Tommy Nac ...so nice to hear from you!
As to Stone Harbor and Muirhead , of which a case study can be made for a kind of wacky genius...something we might not be quite able to understand yet compelling...like an abstract art piece...at first glance it appears alien...even garish ...but if you look long enough it might just appeal to you!
That was Stone Harbor ...brilliant ...mesmerizing ..but way too over the top to receive any kind of public approval ...and the lines of charm .. geometrical ...hard angles...is an affront to the senses of most purists ..
I'm interested in personal knowledge of Desmond....who I never met ..despite spending many hours watching them build Stone Harbor
,I'd imagine his personality was larger than life .. just guessing , but I'm sure when he walked into a room he wouldn't go unnoticed .. Just guessing on this one..
Stone Harbor was so hard ..yet you could make a ton of birdies if you got it going ....the shot you needed to hit was so obvious ...or was it ? . the angles of attack and distance control necessities made it unplayable for most ....even a really good player would eventually fall victim to the need to hit such precise shots ...to me it is much harder (then ) than Pine Vlalley or Galloway
but ...what a great place for a big skin game...and if you were a tournament caliber player (say 3 and under ) you could give a 14 his handicap and beat him...an unusual event in this day and age .
.I remember playing with 16 pretty good players (local pros and such) making five on eighteen .. thanks to a bad drive an da chip out ...and winning a skin that's right sixteen guys ...worst handicap 5 and a bogey won a skin!
Mike Sweeney has it right when he alludes to the sensory overload at Stone Harbor ..even if you didn't quite realize what was wrong...
...you couldn't play an easy round there ...it required tremendous concentration ...there was no let-up although some of the holes were real easy..notably the par fives...
the five pars were and are birdie holes ...but require lots of concentration
Unfortunately the inordinate amount of luck needed at Stoney may have been the eventual doom of Muirheads' "masterpiece" .case in point bieng the tee shot on number two ... You hit ablind tee shot over a hill that has a severe left to right slant .. lots of water right ...there is no bailout left ... from the back tee it requires a pretty good nuke to get it in the flat spot that is preferred .. there is no good lay-up ....short of the hill at about 230 off the tee you were safe ..but faced with a second shot that was terrifying to say the least (this has been softened somewhat )
...
Eventually it wore out all but a few masochists (lol) and revealed the "Emperor had no clothes "...when the cognoscenti ( the tournament player ) started saying that it was too far out ...
.it went from a showplace to a curiosity piece , the average Joe ,who couldn't stand shooting 15 shots over his handicap, and losing two sleeves of Titleists to boot , was quick to join the chorus of naysayers
It strikes me as odd that Muirhead was a high handicapper ....as his knowledge of just how to punish a golfer thru geometry / angles shows a tremendous knowledge of the game...and refutes at the same time that you have to be a good player to be an architect
As we have often talked about ....Stone Harbor Golf Club ... was and continues to be an anachorism ....eliciting wild opinions and controversy...
Anyone who played it remembers it ..they should have never changed the name from Jersey Devil..it s the perfect moniker
hopefully Desmond is laughing and smiling somewhere as he reads this !
cheers