I almost added these pictures to the
thread on McConnell Golf, but they seemed separate enough from that discussion to warrant their own thread.
I recently played The Cardinal after the work that Pete Dye did last year (he originally designed the course in 1975). I hadn't been back in five years after playing the course for four years throughout college. Here are a some comments and pictures on a rainy day when the course was closed to play. Sorry that the pictures are so large; if I have time I'll go back and resize them (likely not to happen).
The nines have been re-reversed back to the original ordering. I can't get used to thinking of the back nine as the front and vice versa and I feel the finishing holes on the now-front-nine are better for the back nine, so I prefer the way it used to be (even though it was not the original routing).
The majority of the changes are around the greens and, with the exception of one hole (see the pictures of 12 below), the routing is exactly the same (aside from the nine swap). I was surprised to see how much of an impact this had on the course, and it confirms for me how much of a course is made by what the greens and their surrounds are like.
The course is certainly more difficult than it was last I played it. Many of the greens sit quite a bit higher and have more severe drop-offs when you miss them. The greens themselves have a lot more internal contour so they require more skill to read. Now, any putt may have multiple changes in break and speed, whereas previously there was typically a single direction and speed to account for.
A few of the greens have been reshaped as well, so the thought process is different when playing your approach; the most significant examples of this are seven (the old 16) and 14 (the old five) which used to be L-shaped and now are more traditionally shaped. Seven was shaped like a regular L and when the flag was back left you had to choose whether to attack the narrow back portion or whether to use the width of the front and accept a longer putt. 14 was shaped like a J rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise so you had to choose whether to try to carry and hold the shallow left portion of the green or whether to play to the right and use the length of the green to offset any lack of distance control. Now both greens have much more standard shapes so these distinct choices do not exist; perhaps on further examination I would see that they do but are just more subtle, but I didn't see evidence of features that would affect my thought process so significantly.
There is a lot more mounding around the bunkers as well, and while this certainly makes recovery more difficult, I think it's a bit odd and unnatural looking.
All in all, though, I like the changes because it makes play on and around the green more interesting. I was told Mr. McConnell asked Mr. Dye to make the course tougher and I think he certainly did that.
Pictures:
From behind the ninth green. The green sits a few feet higher than it used to and has quite a lot more undulation, as well as a steep false front:
From short right of the 10th green. There used to be a single bunker that ran across the front right side of the green, where the new bunkers with (in my opinion) artificial looking mounding are:
From the 11th tee, a short par four that was always the easiest on the course. This green sits quite a bit higher than it used to and the drop off to the side bunkers is more severe. The right bunker comes back into the fairway a lot more than it used to and could be driven into by longer players:
This is the new 12th tee, which sits directly behind the 11th green in the above picture. The hole is 220 from the back and the green feels a lot narrower than it used to:
It might just be the new angle, though. This is the view of the same green from the cart path left of the old tees (on the other side of the water seen above). Note that these tees still exist because they are now used as the back tees for the next hole, extending the carry over its own water hazard approximately 40 yards. This can be seen in the top-left of the picture:
From in-between the two tees on the 14th that are separated by a creek. This hole is unchanged aside from the green changes I mentioned above. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the green:
The 15th green from short right. The green has a bit more contour, as does the bunker in the foreground. The green in the distance is the next hole:
The 16th. The bunker used to extend across the entire front of the green and the green used to be two separate levels, with the back upper level being narrower. Now the green sits quite a bit higher, the bunker only comes across the front left, and the green falls away to the left. It's almost a redan if you only count the contours of the green (and not its surrounds):
A picture of the 17th green (on the right), 7th green (further on the left), and 3rd tee (past the 7th tee closer to the middle) from the 18th tee. 17 is largely unchanged and 7 is the green that went from an L-shape to a traditional shape (there was a bunker at the back right, which is the front right from the angle of this photo).
The same 17th and 7th greens from a different angle (long and right of the 17th):
18 from the tee, which (I think) now sits a bit left of where it used to to make the angle a bit tougher. The fairway bunker around the water also extends a lot further back and into the fairway:
The approach on 18. A good drive will be on the left portion of the fairway in line with this angle, but most will likely be a bit out to the right from what is shown here:
The 18th green from the cart path up on the hill to the left. This green sits a lot higher: the right greenside bunker used to be just a few feet below the green but now it is well below (seen better on the above photo). Pulled approach shots to the left that are on the downslope from the cart path to the fairway used to be significantly downhill; now they're almost uphill:
