these questions may not be as educated as would be the answers of some or many on this site, but without a doubt, after Merion, how I view a golf course has changed.
Mark
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Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.
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Jim,
Not a single course in particular, but a 14-course tour of Australia in general was an eye-opening experience. The quality of the designs were, as a whole, outstanding, but I had played a few courses matching their caliber before. To me, it was the way the golf courses were maintained. No rough on the leading edge of bunkers. Bunkers that ate into the edge of greens, again, no rough. Bunkers that did not present a uniform surface, and were not predictable. Rough that presented lies ranging from perfect, to awful and everything in between, because it was left alone, bare dirt patches and all. Firm and fast turf conditions. The guys I played with never felt entitled to perfect lies, they accepted the good and the bad as one as part of the game.
Tyler
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Jim,
You've heard me talk of the Feb-Jun of 2009 timeframe as the catalyst to all of this golfing stuff. It was pretty simple for me really.
-Pasatiempo's greens and bunkering were just so different and appealing to me. I had never been afraid of a putt or a chip like I was that day. It has stuck with me.
-The 36-hour experience of Sheep Ranch, Pac Dunes and 10 holes of the brand new Old Macdonald. I will never recapture that sensory overload and wonder again. It was as if I had been eating at Kentucky Fried Chicken my entire life, only to eat my mom's fried chicken for the first time at 26 years old. That was my discovery of links golf and its intricacies, boldness and subtleties.
-In June of that year, I saw your home course, Ballyneal. I had never swashbuckled like that on a golf course before. It was such a new idea, to have a golf course that was wild, raw, and grand, while leaving little intimate moments--like on the 3rd green.
There's others. Wolf Point is the course I most want to play at the moment. Mostly because Don is there and we have some work to do and beer to drink. Oakmont and Pine Valley showed me how humbling golf can be, and how the members of those clubs are more normal than most private clubs.
Jim, I really can't pick just one. Golf has been very good to me. Every course I see and play has an affect on what I think about golf courses and what they should be for the golfer.
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Really cool question Jim.
1994 or so...Essex County Club in MA. I first played there in a junior interclub and thought, "whoa, these older-looking layouts are really cool, especially with the long grass." This was my intro to aesthetics. I was only 13 though.
1999...first round in Scotland, at Turnberry. "Wow, I thought I was pretty good at this game. This is like I have never played golf before." Links golf is a totally different game than Mass. parkland courses like mine. Also perked up my golf travel bug. I was a 6 handicap at the time, and I shot a smooth 85. I only broke 80 about 5 times in 22 rounds in Scotland in '99.
2001...Ekwanok with the golf team. "Wow, there are great courses in the country that I still know nothing about." I joined GCA around this time.
2004...Summer working at Myopia. Nothing like getting to know a great course with many rounds and careful study. In 2010, when the Mass. Amateur was played there, I took a couple guys around on a practice round and they were skeptical when I told them they had really lucked out with their practice round pairing. About 4 hours later, they knew what I meant. I bet I did 95% of the talking!
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Winged Foot-West.
I grew up playing tree lined courses with smallish greens.Some were difficult,some were long (back then).But I'd never seen the whole shooting match in one golf course.It was hard as hell but I had a blast.It felt familiar--but it was completely different.Even for someone as unsophisticated as I,it was obvious that the guy who had designed WFW was light years better than the guys I was used to.
I played QR the next day and realized that everything I'd ever read about AWT was right.
The first links course I ever played was Lahinch.This made me realize that there was a whole different kind of game of golf out there.I also learned that I really love links golf.
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Easy for me, it is Bandon Dunes.
I went there a year after it opened. Until then, I though any course without trees was a "links" course. Bandon Dunes opened my eyes to what a true links course is, what firm and fast really means, and just how much fun this type of golf is. Until then I was like everybody else where immaculate conditions and nice tree-lined fairways were the bee's knees.
I don't believe that anymore.
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Jim -- alas only two or three, and only one from the playing: Crystal Downs gave me the personal experience of a journey through a wonderfully designed golf course with surprises and challenges of all sorts (and left me thinking, "ah, this is why the posters on gca.com love great golf courses); and the first pictures of Ballyneal I saw snapped me into seeing the nuance/difference between minimalism and naturalism...freedom golf as Adam C calls it. That was a breakthrough for me.
