Huck,

I normally don't read threads once they get onto the third page, as people are saying the same thing. But this one has been interesting. As an outsider to the event and never playing the course, one thing stood out at least in reading:

*the very good players (scratch types such Fortson, Brown and others I may not know) seemed to smoke the course

* the good players (2-8 yourself and some others that threw you under the bus online ) did not seem to love the course

* the higher handicap players seemed to like it, with the exception of your fictious Dad who did not actually play.

Correct or incorrect? If correct, what is specific to Stone Eagle that creates such different camps?

Mike,
   I think it comes down to where you miss shots. The sticks aren't going to miss many/any shots. The solid players will miss a few more and probably pay the highest price since they will likely get it pin high, but off line where the trouble is. Do note there is always a bailout, but I think players in this camp expect to be able to hit the shot. At my level and worse, we will often come up short (and short at SE is never going to kill you, maybe sand, but not death on the rocks), and depending on where our ball is going on any given day we will be fudging our aim towards the bailout. Now I know the solid players see those bailouts just like I do, but at SE the shots don't seem superhard so even I wasn't as inclined to bailout, but then when my shot started going offline I was suprised at how fast the rocks seemed to come into play. Just my theory, I could be totally wrong.

Mike,
   The solid players will miss a few more and probably pay the highest price since they will likely get it pin high, but off line where the trouble is. Do note there is always a bailout, but I think players in this camp expect to be able to hit the shot.

Very well stated Ed.  Always expecting to to hit the shot intended is the most detrimental fault in my game.  

Anyone above an 8 is a "higher handicapper"?  Come on, now.  I'm a 9.  The architect of Stone Eagle is a 10.  Show some respect.

Tim,

9.6 and going higher. I am keeping Huck off balance for our next match.

Happy birthday to Jason Topp who turned 40 on Monday. It was great to meet so many GCA'ers that I can now put faces with the names. It was a great pleasure to meet Jeff Formanczyk, Jesse Jones, Sean Leary, Tony Peterson, Jason Topp, Jerry Kluger, John Cullum, and Steve Sailer. Thanks for coming out and helping make this another memorable event.

I'll take a stab..

The course plays very short for the low handicappers so with wide fairways, it is wedges into par 4's and irons into par 5's.

The 2 to 8's are good enough to think like the scratch guys that they should score well but not good enough to score like them.  That coupled with the tricky to read greens made their scores higher than they should have.  On a very severe site, makes it seem a bit like goofy golf to those players.

For the higher handicappers, the fairways are very wide, it plays short, and a lot of the drives are down hill.  That allowed many to be comfortable playing the back tees, where they probably don't normally feel comfortable. The grass in the fairways was longish, making it very easy to hit and chip off of. higher handicappers 3 putt a lot anyway, just here they were doing it on fun, severe greens..

I fall in the middle camp for the most part. As others have said,  I would love to play this course when traveling to PS, but probably not every day.  I feel that way about all mountain/desert courses I have played, however....

Interesting. So is Stone Eagle the definition of a "Golfweek not a Golf Digest" Top 100 course with Mr. Huckaby once again being the poster boy or is it not worthy of Golfweek Modern?

PS. Jim the scary thing is that 80 was during a putt everything out tournament where I won low gross over 2 days by 7 or 8 shots so now I think that I can actually play!

Bob, I think you are just having guilt from trying to get by with such a high handicap for you. You hit the ball so much better than the number you told me.

Jordan - Pebble would be WAY too pricey, and there's no way on God's green earth we could get a group of 40 on there in Spring 2007.

Pasa's been done already.

Tommy has a VERY good plan for us all for next year.  It will be up here.  He'll put out details at some point soon.

TH

Evan - good catch.  But of course to get it absolutely correct, we must add the hyphen, before the Roman numeral.

That is, KP-VI.

I also prefer the T to be included also, personally.

Because it is THE KING'S PUTTER, and next year will be the sixth version.

And yes, a more important post has never been made here.

 

Shouldn't it be TKPC-VI?

The King's Putter CUP?

Ryan - no - Tommy will be the first to admit that was an error on his part.  Didn't you get to see the actual Putter?  It exists... oh yes it does... it's a real putter we play for, donated and created by one of the founding father's of this event and it's namesake, Dan King.

The model is The President's Putter, played for annually at Rye.  Here's one reference.  No Cup, oh no sir.

http://www.golfobserver.com/preview/golfnotebook/golfnotebook_122304.html

As you can see, at least in theory this is pretty serious business.

 

Ryan - good man.  And I am glad to see you note the huge import of all of this.

 

I am not sure if the summary is correct that the course was easy for the very low handicaps, frustrating for the 3-8 handicap, and more playable than Mr. H. says for the higher handicaps.  If that IS the case, I will take it.  I would have made it more frustrating for the 0-2 handicaps, too, but there wasn't enough room up on the hill to make it effectively longer.

Perhaps the 5-handicaps are MORE frustrated about the situation because they are getting bopped on both sides -- not only are the lower handicaps scoring well and telling them it's not so hard, but the higher handicaps aren't too bothered and are maybe even beating the 5's because the course has not gotten under their skin.

Of course, it's possible that the course really sucks and just that 90% of the players were sucked in by the stunning visuals of the place.  Everybody but Huckaby, and his silent majority who aren't talking, that is.    [If there are people who are bad-mouthing the course in private but afraid to say what they think on the board, they should be ashamed of themselves, especially for leaving Tom H. twisting in the wind here.  If there was more criticism of the course I would be more inclined not to ascribe it to one player's frustration -- and I KNOW you played one good round too, Tom, you've mentioned that already.]

Mr. Huntley:  The one thing Mr. Huckaby said which is NOT true is that an off-line approach is severely punished on every side of every hole.  It's not even close to that.  The highest handicap player in the field e-mailed me to report that he lost one ball over two rounds.  As for three-putts, they're out there on a lot of greens, if you get yourself more than twenty feet on the wrong side of the hole -- and there are a lot of deceptively large greens there which makes three-putting more common, i.e. you don't get many three-putts on small greens.