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BCowan

Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #75 on: August 07, 2015, 07:36:14 PM »
5 6 - -     Culver Military Academy  * vol. 3

Were these two ratings post restoration/renovation?  I have heard very good things about this 9er.   

jeffwarne

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Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #76 on: August 07, 2015, 07:42:15 PM »
I would say it is somewhat rare for an 18 hole course to have 18 really good holes.


Nigel:


Well, it is a lot harder to go 18 for 18 than it is to go 9 for 9.  It's like the difference between pitching a no-hitter for three innings, or for six.  The front nine at Crystal Downs, to name just one off the top of my head, would beat any of these we are discussing.


Does a course HAVE to go 18 for 18?
couldn't the absolute strength and flow of say 13-15 holes, the setting, the tightness of the routing be enough?
couldn't the rest be connector holes that don't interrupt that flow and aren't great themselves  set you up for the crescendo?


Perfect example TOC-certainly 9 and 10 (or a couple other holes) aren't considered great by many-but the whole is MUCH greater than the individual parts.


I think that's EXACTLY why I dislike nearly all modern golf courses-they try to go 18 for 18 ::) ::)  and there's little to make the great holes stand out.
« Last Edit: August 07, 2015, 10:40:28 PM by jeffwarne »
"Let's slow the damned greens down a bit, not take the character out of them." Tom Doak
"Take their focus off the grass and put it squarely on interesting golf." Don Mahaffey

Mark Johnson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #77 on: August 07, 2015, 09:02:13 PM »
 
1.  Sweetens Cove
2.  Dunes Club
3.  Culver
4.  kukoiloni
5.  Hooper
6.  Fred Richards RIP




hope to get a chance to play whittinsville now that I live close
« Last Edit: August 08, 2015, 09:30:51 AM by Mark Johnson »

BCrosby

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Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #78 on: August 07, 2015, 09:42:20 PM »
Deleted.
« Last Edit: August 08, 2015, 07:25:46 AM by BCrosby »

Jon Wiggett

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Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #79 on: August 08, 2015, 03:19:15 AM »
Also, my own convention is to rate 9-hole courses one grade lower than I would give them if they had 18 holes of the same quality, though I can't say if my fellow authors share that view.



What's the logic behind that? What about courses that are not par 72 or have 4 par 3s and par 5s? If the land available was better suited to a nine hole course surely it is a positive that the GCA/owner saw it as being better to build a good 9 holer than horse shoe in a crappy 18 holer no?

Jon

Adam Lawrence

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #80 on: August 08, 2015, 03:53:05 AM »
A decent course but my most enjoyable 9 holer is Traigh.
Great views on just about every shot and for the coast of Scotland my 2 visits have both been on sunny and near calm weather.


I really, really want to play Traigh. I've been past a couple of times but never stopped.
Adam Lawrence

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JBovay

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #81 on: August 08, 2015, 09:42:51 AM »
Aetna Springs is easily the best I've played, and I'm a big fan, for reasons I've elaborated here previously. For what little it's worth, Aetna Springs is a 6 in my book also.


I haven't seen it yet, but Whitinsville is one of the handful of courses I hope and expect to play in the next 12 months.

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #82 on: August 08, 2015, 10:00:13 AM »
Also, my own convention is to rate 9-hole courses one grade lower than I would give them if they had 18 holes of the same quality, though I can't say if my fellow authors share that view.



What's the logic behind that? What about courses that are not par 72 or have 4 par 3s and par 5s? If the land available was better suited to a nine hole course surely it is a positive that the GCA/owner saw it as being better to build a good 9 holer than horse shoe in a crappy 18 holer no?


Jon:


My logic is that there are a lot of 18-hole courses that if you only took the best of the two nines, the overall view of them would be higher than it is now.  If the outward nine was terrific and the inward nine was not so good, I'd probably take a point off what I'd give the better nine on its own.  Therefore, I thought it was fair to compare nine-hole courses on that basis.


Here's an example:  Rolling Rock Club in PA.  The original nine by Donald Ross was terrific -- it would be in my top five nine-hole courses.  But then they added another nine by Brian Silva, which I haven't seen, but the reports I've heard are that it isn't nearly as good -- which isn't surprising, as Ross used the best part of the land.  [He didn't stop at nine holes because the Mellons were short of money for a full 18.]  Should the expansion automatically knock a point off the course's rating? 

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #83 on: August 08, 2015, 10:05:25 AM »

Does a course HAVE to go 18 for 18?
couldn't the absolute strength and flow of say 13-15 holes, the setting, the tightness of the routing be enough?
couldn't the rest be connector holes that don't interrupt that flow and aren't great themselves  set you up for the crescendo?


