Is it possible to build a really good course that doesn't look good?

[TEPaul]

Terry:

You must be from LA and used to the aura of a Riviera. I'm from the East coast and I would never in a million years call the raw site or the way Riviera is now banal and vanilla land.

I guess you guys are just so used to that "canyon" effect out there as I guess there's a lot of it. It just blew me away. It seemed so confined for a golf course if you looked up high and around but if you didn't it didn't seem that way at all.

To me it was like being in a cathedral with the top of the roof off, and I sure never experienced that on a golf course before.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Where, other than on GCA, would you get a debate about the physical attractions of an actress prompted by a discussion on something as mundane as a golf course?  Mind you I confess that I lusted myself after French Lick until I found out that it was a golf course.

[ForkaB]

Richard the Magnificent:

Has your great little daughter even remotely figured you out yet?

It's the other way around, Tom.  She's studying Mandarin this year and she's all Greek to me!

BTW--18 months from now, expect daughter #2 in Philly.  Watch out, though, if you gave her a bucket and spade unsupervised, the 18th at GMGC would loook like Mackenzie's work at Sitwell Park berfore you and I could finish our 2nd glass of vino........

Rich

[Ian Andrew]

TE,

Ever notice how you take a camera to Pinehurst but never take a photo. Yet you would play there on almost any given day because the course is soooooo (sorry Matt Ward moment) engaging to play. I love the fact you can't lose a ball, shoot par, or pick one hole for a best 18. There also is no weak hole or weak moment either.

I think Pinehurst #2 is the poster child for ugly - brilliant

[Jeff_Mingay]

Ian,

I've played golf with you enough to know, you can lose a ball at Pinehurst  

[Joe Hancock]

On age and beauty:

I have never looked better. It's a different kind of ugly, however, than when I was young.  

Joe

[Michael Robin]

I don't know, doesn't look too boring or banal or vanilla to me.

[Doug Ralston]

TEPaul;

Why ask a question when you know what answer you will get? Of course I disagree with everyone. An ugly course can be challenging, and sort of fun, but to be a really good course, you must also excel in the visual component.

Firestone is a great example of an ugly course that is a great challenge [I am almost certain], but never a great course ..... sorry. Banff is certainly less challenging, yet CAN be a great course. What? You would rate Firestone higher? Well; I have certainly heard more reference here to rounds played at Banff.

Perhaps it is unfair for me to compare courses when I have not played them. But at least many of you know them. If i use courses I have played, you won't be enlightened.

All this is, of course, very much opinion on what a great course actually is. I admit I am partial to natural beauty. Can't help it ..... I am cursed with taste.  

Doug

[James Bennett]

On age and beauty:

I have never looked better. It's a different kind of ugly, however, than when I was young.  

Joe

Joe

there is a reason why our eyesight diminishes with age, and that our memory becomes clouded.  There was a similar reason for the use of alcohol in our youth (the effect of 'beer bottle glasses', increasing the apparent attraction and beauty of some drinking partners).  We are not as pretty as we think.

Have you retained your youthful eyesight acuity, or have you also succumbed to increasing prescription glasses?

James B

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

Your question is really a question in two parts.

1.  Can you build a really good course that's ugly?  Yes ... Carnoustie, Pinehurst, for that matter take away the town and St. Andrews would be pretty boring to look at.  But,

2.  Would it be an even better course if you could make it pretty, too?

I think most people would agree that it would be.  Sometimes, it is a question of budgeting priorities whether you spend the money on "pretty" or on "golf", but ideally anybody would ask for both.

[Marty Bonnar]

James B,
coming from the dingo whose shocking 70's picture adorns his EVERY post, you are in NO position to criticise the attractiveness of any other human being!

Notwithstanding any of the aforesaid, TOC is a DOG. (Maybe she's a dingo, too?)

FBD.

[ed_getka]

It escapes me how anyone can see afternoon light raking across TOC and not find the contour good-looking. I hope we are talking about flat light in the middle of the day from the clubhouse.

[Bill Gayne]

I may be the only one that feels this way but I don't like the look of desert golf courses. I think it looks completely unnatural and it just doesn't look fun. However there must be a really good one but in my limited experience I haven't found it.

[TEPaul]

Bill:

I agree with you. I don't have much experience with desert courses but instinctively they don't look right to me either and they sure don't look natural to me. But there apparently are a lot of very good ones so perhaps that proves that for some it's very possible to have a really good course that doesn't look good to some.

[Mike Hendren]

1.  Can you build a really good course that's ugly?  Yes ... Carnoustie ...  

While beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, I do not understand how anyone can stand on the 2nd tee at Carnoustie and say it's ugly.  Or in the fifth fairway looking at that green climbing the foot of the dune and say it's ugly.  Or stand on the 13th tee and look at that wonderful green and say it's ugly.  

To say Carnoustie is ugly is like saying Jennifer Beals was ugly when dressed as a welder in Flashdance.

Mike

Mike

[Bill_McBride]

Where, other than on GCA, would you get a debate about the physical attractions of an actress prompted by a discussion on something as mundane as a golf course?  Mind you I confess that I lusted myself after French Lick until I found out that it was a golf course.

French Lick?

 

By the way, was that last photo Barbara Rush?

Here she was in a studio pic:

[TEPaul]

Mike:

Would you consider renaming yourself Eagle, Birdie or even Par Hendren?