Pat Mucci asked a question about the first hole at Pacific Dunes. By way of answering, I thought I would respond by printing the draft of my description of the hole for my book on the golf course, which is still in the works.
This gives everyone a chance to see where I'm going. I would be grateful for feedback on what other bits of information you would like about the various holes.
I'm not going to do this as a running series, though. If I'm going to give away all of our "secrets," I should at least make something out of it. Here goes:
In truth, the design of the first hole was done backwards, from the huge blowout in front of the second tee. We wanted that blowout to figure prominently in the beginning of the golf course, to make a statement that there was more to Pacific Dunes than just its oceanfront holes.
Mike Keiser had suggested that we put the green for the first hole where the white tee is on the second, right at the lip of the blowout. But, we were concerned that the wind would always drift sand onto the green, and then the blowout would have been more window dressing than in play. I wanted golfers to hit over it from the second tee, and that meant that the first hole would be very short.
I used to avoid starting a course with a short par-4, because I didn’t want to put too much pressure on the golfer’s opening shots, and a short par-4 without difficulty is just a dull hole. However, on another recent design -- Lost Dunes -- we built a shortish par-4 to start, and it was universally popular, so my reticence went away.
The tee location was pretty well fixed -- there was a trail up the valley of the first fairway, which was actually the way we walked into the property for the very first time. From a natural ridge which is now the white tee it was almost 200 yards to get to the crest of the ridge in the landing area, and into the prevailing wind, that seemed like plenty; but we did go back and forth for some time over the location of the green, because everyone was uncertain whether a 300-yard opening hole was long enough.
We briefly considered moving the green higher up and to the right -- behind the second tee. But I thought that would encourage players to slice their tee shots, and there is a lot of trouble to carry before you can afford to be on the right side of this fairway. Eventually, we solved the “length problem” by deciding to build a back tee so the hole wouldn’t be drivable in the off-season, when the wind can blow from the south. This then allowed us to locate the green so that the huge blowout was the background for the approach shot.
The original undulations at the crest of the fairway were very sharp, so we had to soften them enough to make the fairway mowable. However, we left all of the little natural hollows, so that golfers could get a very uneven lie for their second shot. With a short iron in your hand, it will be hard to judge how much influence a sideslope will have; and a strong wind in your face compounds the problem. Often, a controlled punch shot will work the best, so we left ample room in front of the green to play a low shot home.
The green is in a natural hollow. To the right there is a small patch of sand dune from which you get a free drop, to protect the silver phacelia which is growing there; otherwise this area would quickly become a mass of footprints and start to erode with the wind. Because the green is sitting down from the fairway, it‘s easy not to notice the depth of the left-hand bunker until it‘s too late.
The green itself is one of the trickiest on the course; again, the hollow makes it hard to see the undulations. There is quite a bit of tilt from back to front, and a crown in the middle as well.