I know we're not allowed to have opinions or critique a course until we've played t multiple times, but let's have some fun looking at the plan and see what we can intuit and critique from the plan itself. In two or three years time we can come back and check out our ability to interpret and evaluate plans against what actually gets built on the ground and how it plays.
To aid in the discussion here are some images.
The Hawtree plan. Click through to the bigger version of some of these images (Photobucket seems to have taken away the ability to upload and link to larger images).
The Google aerial of the southern portion of the site.
The Hawtree holes overlaid on the Google aerial.
A look down from the highway to the property in question. The pond in the distant middle of the image is the one between the 5th and 12th holes.
This picture is looking more or less at the 9th hole.
This is likely where the 8th and 10 will go.
Closer in to the 8th and 10th.
Looking across 10, 8, 7 and 6 to the 4th, 5th. 12th and 13th in the green field to the right of the house in the middle distance.
Starting with the plan for the 1st hole, it seems that the tees will need to be benched along the side of a fairly abrupt 50 foot drop from the upper fields to lower ones. the fairway also runs fairly abruptly right to left and down towards the green. Could this be graded to a two level fairway or benched into the bank? Seems to me that most likely the location of this hole was dictated by their inability to move out the troublesome neighbour and the subsequent location of the driving range. Seems like a less desirable plot of land to begin on.
The 2nd looks to be similar to the 1st in that it traverses along the side of the ridge, albeit not so steep a ridge. It also looks like a forced carry over a valley draining some wetlands uphill. I wonder how they will differentiate the 1st and 2nd.
The 3rd looks to continue along the side of the ridge in the farmer's field, the ridge being more gentle still than the 2nd and then turn right and uphill maybe 10 feet to the green. The hole looks too long to be drivable and it turns uphill, so I suppose it will end up being a layup hole for many. Presumably any interesting features on this hole will need to be created.
The 4th is a medium length par 3 over a low area to a bit of a knob. It would appear that this hole will require some shaping to create something interesting.
To be continued .....................