Golf course crap that bugged me this week...

• I'm not well disposed towards measuring devices on golf courses to start with - judging distance should be part of the game - and sales pitches like this aren't going to change my mind any time soon: Laser Link Golf Welcomes Firestone Country Club and Southern Hills Country Club to a Fast Growing List of Laser Linked Courses. Laser Link flagsticks, apparently, contain reflective prisms that register with the golfer's rangefinder to reveal the distance to the pin. The result? "a seamless integration of utility and reflective performance". Oh please...


• Nor do I buy into the idea of doing business on the golf course, for the same reason I don't care for doing the household budget during lovemaking. While Scot Duke feels differently (about golf and business, at any rate) I think even he would have to admit that this post illustrates only too clearly the dangers of handing Satan the keys to the kingdom. And where the financial services industry is concerned, I think you'll agree that I use the word 'Satan' advisedly.


• I was going to keep out of Donald Trump's Scottish adventure. The oaf sets my teeth on edge and I didn't want my opinion of him to prejudice my view of his golf course. Many people, of course, could see a plus side to his being denied permission to send the bulldozers in on 15 miles of dune habitat for rare birds such as lapwings, redshanks and skylarks. Anyone except a Portfolio.com journalist, that is, for whom success can apparently only ever be measured in money. "...Scotland and its coastline are clearly losing out," harrumphs Jennifer Lai. "The resort was to include two championship courses, as well as 1,000 holiday homes, 500 private houses and an eight-story hotel." Yet in her very next sentence, she reports that "It would also destroy some of Britain's best sand dunes and wildlife habitat." Looks like the oaf has found his queen.


• Not a great few days for modesty in golf course design, either. Colin Montgomerie's enthusiasm for his current course construction in Vietnam was on a characteristically loose rein when he addressed journalists this week. "I think this site, this golf course, will become world renowned,” he opined. Some judgments, Colin, sound better coming from other people...


• But for sheer ungraciousness, take a bow Tamarack Resort chairman Alfredo Miguel, for this underwhelmed response to having your Osprey Meadows named Best New Course by Men's Journal: “We are gratified, of course, by this honor. But honestly we would have been disappointed with anything less. From Day One we told Tom [Altmann, Director of Golf] and his team to build the best in the country and they have delivered.” Love that word 'gratified' - Alf and his team expected to win it at a canter anyway, so being 'pleased' or 'delighted' would have been a tad vulgar. They are merely 'gratified'. Next year, Men's Journal might like to consider re-shaping the trophy in the form of a golden ladder, just in case the 2008 recipient also needs help in getting over himself.

Thousand up for The Golf Course as Art

With one thousand hits now in the book for the blog in its Blogger form, my thanks to all those of you who have dropped by over the last five months, particularly those who have taken time to leave words of support and encouragement.

In the words of Cleopatra to Mark Antony; "If you've enjoyed it, tell your friends..."

18 best casino course holes, Pt II

3rd at Dancing Rabbit GC Azaleas Course (Pearl River Resort)

A split fairway gives you a choice on this par 4. The longer route down the right opens up the green, while the cop-out line down the left leaves sand and water in your eye-line as you stand over your approach.















4th at Shenendoah GC (Turning Stone Resort)

Just 364 yards from the back tee, this is a classic risk/reward short par 4. The green is reachable by the boomers, according to the website, although the front left greenside bunker does seem rather large for anyone looking to bounce his tee shot onto the green.

On the conservative route, meanwhile, I'm assuming the bunker ahead of the green is designed to confuse you as to distance.


6th at Circling Raven GC (Coeur d'Alene Casino)

I was going to pick the 4th, when I noticed it's rather too similar to the 3rd at Dancing Rabbit so I've gone for this one; another short par 4.

To me, there's just the right balance between that formidable nest of bunkers and the chance to use what seems to be a slope to the right of the fairway and green to curve an ambitious tee shot onto the putting surface, via the neck of fairway on the right.



Back on Friday/Saturday with something completely different, then I'll resume this rundown next week. Comments, favourable or otherwise, will be most welcome, particularly if you've actually played any of the holes featured.

Chips and pitches - 18 best casino course holes?

Okay, here it is. Writing a poker blog as I do, I have noticed how golf is one of the few things that will drag many of the world's top poker players away from the baize and out into the sunlight.

That and a curiosity as to whether Steve Wynn's golf course matches the grandeur of his hotel, got me wondering about the calibre of casino-linked courses in general.

It turned out that Golf Digest were several steps ahead of me , having produced their top-40 casino courses list earlier this year. Takes more than that to keep a masochist like me down, however. I decided to sift through all 40 to try and pick the best of the best - 18 holes of the 720 available that I would most like to play.

