Now Here's a Piece of Land!

[Craig Sweet]

This would be one heck of a location for a desert course!

Now watch, this probably won't work...

img]http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/csweetccr/detail?.dir=985ascd&.dnm=9899scd.jpg[/img]

[Craig Sweet]

Nope...failure.

[Kevin_Reilly]

The first bracket is missing from your link...but in any event Yahoo photos (sorry Huck) is not the place to host pics for posting...Photobucket and similar sites are better.

[Craig Sweet]

Maybe this will work?

[Craig Sweet]

This is better.

[A_Clay_Man]

Checkout the new church pew hazards at BN.

[Craig Sweet]

The site of the opening hole: A bit tight, but it opens up just past the upheavels.

[A_Clay_Man]

My apologize to John Kirk. He had sent these photos awhile back and I failed to understand that he wanted them posted.

Here's the look of the 12th hole from the right side.




Today, we played her from the most forward teeing ground, which I didn't even know existed. It was from 240 yards and much farther right than the other teeing grounds. The hole was devilishly tempting from this angle and distance. All of the golfers were sucked in to their detriment. At least two of the foursome found a rightside bunker. This hole is a very special hole, in a sequence of special holes.

[John Kirk]

Craig,

I'll take a wild assed guess and say those pictures were taken in southern Chile or Argentina.

[TEPaul]

I'd hestitate to say that some piece of land would be great for golf simply because it is in some way dramatic looking topographically or whatever.

As I've mentioned a number of times, I'd have to say that Bill Coore as been my primary mentor on things to do with architecture, its uses and its prinicples.

One time I took Bill Coore across the street from my home to look at a piece of beautiful rolling farmland that I thought would be a fantastic site for a golf course but to my surprise when we got back to my place he said he thought the scale of the topography was way too big for golf and that he felt golf holes would get completely lost in it.

Noticing something like that is obviously why he's as good an architect as he is. When I look at that land across the street now with golf in mind I can definitely see precisely what he meant.

To underscore this particular point he made about the land across the street from me was something I felt (after a while) when out at Sand Hills G.C.

That site is definitely topographically dramatic and it's scale is also immense but when you go through in your mind how well the particular landforms selected work for golf you can't help but understand what he was driving at.

In other words when it comes to where and how the tees, LZs, other shot areas and greens are situated you begin to see how beautifully and naturally they work together for golf shots. This did not happen by accident---it clearly took a ton of thought and arrangement.

The great thing about Coore is he doesn't get seduced into using something just because it looks great or looks dramatic---it has to work really well for "golf", for the thought process and the reaction of the golf ball too. Whether you tee off on the 1st or the 10th at Sand Hills you don't have to look past the very first tee shot to realize this.

[ed_getka]

Tom,
    What is it about the scale of the topography that is way too big for a golf course at the land across the street? How would that property compare to Bethpage Black or parts of Friar's Head? I am curious about the scale being too big. Is that the land moves up and down too fast for a golf course to flow across it?

[A_Clay_Man]

Ed,
Tom described it as farmland, which precludes severity. I envisioned long rolls of terrain, and have often contemplted what golf might look like on that type of topography. Thanks to that post, I'll stop doing that.

[Craig Sweet]

John Kirk..you are right on the money!

[ed_getka]

Adam,
   Unless farmland is WAY different in PA than it is in upstate NY, I fail to see how a golf course gets lost in the scale of the topography that is too big on rolling farmland.
    I think I'll let Tom Paul take a crack at explaining it to me. Perhaps he has been all this time, but just hasn't finished yet and posted it.
   

[TEPaul]

" I envisioned long rolls of terrain, and have often contemplted what golf might look like on that type of topography."

That's exactly right. I certainly think a decent golf course could've been built on that topography but I do understand what Coore meant. He likes topography the effects the ball in smaller and more complex ways apparently. I guess there is only so much use in massive side-slopes, upslopes and downslopes in his mind.

[A_Clay_Man]

One of the first aspects that I thought of when looking at  long rolling terrain, is it's lack of severity. Which to me, translates to eminently walkable. However, it would appear that the massive scale would only work for Mackenzie's 10,000 plus yard nightmares. Bringing new meaning to the term blindness, indeed. I will say that Sand Hills is as close to the scale I think we are talking about, as any course I have ever seen.