What’s wrong with this? What’s wrong with what is essentially a really long par 3? Don’t all players have to play it and feel the pressure to make 3?
Why the focus on par/score? Why not focus on interesting shots, which always seem in abundance at most Open venues?
A litany of 85-55 yard chips, pitches on the penultimate hole is not interesting... and "the pressure to make 3"?! Who's focused on score or what the hole par is...you KNOW that until 15-20 yrs ago, a 415 hole did not regularly bear these outcomes... hence my comments on rollback. At Erin Hills, a course tailor-made to host the US Open and set up to the exact specifications of an organization determined to 'test the best in the world', the winning score was -16. And at Pebble it was -13. Portrush is more than 'holding its own' (if that's even important).
I honestly don't know what VK is on about with this one. With a seaside links course in Northern Ireland, noting that the course plays easier in good weather than it does in bad seems akin to saying that it plays easier during the day than it does at midnight.
Well what I'm on about is two items:
#1. All these OC" links" are no test without weather...of scoring, of anything... for the world's best...(maybe nothing is and that's a fair point) but this part is that Portrush without weather defense (like Erin Hills I suppose, which isn't a parkland course, but an expensive over-sold manufactured mess of patronage) is a piece of tissue paper. This is technology's fault and this week's watching showed that so convincingly, I had to draw and sharpen our notice.
#2. That the long man-love of links designs have this limitation (expressed in the thread title) that make me appreciate the inland and parkland designs all the more... and no Tom D, the parkland world is not limited to ANGC and TPC Sawgrass...how about WFW/E with nary two or three holes of water... I guess I'm saying it takes a lot more to route and design a parkland course than one with the perceived advantages of climate, humpty-bumpty land and caprice of those by the sea.
Other than that, I want to express that I'm ever more reserving my appreciation of design and practice for the wonders worked on such land
without advantages, with property confines and costly environmental contexts way that are under the radar...I'm more eager to see GCAs work their reno-magic on medicore--shit designs and build anew on unexceptional land... For example I LOVE what Gil Hanse did with rather plain Tallgrass' property...Tom D, lemme see you renovate Hampshire or Willow Ridge or Rye Golf Club or what you could do for the Westchester publinx.... that to me is a greater test than the tabula rasa..."I chose the best 18 pf 130 holes (Sand Hills)" type thing... on properties of great advanatge...
And to be clear, I don't give a shit what the winning score is or what par is for a classic hole.I'm not demeaning Portrush for allowing 16 under and a shooting gallery, it's that without the weather, it's no particular world's finest (compared to other course outcomes I've seen)...and if we didn't have all the shamrock waving and Xander Schaffle won it, you'd be bored to tears.
The ball and the driver must come back 15-25%...the excelling public exhibition of the game is nearly lost.