It's not quite as balanced as I would like: just two par 3s, 10 par 4s and - gasp - six par 5s. Rather than improve on this by compromising my picks, however, I've stuck to my guns.

While I have allowed the surrounding view to play any part in my deliberations on only two of the holes, I appreciate that some of you reading this will have the advantage over me of having actually played some of the courses referred to on Golf Digest's list. I hope so: this 18 is meant to be a conversation-starter rather than any sort of definitive judgment, so feel free to differ or concur with equal enthusiasm.

While the holes aren't offered in any architectural order, I have tried to list them roughly in sync with where they appear on their course. Getting us under way today, then are:

1st at Barona Creek Golf Club (Barona Resort & Casino)

Well whaddya know? Another fairway tree...

There's room to the left and judging from the photograph on the course website, clearing the thing with a big, booming fairway wood isn't out of the question. Decisions, decisions...

I'm sorry, Ian Andrew, but this gets my juices flowing. And I play off 24...

2nd at Talking Stick North Course (Casino Arizona)

At first sight, this looks so simplistic, it could be something you'd find on what Brits would call your local 'municipal' - a cheap public course.

At second sight, however, it looks rather clever. For a clear shot at the green with your second, you need to flirt with the desert from the tee and then do likewise on your second if you want a putt for eagle.

Just two bunkers to defend a 552-yard hole, with what I assume is natural terrain doing the rest. I like the minimalism.

3rd at Whirlwind Golf Club (The Cattail) (Wild Horse Pass Casino)

I may have mentioned before that I like at least one hole on a course to defend itself without recourse to bunkers. This is my candidate here.

I also like the fact that while water is obviously on your mind, it's not such an all-or-nothing shot that high handicappers will stand on the tee in a blind funk.



To be continued...

Black Rock golf course the perfect cure for grey

I'm suffering golf course fatigue.

In the next few posts, I hope to have a stab at naming my best 18 casino golf course holes. Ploughing through the 720 holes involved in this process, however, has led me perilously close to the point where one hole starts to look pretty much like another and golf becomes one long, endless fairway.

It needed something pretty special to snap me out of this haze.

The Club at Black Rock is that something.

Illustrating perfectly the scientific methodology by which I decide what courses to write about, I dallied at Black Rock mainly because the architect looks a little crazy.

Maybe I do Jim Engh an injustice here. Maybe this is just his normal 'Havin' a Great Day' face.

But where's the fun in that?

No, I fancied I saw something more: a touch of wildness about that glint in his eye, perhaps. And that mouth looks strangely familiar...

Jim's something different, I decided. I was keen to see if this spread to his work.

Hell yes.

A week's accumulated staleness began crumbling to dust as I went from one hole to the next. Just when I was starting to think that golf holes, like comedy, were all derivative, this Idaho stunner offered a slap-in-the-face reminder of the game's boundless possibilities.

On a lesser course, the management line that their course doesn't have a signature hole because it has 18 of them, could have rebounded really badly. While it mightn't be completely watertight, however (see the course notes for 15 - can an 'upgrinder' ever be a signature hole?) it is not so far of the mark that it can't still be shouted from the clubhouse roof:

• Look at the 3rd - one bunker in 600 yards yet it commands your attention from start to finish
• Options abound: do you take on the right hand bunker on the 4th, the first left hand bunker on the 5th, the greenside traps and water at the 8th, ditto at 16?
• The quirks: the deep front-of-green bunker distorting perspective and playing with your mind as you tee off at 7, the option to use your putter from 120 yards out on the 10th, the Jurassic Park green settings at 11 and 13, the 17th's links-style bunkering.
• And, because I try to stay focused on a track's intrinsic merits, you'll notice I haven't even touched on the scenery yet...

Collectively, it looks quite magnificent. If you know any other architects famous for the wild look in their eyes, please lead me to them.


NB: (a) ever since my post defending fairway trees last weekend, guess what I've kept bumping into on my tour of golf course websites? First it was the 8th and 10th at Tom Doak's Apache Stronghold course, now it's Jim Engh's 1oth and 16th at Black Rock.
(b) Engh is only one architect making his mark at Black Rock but I'm not so sure about the identity of the other one. Anyone seen Tom Weiskopf and Mark O'Meara in the same room recently...?

Is this what they mean by "eating your greens"?

There may be better howlers on a golf course website out there somewhere but I wouldn't want to have to use up my holiday entitlement trying to find them.

