Ladue Country Club, Missouri (OG Classic Design Series)

[mayday_golf83]

Figured I'd start a running WIP on this latest project that I'll be doing for theclv24 's OG Classic Design Series

I'll be doing a quasi-RCR of Saint Louis Country Club, in the suburb of Laude, MO. The club has hosted of five USGA championships (including the 1947 U.S. Open) along with the 2014 Curtis Cup and features many of the MacRaynor classic templates. Most interesting, is that after a modest par 4 to start, the course confronts you with back-to-back one-shotters that play longer than 200 yards with a Biarritz and Eden on 2 and 3.

Won't be a full-on RCR (hence the name change), but the plan is to follow the layout closely while adding some yardage to the 6,530-yard layout to keep the shot values in place for the player and tour clubsets (or whatever they're going to be called in TGC2019).

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[mayday_golf83]

With the introductory post out of the way, time for progress report No. 1.

Made some very good headway w/ a mostly free weekend to work on it and have eight holes roughed in from a layout/elevation standpoint. 

The overhead will better illustrate what's going on and how I'm kind of attacking this thing. First 4 holes (right of your screen) are south of the clubhouse, and those are the ones I tackled first. In this group is the Biarritz (2), Eden (3) & Road (4).

Holes 16-18 sit in their own little section on the northwest corner (bottom left), so attacked those next, which includes the Redan (16), and what Golf Club Atlas referred to as an Alps (18). A little bit of a different Alps as the blind concept is not achieved by perching a green behind a ridge, rather by sinking the green into it's own little dell along with a heavily sloping fairway from right to left. The green sits about 10 foot below the grade of the fairway and, what's more, there's a large pit bunker short that's nestled 10 feet below the green. Woe's to the golfer who comes up short there!

Started in on the third grouping of holes which includes all three par 5s that will be on the course (I'm converting the 9th to a par 4, which made since given the limited room I had to stretch the boundaries of the course). This includes Punchbowl (5), Long (13) & and a double plateau (15), and the par-4 14th that connects the two westward running par 5. Hole 5 is the last hole I roughed in before calling it a night. 

From there, I'm probably going to take on 10, 11 & 12 together along w/ 6, before getting to Shorty (7) and down to the lowest part of the property, 8 & 9. 

Astute observers will likely notice the auto-genned rough, but that's only in there so I could have the natural corridors for the holes. After I get all 18 roughed in and dome some work on the greens, I'll put in the proper rough before going all-in on the planting. Challenge will be how much detail we'll add in. Being smack dab in the middle of a suburb, the entire perimeter of the course is surrounded by enough houses to make jacobkessler blush!

But that's a ways in the offing. Down the line will post some shots of the individual holes along with their real-life doppelgangers. 

[mayday_golf83]

Just a quick progress report as I had a good chunk of time to fiddle on this project today and now have all 18 down and generally sculpted. Here's the view from the opposite angle of the first overhead, which shows the northeast corner of the property.



Holes 6-9 are the ones closest to the camera w/ a mulch path temporarily standing in for the creek that is the star of the Cape 8th hole and bisects the 9th. This is portion of the property that ends up going furthest astray from the IRL layout. Bunkering about in the same place on 8, but changed the angles and added about 50 yards to 8. It's a 350-yard Par-4 IRL and you could cut the corner and maybe get to the front edge. So stretched it out to take that out of play. Added an oak on the left side (camera right) of the fairway, though to encourage players to take on the creek or risk having an partially obstructed 2nd shot in, depending on how safe they play it. 

Hole 9 plays a 510-yard par 5 IRL, but I'm cutting off about 10 yards and converting it to a 4 as I already have two par 5s (13 & 15) running in that direction and -- length-wise -- 6, 7 & 8 are a bit of a breather and 10 & 11 aren't overly long either. Long par 4 feels better here to add a little variety to the round. To make this work, though, moved the stream about 40-50 yards closer to the tee than in IRL, where it dictates the strategy for shorter hitters positioning their second shot. Now dictating that strategy off tee. A chance the big hitters could run through the fairway down the left but the landing area's some 45 yards wide. The width tapers as you go further right, and the road creeps closer, but also rewards the golfer with a better angle in. 

Probably won't have too much time this week between a compressed work week and spending some time over the 4th to do the final touch-ups before release on my Survivor course, but we're making good progress on this one. Fine-tuning the greens next before adding tees and rocks and then getting down to the nitty gritty of planting. Any luck, I can get this finished before the launch of TGC2019. 

[mayday_golf83]

Still plodding away on this one. Finally getting down to some planting. Plan of attack going to be similar to how we constructed the course as 1-4 & 16-18 are on their own corners of the property, will be working on those first before heading down the hill toward the water (So probably 5-13-14-15, 6-10-11-12 & 7-8-9 for the other segments). Going to work on everything inside the property lines before I focus outside the lines on the surrounding houses, etc, so I don't max out the planting meter too early in the process. 