Perfect example TOC-certainly 9 and 10 (or a couple other holes) aren't considered great by many-but the whole is MUCH greater than the individual parts.


I think that's EXACTLY why I dislike nearly all modern golf courses-they try to go 18 for 18 ::) ::)  and there's little to make the great holes stand out.


Actually, Jeff, I agree with you on that.  I've taken some flak from people for writing that a "10" on the Doak scale means "if you skipped even one hole, you'd miss something worth seeing," which I will admit doesn't apply to all of the courses I rated a 10 ... there are not more than five courses in the world I could say that about, and I certainly don't think every new course should try to live up to that standard.


By the same token, in this debate, a nine-hole course will never have the absolute strength and flow of 13-15 holes; it can't have more than nine.  So I don't see how I could rate it a 10.

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #84 on: August 08, 2015, 10:10:58 AM »
5 6 - -     Culver Military Academy  * vol. 3

Were these two ratings post restoration/renovation?  I have heard very good things about this 9er.


No, none of us have seen the renovation as of yet.  Two friends of mine were very involved with it.


However, I have always maintained that restoration work does not change a course's rating on the Doak scale too much.  The prime factors in my ratings are the routing and the greens, and what kind of character they bestow on the course, and restorations seldom change any of that.

Jaeger Kovich

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #85 on: August 08, 2015, 10:44:56 AM »
Just to inject a little rigor, here are the numbers we have so far in The Confidential Guide:

- 7 - -      Sweetens Cove



This is outrageous! The course averages 20 catch basins a hole. 




Jaeger Kovich

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #86 on: August 08, 2015, 11:20:04 AM »

9 Holers that I would give a 4 or above:


Royal Worlington and Newmarket - 9
Whitensville - 7
Dunes - 6
Sweetens - 5
Sewanee - 5
Pelican Beach - 5
Thedford - 4
The Horse Course - 4






Would the original 9 at Prairie Dunes be a 8 or a 9?


Jason Thurman

  • Karma: +1/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #87 on: August 08, 2015, 11:24:35 AM »
I need to duck under the desk after I make this post:
 
I enjoyed Sweentens Cove immensely and I think what Ari and Rob have accomplished is extraordinary.  That said, a contrarian might opine that it reminds him somewhat of an ostentatious Parade of Homes house where the builder is more interested in displaying his talent and capability by including every conceivable bell and whistle than he is in building an architecturally brilliant residence. 
 
Sweetens is fun to play and a great marketing model for Rob, but I don't think it's a great golf course.  Favorite nine-holer?  Perhaps.  Best?  Not in my opinion.
 
Perhaps I should have waited to post this until AFTER the Dixie Cup.
 
With all due respect,
 
Bogey


I totally understand what you're saying here and where you're coming from. But I don't agree with you.


There's no doubt that Rob threw the kitchen sink at the course and built a showpiece for his talent, but I think when you consider the limitations of the project that his approach makes sense as more than just a living resume. The final product at Sweetens has been good enough to obscure the fact that it's a tight, flat, flood-prone property with room for only nine holes, and not an especially huge amount of room for those. I think a lot of the things we see as "the kitchen sink" are really just accommodations that had to be made to fit 9 compelling holes onto the property.


For example, the 4th hole at first glance is a massive, shape-shifting par 3 with an almost ridiculous array of teeing angles, pin placements, and potential playing distances. And yet, there's a lot of value in having a hole like that on a 9-hole course that, by its very nature, has less variety than a standard course. The 5th is a quirky, almost cute tiny par 4. Even if it wasn't an outstanding hole - and I think it is - its playing angles and tiny size enable the one truly massive hole on the course to follow. The 6th is a crucial piece of the puzzle with its high-stakes drive on a monster par 4, and many will then look at 7 and 8 as a playable pair of shortish par 4s with a gratuitous Biarritz swale and a double-fairway tossed in to get the GCA nerds salivating. However, I see the double-fairway not as an architecturally gratuitous feature. Instead, I see it as a feature that both allows the holes to play very differently from one round to the next, and even more pragmatically, as a feature that reduces the individual footprint of each hole to allow space for the 1st and 6th holes, which I consider to be the two most critical holes in the course's routing. 1 and 6 aren't necessarily the best or most memorable holes on the course, but it was crucial to get each of them right in order to inject the course with the variety and "big holes" it needs to work as a 9-holer on a tight property.


It's easy to see everything going on at Sweetens as a collection of great features, but I think the majority of those features also relate to numerous other points on the course, imbuing interest to the hole they're on along with creating space or angles for holes elsewhere on the course. Maybe the property isn't good enough to call it a great course, but I think it's a design that absolutely gets the most possible out of that little flat piece of land.


