My initial reaction was:
"This is not what I want to play when I come over here."
"A disappointment."
My final impression is a bit of a mixed bag but definitely more
positive on reflection. I needed to think of where its place
truly is in the golf world.
It is clearly manufactured; in fact they tried way too hard
for shelving, skylines, angles of views, WOW! factor - but what
do you expect from some amurikens?
It is indeed an
American links-style interpretive golf course, but
much better than Bayonne, for instance. There is plenty or room
for such a course in the wonderful world of golf and gca.
What put me off so much at first?
The first posted photo is a good example. All the rumply
stuff is off to the side. I would have liked to see more of
it in the line of play. The course for me lacks a certain soul
and seems altogether too fair. It's too smooth and polished
especially considering its scale.
Some of the features are way too manufactured as is the
very large revetted bunker greenside on the first par 5 (3?)
and also the bunker revetted into the hill behind the 18th seen
in the last posted photo. That one although functional just seems silly - all backwards-facing and all.
On the positive it is a very good well-constructed modern
golf course with an emphasis on being fair, perhaps a bit too
much as I found features collecting rather than repelling shots
more frequently rather than randomly. I expect to get a rub of
the green and sometimes really effed.
I can't think of a single must-recommend "signature" if you will
hole, perhaps that is good as the course is very solid hole-to-
hole without any real stinkers, either. Personally I liked #17
best and #18 least, but 12-14 is a nice stretch and I
understand that that land was added at the last minute
to the parcel. (Pschew!) All in all it is a very good place to play
golf, but thoroughly modern. Even the clubhouse felt like
Cleveland, OH or something.
It needed a tighter more intimate routing, especially since they
could have done whatever they wanted (and apparently did!)
building it from scratch.
Interestingly I hit a big pull on #4 and played up to the green
from #3 and that certainly took the fairway bunkers out of
play and perhaps may be the better way to play the front
left pin.
Several days later talking with my caddie on the Old Course
(An English Engineer who has been caddying while his Father
was terminal and living nearby), we had some philosophical
discussions about the Old Course, Kingsbarn and golf course
design. With all of us, familiarity does indeed breed contempt
and that is one reason that the people of the UK may like
Kingsbarn so much and and I initially was so let down by it. We
get a certain familiarity which we love and some which we
wish to at times leave behind. Americans visiting there are
bound to love it, maybe even more than Ailsa or HCEG.
Chacon a son gout How do I put it? About #200 on my rush-back to play list. It is
ahead of Bayonne and The Dukes' at TOC Hotel, probably ahead
of the majority of new to newish American efforts as the setting
is spectacular and unreproducible. It is going to be interesting
to compare the Castle to Kingsbarns.
I would recommend it to anyone, but I have way too many mid
and little links and parkland courses to play first before going back. I'll definitely play Brora, Prestwick, Machrihanish, King's
at Gleneagles, Royal Aberdeen and Pac Dunes way before as well.