A tree or six in your way - Hunter Ranch

[Garland Bayley]

The new topic button does not work for me in Firefox, so I will post this with IE, and then switch.

[Garland Bayley]

Approach to number 2.



Second shot on par 5 6th.



Par 3 8th



Tee shot par 4 13th



The totally obnoxious par 3 14th



Tee shot on par 5 17th. The proper line is to carry blind the trees on the right. There is actually a stop light at the tee to tell you when the fairway beyond has cleared.

[Garland Bayley]

As you can see from the above, I don't hit it too straight. I am off the right side of the 2nd fairway. Move into the center and the tree looms right in front of the green.

I am off the fairway on the left of number 6. From the center of the fairway the tree looms directly ahead in the center of the fairway.

There are other holes where given time trees directly on line will grow to obstruct play too.

[Garland Bayley]

Tom,

I personally reference the Simpson quote you mention all the time. It's one of my favourites: "The educated taste admires simplicity of design and sound workmanship for their own sake, rather than over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards."

Jeff's post on another thread certainly is timely with my posting about Hunter Ranch. The "over-decoration and the crowding of artificial hazards" suits Hunter Ranch quite well IMO.

[Tom Huckaby]

Well now this is disappointing... I so wanted this course to be good... I have driven past it many times - Hwy46 being our more fun means to get from San Jose to LA, a drive I make quite often given so much SoCal family - so I have gazed at that course and often wondered.. it looks pretty darn cool from the road.  Darn it.

On the other hand.. I shall no longer feel like I missed all that much, and quit the scowls at my wife as I am forced to pass it by yet again.  These will now turn to knowing smiles.  My wife thanks you, Garland.

 

[Tom_Doak]

Garland:

Gil Hanse and I interviewed for that job with Mr. Hunter way back when.  It was a beautiful piece of property, but I guess we were a bit too pricey ... we must've asked for $175,000 or some outrageous design fee.

I am not surprised that he left a lot of trees, I think that was an owner mandate, not a designer's.  Some of your pictures didn't really bother me at all as individual examples, but when you add them all together, it does seem like overkill.

[Garland Bayley]

#6 and #7 are back to back par 5s. Here are the tee shots.

[Bill_McBride]

Garland:

Gil Hanse and I interviewed for that job with Mr. Hunter way back when.  It was a beautiful piece of property, but I guess we were a bit too pricey ... we must've asked for $175,000 or some outrageous design fee.

I am not surprised that he left a lot of trees, I think that was an owner mandate, not a designer's.  Some of your pictures didn't really bother me at all as individual examples, but when you add them all together, it does seem like overkill.

Those are pretty old trees, it seems the architect could have routed the holes so that the trees were between the corridors rather than right in the middle of them!

I don't mind the dogleg right where you have the risk/reward option of carrying the trees or having a disaster, but a fairway with a big tree right in the middle of it ought to be a once in a while thing (think #12 Stanford).  Here there are way too many, IMHO.

[Kalen Braley]

Almost has a valderamma feel to it with those chutes and trees hanging over the rolling fairways...

[Garland Bayley]

Well now this is disappointing... I so wanted this course to be good... I have driven past it many times - Hwy46 being our more fun means to get from San Jose to LA, a drive I make quite often given so much SoCal family - so I have gazed at that course and often wondered.. it looks pretty darn cool from the road.  Darn it.

On the other hand.. I shall no longer feel like I missed all that much, and quit the scowls at my wife as I am forced to pass it by yet again.  These will now turn to knowing smiles.  My wife thanks you, Garland.

 

Tom,

A little research would have told you that the scowls at your wife were unneeded. There is only the slightest difference between the slope ratings of Hunter Ranch and La Purisima. We all have read your preaching about the devineness of lower slope ratings. You should have known Hunter Ranch was not devine.

[Garland Bayley]

The landing areas for 6 and 7 are quite wide open, so it is an illusion of narrowness from the tee. The immediate repetition of the template is what put me off.

