6 was obviously a hit with everybody. I thought the green and the cross-bunkers made for a great defense on a short par five.
11 was tough as hell, especially with that back hole location. I missed left on the second shot, meaning I had almost no chance for an up and in. 11 appeared to be a simple hole, but the green really made it. The player must control his shot into the green, with a short and straight miss leaving the best change for a 4. However, the chipping areas were very well done there. As Brad Klein said afterward, the chipping areas there were propped up with an up-slope, meaning that balls feeding off the sides of greens would stay in the fairway and leave the golfer with multiple recovery options.
1 was an excellent green that really set up well from the fairway. Although the pin yesterday set up for an approach from the left, there were plenty of hole locations that would favor a second shot from the right side of the fairway. Kris Shreiner and I spent a few minutes walking around this green, looking at the two spines and various locations on the green. Ultimately, the first green is very wild, but it was a perfect extension of the hole's tee to green strategy. I think it would be hard to find a better opening hole than the first at Mountain Ridge.
7 was another favorite of mine. I thought the tiny flaw in the Mountain Ridge greens was that there too many greens that repelled shots that were less than perfect. The bowl green at 7 gathered shots in, making it a nice compliment to other greens like 1, 6, 8, and 11. 7 sets into the land very gracefully, and the punchbowl nature of the green gave the imaginative player various ways to recover from a poor tee shot.
As a set, the Mountain Ridge greens were excellent and very different from other sets of Ross greens (Thendara, Teugega, Oak Hill (West)) that I've played this fall. Pat, are any of the greens at Mountain Ridge non-original, non-Ross greens? If so, I didn't notice.