Bill [and Joe]:
Can you quantify how many pins you saw out of 18 that there was almost no way to get close? Just curious as to how many it takes to set off alarm bells. (Asking for a friend, of course.)
With hickories? All of them!
Kidding, but it's really firm, so anything short is going to be tough to get close to, though I think on the whole them seemed a little more bounce it in friendly than I remember the Loop, but that was six years or so ago. We had a couple weird days with little to no wind whatsoever, and I think the wind could play a big factor in holding those greens. On 15 I hit one into the middle bunker off the tee, had to just pop it out, and then hit either a mashie or mid-iron to a back left pin about four feet and made par, but that was into a touch of breeze which held the ball up. Anything where you needed to land the ball on the green was going to be tough if the pin was front to middle. Eight is already a hard hole, but getting anything close to a pin on the front third needed a bit of luck to hit the mound in exactly the right way. 17 seemed like it should have been difficult with the green sloping away, but we actually had the ball stop there a little quicker than expected.
One thing I like was whatever grass constituted the "rough" around the greens. It wasn't cut much longer than fairway height, but the ball really sat up on it, and made recoveries, even when you needed to go over a big slope, pretty doable.
Tom, do you expect the Lido to play as firm after as many years as the Loop presumably still plays today? I never played Kingsley until 2011, but I hear it was rock hard when it opened and softened as it matured. I expected the Loop to do the same, but from the sounds of it, that hasn't happened. I will say, the sound of the ball hitting the green at Lido is like nothing I've heard before.