Gentlemen of the Treehouse,
As a few of you know, several GCA'ers made their maiden appearance up north at the Myopia Hunt Club this past week. Fortunately, most of us made it out of town before the Yankees made mincemeat of the local sandlot-ball team and thus avoided having to laugh out loud, too hard and in person, at the frustrated fans of Beantown!
I think I can safely represent for all of us in attendance that the common opinion was "marvelous, fun, charming, sporty, with strong examples of drive and approach placement difficulties, tough small greens, and an example of wonderful golf course architecture and features. I, for one, played poorly, but still loved the course from every angle!
My question is this: Why does a Somerset Hills (or maybe even others like Shoreacres, Camargo, The Creek, Baltusrol Upper, Forsgate and Maidstone,) consistently rank so very much higher, and thus thought so highly of over Myopia? Many of you know that due to my proximity of location (living in Far Hills) and opportunties to play Somerset Hills, I've consistenlty defended SH as a wonderful sporty course that might well have one of the best set's of par 3's in existence.
After seeing Myopia, I was totally overwhelmed with the greater quality of the entire course, especially the par 3's. The variety of length and challenge (the shortest at 140yds might well be the toughest to make par on, despite a 253yd long single-shotter) easily eclipse SH's collection. The 4's are especially strong and interesting as the length premium quickly takes a back seat to absolute strategy. That is not always the case at SH. The 5's are the weakest at both locales, but MHC's clearly have no less than a slight edge in the stiffness to par category.
Most often, critics of SH cite the finish of 17 & 18 as the weakest link on the closing nine. MHC has no such questionable finale. The 18th demands a perfect tee shot to the correct side of severely sloping fairway to get anything close to a pin anywhere on the front 2/3's of the green. The 17th might be questionable, but the green is so small(17-20 paces long and a bit less wide), only the best struck and thought out approach iron leaves a birdie putt.
The old argument that MHC is too short for modern technology is hogwash. Granted, a few of the short fours are driveable, but the tiny greens and severe nearby hazards quickly spell double bogey or higher if a valiant effort goes astray. Hit and putt the ball and you will score. Miss either and you will struggle. By no means do I infer that either course defends itself like a big man-style track, old or new. Neither will ever hold back the scratch golfer who is on their game like a Bethpage Black or Oakmont.
Yet these sporty courses are the type that 36 hole days and dreams are made of. Both ooze charm and both beckon any afficinado back to the first tee after stepping off the 18th green, however, Myopia really separated itself, for me, from all those other sporty courses I cited initially. It even made a reasonable challenge to one of my old favorites: Garden City Men's Club. MHC shares some very similar features; small, hidden beneath the horizon, sand hazards, tilted greens that look benign from beyond the heather, and ugly style rough that moves along the fairways at interesting angles to the green. Both courses permit and encourage the ground game and routinely reject the wrong aerial approaches. GCMC is no doubt a slighly more complete, championship-style course, but it's recent bouts of inconsistent maintenence (hopefully solved with a new greenskeeper) don't do it any favors. MHC seems to just feel like maintenence consists of mowing the greens and watching the moss grow.
Rather than let this thread disintegrate, or get hijacked into, trolley debate among the site's most regular blathering space-fillers....
I propose a well-reasoned discussion of the merits of the sporty courses (Matt Ward, you might have to abstain from all but your regular regurgitation on Forsgate
) and their appropriate and relative features. Discuss!