Recently Mike Clayton was at my home club in Heathcote, Victoria. This topic isn't a discussion of his work there, which I'll try to get to at some later time.
As a result of his trip it is evident from a twitter conversation that he drove between Lancefield and Pyalong. This is a lovely 15-20km stretch of hills crowned with granite boulders and close cropped farmland. He marvelled at the land and expressed how good a course could be in that area.
I have driven that road perhaps 300 times and had never seen it from a golfing perspective. I now realise there is something missing from my golfing experience/knowledge bank. I have grown up on flat courses in country Victoria, had access to a predominantly flat sandbelt, experienced a lot of links golf in Europe (again due to the nature of links, not large elevation changes). I haven't seen any truly good course on hilly terrain (the National Old might be closest to fitting the bill - although my feelings on that are decidedly mixed).
I have an inkling that those with experience of golf in the US are much better placed to have experienced good/great golf on hilly terrain.
Since Mike's comments I've driven the road another half dozen times I can now see some great holes, but am still perplexed at how someone would be able to connect the dots.
So three questions.
What knowledge gaps do you have?
What do you need to experience/learn to fix it?
To fix (one of) my gaps, which 5 courses do I need to see?