Cruden Bay 2017 proposed changes- extreme in my judgement

[Ken Moum]

since I've only played Cruden Bay a couple of times, I'm no expert on the value of the changes, but I played it about a week ago in a Mixed Greensomes, with my 70th birthday less than three weeks away and a stiff wind to contend with from the third tee onwards, i hope I never see the medal tees again.


On the holes into the wind, I think we only played my tee shot on the eighth, in fact it may have been the only hole I got a ball in a place we could play from.


My recollection from the previous round, in 2006, was that the course was difficult, but not THAT demanding. Of course, i didn't play the medal tees and I was only 58 years old.


The upshot? we shot 55 going out, and were bested by our fellow competitors by 12 shots. Turning back we managed a 43 despite a lost ball, and bettered them by one.  A pair of 43s would have put us near first place

[Niall C]

I'm just catching up with this thread which is on a topic of interest. Let me throw out a number of random comments;

Cruden Bay is not a Tom Simpson course. It is a course he did a lot of work on and arguably his proving ground and probably the one course he had the longest association with, but the routing is not his and was largely there prior to his work. In addition the 4th and the 11th were designed by the club pro.

Simpson didn't work to a 10 year plan at CB and never had any compunction in making changes to other peoples work.

Simpson nominated the 8th and, from memory, the 18th as the two best holes at CB. He did so even though neither were really his. The 8th green site has been rebuilt at least once I believe as it was originally higher up.

In my one play at CB I was loving the golf until I got to the 13th. Being Scottish I'm used to blind shots but 4 holes in a row like that really took the shine off the round. Maybe some visitors quite like that but this isn't a pay and play, it's a members club and if the members don't like it (which I don't know to be the case but presumably the membership will make their thoughts heard) then taking professional advice to make changes doesn't seem like an unreasonable thing to do.

The same architects recently redesigned another iconic Scottish links to great acclaim (even if you don't like the owner) so why so little faith ?

Niall

[Howard Riefs]

I knew this would happen as soon as I heard that the Scottish Open is considering Cruden Bay. Of course they make it sound like the proposals have been years in the making, but they're not fooling anyone with half a brain. The only hope to rescue the course is now to find someone at the European Tour to disapprove those changes.

It's sad to have those self-important green committees, especially on a Simpson course - we all know what Simpson said about green committees.

Ulrich

As I understand it from a recent visit to Cruden Bay, the proposed changes have been in the works for quite some time. If the club is awarded the Scottish Open, the changes will take place following that event.