What's the Easiest Great Course?

[BCrosby]

Cary -

Merion? Kiawah? Pebble?

I'm with Wayne above. If you are serious, you bat in a different league than I do.

Bob

[David_Madison]

Pinehurst #2 - - Under a typical resort/club set-up, average bogey golfers will still be able to make bogeys, and scratch players will often shoot around the course rating. No water or OB to speak of, wide fairways, easy rough, plenty of roll so length is not an issue. Grow some rough, firm and speed up the greens, and get interesting with the cups and it's an entire other thing.

While I agree that for the bogey golfer #2 is an easy course to shoot bogey golf on - you don't lose any balls and n real water or OB - I find it incredibly difficult to shoot a good score on. I've been a 2 handicap or less for at least the last 15 years - almost all of those years my handicap has been below scratch. In those 15 years I've played #2 at least 100 times and have never shot below par from any set of tees. I barely broke the course rating each time from the Open tees in three rounds a few weeks ago, which still left me 4 and 5 over par. But, I was helped tremendously by unusually slow and soft greens because of the heat and they had been aerated. Under normal conditions (let alone Open conditions) the are the firmest and hardest greens to hit in regulation of any course I've played in the U.S.

Just shows that different courses play differently for different people. My handicap has ranged from 0-2 over the past three years and I almost always shoot between 73 and 76 from the back tees, and most of the guys I've played with at #2 meet or beat their handicaps by a shot or two. But then again, we've never seen it set up with any real teeth.

[Mark Chaplin]

At Royal Cinque Ports a few weeks ago in the English amateur there were 2 rounds of 64, admitedly the EGU used some very tame pin positions.

Last week during a 2 day Open handicap event the best nett score was 66 on day one. A couple of good low handicap members shot level par. I was included in the top 50 who qualified for day two.

We were greeted with 28mph winds gusting to 50mph. The 450yd #3 was driver, 3 wood, 5 iron. I couldn't reach the fairway on #5 and the 310yd #6 was driver and a 5 iron. The usually harder back nine was 4 iron, 9 iron all the way.

Needless to say nett 79 was the best score of the day. Most GB&I's top links courses present scoring opportunities on a windless day but given a breeze or stronger and the scores rocket

[Tommy Williamsen]

I have to go with Cypress Point.  The par fives are all fairly easy. The par threes, with the exception of 16 are not what you would call difficult.  The par fours have a sprinkling of difficult and but pars are too hard to come by.  It doesn't take away from the course. It just doesn't beat anybody up unless they are playing poorly, but then any course would be tough.