Golf Week Indiana courses

[Bill Seitz]

There's nothing "missing" from the Indiana list and we didn't omit or miss any courses. Some folks here simply disagree with our top-10 public access courses.

If we had gone to the top-15 those courses would have suddenly "appeared." Indiana is so much stronger for public golf than Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and I was tempted to go 15-deep there but we needed a certain symmetry (of 10) in the number of courses we listed for comparably-sized and -populated states. In any case, the real issue is not Golfweek's negligence but the depth of talent and the compression in the voting results.

Brad, I'm not sure anyone is accusing GW of anything nefarious. Personally, I'm just surprised, based on what I've played, that he numbers came out the way they did. As far as I'm concerned, that's an indication of the quality of public golf in Indiana.  If there are ten courses in Indiana better than the Trophy Club, it's a pretty good state for golf. Yeah, I'd say we disagree, but hats why people make lists.

[Ken Fry]

Scott I grew up in Carmel and have played pretty much every golf course in Indiana except Victoria National.  For you to say that Prairie View is not even Top 5 in Hamilton County for PUBLIC golf courses, you must be joking right, remeber we are talking public Scott, maybe you were thinking private too, which I would agree with you then.  If you include Purgatory, Bear Slide, Plum Creek, Prairie View, and then after that you start getting into pretty bland public courses.  If you ask the general public golfers, or as we say on here Retail golfers in the Indy area, I guarentee you that everyone would say how Prairie View is one of the best publics in the Indianapolis area.  Conditions, views, no homes on golf course, and a pretty good course for Trent Jones Jr. I would say that Prairie View is pretty nice.

Also, not that I agree with Golf Digest often.  In there best in state rankings, which include public and private, prairie view is ranked #7.  So Scott maybe you need to check your facts .

Just to compare here is Golf Digests Best in State ranking, which has both private and public
1. Victoria National
2.  Crooked Stick
3.  French Lick Dye
4.  Sycamore Hills
5.  Wolf Run
6.  French Lick Ross
7.  Prairie View
8.  Rock Hollow
9.  Brickyard Crossing
10.  Otter Creek
11.  Woodland CC
12. South Bend
13.  Sagamore
14.  The Fort
15.  Purgatory

Peter,

Different lists like different people have different opinions.  I'm in the camp that believes Prairie View, from Day 1, was an over rated, over priced project.  For the most part, I've found Golf Digest raters like pretty and expensive, hence the results of the state lists.  There's no one I know that would put Prairie View as the best public course in Indiana.  In the Golf Digest list alone, the five courses listed below Prairie View are better courses.

In the Indianapolis area, Trophy Club, Purgatory, Bear Slide, The Fort, Brickyard and the original Eagle Creek Golf Course were much better than Prairie View in my opinion.  I may even say Heartland Crossing but it's been too long since I've been down.

Statewide, Otter Creek, Sultan's Run, The Warren Course at Notre Dame and Harrison Hills are all better than Prairie View.  I haven't been to French Lick or the casinos so I can't comment on those additional four courses.

So maybe Scott saying "Prairie View wasn't top 5 in Hamilton County" was a bit stretched, but outside top 10 in the state?  Not tough for me to believe.

Ken

[Nigel Islam]

Scott, I just checked he aerial for Coffin. The ponds on 8 and 15 that I remeber them putting in the late 90s are gone. It looks like the lay up area on 15 is pretty bare. How long is that hole playing with that retention pond? I remember it being about 470 down the cliff. Also nice to see the astroturf tees ar still there at 18 on Riverside.

[Andy Stamm]

Scott, I just checked he aerial for Coffin. The ponds on 8 and 15 that I remeber them putting in the late 90s are gone. It looks like the lay up area on 15 is pretty bare. How long is that hole playing with that retention pond? I remember it being about 470 down the cliff. Also nice to see the astroturf tees ar still there at 18 on Riverside.

The water on 8 is gone, unless it rains! On 15 I think it's still there, but way short of the landing zone. They flooded the right side of the hole though to improve drainage. That water extends to the right of 16 as well. I haven't seen that as it happened last year. But, anything that actually addresses the massive drainage problems is a great addition.

[Paul OConnor]

I hadn't realized how awful public golf in Illinois is when both Kankakee Elks, and Ravisloe are both in the top 10 in the state.  Good god!