Peter
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The Dunes Club as a Freshman in high school. In the days before GCA and an easy google search, I had no idea what to expect when as part of a local high school competition (the old Winnetka "May Madness" between NT and Loyola golfers) organized a day trip via coach bus to the club. I had played some very good golf courses before that, but nothing was like the natural sandy "Pine Valley" look that I had never experienced before. That day we pretty much had the run of the club, and played 36 holes of various match play games.
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Merion Golf Club
It was the first elite private course I had played in the US and the first course that gave me that feeling which is hard to define. I've spent quite a bit of time since searching for that feeling elsewhere, but I've only been able to find it a couple of times. I have only played Merion a few times now, but I could sit down this afternoon and draw a yardage book from memory that I think would be reasonably accurate. To me that is what seperates the best designs from the rest.
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Either Pasatiempo or Foulpointe. It's a toss up at this point.
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Wed. June 16, 2004: Shinnecock Hills, Southampton, NY. Hole #7.
The summer between Jr. and Sr. year of high school I was lucky enough be to given a pair of tickets to the final practice round before the open. I had just completed my first season on the Millbook golf team and was determined to improve my game after being embarrassed in the New England Invitation Tournament that served as the Championship final match. I had probably played somewhere around 15 different golf courses, mostly through the school team before I got to Southampton. Oddly enough, one of the courses was actually The Hotchkiss School course designed by Raynor and Banks, although I wouldn't know it for years to come.
After spending the morning walking the course backwards in hopes to see as many different Pros as possible, I decided to rest the legs and sit down at a grandstand. I happen to pick the grandstand behind #7 tee. Group after group came to the tee of the 184 yard par-3, and ball after ball hit the green and rolled off to the left. Then one of biggest foursomes of the afternoon came through: Vijah Singh, Adam Scott, Darren Clark, and a 4th who escapes me, all dropping multiple shots on the tee, and not one could get it to stay on the putting surface.
I remember walking in to my parents room that evening after taking the train home, and telling my father about the seventh hole, how it was going to be the story of the week and was near impossible to play. Interested in what I was yammering on about, he turned on the Golf Channel Open preview, and there it was, one of the biggest controversies in golf course history. It was a pretty special insight into the possibilities of golf courses.
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(well, I'm not a 'golf course aficianado' just a wannabe-but-probably-won't-be-until-the-next-life but...) Lahinch. Started golf late (10 years ago) had been playing for five years, never been to a links course. First tee right by the road, no trees, wind, rain--something snapped (into place I hope, but certainly snapped)!--ah, so THIS is golf!
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The Valley Club of Montecito really made me see how much better a course could be than the run-of-the-mill courses I had been playing until I joined the UC Santa Barbara golf team and got to play there in 1962.
Until then the best courses I had played were Sonoma Golf Club, Pasatiempo, and the Meadow Club (all still favorites). There was just something about the way the architect (at that time I didn't even know Dr Mackenzie was the GCA!) used the natural feature to maximum advantage, and how the routing made as much use as possible of the hills and the creeks. I also saw, really for the first time, that you had to very careful with your approach shots so as to avoid really diabolical slopes!
Later I learned that both the Meadow Club, where I caddied but only got to play once, and Pasatiempo were also Mackenzie courses. While they were a notch behind the Valley Club, I learned that who designed the course made a big difference in what I enjoyed about golf.
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Bandon/Pacific, I think I made my first trek in 2002.
Much like Rich, I had just never experienced that style of golf, which was just so much fun. I haven't played many of the classics, and most of the vaunted publics in BC are quite penal. The openness of the land and the play was invigorating, and the experience really stuck with me and changed much of my thinking.
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I must be a whack job extraordinaire, as I have these awakenings every single golf season. As a kid, Grover Cleveland (CCB/1912 US Open) did it, then Park Club (Allison/Colt) as an 8th grader on the JV team, #2 as a junior in h/s, then CCBuffalo (Ross) as a senior, then Stafford (Travis) after college, then St. Andrews Old on honeymoon, then Bandon for 40th birthday, then Triggs at age 43, then Ballyhack, then, God Willing, Bethpage and Tallgrass and Paramount and Knoll West in 2011!!!
