Tobacco Road pictures are added...

[GeoffreyC]

Ran

You are correct, by definition I am judging TR on my single experience.  I have in the past written about the positive features I saw at TR (the approach to the green on #1 is a good example right off the bat) but I also saw several goofy things that could/should be corrected.  

It was blowing hard enough for us to stop and turn our backs into the wind on #10 to avoid being sandblasted in the face. If 15 was fixed then that's a positive but there was no room to stop a ball with a lob wedge from any angle I could recall (we had balls left and right on the fairway).  The problem was the ball doesn't just fly off the green into a potentially recoverable area it can and did go into unplayable areas.  That was goofy under any playing conditions.

The other potentially dangerous areas of the course needed to be corrected as well.  

I can see TR as being a really fun course to play but as it was I didn't see anyone wanting a steady diet of that.  That's totally UNLIKE Yale where I can be content playing there every day under any conditions.

Unfortunately I'm not coming down to Pinehurst for the Golfweek rater get together this spring. I will be at the Golfweek Raters Cup at Kiawah Island in September.

[Jim_Bick]

These comments remind me of a conversation several years ago after several of us played Tobacco Road for the first time. I can't remember exactly how this managed to happen, but almost simultaneously a scratch-playing friend said he hated the course and couldn't see playing it more than a couple times a year and I said I liked the course and felt it would be fun to play a couple times a year (living within an hour). We all had a good laugh and discussion about perspective and expectation as it relates to "rating" courses.

After 5 or 6 rounds, all in the winter since, the most recently last weekend, I still feel the same way.