After reading the "controversial thread", playing a round on my home course today, and watching the Pebble Beach Pro-Am, I'm realizing that I have a hard time defining what makes a great par 3. I know it when I see it, but I wonder if there's a more quantifiable way to define it.
In spite of any mounding, the 7th at Streamsong Blue looks really compelling. 7 at Pebble Beach is similarly stunning visually. How much of it is about dramatic terrain and scenery?
My home course is an old and largely unheralded Langford and Moreau design that, nonetheless, features an excellent set of par 3s. I love that several of them seem cross the least interesting sections of the property, using great green complexes and uncomfortable distances to create shots of interest on terrain that holds very little by itself. Alternatively, another par 3 on the course traverses an extremely deep ravine at the property's edge in a way that creates playability and routing flow on a section of the property that must have been the most difficult area of the course to incoporate into the design. Are par 3s the ideal place to create "transition holes?"
Par 3s are really straightforward. Most of us are just trying to hit a ball from a flat and perfect lie onto a defined target (the green), which sounds a lot like what I do at the driving range. With that in mind, how do some par 3s transcend the simplicity of their concept? What are the ingredients that make a great par 3?