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Harbour Town, 1975 or '76. My club's ex-pro took a job there and my dad and I were able to play. Not only was it a golf learning experience the 2 gentlemen we were paired with were sent there to settle a labour/union dispute/strike happening in California. As a high school senior it was eye opening watching them negotiate and do business.
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Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.
Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.
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I was into golf architecture and links golf before I had ever played a course so there is no course that flipped the switch or changed everything. HOWEVER, it was watching the 1978 British Open from St. Andrews on television and staring at original World Atlas of Golf for hours that got me thinking about golf architecture and got me interested in playing golf. I was fascinated by the classic courses of the UK and USA from day one.
Bill,
Do you still think Pasatiempo is a notch below the Valley Club?
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Prairie Dunes the first weekend of October 2005 . . . but I didn't realize it until the third weekend of October when I realized I could still vividly remember every shot I played, every roll in the fairway, putting over the "elephant" buried in the second green, the smell of the red fescue gone to seed in the gunch, the view of the sunset from the 18th tee.
There were a few small steps on the way, the feeling that I was playing golf on Gilligan's Island at the Ocean Course, a three day respite from a cold gray Kansas winter at emerald green Pasatiempo in February, Pebble, Spanish Bay, my first trip around Southern Hills, a little known Ross on the wrong side of the tracks in Kansas City called Hillcrest Country Club to name a few.
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Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.
Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.
Yale may be the clubhouse leader. Jim's comment about scale & slope is exactly what hit me. I never knew a golf course could be like that.
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Columbia in DC in the 1980s. I was familiar with modern architecture, and had played modern quirky architecture like Harbour Town, but had never played a truly quirky course. After Columbia I realized how much fun and interesting gca could be.
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North Berwick. So under publicized, but so over-whelming. It emphasized for me that you don't have to be famous (or underrated) to be good. Can't wait to find the next underrated jewel.
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Ballyneal without a doubt. I had played the courses in Bandon, Sandhill and a dozen or so of the classic courses in Scotland and Ireland, so I understood on some level the concept of links golf. I came back to Ballyneal and understood that golf, above all, was meant to be fun, in almost a puckish, whimsical way. Part of it was the fact that most of the courses except at Bandon, I only played once. When I play a course multiple times, I start to understand the nuance. But it was Ballyneal that truly made me appreciate the ground game and I am hooked. I actually embrace windy days!
Jim, nice idea for a topic.
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Two courses come to mind:
Merion--I still have not played it, but I walked it thoroughly during the 2009 Walker Cup. I was struck by the variety of green complexes and hole designs that stick together so well. It's hard to believe that holes like 7, 11, and 16 could all stick together on one golf course, but they do so perfectly. It was also my first introduction to the wide world of Philly golf architecture.
Deal--Sandwich was the first links I played in the UK, North Berwick was my favorite, but Deal had the most impact on me. It showed the way in which ground contours and short grass can truly maximize their potential. Deal also demonstrates that greensites do not greenside bunkers to be effective. Deal has 8 bunkerless greens, and those greens are likely the most interesting on the golf course. It is also a perfect display of what a British golf club should be.
Along with Woking, Merion and Deal are still the two most interesting sets of greens I have seen.
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Royal Cinque Ports.
That landscape, which allows nine greens to be bunkerless without you really noticing, because there isn't a single one that doesn't have challenge and interest in spades.
The lack of length without it being a walkover - I still challenge anyone to shoot their handicap from the 6300-yard par 71 tees.
The width of most of the corridors.
The amount of short grass around the greens.
It established a prism through which I have viewed every course I have seen since.
EDIT - John: Great minds. You count only eight bunkerless greens? I have the list as 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18.
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Walking Cypress Point with a group of Aussie supers on a beautiful february afternoon four years ago.
The transition from forest to dunes to ocean was mindblowing, I think i got as much enjoyment from holes like 5/6 and 8/9 as the obvious 15/16/17
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I was into golf architecture and links golf before I had ever played a course so there is no course that flipped the switch or changed everything. HOWEVER, it was watching the 1978 British Open from St. Andrews on television and staring at original World Atlas of Golf for hours that got me thinking about golf architecture and got me interested in playing golf. I was fascinated by the classic courses of the UK and USA from day one.
