[Doug Wright]

George,

Blind chip shot up the hill and into the cup for a 2 at the par 3 8th at the Black Mesa GCA event to stun our competitors and spur the Pazin/Wright duo to victory? ...

[Jesse Jones]

Third Hole Pinehurst #2--330yds..

I get to the third tee after a couple of ho-hum pars and decide to drive the green..
Feet spread wide, grip tight I take a mighty swing.
I'm later told by my friends that my backswing was about twice as fast as the downswing.
Anyway, that combination led to a topped shot.
It skipped off the tee box, skimmed over the rough and buried itself about 60 yards away.
When I get to the ball, my caddy, who was about to quit after the last stupid decision I made, just plopped the bag down beside me and said nothing.
I pull three wood..
The pin was back left..
I just chop down on the ball as hard as possible..
It jumps out of the rough and soars towards the green.
The ball bounces on the front, rolls past the pin and somehow stops 12 feet away.
Unreal..
My caddy who had just disowned me about five minuets earlier, said " In 30 years I've seen nuttin' like that, now go get that birdie."
The rest of the story is too painful.
Let's just say this, I walked to #4 with a bogey.

Jesse

[George Pazin]

George,

Blind chip shot up the hill and into the cup for a 2 at the par 3 8th at the Black Mesa GCA event to stun our competitors and spur the Pazin/Wright duo to victory? ...

Not to mention you were carrying an extra 200 pounds on your back the whole round....

I'm not sure my original idea really bore out, but here goes:

I think too often we evaluate golf courses in very straightforward terms. How were the par 3s? 4s? 5s? Did they offer options for everyone? Was there a balance of holes? Etcetera, etcetera.

Yet, look at the list of everyone's shots (well, maybe don't look at Jordan's, that's kind of scary ). You have hole outs galore, but they are from everywhere on the course. Maybe half of the respondents mentioned unusual recovery shots.

I haven't had the pleasure - yet - but I'm willing to guess that is the true magical mystery of The Old Course. The challenges are not simple, straightforward options, it's presenting the golfer with unusual opportunities to envision a shot, and try to execute it. When you do, it's magical.

So, with such a wild diverse array of shots, why do we - everyone, really, not just gca'ers - seem to evaluate courses in such a bland, rote manner? Do you receive a reward for challenging a bunker? Heck, I'm more interested in whether or not the architect gave you any kind of out (well, maybe nothing quite so extreme as Scott Coan's magical mystery wind tour).

I started thinking about this about responding on the "What do pros offer" thread, where John Cook made the (colossally bland, imho) observation that architects who are not pros can't imagine what a perfectly flighted 280 yard shot is.

I couldn't care less about a perfectly flighted 280 yard shot (and I've hit 'em, even me, a lowly high handicapper, hit a couple just a few weeks ago). What I care about is whether or not an architect can think about how to make the game interesting for everyone. Not EASY, anyone could make a super wide bland boring course with no contour, but INTERESTING.

Not sure whether or not all that BS was worth the build up, but it was fun reading everyone's responses nonetheless.

Here's my (by comparison) boring little best shot:

I was playing a relatively short par 4, maybe 380 or so (their scorecard is woefully inaccurate). I hooked my tee shot into the left rough. A tree guarded the inside leg of the dogleg. I was 9 iron distance away, but the shot was a bit uphill, with the tree in my way. I thought I had a little bit of a jumper lie, so I took my 7 iron, aimed just left of the tree, opened the face a bit, swung my usual hard swing, and the ball came out straight high and true, started just left of the green, and faded back just enough to drop onto the front of the green, and leave me with a birdie putt of about 15 feet, which I of course missed.

Nothing spectacular, it just came off exactly as a I envisioned and hoped. I even said to my playing partner, heck, this is nothing but a high cut 7 iron. And it was.

[George Pazin]

Shiv, in many ways, your post encapsulated eveything I was trying to say.

And, yes, there is luck involved with many great shots, as there is with most shots, but that promoting luck over skill was not my intent.

[Tom Huckaby]

George:

Yes, most greatest shots ever are envisioned and then pulled off, and there usually some kind of cleverness involved, due to duress, the situation, something like that.

And yes, The Old Course allows for that in spades.

I'm just not sure many DON'T take this into account when evaluating/assessing a golf course... I for one have always figured the more I have to think and the harder it is to figure out, the more of a huge plus that is....

And I believe I am FAR from alone in this.

But yes, if this is not considered, one is really missing a lot of what makes a course great.

