I was planning on doing a big, long post with everyone’s holes in it, but I decided that individual posts would be more conducive to discussion. I’ll try not to do more than a couple per night. And I’ll post the reduced size aerials at the bottom. Ignore the white circles, those were from the esker discussion.
Okay to kick things off, on the heels of our ponderous preponderance discussion, it’s GBay’s 3rd hole. This is a shortish par 5 with no bunkers, lakes, or other artificial hazards. I felt like this hole contains the best of what “gravity golf” has to offer. Here is a look from behind the tee with Paddy Harrington showing us how to play it.
I won’t try to describe the method of play (Garland can do that) but the use of the contour is quite good in my opinion. The way the ridge in the landing area runs diagonally added with the diagonal direction of each of the forward teeing areas (technically they are ribbon-style tees) makes the tee shot seem very strategic, and roughly proportional in its difficulty with regard to where one tees off.
Below we have the view from behind the green looking back. This is a perfect example of a crowned/elevated green. What’s more, I think it is the ideal green for this hole. Without artificial hazards, and since the green is probably easily reachable for the better player, the green-site needs to be somewhat severe to challenge the better player.
Since most higher handicap players will com up short in 2 or even 3 shots, they’ll have a suitably challenging chip or pitch shot. For the low-handicap player, being even a little off in any direction could mean a very tough par since the long-iron approach will be coming in with some velocity. That velocity combined with gravity could feed the ball well away from the green.
Well, here I’ve gone on longer than I planned, and talked a little strategy as well (sorry Garland). Let’s see what you guys think.
Aerial (Hole 3 is lower-middle):