[Kevin Stark]

Scott I grew up in Carmel and have played pretty much every golf course in Indiana except Victoria National.  For you to say that Prairie View is not even Top 5 in Hamilton County for PUBLIC golf courses, you must be joking right, remeber we are talking public Scott, maybe you were thinking private too, which I would agree with you then.  If you include Purgatory, Bear Slide, Plum Creek, Prairie View, and then after that you start getting into pretty bland public courses.  If you ask the general public golfers, or as we say on here Retail golfers in the Indy area, I guarentee you that everyone would say how Prairie View is one of the best publics in the Indianapolis area.  Conditions, views, no homes on golf course, and a pretty good course for Trent Jones Jr. I would say that Prairie View is pretty nice.

Also, not that I agree with Golf Digest often.  In there best in state rankings, which include public and private, prairie view is ranked #7.  So Scott maybe you need to check your facts .

Just to compare here is Golf Digests Best in State ranking, which has both private and public
1. Victoria National
2.  Crooked Stick
3.  French Lick Dye
4.  Sycamore Hills
5.  Wolf Run
6.  French Lick Ross
7.  Prairie View
8.  Rock Hollow
9.  Brickyard Crossing
10.  Otter Creek
11.  Woodland CC
12. South Bend
13.  Sagamore
14.  The Fort
15.  Purgatory

Peter,

Different lists like different people have different opinions.  I'm in the camp that believes Prairie View, from Day 1, was an over rated, over priced project.  For the most part, I've found Golf Digest raters like pretty and expensive, hence the results of the state lists.  There's no one I know that would put Prairie View as the best public course in Indiana.  In the Golf Digest list alone, the five courses listed below Prairie View are better courses.

In the Indianapolis area, Trophy Club, Purgatory, Bear Slide, The Fort, Brickyard and the original Eagle Creek Golf Course were much better than Prairie View in my opinion.  I may even say Heartland Crossing but it's been too long since I've been down.

Statewide, Otter Creek, Sultan's Run, The Warren Course at Notre Dame and Harrison Hills are all better than Prairie View.  I haven't been to French Lick or the casinos so I can't comment on those additional four courses.

So maybe Scott saying "Prairie View wasn't top 5 in Hamilton County" was a bit stretched, but outside top 10 in the state?  Not tough for me to believe.

Ken

The original Eagle Creek is fantastic. Someone should be put in jail for what they did to that golf course when they added the additional nine holes and split it up.

[Andy Stamm]

The original Eagle Creek is fantastic. Someone should be put in jail for what they did to that golf course when they added the additional nine holes and split it up.

Breaking it up was an incredibly bad idea. I quite going in protest. But, the one good thing is that it's all still there, so you can go when it's really slow and just play the original 18.

[Nigel Islam]

+1 on Eagle Creek. I was moving when they were building the fourth nine. I was just unsure why they would mess with Dye's work. Still have never played the new rendition. I always liked the Indy city courses, and of course Eagle Creek was the star of that bunch. Does the city still run a bunch of courses?

[Chris Clouser]

Nigel,

Yes, they still run several courses.  I wish they would put the old championship course back together and get the maintenance up on it.  For a while it was very overwatered.  It is still the best city owned course in Indy.

[John Nixon]

Not sure I agree with the logic that since Indiana is similar to Ohio or Illinois or Timbuktu, that dictates that the list can't relfect the quality of public golf in the state. If Indiana's publics are stronger, shouldn't the list be lengthened to show that?

#15 at Coffin plays to the same length, you just have to fly your 2nd (or 3rd, in my case) shot to the green rather than run it up. It's unfortunate that the course has had its share of drainage and erosion issues over the years, but they seem to be getting a handle on things gradually. I play Coffin fairly often - and maybe I'm feeling particularly contrarian this morning - but I've come to placing it higher and higher in my estimation every time I play it. If I get ambitious enough maybe I'll post a profile of it some day, hopefully with some photos. I think it's incredibly underrated.

Eagle Creek is an interesting case. Yes, the original full 18 is still there. Perhaps one thing the addition of new 9 holes did was make it more likely that more golfers would see Dye's original 9-hole course. I know I never played them 'til they were part of the new Pines course.

[Andy Stamm]

I've played Coffin a few hundred times, and I agree there's a lot to like out there. There are also some flaws, and it's the one place for me that the conditioning and related issues were so problematic that they got in the way of enjoying some really good golf.

Have you played Coffin since the area around 15 and 16 was flooded? I haven't. I've heard about it, but I'm curious how it's impacted the holes.

[John Nixon]

#16 is the same. The new work didn't affect how it plays.