In any case, great thread!  These have all been very fun reads.

 

[George Pazin]

I'm just not sure many DON'T take this into account when evaluating/assessing a golf course... I for one have always figured the more I have to think and the harder it is to figure out, the more of a huge plus that is....

And I believe I am FAR from alone in this.

I think you are wrong in how many evaluate courses, and I think you sell yourself short in believing you are FAR from alone in this.

 

I also think it shows a lot of what is lacking in John Cook's thinking.

[Tom Huckaby]

Really?

So you think most people just evaluate the challenge involved for the low handicapper and don't take any of this into consideration at all?

If so, well that is sad.

But that's a very cynical view of the golf world, George.  But then again you can call me Paul E. Anna if you wish.

 

BTW, you know another take-away from this exercise?  Golf remains a very social game.  Look at how many "greatest shots" involved the reaction of others, what it did to others, the legend it became amongst friends, etc,  Quite a few are as much about this than as the actual shot...

[Gene Greco]

1 iron
Cypress Point Club
16th hole
220 yds
January 1993
Into the wind 15 mph
To about 20 feet short of flag but dead on line the whole way!
All on tape

I rarely overly react to any sort of golf shot, good or bad, but I screamed at the ball from the time it left the clubface until it landed safely on the green, the entire time hoping it would disappear in the cup as I had dreamed my entire life!

A close second:

2 iron
Sand Hills Golf Club
13th hole
Also, 220 yds
June 2003
30 mph cross wind, rt to left
Into the hole on a fly!

....but it didn't stay there.

[Gary_Nelson]

My best shot:

Pebble Beach
#8
205 from the left rough
Hit the most pure 3 iron in my life.
The ball never left the flagstick.
The ball hit the green and rolled to 10 feet.
First time I felt like a pro.

Gary

ps.  I missed the birdie putt by 3".

[Gene Greco]

Of course, Gene's post also reminded me of the 2 worst back to back shots of my life:

1.  the whiff/top/dribbled drive off #2 tee at SH, which wound up in the gunch on the hill before the fairway starts, up against the opening of some sort of burrowing animal hole; and

2.  the attempt to get the ball into the fairway from the front of the animal hole, which I cold bladed directly into the hole.  If there was an animal in there, it must have scared the living crap out of him to see a Titleist barrelling down that hole right at him at about 110 mph!  

Dave:

    You were a very brave man.

I can assure you that what was in that hole was no friendly-faced furry little creature frightened by your ill-played Titleist but rather some prehistoric nightmare which swallowed the ball whole and actually digested it.

[George Pazin]

Here's a couple other quick thoughts from the thread:

- Notice how many people mentioned interesting recovery shots. I think Shivas had the only interesting punch out story. What does that say about the transformation of Augusta from a fun interesting test to a stern challenging test?

- Notice how many people have hit purely struck shots. That makes Cook's observation even more silly, imho. If even a lowly high handicapper like me has hit the occasional pure shot, even if it's by accident, how tough is it to imagine a perfectly flighted 280 yard shot? Let me tell you something, imaginely an N dimensional matrix is one helluva lot more difficult. I think it's a lot tougher to imagine how a high handicapper can get around a course and still have fun. I think the traditional notion of "the bogey golfer hits it 200" is hopelessly misguided.

[William King]

Shaker Run #10 (old #1; 535 par5)

Hit a very good drive and I'm on the left side of the fairway 215-220 out, pin is in the back right. Hit a perfect fade up the hill with my 3w to 5ft made the putt! One of those rare shots that comes off exactly as planned!

close 2nd:

Cobblestone GC #12 (400yd par4)

poor drive forces me to pitch back to the fairway and end up about 14 out into the wind, take one extra club and hit a knock down that flies low to the front of the green right of the hole then proceeds to roll in: birdie the hard way!

[Doug Siebert]

I've had some amazing recovery shots, where I do something like hitting a slice off a hook lie in the rough with a low enough trajectory to stay under branch X but high enough 20 feet later to clear branch Y, then slicing towards the green after passing tree Z, etc.  You get into trouble as much as I do and you get a lot of chances to learn those, and on the days when I can execute what I can imagine I've done some stuff that would impress even Tiger.  But it can be argued that's just odds, and there's a certain element of luck involved in making a shot that you have never seen before and will never see again.

