DeVries Exacting Nature

[Mike_DeVries]

Adam:

The title of this thread is: "Re: Mike DeVries Exacting Nature."

I was wondering if by that you mean Mike DeVries' golf architecture in that it's exacting of the possibilities of what Mother Nature gives him in landforms for golf or whether you mean Mike DeVries' own nature itself.

If you mean the latter, like with his personality or whatever, he's actually a fun and funny and pretty laid back guy but only to a point, I think. I had a good time with him that way one time out at Crystal Downs sitting on the porch of a mutual friend next to the clubhouse. We were having a good time for about an hour or so and he was laughing a lot or whatnot until I actually asked him if he had the guts to create a hole as cool and radical as the 5th at Crystal Downs!

WELL---at that point his "nature", like in his personality or temperment, did get pretty exacting as he rushed over and grabbed me and tried to throw me off the porch onto the rocks on Lake Michigan about a hundred feet below the porch, until our mutual friend intervened.

Touche, my good man, Mr. Paul!!!!   

[TEPaul]

Mike DeV:

Do you know you truly are a most resourceful and creative guy. Do you think there's any possibility you could teach me how to put someone's post in a neat blue box with their name, date and time on top of it, like you just did with my post? ?

[RJ_Daley]

Mike DeV:

Do you know you truly are a most resourceful and creative guy. Do you think there's any possibility you could teach me how to put someone's post in a neat blue box with their name, date and time on top of it, like you just did with my post? ?

You mean like this? 

[Mike_DeVries]

Mike DeV:

Do you know you truly are a most resourceful and creative guy. Do you think there's any possibility you could teach me how to put someone's post in a neat blue box with their name, date and time on top of it, like you just did with my post? ?

You mean like this? 

Tom,
I leave all the technical issues like the groovy blue box to RJ and others in the know.  I really don't have the time to teach, unless it is in the dirt!   
Cheers,
Mike

[RJ_Daley]

Wow, TEPaul has as keen of an eye for reading a golf course design and figuring out an archie's design intent, and translates that into superb play of the game, and yet he hasn't figured out the bluebox quote machine yet!   

Tom, please tell me you are kidding, right? 

[Adam Clayman]

Tom P., My experience was a bit different. Mike succumbed to the three sisters and was likely thinking 'what the hell were those ODG's thinking', just about the time his left foot was about three or four feet above his right, on a side hill lie, in a bunker. But seriously, if you have not been to Greywalls or Kingsley, you have no idea what the man is capable of designing. Truly inspiring stuff. Now, if he could only learn how to frame a green with features that are 800 yards away, he'll make out O.K..  

[TEPaul]

Adam:

Yes, even though either Mike or Joe Hancock told me I had to see Greywalls, it was only Kingsley I had time to see that time while at Crystal Downs.

But I was so impressed with Kingsley and so overcome with emotion after seeing it, it actually took me something like three days to find my way out of Michigan during the realitively simple drive home to Pennsylvania.

I must say, the very size of some of those massive topographical contours on a few of those holes at Kingsley stunned me, and certainly proved to me I had no right or reason to ask Mike DeVries if he had the guts to do holes like #5 at Crystal Downs.

Nevertheless, I don't think he should've tried to throw me off the porch at Crystal Downs and onto the rocks on the coast of Lake Michigan a hundred feet below.

But had he done it, it wouldn't have mattered because regardless of what I hit I do know how to BOUNCE and skeeeedattle. I learned that really well when I was six years old and the star flanker-back on the elementary football team of the Seabreeze Private School "Sandpipers" in 1949 or 1950.

[Bill_McBride]

I found it difficult, especially on the ninth at Kingsley, is if you miss the green you could be going back and forth over the green trying to get your chip to stay on the green.  I couldn't really find a ridge on the ninth that I could play into to help feed the ball to the hole.  The pin was in the front right portion of the green the day I played and it's really narrow down there.

It's certainly possible that Mike DeVries has played more than one round at Royal Dornoch!

#2 and #10 there are very frustrating with the back and forth element, but it makes for two great challenging par 3s.  And #10 isn't particularly long either.

[Adam Clayman]

There's an interesting omission from all the talk of the ninth at Kingsley. Teeing grounds from differing angles.

While I only saw the one we played, the others orientation surely must change the feelings people seem to have about the size of the target. I did notice the far back left portion of the green had a sort of back stop. Next time I would try to hit to that area. Knowing my game, the perfect miss and power outage would likely result in a fine shot. But from the teeing ground to the left of where we played would make that back stop a kick plate.
Who could ask for more elasticity?

To tell the truth, I loved all the controversial talk about Mike's work. It reminded me of either a C.B. quote on controversial features, and/or, how Mackenzie wanted to feel after the first reports were in on CPC.

[Mike_DeVries]

I found it difficult, especially on the ninth at Kingsley, is if you miss the green you could be going back and forth over the green trying to get your chip to stay on the green.  I couldn't really find a ridge on the ninth that I could play into to help feed the ball to the hole.  The pin was in the front right portion of the green the day I played and it's really narrow down there.

It's certainly possible that Mike DeVries has played more than one round at Royal Dornoch!

#2 and #10 there are very frustrating with the back and forth element, but it makes for two great challenging par 3s.  And #10 isn't particularly long either.

Bill,

I hadn't thought of that specifically, but that is an interesting analogy.  Combine them with the great 6th and they are 3 very exacting and exciting par 3s.  As I have called Dornoch since I first went there, it is the Mecca of golf, a holy shrine that requires a pilgrimage to get there, but once there, you feel blessed. 

Cheers,
Mike

[Josh Smith]

Last time I really had my socks knocked off was playing a DeVries course.  His sense of mixing different scaled features together is very unique and DIFFERENT.  Think 15 at Kingsley.  460 yard uphill par 4 to a 3000 ish square foot green that falls off hard on 2.5 sides.  He takes risks and really seems to create ultra natural courses.  Holes that are so unique, one might think, "this green pad must have been here, no one would build it so small, or would build it with such movement." (i've only played Greywalls, Kinglsey and his work at Meadow). 

I played both Kinglsey and Greywalls over 2 years ago and only had time to play each course one time, I am still able to remember every hole very clearly.

WFC and DEVRIESIAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Adam Clayman]

Well said Josh. The howls about the size of the 15th green at Kingsley was another one of the controversial topics brought up by those who apparently think a formulaic approach to green sizes is a good thing. My thoughts on that aspect of that hole are that the majority of the whiners can't hit that target in regulation, not because of it's size, but because the hole is long and uphill. Meaning, most will be chipping to the green making it's size immaterial.