[Jay Flemma]

Brauer power! 

Where were those Dye mounds? Is that Antigua?

[Joel_Stewart]

Brauer power! 

Where were those Dye mounds? Is that Antigua?

Very close.  French Lick, Indiana

[Jay Flemma]

Thy look like volcanos:)

[Bryan Izatt]

Hole 10








Hole 11










Hole 12








Hole 13










Hole 14










Hole 15








Hole 16 ..................  ooops, winter storm Iago turned out the picture taking lights.  Or, maybe the sun set, or maybe both.  The 16th is a long par 4.  The 17th is a long par 3 over a wetland area.  And, 18 is a par 4 bending left around water hazard.  All have the requisite mounding to fulfill the design brief.

   

[Jeff_Brauer]

Bryan,

Thanks for the photos. It actually seems maintained pretty true to design after 20 years.

One other memory.  Those 4 humps in the 14th green were my idea.  But in the opening day press day, someone questioned the design of them. I think I was flustered and tried to explain them, but the reporter kept badgering.  Then, Larry Nelson piped in and said "When I won at Oakmont, I was impressed with the XX green there, and it had those mounds so I wanted them put in>"   All of a sudden, every head in the crowd was nodding up and down as to what a great feature those were.....

The power of celebrity!  Last year at La Costa, Damian and I kidded Steve Pate that every sentence he uttered needed to start with the words, "When I won here......"

[Jeff Blume]

Jeff,

What hole had the "pork chop" bunker?  I seem to remember doing a grading plan for that one.

[Bryan Izatt]

Was it the 7th hole that named "Pork Chop"?  I noticed that name, but had no idea what inspired it.  So, it was a bunker?  I was going fast and wasn't really paying attention to the hole names, but I noticed #9 was named Valley of Sin, but it wasn't really obvious where the feature was.  Maybe Jeff remembers all the hole names and what they meant.

[Jason Connor]

I literally winced and turned away.  Wow.

[Brian Ross]

Was it the 7th hole that named "Pork Chop"?  I noticed that name, but had no idea what inspired it.  So, it was a bunker?  I was going fast and wasn't really paying attention to the hole names, but I noticed #9 was named Valley of Sin, but it wasn't really obvious where the feature was.  Maybe Jeff remembers all the hole names and what they meant.

You are correct, the 7th hole is "Pork Chop."  The left greenside bunker resembles a pork chop when viewed from above.  Agree on #9 as well.  Never really got the Valley of Sin reference there.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff,

Ah, the pork chop bunker.  The back story is that when working for Killlian and Nugent, we redid a green somewhere in Chicagoland.  Every day for a week, I left a shapely bunker there.  And the next day for a week, I would return to find the superintendent had simplified the shape for raking to a big blob, but also left a little stem for his rake to go in and out.  I told him it looked like a pork chop and he said that was the look he was going for.  So, every so often, I do a pork chop bunker in memory of that moment.  It never caught on like chocolate drop mounds, proving, I guess, that golfers have a sweet tooth.

Brian/Bryan,

As originally built, the front left of the ninth green was originally part of the green, but the superintendent removed it as "too hard to maintain."  However, the name stuck.  I frankly don't recall the other names at all, other than 12 might have been called Redan because its sort of a reverse redan.

[Brian Ross]

Brian/Bryan,

As originally built, the front left of the ninth green was originally part of the green, but the superintendent removed it as "too hard to maintain."  However, the name stuck.  I frankly don't recall the other names at all, other than 12 might have been called Redan because its sort of a reverse redan.

Jeff,

You're right on 12. 1 is Moguls and 18 is Cape. I can't remember the other names off the top of my head. I have an old yardage book with all 4 courses but it doesn't have the hole names.

[Shaun Feidt]

I remember playing wild wing maybe 12-13 years ago when they had multiple courses.  I went to myrtle this past year, sounds like they now only have 27 holes?  Did the rest just go by the wayside like many of the other courses I used to play in the 90's?

[Scott Weersing]

When I first began reading this thread, I thought, why would a course need to have mounds in the first place?

But it makes a lot of more sense now. You want your course to stand out in an overcrowded market of Myrtle Beach. You do not have to worry about GCA people rating it low because GCAers know what a good course is in in Myrtle Beach (Doak, Strantz).

I think your regular guy (the golfer from the NE on vacation) would like this course. The mounds are consistent through out the course and would make the course stand out. THere are no blind shots over mounds. Regular guy hates blind shots.

I thought the overseeding was strange but that is because we don't overseed here in Virginia.

[V. Kmetz]

If a great volume of courses had this look, I'd hate it...

because I don't often see or experience such features, I like this.

cheers

vk

[Jason Topp]

I kind of like it because it is so over the top it is fun.

However . . . .I have a candidate in Minnesota that I will add next summer sometime.  I have never played the course but everytime I drive by I want to take a picture.

[Mark McKeever]

Joe needs to post some pictures from Linfield National to show some wild mounds!

Mark

[Gib_Papazian]

Jeff,

I think that golf course looks like an absolute blast! Half the Treehouse intellectuals forget that world's most revered courses have nutty features every bit as "unnatural looking," but give them a pass. There is plenty of room for wild looking mounding and I am going to make a point of playing this course.

Think about the crazy-ass stuff Mike Strantz got away with back there - the only difference is that your mounding is clean and neat, like stark alien landforms from another planet, airlifted into the Carolina flatlands.

I've always gotten a kick out of Macdonald's "Very Soul of Golf Shrieks" line - and coming from me, this obviously has to be a surprise - because Raynor built nothing but unnatural looking, geometric arrangements; I have never heard "Golf's Soul" do any shrieking about courses like Shoreacres or Westhampton.

There is a clear dividing line between the Donald Ross/Mackenzie style of trying to parrot nature and the Raynor/Langford philosophy of function over form. Personally, I prefer bold shaping and do not object to features and shapes not found in nature - but I've always looked at golf courses more as a board game - with each hole specifically created to stimulate a different challenge - as opposed to whacking a ball across a random expanse of land tortuously made to look like the hand of God.

             

[Jeff_Brauer]

Gib,

Thanks for the thoughts.  In reality, if you look past the stylistic elements of the early 90's, there are some good holes in there.  Sort of like listening to George Harrison songs of the 70's without the Spector backing tracks......

I always figure that if a course like that hadn't existed, someone would have made it exist, if not me.  I cannot actually imagine the classic era guys doing the same thing over and over again without trying something new either.

As to the actual shape of the mounds, I agree.  I went to the landscape school at U of Illinios, and their programe was dominated by the thoughts of Sasaki - "the land is putty."  Perhaps, mine were too.  It is a thought process, and not every course needs to aim to be great as much as stand out, nor does any one style have a mortal lock on being "right", this site excepted.

[Thomas Dai]

David,

Photo as requested of the mounds in front of the green on the 11th at Tain.



All the best

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