This, from the course notes accompanying the 3rd hole at Arizona's Whirlwind Golf Club:

"Torn between the water in front and the huge expanse of dessert and mountains behind, the golfer must face the first decision of risk versus reward that this course has to offer."

By the sound of it, I'm not sure even four bunkers filled with toxic waste could outweigh the rewards on this particular hole...

................................................................

Shame on those grandiose golf courses which, for all the chest-beating on their home page, decline to provide so much as a hole-by-hole course map for prospective visitors.

They know who they are and how creaky their web presence now looks is illustrated by Seaview Resort & Spa's site, whose Motion VR Tour allows you to 'walk' the fairways of three holes on this restored Donald Ross course in New Jersey.

More kudos still, to the Inn of the Mountain Gods, whose new benchmark in preposterous names is at least balanced by a course map that provides video footage of each hole actually being played.

Also provided is an intriguingly-named 'shag range' (foot of the map). See here as to why this could bring British tourists flocking to the lap of the Gods...

Tree's a crowd? I'm not so sure...

As a recreational devotee of golf course architecture, I would never pretend to be the definitive voice on the subject.

Spend an hour among some of the purists and pros on the Golf Club Atlas forum, indeed, and you wonder if you even know your Amen Corner from your elbow.

So it is with some rejoicing that I have been following Ian Andrew's 10 things I don't like series of architectural pet hates over at his Caddy Shack blog.

Ian is a real deal architect, so when he denounces island greens, samey finishing holes, cookie cutter ponds, clashing bunker styles, target traps, and tasteless mounding, I am happy to find myself nodding both in agreement and understanding.

It was too good to last.

When he takes aim at Trees directly in play, I hesitate. I actually enjoy meeting the occasional intrusive tree, as long as it meets the following conditions (I'm thinking here of the tree that comes into play from the tee, rather than one which guards the green):

• It hasn't been shipped in especially for the purpose. This makes it no better than bad containment mounding
• It will never grow so high that clearing it with a well-struck tee shot becomes impossible for players of all abilities, nor so wide that it is beyond the best of fades/draws
  
• One one or both sides, there must be fairway space for the cautious player to bale out, albeit with the penalty of a less favourable line to the green for his next shot
• Alternatively, the lower branches must be kept cut back so that the conservative golfer can deliberately play short of the tree and play a low, running punch shot to the green for his next. Something that encourages a manufactured shot can't be all bad

There is another drawback to the fairway tree, however, that has more to do with Nature than architecture. In his book Golf's Magnificent Challenge, Robert Trent Jones - not otherwise averse to the tree-as-hazard concept - explains:

"The problem here is that trees can die. They become diseased, get hit by lightning, are blown down by wind or just naturally expire. If you design playing characteristics around a tree or two or three and they disappear in a few years, the character of the hole is lost.

"It is especially dangerous to isolate a single tree from a dense wooded area and design a hole around it. ..You have changed its environment dramatically. It has grown up with the protection of other trees around it. Its root structure may have been affected by the other trees. Now the wind gets at it, the sun gets at it and it may get burned. You have changed all the conditions in which the tree survives. Now you are telling it to do something else and a lot of them don't want to."

Ian Andrew's series continues. To show there are no hard feelings, this is dedicated to him...


[Photo courtesy of Christop]

Golf course housing: the bigger they come...

With my computer having been commandeered by Elder Son for homework purposes, it's now late, I'm tired and I'm feeling flippant, so...

• For those of you with the eradication of golf course housing firmly in your sights come the revolution, Forbes.com's Matt Woolsey offers a few pointers as to your primary targets, although that probably wasn't quite what he had in mind


• Golf carts aren't everyone's cup of tea either but it would be a stone-hearted individual who didn't make an exception for these beauties


• And while we're on the subject of pet peeves, those of you who condemn island greens should know that they don't all come without generous run-off areas

Back to the sensible stuff on Friday...

Golf returns to Pelican Hill

Great to see California's Pelican Hill back in business, after a lengthy lay-off for renovation.

I have the Links LS Classic PC game and of all the 33 courses that go with it - St Andrews, Firestone, Mauna Kea et al - Pelican Hill's South Course is the one I keep going back to.

While the strategy of Tom Fazio's bunkering sometimes escapes me, the rolling landscape and constant changes of elevation make for a round of golf that's just great fun.

Find examples of two of the best holes on the course (and a wallpaper to boot) here (5th) and here (18th). For two of the delightful par 3s, see here and here.

Randy Youngman reports on the work carried out, while there's an interview with the resort's GM Steve Friedlander, where he goes into detail about the work carried out on the two courses (see also here).

Now the bad news.

