How do you define playable?

[Garland Bayley]

Matt,

I'll repeat what has been written here for the "hard of hearing". Yes, that means you.

Matt,

Unaccomplished players suffer not only in distance, but also in direction. The people who didn't hit Kansas from Oklahoma may have sliced it into Missouri or hooked into Colorado.

Playing the correct tees only gets a bad player through the round quicker, it doesn't make them better.

Joe

Now before you talk about lessons again, I would remind you that if PM hit the drive he hit at 18 at WF at BM, then he had better have his snake bite kit ready to go find it and hit his recovery.

I suppose by your logic he wasn't play handicap appropriate tees.
 

I would guess that George would say that Black Mesa is NP playable and Desert Forest is NP complete.  (Ignore this part Matt, it is math geek jokes.)

[Andy Troeger]

Well at least you people admit that Black Mesa is a desert course.

When I first complained about playing desert golf and it's related problems at Black Mesa, I got flamed with statements saying Black Mesa wasn't a desert course.  

Andy,

I found plenty of my off line shots at BM (for that matter, I even parred from rattlesnake area). It is just that on the first hole, they disappear behind the hill, which makes them harder to find.

Garland,
Now see, if you'd have said it that way the first time I wouldn't have had to harass you about it  

Desert golf has some neat features and aesthetics and its a nice change of pace from other types of courses, but there are natural drawbacks due to lack of water availability and grass. Black Mesa handles these better than most, but some will always tune out desert golf. At least the NM ones tend to be "high desert" which has more trees and vegetation than in Phoenix or Palm Springs from what I can tell.

[Doug Siebert]

Don't plenty of links courses have 150 carries over gorse? ...

Name one.

How about Troon, in particular the 11th (Railway) hole?

If you change "gorse" to "deep grass" then you can add Muirfield amongst others, unless you want to count the Hogan walkways there as playable (my dad had to play to those on a few holes, that's probably why they are 20 feet wide there instead of 4 feet wide like on many courses)