Tommy Naccarrato says:
Two things: This color you put on the topo has got to go! It makes it very hard to see the great use of topography your accomplished! The other thing is the greens are a bit too busy for my tastes. Stop trying to impress Tom Doak and start trying to impress George Thomas!
Seriously, you’ve got some brilliant strategies here that work , great green shapes and some very good contours in them., although I think you have to show some restraint for the land in terms of the greens; let the land do its job as god and Mother Nature intended!
Your green drawings are tops by the way! Explains a lot about the routing which I can barely see thanks to that color you applied!
Also, a less reliance on sand and more reliance on land is whats more important to the strategies. I see a lot of bunkers that are unnecessary—all sixty of them!
We have a new leader in the clubhouse! But if I compare to one of the others, and the restraint comes into it, it might be a deciding factor to an otherwise brilliant routing!
Ron Whitten says:
First thing I noticed was the practice range, positioned due east, which is not quite into the morning sun on summer mornings, but still into the rising sun enough to make it awkward for morning golfers. Plus they’ll be constantly fighting a strict crosswind from right to left, overemphasizing draws and misleading slicers into thinking they’ve straightened things out.
The next thing I noticed was the massive amount of irrigated turf used on this course. If the scale is accurate, over half the holes are more than 100 yards wide (including the approach to the par-3 15th!) While I love the fact that the architect used the vast site to exercise some flights of fancy with regard to width, alas, he has everyone teeing off from precisely the same angles. (Indeed, this design looks like it could have been prepared by Robert Trent Jones in 1960.)
My personal feeling is that the best golf holes are those that look and play differently from each tee on a hole. I don’t see that here. (Only the par-3 eighth has a tee box in a considerably different angle from the others, and that exists to present a “sunset round.” Nice touch, but I would have liked to have seen much more of that.)
Also, the course is very long from the front tees at 6,565 yards. Barney Adams’s recent “Tee it Forward” studies have shown that to hit greens in regulation on a 6,400 yard course, a golfer must be able to drive it an average of 250 yards per tee shot. That’s well beyond the range of mid to high-handicap golfers, for whom this golf course will rely upon for income.
Also, I notice another of my pet peeves. In order to make a course easily walkable, it’s ideal if tees are close to previous greens. (Most architects don’t do that these days because of a variety of reasons. Litigation is a primary one. Cart paths are also a frequent contributor.) Here, the architect thinks he’s accomplished the task, but the problem is, he/she has the back tee closer to each previous green. Which defeats the purpose, since few golfers use the back tees. It’s much better if the regular tees are closest to previous greens, and back tee players walk back to their tees.
Since this design has considerable width on most of its fairways, I expect to see all sorts of alternate routes and options. But most holes don’t seem to provide many options. Only the short par 4s seem to pose different avenues of attack. The architect suggest three routes on the 310-285 yard par-4 second. Playing to the far left, over the carry bunker, would certainly leave a good angle into this diagonal green? But if a golfer can hit it 275 yards to that spot, why wouldn’t he play up the middle of the hole? It might not be quite as good of an angle, but it’s only a sand wedge shot anyway. And would anyone deliberately play to the right? The bunker over there seems penal, simply to punish a slicer. On a hole this short, this much width seems like overkill. The strategy would work better, I should think, on a longer par 4, where the thought of trying to hit a long iron or hybrid into a diagonal green with a front bunker would dictate trying to get as far left to approach into the long axis of the green.
The short par-4 10th is merely a mirror image of the second in terms of design philosophy. Here I question the architect’s scale. If the second is indeed 310 yards, the 10th is not 305-280 yards long. I measure it at closer to 400 yards. Which is fine. The strategy works better on a longer hole. I like this hole much better, because some players will aim down the left side of the hole because the entire hole slopes left to right. Others will play down the right side to get that better angle (although I doubt anyone drives it 385 yards as shown), and the strategic bunker on the far right is more of a savior than a punishment.
I just wish the architect had provide more holes with these sort of options. The 13th, although flight-lined to show two options, really doesn’t have two options. It’s too long, uphill and into the prevailing wind, to be a realistic drivable par 4 for all but a few professionals, so no one will attempt to carry the fairway bunker on the right, simply to leave themselves an awkward half-wedge into the green.
Speaking of awkward, the most awkward hole on the design is the par-4 11th, playing uphill from the tee, with the proposed landing area (albeit 380 yards from the tee) down in a hollow, from which the next shot would be uphill and presumably semi-blind. (As a “back loop” par 5, playing to the 16th green, the hole is actually better in terms of visibility and probably playability. Which makes me wonder why the architect didn’t design 11 as a par 5 to that green in the first place, and re-route the 16th to some other location.
Other observations: two of the four par 3s play in exactly the same direction (four and 17), never a good thing, even though each is bunkering differently. Eight, from its alternate “sunset” tee, plays in the same direction as 15. More variety is needed. There is better variety in the alignment of the four par 5s. Three plays more or less downwind, while the other three face differing crosswinds. Which is good.
I also reviewed each green plan provided by the architect, and while I wasn’t certain of the dimensions of the ridges in these greens, I was a bit concerned that so many greens contained so many distinct ridges. It became monotonous. While I agree that greens in a sandhills location ought to emulate the rugged nature of the surrounding terrain, I also think that balance is needed. There doesn’t seem to be a subtle green anywhere on the property. Some seem unfair. The fourth green appears to me to be a series of tiers dropping right to left, rather cruel on a hole where the prevailing wind is right to left. The 12th green has a knob diagonally through its middle, which would dictate that pin positions would be needed around the perimeter of the green. Yet there are knobs and slopes at several points around the edges. Where, exactly, is a superintendent supposed to locate holes?
However, I did like the 16th green, which appears to tumble left to right as viewed from the 16th fairway, and from right to left when played from the 11th fairway as part of the “sunset” back loop.
CONCLUSIONS TO ENTRY 13: Should this architect be hired, I would urge him to re-examine his scale of features and rethink a few of his par 5s, which seemed to blur together. The overall routing is not that bad, but a few more twists and turns within some of the holes might vary the wind directions. The strategies used on the short par 4s ought to be adapted to longer ones.