So when I think about my best shot I've ever hit I've got to think about more everyday shots that were executed in an extraordinary fashion.  I can't get away from one shot that was just so perfectly conceived and executed which couldn't really be improved upon.  I was playing my home course's 13th, which is nominally 199 yards, but I stepped it off and the tees were up 9 yards, and the pin was up a bit as well so I decided it was 185 yards.  Virtually no wind, slightly downhill, perfect 7 iron on a warm summer day.

I teed it up and carefully evaluated the wind and decided there was the merest zephyr from left to right, so I aimed it 6 feet left of the hole, and took a nice smooth swing and hit it square, exactly where I aimed.  I watched it arc up to a tremendous height, and as it reached its zenith that tiny wind started pushing it every so slightly to the right.  As it started to drop I lost sight of it (as I always do, I've got otherwise good vision but always had that problem) so I look down at the hole and see the ball land 18" right, pin high, where it spins directly left like it had eyes and goes right into the cup.

I'd had a previous hole in one, but it had an element of luck on it since I'd hit it a bit thin which helped keep it down out of the strong wind that was blowing, and I hadn't seen it go in due to the lay of the land.  I'd always hoped I'd someday get to hit a hole in one on a shot that was indisputably perfect, that not even the greatest golfer could possibly improve upon in terms of planning, execution or visual eye candy watching it happen, plus I'd be able to see it go in.  I can still remember everything about planning and hitting that shot as if it happened an hour ago, and no matter how many bad shots I will hit before I hit my last shot hopefully many decades in the future I'll always have that memory of one shot that was perfect by any possible measure.

[Gordon Oneil]

Fun topic boys, enjoyed reading the "stories (I caught a fish this big...)."  Just kidding, they were fun to read.  One thing confuses me though, all this time I thought putting was an important part of the game.
As for me, if you've read and absorbed the information in every player's required reading, the Bob Rotella books, THE BEST SHOT I HAVE EVER HIT IS MY NEXT ONE.

[Garland Bayley]

17th hole Orchard Hills CC, 180 yards to center, hole back right  behind the ridge in the green. teed the ball high swept it up with an 18degree hybrid, hit into the ridge in the green, bounced right as the ridge normally kicks it and ran into the hole. 4:30 p.m. mother's day May 14, 2006.
 

[Peter Pallotta]

From now on it's MR. Garland Bayley to the rest of us!

Congratulations, Mr. Bayley. Great shot!

(But, being it was Mother's Day, I hope Mrs. Bayley was somewhere in the picture )

Peter

[Garland Bayley]

Well Peter,

I actually prefer Dr. Bayley, Sir.

I used to kid my son telling him that is what he and his friends were to call me.  

As for Mrs. Bayley, she was planting jasmine on the "farm" by the lower gate. When I stopped the car there on the way in, she said, "What did you do, get a hole-in-one. You wouldn't stop here otherwise!"
 

[peter_p]

Way to go!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Evan Fleisher]

CONGRATS, Dr. G!!!  (...my wife is Jill and we call her Dr. J)

Another member added to "the club"...sadly one which I am still not a member of.  

[John Kirk]

Congratulations, Garland.  Based on personal experience, the 20 smiley faces pretty accurately reflects one's sentiments.

[George Pazin]

Congrats, Garland.

Another member added to "the club"...sadly one which I am still not a member of.  

Everyone on here is a member, some just haven't paid their initiation fee yet.

 

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

Congrats Garland!

JWK

[Anthony Butler]

One shot comes to mind-hit a long time ago unfortunately:

1979 NSW 'Schoolboys' tournament at a hilly little dogtrack called Roseville Golf Club-about a par 66. Couple of good holes though. On the 1st hole (our 10th) drove it left into the trees. Had about 175 to the pin if I could hit a sweeping hook through a  2'x2' gap about 15 yds in front of me. Ended up about 30 inches from the pin.

Still recall that shot because it brought a snort of disbelief from my playing partner-who later went on to win 7 PGA Tour events and a major.

[Tom Huckaby]

Still recall that shot because it brought a snort of disbelief from my playing partner-who later went on to win 7 PGA Tour events and a major.

Steve Elkington?

[Anthony Butler]

Still recall that shot because it brought a snort of disbelief from my playing partner-who later went on to win 7 PGA Tour events and a major.

Steve Elkington?

I knew it wouldn't take long on this board...  His older brother Rory was more of a star at school (still holds amateur course record at NSWGC). It wasn't until Elk's junior year at Houston, when he came back for the Australian Amateur and killed everyone, that he was considered the real deal.

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