Ian, what were the safety issues you noticed at Pennard?
The 1st landing is right beside the 10th tee (a nice place to miss)
The 4th tee hits over the 3rd green with a landing area 20 yards right of the 7th tee (with OB right - a great place to bail).
The 15th tee is right beside the high side of the 12th landing (trying to hold the slope - you almost need to aim at that area)
The 17th landing is blind from the tee and we were hit into from the 17th tee "and 16th tee" as we waited to play our next shot
Ian
What you fail to mention is that the tee shots on #s1, 4, 12 and 15 are in full view of others and others should be paying attention to what is going on around them. There is no reason why these shots need be more dangerous than untold numbers of shots on untold courses. In fact, I would say they are safer than many tights shots which use trees for screens. #17 is a "bell" hole. These are very common - not ideal - but common and sometimes these are brilliant holes. I understand that there are many spots that aren't ideal from a modern view point of design safety, but I am not at all sure there isn the amount of land available or the type of flatish land or land runnng through dunes at Pennard to avoid creating a course where folks don't need to pay attention to others - unless there was to be a complete overhaul of the routing and a serious grading of the property. We must remember than when Pennard was built a 200 yard drive was a bigun' so the archie cannot be at fault for the "hot spots". If you were to label the hot spots you mentioned as dangerous enough to require altering, than many, many holes in the UK would need to be altered. To be fair, some have been and the result is usually not satisfactory from an arch9
itectural PoV. In fact, the 4th used to be a par 5 bending around the oob but too many balls kept landing in the property bordering the oob. It was though a safer option to play over the 3rd green. Hopefully it never becomes too harsh with the health and safety lot. Honestly, you are the first person I have ever heard say that the course is dangerous. Most people complain about all the footpaths and/or grazing animals. I can probably count on one hand how many times I thought a hole was too dangerous, but the one that always stands out to me as crossing the line is Painswick's 8/9 combo with a blind shared fairway.
Ciao