I just played a brand new Faldo course around Hutchinson Kansas called Cottonwood Hills that seems to be a lead-in for a residential development.
In my opinion, the course is basically strategy on ultra steriods. By that I mean there is constant use of undulating topography, all kinds of uses of visual deception through blindness, selective width and narrowness, and constant danger of lost balls if off fairways and such.
If the wind blows on this course (as it did in our three days out there) this could be one of the hardest courses I've ever seen to score on.
A few of the greens are utra strategic vis-a-vis approaching, recovering and putting due to topography and radical internal contours.
The course rating from the tips is 76.4 to a 71 par and a slope of 150.
This is definitely a course one would have to play a couple of times to have any idea what to even try to do.
There are all kinds of ways to design a course to create strategy and this one appears to attempt to use every single available technique imaginable.
To say it's excessive that way is an understatement, particularly for a daily fee public golf course.
The price for play and cart is $37.
Perhaps us "strategy" proponents in golf architect should be careful what we wish for lest architects throw the entire kitchen and sink at us that way as Faldo & Co did at Cottonwood Hills.
It was said out there that Nick thinks this course could hold a US Open.
If it did the US Open better reduce the field by about half and enlist about 300 Rules Officials and spotters.
Intuitively, I've been a fan of Nick Faldo's philosophy on golf architecture but if he ever wants to compete with Prairie Dunes's Perry Maxwell as an architect he better learn to tone down his architecture in a strategic sense by about a factor of ten.
On the other hand, if anyone really wants to see what strategic golf is all about as an ultra test in the currency of conserving strokes go play Cottonwood Hills, Kansas.
By the way, I'd never been to Prairie Dunes GC before. In my opinion, that golf course just might be the ultimate classroom in sophisticated strategic golf course architecture.