It's the best nine-holer I've played by a wide margin, though I haven't played the other contenders being mentioned regularly.
"There will always be haters. That’s just the way it is. Hating dudes marry hating women and have hating ass kids." - Evan Turner

Some of y'all have never been called out in bold green font and it really shows.

Mac Plumart

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #88 on: August 08, 2015, 12:19:29 PM »
I've only played a few, but my top two are:


1) Sweetens Cove
2) The Dunes Club


Both really good and very well done.


Dunes does a great job of using multiple tees to create unique angles for subsequent plays of the same hole/green complex.


I really do think Sweetens would be a Top 100 US course if it were 18 holes.  It is spectacular.
Sportsman/Adventure loving golfer.

Jon Wiggett

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #89 on: August 08, 2015, 03:37:16 PM »
Jon:


My logic is that there are a lot of 18-hole courses that if you only took the best of the two nines, the overall view of them would be higher than it is now.  If the outward nine was terrific and the inward nine was not so good, I'd probably take a point off what I'd give the better nine on its own.  Therefore, I thought it was fair to compare nine-hole courses on that basis.


Here's an example:  Rolling Rock Club in PA.  The original nine by Donald Ross was terrific -- it would be in my top five nine-hole courses.  But then they added another nine by Brian Silva, which I haven't seen, but the reports I've heard are that it isn't nearly as good -- which isn't surprising, as Ross used the best part of the land.  [He didn't stop at nine holes because the Mellons were short of money for a full 18.]  Should the expansion automatically knock a point off the course's rating?

Tom,

you can only judge what is in front of you. What you do is flawed in my opinion because you automatically assume that another nine would be of lesser quality which is something you cannot simply know. You might argue that many 18 holers would be rated higher by you if they lost three or four of their worst holes. If it were possible to lose the few offending holes and still keep the quality of rhythm and routing then they should be rated higher despite the lower number of holes because the overall quality of the course would not be diluted by lesser GCA.

Your system is biased on rating 9 holers down because they are not 18 holers and not based on the quality of the GCA they have. For you 18 holes are better GCA than 9 holes

If you think about your example of Rolling Rock Club and the fact that according to you Ross built only 9 holes despite having the land and money to build 18. Does this not show the high quality and confidence of Ross to build only nine holes of quality thus creating the best result possible. If the addition nine were of lesser quality then yes the 18 holes should have a lower rating because the total GCA quality would be lesser. All it shows however is given the circumstances Brian Silva was not able to create an additional nine holes of the same quality as Ross.

And all that shows is that it was a better course as a 9 holer than as an 18 holer would you not agree? and if you do agree then it shows the flaw in your system.

Jon

Cliff Hamm

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #90 on: August 08, 2015, 04:12:44 PM »
I'm not convinced that Tom's logic isn't valid. As much as I love Whitinsville and wiould  give it an 8, being nine holes a 7 is appropriate. A six is too low.


A course that comes to mind is Pasatiempo. The front is solid, the back is spectacular.   The difference in the nines is as much as three Doak points...  I might give the back as much as a 9 but the front a solid 6.  No matter what points are assigned the difference in the nines is substantial.


Regression to the mean enters into the conversation.  If one 9 is spectacular the odds are that the other nine will not be as good.   Whitinsville might be a perfect example, but unfortunately we'll never know.

Cliff Hamm

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #91 on: August 08, 2015, 04:49:05 PM »
 Pacific Grove is an excellent choice. I was up in the air between that and Pasatiempo. Pacific Grove has the greatest disparity in nines that I have ever seen.

Thomas Dai

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #92 on: August 08, 2015, 05:23:34 PM »
To add a few more to the mix -


Portmahomack (Tarbet GC) looked interesting from over the fence. What's it like?


I understand that the Yellow-9 at Portmanock is pretty tasty. The 4th hole certainly looks an absolute corker.


What about the three-9's at Princes?


Reigate Heath is a 9-holer I've heard good things about.


Durness?


Atb

Matt Frey, PGA

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #93 on: August 08, 2015, 09:13:02 PM »
Here is Ian Larson's presentation on Culver at the 2015 Philadelphia "Barn Fest," organized by Joe Bausch: https://youtu.be/p_IHZ615ULg


Cob Carlson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #94 on: August 08, 2015, 10:16:53 PM »
Played Whitinsville on Thursday. Probably my tenth time. It is scary good. An absolute beauty from start to finish. No weakness. And as Tom Doak noted in my film, the ninth hole was one of Ross' favorites. It is one of the, if not the,  hardest finishing holes in Massachusetts.

Rob Collins

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #95 on: August 08, 2015, 11:08:41 PM »
Just to inject a little rigor, here are the numbers we have so far in The Confidential Guide:

- 7 - -      Sweetens Cove

This is outrageous! The course averages 20 catch basins a hole.


