I got in the car in the rain at 7:30 Saturday morning to drive an hour across town and out into meth-lab country for a scramble in a cow pasture. At 8, I got a call that the scramble had been canceled due to the weather. A quick look at the radar showed the rain was moving out before another band would come in a few hours later. Figuring courses would be empty, I went ahead and made the trip over to another east-side boondocks course that I'd been meaning to play for a while. Stonelick Hills is located east of Cincinnati and was designed by the local sandwich peddler who owns the place.
I found a surprisingly good collection of holes that, despite some really long transitions between them, proved to be a lot of fun to play. Aside from the very tedious walk, it probably ranks as the best modern course I've played that was built by its owner without an architect's involvement. I'll certainly return. While the course has a handful of better holes, the one that stood out to me was the 8th. It's a mid-length dogleg-left par 4 with an aesthetically unimpressive but still interesting tee shot, followed by this:
From the above photo 50 yards out (the approach will likely be played from 100-150 yards for the player who cuts the dogleg), you can see the front edge of the green in the left-center. The massive putting surface extends back some 35 yards, and features a right edge that wraps around the greenside bunker. You can see the day's pin back on the back corner.
From closer to the front edge of the green:
A large thumbprint in the green is barely perceptible in the photo above, but very clearly present on the ground. It allows a player to swing a ball around from the front right of the green to a back right pin, but the ball needs to be struck very precisely to get close. Putts from the center of the green or anywhere on the left side are far more straightforward:
What do you think of this?