Now that's what you call an outcrop...

How strange that just a couple of days after considering the 15th at Pound Ridge Golf Club ("...roughly half the balls that hit the outcropping will bounce back onto the green, and half will ricochet 'somewhere else'") I should encounter the mother and father of outcrops at the 14th hole on southern California's Oak Quarry course.

Designed by former Tour pro Dr Gil Morgan and the Schmidt-Curley partnership, the course breathed new life into Jensen Quarry, which had supplied much of Los Angeles' limestone and marble since the early 1900s.

Nowhere is the contrast between old and new more dramatically manifest than on the course's signature hole at 14:

"This signature par 3 hole was rated the best in southern california. The tee shot spans the quarry and must land on a small peninsula like green. Intimidating but fair, it is best to trust your swing and go for it! The bail out area short right of the green is always an option when confidence is low."

Two Guys Who Golf describe it as "one of the most beautiful golf holes I have ever witnessed!...one that will remain embedded in your memory" and I'd say their course photographs actually do the place as a whole more justice than those on the club's own website.

Definitely Exhibit A for the defence when golf goes under the environmental microscope. And for the snappy Johnny Bristol soundtrack accompanying their homepage, Schmidt-Curley Design are The Golf Course As Art's architects of the month by a country mile...