Jaeger,

I was going to abstain from posting on this thread, but since you brought the discussion into the realm of the absurd, I feel like I need to respond. We got a good laugh about your email to Patrick after your round where you suggested that "more attention should have been paid to surface drainage."  Clearly, you have no idea what the nature of the property was pre-construction even though the featureless fields adjacent to the second and third holes provide a clear idea to the discerning eye. There was actually a "golf course", a term which should be used very loosely, on the site before we started formally known as "The Sequatchie Valley Golf & Country Club," a moniker which was bastardized by the locals who commonly referred to it as "Squishy Valley," for obvious reasons.  The raw land, which sits on heavy clay soils at the base of several mountains and rests in a floodplain, possesses all of .00055% fall from the west to the east end of the property, a percentage that equates to one foot over 600 yards. 

I'll attach a few pre-construction photos of the seventh and eighth holes that give a representative example of what the property was like pre-construction. This is a photo of the approach to the old seventh green:

This photo shows the drainage ditch, which is now buried underneath the combined seventh & eighth fairways:


Obviously, surface draining to an open ditch was not an option.  As you can imagine, architects have to work within the confines of a budget and upon the piece of land that they are given, and therefore, importing vast quantities of fill in order to achieve surface drainage was impossible.  In the case of Sweetens Cove, we completely replaced every feature on a 72 acre site for one million dollars less than they spent at Sewanee, and the result of that process allows the current course to play as an inland links in spite of its inherent geographical limitations.  I bring up the budget because our methods allowed the course to be constructed for an extraordinarily cheap price, a hard number that would've sunk the project had it been exceeded.

Prior to construction, the rain that hit the day before your visit would have rendered the course unplayable for at least two weeks, whereas, we had carts off of the path within 24 hours.  Today at Sweetens Cove, drives were bouncing down the fairways as if they landed on a concrete cart path.  In sum, we had to sacrifice surface drainage on the alter of achieving firm and fast playing characteristics, a decision that I would wholeheartedly make again. 
« Last Edit: August 08, 2015, 11:45:27 PM by Rob Collins »
Rob Collins

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Kyle Henderson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #96 on: August 09, 2015, 12:52:45 AM »
"I always knew terrorists hated us for our freedom. Now they love us for our bondage." -- Stephen T. Colbert discusses the popularity of '50 Shades of Grey' at Gitmo

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #97 on: August 09, 2015, 09:08:17 AM »

you can only judge what is in front of you. What you do is flawed in my opinion because you automatically assume that another nine would be of lesser quality


Jon:


On the contrary, if another nine would have been as good or better than the current nine, I assume nearly any architect would have built it.


Our disagreement in a nutshell is about whether judging courses is strictly an additive effort.  By one view, the more great holes a course has, the higher the ranking ... but poor holes would not detract from its rating.  By another, it is the average quality of the holes [factoring in the bad and the good] that matters.  Obviously, it's easier for a nine-hole course if you judge by the second system ... it's MUCH easier to have no bad holes if you only have to build nine ... but also obviously, if you judge by the first system, a nine-hole course would lose to any course with ten or more excellent holes.  [And most of the world's great courses have more than ten excellent holes.]


My view is that it's some of both.  I may give a pass to a course that has one bad hole [Cypress Point, 18th], but two or three bad holes are going to knock a course down at least a point on the Doak scale [Pebble Beach].  But by that logic, nine hole courses have to be rated on a 9-point scale; there just isn't as much variety as there is on a full 18, and variety is so important in my rating of a course that it's tough to overcome.


Perhaps you have a point at the lower end of the scale; there is not as much reason to dock a course from a 6 to a 5.  It's either worth driving 100 miles to see, or it isn't.

Jaeger Kovich

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #98 on: August 09, 2015, 09:12:35 AM »
Rob - Thanks for your response. I'll send you a pm so we don't take this thread off the rails.

Dan Boerger

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Best 9 hole course you've played
« Reply #99 on: August 09, 2015, 09:39:36 AM »
Best 9 hole course I've played is the Sadaquada in Whitestown, NY. Shortish, small greens but very interesting. Opens with a straightforward par 4 over water and then two par 3s, one medium in length the other long. The 4th is a straight away brute of a par 4 and the 5th a reachable par 5. After another long par 4 to an elevated green, the par 5 7th is the most interesting hole on the course IMO. You'll need a bruising tee shot to reach in two, but most will need 3 shots. The 8th a dogleg right par 4 that has a green that runs away on your approach. The 9th is a long, uphill par 3 that actually plays as a par 4 with different sets of tees for  10-18.
"Man should practice moderation in all things, including moderation."  Mark Twain

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