As for #15, simply imagine a 20 yard wide riprap-lined water channel running perpendicular through the fairway about, what, 60 yards out from the green. It drains into a retention pond just right of the fairway, looking from the fairway toward the green. It adds its own dimension to playing the hole, but as I posted, certainly changes the way I play the hole. It adds a definite new wrinkle to a 2nd shot layup.

[Andy Stamm]

Thanks.

I didn't realize that it cut across the fairway. I thought it was just up the right side. That certainly will have a big effect on how it plays.

[Josh Tarble]

I don't know...Coffin maybe has the guts to be a little above average.  There is some good shaping and a few pretty decent holes.  But there are also a lot of pretty bad holes and the site it's on is just really sub-par.  It probably does get the most out of the site it can though.

You guys also hit on it, that the conditioning is just so poor you really can't look past it. 

[Tim_Cronin]

There's nothing "missing" from the Indiana list and we didn't omit or miss any courses. Some folks here simply disagree with our top-10 public access courses.

If we had gone to the top-15 those courses would have suddenly "appeared." Indiana is so much stronger for public golf than Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and I was tempted to go 15-deep there but we needed a certain symmetry (of 10) in the number of courses we listed for comparably-sized and -populated states. In any case, the real issue is not Golfweek's negligence but the depth of talent and the compression in the voting results.

Or you could simply list each course in a state that hits a certain point in the rankings. Say, 6.5. If California has 37 courses above 6.5 and North Dakota has one or none, so be it. If would provide an excellent indication of depth of quality in each state, never mind the state's population. And symmetry be damned!

[John Nixon]

I don't know...Coffin maybe has the guts to be a little above average.  There is some good shaping and a few pretty decent holes.  But there are also a lot of pretty bad holes and the site it's on is just really sub-par.  It probably does get the most out of the site it can though.

You guys also hit on it, that the conditioning is just so poor you really can't look past it. 

1. Which holes do you consider "pretty bad"? A lot of them? I'm not saying you're right or wrong, just curious.

2. Is it really that hard to look past poor conditioning in determining the underlying design? Is it difficult to imagine how a hole might play differently if it had, say, real live grass instead of patchy weeds and dirt?

[Andy Stamm]

I consider 10 and 18 to be pretty bad, notwithstanding conditioning. I can easily ignore bad grass, but new water hazards on 5 and 8 (and I guess now 15) to fix condition issues but that effect play greatly are more what I had in mind. And besides the water, the trees have grown up around 8 so much that I'm not sure that it even makes sense from the original tee.

[Josh Tarble]

I don't know...Coffin maybe has the guts to be a little above average.  There is some good shaping and a few pretty decent holes.  But there are also a lot of pretty bad holes and the site it's on is just really sub-par.  It probably does get the most out of the site it can though.

You guys also hit on it, that the conditioning is just so poor you really can't look past it. 

1. Which holes do you consider "pretty bad"? A lot of them? I'm not saying you're right or wrong, just curious.

2. Is it really that hard to look past poor conditioning in determining the underlying design? Is it difficult to imagine how a hole might play differently if it had, say, real live grass instead of patchy weeds and dirt?

1 is really strange with the big tree...this might work really well if there were fairway on both sides

2&3 might be decent if there was just a bit more space, but they are just too narrow...like a 15 yard window on 2 and slightly more on 3.  I don't consider them completely bad though, the thought is there

5 it may have a good view, but I think its a really poor hole with the pond down the right...just hit 2 or 3 decent straight shots

6 is a bit weird as well with the big tree in the middle, I think that one works though.  Plays more as a centerline hazard

8 is awful, the trees just really clog that hole...maybe with a bit of pruning it would be better

10 is pretty bad with the ponds up the right side...just far too tight

12 might be better with better conditioning but as is its a poor redan knock-off

15 was not that good before the pond, I haven't played it after the pond was added, but that actually might make it better...may add some decision making into the layup

17 also may be better if some trees were pruned, but I can't really see it right now

I can see the concept on a lot of the holes and I think Tim Liddy did a really good job with a really poor site and there are some excellent holes... I really like 11, 13, 14.   But to me it's one of those courses that probably shouldn't have been built because of the site.  

[Nigel Islam]

8 was terrible when they had the lake there. I used to really like 15, before the changes. I don't think there are any "bad" holes but certainly several with borderline playing corridors (which is what I would assume the critique of 10&18 is. 6 was always a pretty cool tee shot. There is water on 5 now? I'll have to look at the images again

[John Nixon]

There is no new water on #5. What's there is what's always been there as far as I know - the pond running the length of the fairway down the right side, and adjacent to the White River. 