Bill,
Do you still think Pasatiempo is a notch below the Valley Club?
Yes, but really only on the grounds that the setting at the Valley Club is pastoral and Pasatiempo is cluttered with housing. The back nine at Pasatiempo is still my favorite nine holes in golf; there is so much to love there.
There are also the relatively minor annoyances of the first at Pasa converted to a par 4 and the fugly driving range.
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Jim -
Gullane - first "true" links course I ever played. Ironically, it was the first Gorsemen trip. It was September 2001. I'll never forget the sweet wedge I clipped from the 1st fairway only to watch in bounce and rocket over the green. My jaw was dropped. Then I put one in a revetted bunker a few holes later and had no idea what to do. "Take yer medicine" a guy tells me. What the heck is that?
I was in love.
And it only got stronger.
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Royal Cinque Ports.
That landscape, which allows nine greens to be bunkerless without you really noticing, because there isn't a single one that doesn't have challenge and interest in spades.
The lack of length without it being a walkover - I still challenge anyone to shoot their handicap from the 6300-yard par 71 tees.
The width of most of the corridors.
The amount of short grass around the greens.
It established a prism through which I have viewed every course I have seen since.
EDIT - John: Great minds. You count only eight bunkerless greens? I have the list as 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 15, 16, 17, 18.
Scott, doesn't 10 have a bunker front right? That green is fascinating in spite of that bunker, I suppose. You were definitely the one who pointed that out to me originally. Thinking about it now, it's unbelievable how vast the short grass is around the greens and that presentation makes the greens pop out.
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I played NGLA with little knowledge or real interest in GCA. But it almost hit me like a lightening bolt when I played the Alps hole there. I remember hitting a good approach shot onto the green, and then (when on the green) looking back and thinking "holy sh-t", there's an amazing amount of stuff going on here.
It really sparked my interest in this subject.
Another course I really looked past for many years is the Yahnundasis ... but now realize there are some really good holes and features there.
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I think it's easier for me to think in terms of a three-course progression. Cherry Hills CC in Denver is the first great, classic course that I played. It stirred me to my golfing soul. The mountains, the history, even the damned moat around the green. I was so excited to have played there that I paid the locker room guy to fill my duffel with various keepsakes from the club. After that, I'd say the Dunes Club in Michigan changed the way I looked at golf courses. It was (and is) so different from other Midwestern golf courses that I started to see the possibilities offered by different types of properties. Finally, Sand Hills just transformed the way I look at golf courses.
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Yale did the trick for me. Prior to playing it in '85 I had never seen a course built on the same scale or scope.
Jim-Yale did it for me as well. I had never seen anything so bold or different. I understood immediately that it would act as a sort of benchmark for me as to all those that came after. My feelings have not changed some 27 years later.
Yale may be the clubhouse leader. Jim's comment about scale & slope is exactly what hit me. I never knew a golf course could be like that.
Yale also would be my choice. The scale, slope and -- of course -- those greens!
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Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, SC.
By Mike Strantz.
Summer of 1994.
I had been to Myrtle Beach a couple of times with my parents as a kid and was already into golf course architecture as a result, but the day I stepped on that golf course for the first time, I realized what great golf course architecture could do.
I would not say it changed me per say, but it pushed my interest much further. I still have fond and vivid memories of the place even if I haven't been back there in more than 12 years....
The links courses of Scotland had a similar effect a couple of years after that.
YP
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I've had a few script flippers.
Started playing in 2002.
Lake Chabot introduced me to quirk (blind par 3 dropping 100 feet in 150 yards, ski slope par 6, etc.)
Tobacco Road introduced me to bunkers over 30 feet deep, par 3s that alternate the angle of play by 90 degrees from one set of tee markers to another and holes sculpted by a visual artists to evoke a thematic and theatric sense of scale.
Ballyneal introduced me to truly fast and firm playing surfaces, absent tee markers and course ratings, first-rate naturalism in bunker construction, "mogul greens," and fairways contoured so heavily that their massive widths are defined by multiple targets (kick slopes, flat lies, short cuts) as well as their central and surrounding hazards.
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The first course which really opened doors for me as far as posibilities go was Troon circa 1991. It was the first links I ever played. Before that I had only played parkland courses some of which are very good, but still of the same basic type.