Got a good chunk of the planting for holes 1-4 in and it's really starting to take shape. Here's a side-by-side of the par-3 3rd hole, a long Eden, that stretches to over 200 yards IRL and plays to a similar distance in game. 

[mayday_golf83]

Dusting this one off the shelf now that TGC '19 is here. No real progress report yet as I'm finding that it's better to redo the spline look now that those have been adjusted for this game. The spline adjustments feel like they'll be an improvement in the long run, but a bit of a PITA to re-do them in a port over.

[joegolferg]

Sept 1, 2018 11:50:57 GMT -5 mayday_golf83 said:

Dusting this one off the shelf now that TGC '19 is here. No real progress report yet as I'm finding that it's better to redo the spline look now that those have been adjusted for this game. The spline adjustments feel like they'll be an improvement in the long run, but a bit of a PITA to re-do them in a port over.

How does the 200 yard Eden convert over in 2019 with the new firmness settings and all? I've had to readjust some settings.

[mayday_golf83]

Sept 3, 2018 12:28:02 GMT -5 joegolferg said:

Sept 1, 2018 11:50:57 GMT -5 mayday_golf83 said:

Dusting this one off the shelf now that TGC '19 is here. No real progress report yet as I'm finding that it's better to redo the spline look now that those have been adjusted for this game. The spline adjustments feel like they'll be an improvement in the long run, but a bit of a PITA to re-do them in a port over.

How does the 200 yard Eden convert over in 2019 with the new firmness settings and all? I've had to readjust some settings.

Haven't really gotten around to playtesting it yet as I'm still redoing all the splines. I have been a bit all over the board between learning the swing mechanic, fixing my TGC ports and fiddling with a scratch design in 19 to get a better grasp of the tools. 

Might have to tweak a little bit, but it was never intended to be a firm course. Thinking medium firmness w/ fast greens as a base line. 

[mayday_golf83]

Been able to make some real headway on this over the weekend. The basic 18 had been sculpted and was playing fine in TGC2. A lot of the work has been on the planting and trying to get the feel of the course right. Think I'll have a good handle on the planting around the perimeter of the course by next weekend. Then will be a matter of some playtesting and fine tuning. Starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel on this one.

Here's a couple of comparison shots

Hole 9



Hole 12

[mayday_golf83]

I've made an editorial decision about this course over the last day or so in that I'm going to release two versions of this course -- a members edition and a tournament edition. 

Biggest reason I'm doing this comes down to the 6th & 15th greens, which both have small, elevated shelves where pins are place IRL, according to my research. The following two pics from Golf Club Atlas illustrate the challenge:




Which look like this, in game:



Though a player should, in theory, have nothing more than a wedge into either of these holes (Hole 6 is about 350 yards and 15's a reachable par 5 where laying up is the better option if the pin's in back), I could see where getting it wrong would cause much angst and annoyance for the casual player. There are a couple of other holes with small landing zones thanks to raise/depressed thumbprints, but these are the two most extreme instances. I'm going to refrain from using these locations in the members version, and make the pins easier on the whole for that version. 

As for the tourney edition, those shelves will be utilized, true to life, in one of the 4 pinsets (looks like set 3 for both, coincidentally, the way my pin rotations are working, but that's still TBD). The greens will be a little firmer and faster. The rough, a little sticker. Plus I'm going to add an extra set of tees that stretches the course to over 7,200 yards and brings back some of the strategy that's been taken away off the tee with the new carry distances of the master set. 

[mayday_golf83]

Ladue C.C. (Members Ed.) is published for its soft opening. Not a beta, because I do feel I have it nailed down, but want to get the Championship Ed. out before I do a full-scale announcement and hope to be working on that tomorrow into early next week. That will also buy me a little time to do a full-on write-up on the project for theclv24. 

Members version is a par 71 that plays 7,031 yards from the tips w/ 153 greens (.60 firmness), Fairways 0.7 firm & roll, light rough 0.6 firm/roll, heavy rough 0.5 firm/roll, bunkers 0.5 firm/roll. Pins, in general, will be a little more accessible in this edition and I refrained from using a couple of the more challenging portions of greens (back ridges on 6 & 15 in particular) for this edition.

Will convert 9 to a par 4, add a championship tee set and dial up the speed/firmness a bit for the championship edition, in addition to some more challenging pin placements. 

Here's some pics of the finished product:

Approach into 6:


Approach into 8:


The "Crater" hole, Hole 12


Left of 18 green, looking toward the clubhouse:

[mayday_golf83]

The tourney edition has opened. View the full release thread here.