What makes the greens a 10? Genuine question.
Visually they looked really cool, even on TV. But it did appear that there was only one spot you could hit towards on each green, regardless of pin position.
Anyway, it was the first time I had really focused on the course and it looked like my kind of place. Very reminiscent of The Loop.
Ally, I'm glad you brought up the Loop because it's the closest comparison to no.2 of any course I've seen, both in look and how it plays. And comparing them helps illustrate why I like no.2 so much. There's a bit more variety in the green complexes at the Loop, but a lot of them are similar to no.2, surrounded by slopes that take the ball away from the green.
The reason I prefer no.2 to the Loop is because no.2 gets the balance right in the runoffs around the greens while on the Loop, like many other new courses that have a lot of runoffs, they're too often too severe. The no.2 greens have some crazy areas, like left of 5, over/left on 8, and over 14. But only a small percentage of the surrounds are that severe. Most of the areas around the greens if you miss, the ball runs 2 feet downhill and 10-15 feet away from the green because the slopes are neither steep nor long. That's a tricky shot, but it's not impossible. The ball might come back to your feet, but only if you hit a terrible shot. And it should never go off the other side.
So I don't think it's true that there's only one place around most of the greens that you can miss. It's more often the case that there's only one place where you
can't miss. Usually on no.2 you'll be safe if you play anywhere toward the front of the green. Sometimes, like the 2nd hole, you have to favor the front and one side (here, the left). But others it can be the front and an entire side (short or right on 1, short or left on 15). On 5, as we saw yesterday, short-left is bad, but short-right is good and so is the rest of the right side.
My issue with the Loop is that the runoffs around a lot of the greens are too steep and often too high. Some get it right, like the 2 Black/16 Red green. But I think some are pushed up a bit too high, like 1 Black/17 Red, 6 Black/12 Red, and the back of the double plateau 16 Black/2 Red. There are safer places to miss around these greens, but I found them smaller and harder to get to than on no.2. And on some, even if you play to the safe area--like around the lower plateau on 16 Black/2 Red--if you're playing to the higher plateau, it's still easy to miss the green.
Again, many of the greens on the Loop aren't like this. But enough of them are that it holds the course back a bit for me. I just wish that sections of a few of these greens were 2 feet lower. Then it would be more like no.2.
But the Loop is one of the few courses besides no.2 where the rough is close to natural, so like I said in my last post, it gets points for this. The pine barrens of north central Michigan would get frequent fires, which would result in an open forest of Red Pine, Jack Pine, and occasional oaks, like you have on the Loop.