After Troon I had smaller eye openers such as Pennard and North Berwick, but they were only important in so much as they showed me links didn't always have to be a battle to the death.
Kington circa 2000 was a huge surprise for me. Before this I was always a firm naturalist. Kington made me realize there is more than one way to skin a cat and that unnatural looking features can be beautiful in their own right if their function is spot on. Right around the time of Kington, Beau Desert and Huntercombe drove home that unnatural features are just fine. I have even gotten to the point where Raynor's stuff doesn't bother me - my mamas so proud of me.
Ciao
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I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to play St. Louis Country Club a few times when I was in high school & college. I had never seen bunkers with steps going into them, or greens with valleys in the middle.
Remember the scene in Field of Dreams when the old ballplayer asked Kevin Costner if he was in heaven, and Costner responds, No this is Iowa. Well that is what it was like to be on St. Louis C.C. when I was a teenage golf fanatic.
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Firethorn, Lincoln NE.
then,
Sand Hlls, Mullen, NE
then,
Prairie Dunes, Hutchinson, KS
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I can’t say that I’ve completely “Flipped Da Script” but the course that sparked my interest in course design is Rustic Canyon. When I first played the course in early 2010 I played with a gentleman probably twice my age who stated he played the course three times a week. He knew the course and wish I would have listened to what he had to say a bit more as I'm sure it would have improved my score. Hole 14 is the hole that I really remember thinking this course is different. My playing partner that day played his drive well to the right while I played it over the trees/bushes. He didn’t reach the green but left his approach short right maybe 40 yards. I took wedge and landed to what I thought would be 20 feet only to watch it roll long left. I then watched my playing partner take his putter from 40ish yards out aim far right and let the ball feed to five feet. I didn’t get up and down and he of course made his par.
Living in LA I try to get up there once or twice a month and believe it is all I could ask for from a golf course. It’s a place that my friends who top over 50% of their shots can still manage to play and also a course that challenges the scratch golfer.
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Pebble Beach
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Jackson (TN) Country Club in the mid-70's. Boldly pushed up greens guarded by deep grass faced bunkers. Perhaps Langford's influence and my first classic course played in competition.
Wild Dunes in the mid-80s. My first introduction to the thrill of seaside golf (17, 18) and heaving fairway movement (10, 11, 12).
Bogey
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Good question Jim. Can't say it was one course but a couple events:
1. Oak Hill East 1973. The first "major" course I ever played; made me realize there is a difference in the quality of golf courses.
2. First Scotland trip 1990. First encounter with links golf. Walking the Old Course and playing Muirfield and North Berwick were eye-opening.
2. The Island, 1994. Fresh off the overnight plane, my second GBI trip, and the quirk that was The Island was rapturous.
3. Sand Hills 1999. Not playing it--looking for it on the then relatively new Internet and I found the Sand Hills Course Description on GolfClubAtlas.com. The rest, as they say, is history.
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The 86 Masters and my first time on the grounds in 87 hooked me on golf. The 88 Heritage that Greg Norman won and the opportunity to follow him on Sunday had the biggest effect on my love of architecture. I found myself drawing golf holes in school instead of studying and even went out in the back yard and dug a bunker with mock railroad ties fronting it (ala the 13th at Harbor Town). I can't believe my parents let me do that.
(http://www.picamatic.com/show/2011/07/18/07/09/7704309_bigthumb.jpg) (http://www.picamatic.com/view/7704309_30269/)
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JC -
Pacific Dunes. It was the first time I had every really played off sand based turf, which was a revolutionary experience for me at the time.
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I've always had a decent idea about what makes a good golf course and possibly more importantly what makes a bad one. But spending 6 months working on the Melbourne Sandbelt and the following 6 months in St Andrews and the east coast of Scotland helped me see what makes a truly great golf course stand out above all of the good ones out there.
Sandbelt bunkering both visually and strategically had a profound effect upon me. Especially at Kingston Heath where the bunkering turns what could have been a pretty ordinary course on fairly boring flat land into a great golf course. Unfortunately I didn't get to see the mighty Royal Melbourne, but it gives me a great excuse to go back one day!!