Officials plan to open the rest of the resort, including a spa, a wedding chapel and hundreds of villas and bungalows, next fall.

If this floats your boat as much as it does mine, there are always Plans B and C...

Rubbish golf an inspiring prospect

I had all sorts of punchlines brewing up when I read Former landfill to become a golf course.

Then my research led me to this site and the fascinating story of eyesores turned into eye candy and you know what? No punchlines.

Look at the photographs at Brownfield Golf and tell me this isn't one of most inspiring golf stories you've read this year.

Best of luck to them all and a tip of the cap to those architects and landscape workers who held their noses long enough to get involved.

Prim and proper?

Handsome though it may look, it still comes as something of a shock to learn that Donald Steel, Primland's Highland course architect, required - gulp - dynamite to help build the course, high in Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains.

The Donald Steel? Mr British Golf Establishment?

Explosives aren't unheard of in routing, of course and had it been someone called 'Chuck' or 'Red' squeezing the plunger, or were Primland an icon of Roaring Twenties frontier enterprise, I might have accepted the idea without demur.

But Donald Steel?! In the 21st century? President of the English Golf Union, 45 years an R&A member, the only architect let loose on St Andrews' century-old Jubilee Course in 42 years?

It's like being told Rembrandt occasionally used a paint roller.

"Primland is built on traditional values, the values that made golf course architecture an art rather than a formula," said Donald, probably just before shouting "CLEAR!" and squatting behind a rock with his fingers in his ears.

Yet once the shock subsides (pardon the pun) an intriguing thought remains.

Is anyone keeping count here?

For with more and more architects talking the oath of minimalism and vowing to make courses fit the land, rather than vice-versa, a rating system that classified designers by how much TNT they get through in a calendar year, could make for interesting reading.

And 'Boom Boom' is too good a nickname to disappear with Fred Couples, right?

Rio Secco - three golf courses in one

"LAS VEGAS, Oct. 28 1997 -Rio Hotel & Casino, Inc....announced today that its subsidiary, Rio Development Company, Inc., has opened the Rio Secco Golf Club. Located in Henderson, Nevada...an 18 hole championship golf course designed by Rees Jones..."

Happy 10th birthday, Rio Secco, living proof that those fantasy course architects on Tiger Woods Golf aren't so deluded after all.

I have several courses on my hard drive whose only architectural flaw is that their character changes completely at the half-way point. Like some golfing Narnia, you leave parkland behind at the 9th green and step into Palm Springs at the 10th.

The contrast might not be quite so stark at Rio Secco but at least Rees Jones gave the idea a shot.

"The course winds through and around the natural canyons and desert landscape. There are six holes that go through a desert wash, six holes that have a background of the city, and six holes that go through a canyon." - Las Vegas Golf Adventures

You'll find a map of the course here and an aerial shot here. To give you your bearings, the 1st is beneath the words "Rio Secco Golf Club" on the aerial photo.

Two Guys Who Golf have provided a thorough hole by hole review:

"Beginning and high handicapped golfers will appreciate...bail out areas on many of the holes with forced carries."

"The front nine will get your attention, and the back side will demand your best golf. At 6375 from the white tees, it is a formidable challenge for the average golfer. Keep in mind that the elevated tee areas considerably shorten many holes."

The 16th (formerly the 7th*) is the signature hole, set in the course's canyon sector, perhaps more for its visual appeal than its strategy, although Ron Whitten has this to say about it in a delightfully pugnacious interview with Golf Club Atlas:

"Love this box canyon par 4 mainly because it's so atypical of Rees [Jones], who likes to mold every hole into his own preconceived notion. The hole was there. His first routing had it as a par 3, but he was persuaded to change it into a par 4."

The club's marketing director Charles Fahy, opts for the 11th:

"When you're teeing off you see the city in the background. It's a dogleg right with an elevated tee, and it's just a very picturesque hole. It's our second toughest hole on the golf course. The green has a good slope to it and it's a risk-reward golf hole. You can hit a fairway wood off the tee and just have a long approach to the green. Or you can try to cut the corner and have a better long angle into the green, but you might put yourself in the rocks as well."

Golf Publisher Syndications' Ray Brewer, meanwhile, likes the 9th:

"...one of Rio Secco’s more notable holes as the Las Vegas skyline with mountains beyond serving as the backdrop. This hole has five sand traps, including two that guard the green. This hole will take three well-struck shots to reach the green with plenty of room on the right side of the fairway."

For a photographic summary of the course's variety, however, you could do no better than to take in the superb portfolio at Elite Golf Courses.


* It seems the course is occasionally played back to front, as some references have the 7th as the 16th etc