The ponds on #8 are no longer there. That portion of the fairway tends to remain a bit soggy longer than most of the rest of the course though.

 

[John Nixon]

1 is really strange with the big tree...this might work really well if there were fairway on both sides

Opinions. If you don't like tangling with the tree lay up short right of it with a FW. Challenge it with a driver.

2&3 might be decent if there was just a bit more space, but they are just too narrow...like a 15 yard window on 2 and slightly more on 3.  I don't consider them completely bad though, the thought is there

I'll grant the course as a rule demands accurate driving. On a few holes it demands too much IMO (10 and 18). I don't think #2 is too narrow. #3 uses the rolling terrain very nicely, hit driver and risk having your shot directed downhill right towards the bunker. Lay up onto the flat part of the fairway or hit the left side and roll down to the middle.

5 it may have a good view, but I think its a really poor hole with the pond down the right...just hit 2 or 3 decent straight shots

#5, to me, just begs the player to pull out the driver and swing as hard as possible - it's too inviting to try and hit it a mile from that vantage point on the tee up on top of the hill. You have to know your limitations. Then you have to control your 2nd and 3rd shots or end up wet.

6 is a bit weird as well with the big tree in the middle, I think that one works though.  Plays more as a centerline hazard

8 is awful, the trees just really clog that hole...maybe with a bit of pruning it would be better

Agreed, could use a little trimming, but  generally a solid design that's a victim of, shall we say it together, conditioning

10 is pretty bad with the ponds up the right side...just far too tight

Yes, too tight. Nice green complex though. And a scary approach.

12 might be better with better conditioning but as is its a poor redan knock-off

Again,clash of opinions. I'll disagree that's it's a poor Redan knockoff.

15 was not that good before the pond, I haven't played it after the pond was added, but that actually might make it better...may add some decision making into the layup

17 also may be better if some trees were pruned, but I can't really see it right now

The trees are what make the hole. Perhaps eliminating a few of the trees at the end of the row, nearer the green would make it more tempting to try and take the over the water approach, but it's the second shot that make this hole anyway. Scariest shot on the course for me. Death left and near death right.

I can see the concept on a lot of the holes and I think Tim Liddy did a really good job with a really poor site and there are some excellent holes... I really like 11, 13, 14.   But to me it's one of those courses that probably shouldn't have been built because of the site.  

Well, there was a course there before Liddy did one.

[Andy Stamm]

I haven't been out there since '11.

From my experience, the hazards come and go with the water. So just because there's no water left on 5 today, doesn't mean it won't be there tomorrow (and played as a hazard not casual).

But it was the water left (AND right) on 5 that was a joke. When the junk is high enough around there (when it's just muddy enough, but not standing water), it's just as bad. That hazard or lost ball junk can go all the way to behind 8, which is that last thing that hole needs as well.

[John Nixon]

I haven't been out there since '11.

From my experience, the hazards come and go with the water. So just because there's no water left on 5 today, doesn't mean it won't be there tomorrow (and played as a hazard not casual).

But it was the water left (AND right) on 5 that was a joke. When the junk is high enough around there (when it's just muddy enough, but not standing water), it's just as bad. That hazard or lost ball junk can go all the way to behind 8, which is that last thing that hole needs as well.

Fair enough. I've seen about 4 balls ever lost left on #5 in 10+ years of playing Coffin. And have yet to see anyone go long on #8 to the point of hitting the water between it and 5. 

[JLahrman]

Or you could simply list each course in a state that hits a certain point in the rankings. Say, 6.5. If California has 37 courses above 6.5 and North Dakota has one or none, so be it. If would provide an excellent indication of depth of quality in each state, never mind the state's population. And symmetry be damned!

Don't national rankings (where California has 15 courses and North Dakota doesn't have any) already accomplish this?

[Andy Stamm]

To get away from being negative, things I like about coffin.

Center and left pins of 4 are fun.

I think 5 from the back tee is a good hole with good angles and options and makes a good risk reward.

6 is good with good options and the tree make the hole. An easy but interesting and challenging short hole. A good use of a tree that I'd like to see discussed more.

The right pin location on 7 is fun.

Center and right pins on 9 are fun.

11 is a good hole.

13 is a great hole. I wish the right bail out of the tee were a worse option though.

Left pins on 16 are fun, although this is another hole where a tree is killing the hole.

17 is a great hole when an approach missed slightly right won't feed into the water. Great options and angles.

The second half of 18 is good. The mounding is lame and the landing area a joke, but the approach is good. And playing the hole well is very satisfying.