Barnbougle Dunes and St Andrews Beach, I was delighted to see modern courses which don't 'try too hard' and let simplicity and nature do the work. Up until then my experience of modern courses were inland English courses trying to copy US tour stadium courses and were all boring and mostly very bad with no character whatsoever.
Then came the big one.....The Old Course, everywhere I ever visit now will be measured against it. The variety of shots one can use to play a single hole is unreal and I loved how people of all abilities could enjoy the course in their own way. It challenged the pros yet gave the beginner a chance.
Carnoustie showed me what a a hard golf course truly is and that hard can also be fair.
North Berwick and parts of Cruden Bay showed me that ridiculous can sometimes be great.
Though Cruden Bay coupled with Gleneagles Kings Course also made me realise I'm not a fan of blind approach shots!
14th at Royal Dornoch showed me that the placement of a green has far more bearing on the quality of the hole than the placement of a bunker or water hazard ever can.
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Two events, both when I was in my teens.
I remember playing St. George's in a junior tournament and thinking what a nice course it was. Hilly with nice undulating greens. When I played a tournament at Cataraqui later in the summer and again thought it was a nice course. Nice undulating greens and good par 3s. When I found out it was designed by the same architect I thought I'd like to find out more about this Stanley Thompson guy.
The second was playing Barrow golf club in England. It's not too far from the Irish Sea without a tree on the place. The wind coupled with a total lack of depth perception made me rethink how I was not going to run out of balls again.
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For me it was not a particular course but instead from realizing that my enjoyment of the game need not revolve around my score.
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Lots to say here...
Playing golf in the Sand Hills area of Nebraska blew me away. I played Dismal River first and had that jaw dropping "WOW" factor feeling in regards to the features and landscape there opened my eyes.
The drainage at The National Golf Links of America blew me away. Played it after it had been raining all night and coming for the red clay land of Georgia, I just knew the course would be muddy, sloppy, and nasty. Nope! It was perfect and the water drained right through that soil.
Playing East Lake the weeks before or after The Tour Championship showed me how you can "trick" up a course and make it impossible to score on.
Rivermont showed me how an owner who "gets it" regarding architecture can make a damn fun course by using the right architect and still make the course affordable.
TPC Sawgrass showed me what I don't like. Over-priced and over-crowded is not what I am interested in, even if the golf course is pretty sweet.
The Lake Oconee Ritz courses, similar to Sawgrass but without the architectural merit. Oh yeah, Cuscowilla and Longshadow are right there as well.
Seminole showed me how difficult and demanding you can make a course by having hard and fast greens and LOTS of bunkers.
Shinnecock showed me how simply great and challenging a course can be without over doing green speeds, bunkers, or rough.
I'll stop now! :-X
Ugh!! I can't stop...Crail Balcomie showed me how much fun a course can be and not conform to the hype regarding length and/or standard par.
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The Oceanside nine at Jekyll Island, GA. I think it's called Great Dunes now. It was built by Walter Travis in the 20's for the Rockefeller/Carnegie gang. Relatively unkempt, it was meant to be played on the ground due to the ocean breezes. When I first played it in the early 80's, I couldn't figure out why it wasn't green and why my pitching wedge shots blew all over the course. It was truly my first introduction to "links" style play.
Next was North Berwick. Who's idea was it to leave stone walls and what-not throughout the course? And a par-3 with a green sloping away from me? Truly a great experience and an architectural eye-opener.
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I played Camargo ne time as a kid and didn't see what the big deal was about. i thought it was just another course in Cincinnati.
Then my parents joined Pinehurst when I was 15. I played #2 almost every day I was there for 5 years or so. I realized it was a special course without really knowing why.
Then I took my first trip to Scotland at age 26. The first course we played was Longnidry. Nothing special about it, but I remember the ball bouncing everywhere and the wind blowing like crazy. I was in love with links gold immediately even though I had no idea how to score on one of those courses.
Thenthe real wake up call came when I got to play Pine Valley. It is how I found GCA. Pi e Valley was just perfect and GCA helped me to understand why.
Then I got to play Camargo a few more times and I began to see why it is so great. Each time I play it I like it more. And now another course in Cincinnati gets the same reaction from me - Hyde Park. A hidden gem of a Ross restoration. Not long but all the golf course that you need with great greens that are being restored to all their glory. Tremendous strategy involved.