[Garland Bayley]

As you can see, I am no Aidan Bradley. He has a very attractive picture of the 3rd. However, to me the hole just screamed over bunkered.

[Garland Bayley]

My favorite hole? The relatively short par 4 10th. That's the fairway partially hidden by the two trees a little below off the front of the tee.



The green is guarded by a "burn". Those who read my posts know how much I prefer the creek to a pond. I can accidentally miss a creek a high percentage of the time. Not so with ponds.



My most hated hole will be posted next. Anyone who knows the course care to guess?

[Chris DeNigris]

"You know, when I was your age I used to hit the ball right over that tree"   

[JohnV]

Tom H, anyone who could love the old Bayonet as much as you should like Hunter Ranch. 

[Tim Gavrich]

It looks like the areas around the center-line trees and those just off the fairways are clear of junk so that people can punch out aggressively, if they choose.

I think the tree scheme at Hunter Ranch looks no worse than that of the much-heralded Harbour Town.  There are a couple holes with center-line trees at Pawleys Plantation that work, I think.  Trees can be a legitimate and fair obstacle as long as it is possible to escape from them.

[Andrew Summerell]

Not only are there trees, there seems to be a guy in the way on the 14th.

[Rob Rigg]

Garland,

Does it seem like they left "all" of the trees or does it seem like they probably removed a lot but decided to leave a lot of trees in the line of play on about 5 holes too many?

If the architect had a mandate to leave all of the trees then it is a lot more understandable than if he could remove some and still decided to have so many dictate strategy within the routing.

[Garland Bayley]

It looks to me like they cleared trees, but left a few too many in center. What amazes me is that there is a huge amount of sand on the course, but they never put a bunker in the center of a fairway, or diagonally crossing. The most memoryable thing about the course was the tee shots on 6, 7, and 14. The most interesting green site to me was 10, and the rest really  did not distinguish themselves.

It is easy to make a course hard. It is much more difficult to make it interesting. To me this one only passes the hard part.

[Scott Weersing]

So, Garland, what did you like about the course? What did you not like about the course?

Would you go back and play it again?

What brings you down to California and where else are you playing?

[Garland Bayley]

My most hated hole was 11, a mid length par 4.





I managed to reach the right fringe of the green in two., but I can see this hole being a disaster for the high handicapper.

[Garland Bayley]

So, Garland, what did you like about the course? What did you not like about the course?

Would you go back and play it again?

What brings you down to California and where else are you playing?

The pictures were taken the week before KP while I played for 5 days with a friend who lives in Santa Maria. The five courses I played were Cypress Ridge, La Purisima, Monarch Dunes, Hunter Ranch, and Dairy Creek. Hunter Ranch would be the one I would least likey go back to.

What did I like about it? To me it is an average golf course. A solid Doak 3. If you are scoring on conditioning, then the course goes higher. But I don't score on conditioning. My favorite of the week was Dariy Creek, and it has the worst conditioning. You pay twice as much to play Huter Ranch over Dairy Creek, and for that you get lots of mundane looking sand bunkers, not particularly strategin, and lots of luch rough.

At Dairy Creek you get a much more memorable course experience.

[Lynn_Shackelford]

Very disappointing.  Like Tom H. I have been near there, never played, but heard it was a good course.  From the pictures it looks like a huge disappointment.
Garland you should have also played Marshallia Ranch.  I haven't played Dairy Creek, probably never will, but you rank it preferable to Monarch Dunes?  Why?
I suspect after Sandpiper and La Purisima, Hunter thought he knew enough about architecture to self design it.  Had Hanse and Doak done it, it would have had a major influence on other course designs for this area in the last 20 years or so.  Funny how little things like that have big influence or how things turn out.

[Jon Spaulding]

I've not played there in years; these photos are a great reminder why. The only things I really remember about the course were that it was $25 and was able to walk up without a tee time and play in under 3 hours.

The place is a fair distance behind La P and Sandpiper on any scale.

[David Stamm]

The property look very good. It's too bad Tom and Gil were not able to do the work. I'm sure from the looks of the terrain it would've been something special.