It takes a couple of good golf shots, although quirky, to make par.  If you let your guard down you can make a number.  I agree with Tom not as bad as a lot of people think, but certainly not as good as the 17 that come before.
Would peoplefeel different if it came elsewhere in the round?

Lou:

Concur re 10 and especially 14.  The latter is a GREAT golf hole.

I also concur re 18... if chain saw is to be procured, use it on the trees in front of the tee... but spare the trees to the sides and especially the huge one near the green.

TH

Bump, for the other thread.

Well as they said at Chambers Bay, if you put the clubhouse on the water, you loose some of the best land for golf. Would you rather the clubhouse be in the location of the 16th green, or would you rather have 16 as is and return to the clubhouse with 18?

After one play, I think it should be a par 3.  

More seriously though, I thought it was a quirky finisher surrounded by the most lasting image of the property, the gnarled cypress trees.  I think it fits.

I don't think every #18 should be a bruising 460-yd finisher, and #8 at PB wouldn't have fit the land going back towards the clubhouse.  I do think #18 at CP requires two precise shots, the second being one that not only challenges club selection and distance control, but also ball flight around,over or under the overhanging tree, certainly a unique challenge.

So would it be correct to assume that a few of the trees on CPC 18 should be removed to make the hole more playable?  Or would this take away some of its defenses?  Or perhaps just prune them back so one has hope to hit thru a couple of the branches.

On a related note, with todays modern constructions materials and techinques, I would think a bridge could be constructed out to that rock that could withstand a few wicked storms here and there.  With that parking lot where it is, I'm not sure what they would do with that though....

This very morning I had a pretty maximal anti-climax. I walked off Aston Oaks, a pretty little Nicklaus Inc course in western Cincinnati; and I was simply happy to be done.

Why? To begin with, I lost 26(!) golf balls today. That should tell you something of the insane angles my golf took. I have never worried much about score ...... but a round like this is hard for anyone to take. Hard to even understand. I bet I hit the hosel of my driver a dozen times today, seven or eight of them on the 8th tee, where I lost 10 balls before departing.

Anyway, all approach shots went right, all tee shots went left [and down!]. And FINALLY ...... I went home.

That was a round well worth forgetting!

Doug

how do you carry 27 balls in a bag?

I have for some time now come to the comclusion that I may be the only one who did not dislike #18 at CPC...perhaps by then I was so in awe of the place that I could see no wrong, but I just dont understand the harsh comments.
It is a stratgically placed tee shot to an elevated green atht requires some degree of precision...the greens bunkering is superb, and the green itself has enough contour to keep any golfer honest....but best of all THE VIEW...awesome...when you walk towrad the green glance left and see that view...wow...I just dont understand the criticism...ever thought Dr Mac intended it that way...that view reminding you of all you have just enjoyed without the extra thoughts of yet another spell binding hole.....to me it is just another example of his genius....but perhaps that is just the romantic in me

Michael:  you are not alone in your assessment of CPC 18.  There are a proud few of us who share these views.  We just don't chime in much because getting shouted down gets old quickly.

 

Kalen:

That likely has something to do with it, but not much.  Trees play a significant role on 1, 4, 5, 6, 14, 17.  So it's not like the course is treeless.

I think what gets people are the trees directly in the way off the tee.  Look at the aerials posted in the other threads... you have to hit right over some trees to reach the fairway.

And that is weird.  Then you combine this with the very tight nature of the hole up near the green, and there's the dislike.

None of it bothers me though.  Oh, like I said earlier in this thread, I can't call it a great hole... but I also don't see it as an anticlimax.

Anybody know the age of the offending trees off the 18th tee?

There's been a lot of speculation on these three threads about what Dr. Mackenzie intended, but I always assume an architect did not intend for a tree to affect the line of play unless the tree was already there when he designed the hole.

Quote from: Rick Shefchik on May 30, 2007, 05:42:39 PM

Anybody know the age of the offending trees off the 18th tee?

Rick,

I've asked that question several times and never got an answer. It would seem to me that the tree has grown over the years and is now an impediment to play, but who in their right mind would cut down a gnarly old cypress tree the could be older than your father?

I've got Geoffs book on CPC at home.  I'll check to see what pics exist of 18 when it was orginally built.  If memory serves me right, the trees were there but not nearly as over-grown  as it is 80 years later.

I have advocated this in the past and will do so again.  But to satisfy both the tree and non-tree camps, why is it not feasible to go in every 5 years and prune the trees that are regulary in play on the course?  Yes it would be damn expensive to prune every tree on the course, but couldn't a couple of dozen that really come into play be thinned out to still get players thinking about them, but at the same time allow a recovery if you get behind it?