Doubtful Creek CC (WCoD)

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Doubtful Creek CC, my entry for the 2019-20 World Cup of Design, is now published! This Harvest-themed course was inspired primarily by Crystal Downs, which features many steeply-inclined greens. The default green speed on this course is 136, and for good reason: anything higher than 144 will lead to illegal pins and tons of frustration from anyone who plays. I do NOT recommend playing this course with fast (163) or very fast (187) greens. The fairways are normal firmness, and the greens are firm by default.

The course is routed along a hillside, with a creek that falls 175 feet from the top of the plot to the bottom. I've already had a couple people ask me how I made it, so here is a video to show my method (click here to watch). It was very time-consuming -- around 15-20 hours in all, I'd estimate.

Here is the course scorecard:



As is tradition, here is my typical low-budget course map (taken before trees were added):



And this is how the course looks from above once the trees were created:



Finally, here is the view up the 18th fairway:



Thanks in advance to all who play. Any feedback and constructive criticism is appreciated. I hope you enjoy your round at Doubtful Creek!

[coruler2]

Did you use blue boards for water? Interesting how it came out in the picture.

Will check out your course this weekend

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Jan 31, 2020 19:39:54 GMT -5 coruler2 said:

Did you use blue boards for water? Interesting how it came out in the picture.

Will check out your course this weekend

Yeah, that picture looks like that because I took it in the designer. Looks much better on the course, I promise. 

Edited to add: I swapped out the original picture for one taken outside the designer, which removed the blue bars that were visible.

[Deleted]

Great course Griffin, I really enjoyed my round here with the boys.

I was going to use that picture of the 18th you have above for the TGCTours Twitter announcement, but it is in a strange .png' format. I'm not sure what the apostrophe is at the end of .png but my graphics system doesn't recognize it as an image file. I'll need a different formatted picture to use on Twitter to put you up.

Thanks!

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Feb 1, 2020 11:21:00 GMT -5 VctryLnSprts said:

Great course Griffin, I really enjoyed my round here with the boys.

I was going to use that picture of the 18th you have above for the TGCTours Twitter announcement, but it is in a strange .png' format. I'm not sure what the apostrophe is at the end of .png but my graphics system doesn't recognize it as an image file. I'll need a different formatted picture to use on Twitter to put you up.

Thanks!

Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed your round.

Yeah, I checked the BBCode, and there were two sets of quotation marks after the file name. Not sure why that happened, but I think it should be fixed now. Let me know if you still encounter a problem.

[meyo]

Enjoyed this course very much, planting fits well. Nice job Sir and Gl in the contest

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Thanks for taking the time to make these videos, meyo . Always interested to see people play my courses. I don't mind the red trees so much, but I do agree that the Harvest color palette can be too vibrant at times. I had always wanted to try that theme, but it's not really one of my favorites after having worked with it. Great par save on 10 after dunking your tee shot, and nice birdie on 15 (the #1 handicap hole, for some reason). Good luck with that next course of yours.

[DoubtfulObelisk]

As promised, I uploaded that creek tutorial video (embedded at the bottom of this post). I hope people find it useful, and will continue to improve and perfect my method. I can't wait to see what the creative folks of this site can do with it. Happy designing!

[jwtexan]

Had fun watching you explain how it’s done. Congrats on pulling it off, it looks seamless in game.

[b101]

Feb 1, 2020 11:21:00 GMT -5 VctryLnSprts said:

Great course Griffin, I really enjoyed my round here with the boys.

I was going to use that picture of the 18th you have above for the TGCTours Twitter announcement, but it is in a strange .png' format. I'm not sure what the apostrophe is at the end of .png but my graphics system doesn't recognize it as an image file. I'll need a different formatted picture to use on Twitter to put you up.

Thanks!

For future reference, just edit the file name and delete the apostrophe - should sort it 🙂

[Avakrac]

Nice course dude, enjoyed my round. Sorry you didn't make the cut, keep designing and hope to play more in of your courses in the future. Enjoy.

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Feb 19, 2020 5:02:54 GMT -5 Avakrac said:

Nice course dude, enjoyed my round. Sorry you didn't make the cut, keep designing and hope to play more in of your courses in the future. Enjoy.

Cheers, mate. Really enjoyed the video. Still haven't gotten used to watching people play using metric units, so that was interesting. I hadn't seen anyone take the route you did on the par-3 4th hole (lol), but you made up for it with some nice putting on a few holes -- 8 and 18 spring to mind in particular.

I didn't necessarily mean for it to be a "simple" course, but a lot of the challenge is intentionally subtle -- probably too subtle, based on many of the judges' comments. My previous course's tee shot options had all the subtlety of a Mack truck, so I tried something different with this one and evidently didn't quite pull it off. As always, I'll take the feedback on board and try to improve for next time.

Thanks again for taking the time to make this video -- I entered this contest primarily to generate some exposure for myself, so videos like these highlighting the courses are just a delight for me (and I'm sure for most of the other competitors as well) to watch.

[LKeet6]

My take- "subtle" done well will MASSIVELY impress 10 people for multiple plays, "obvious/arcade/fantasy" will quite impress 100 people for one play.

Obviously that is an oversimplification, but you get my point...

[smudge22]

Just seen this course on Avakrac. Looks really nice.

I was looking round intently getting ideas for planting in the Harvest theme - hope you don't mind.

Keep up the good work.

[DoubtfulObelisk]

Feb 20, 2020 3:49:49 GMT -5 smudge22 said:

Just seen this course on Avakrac. Looks really nice.

I was looking round intently getting ideas for planting in the Harvest theme - hope you don't mind.

Keep up the good work.

Thank you, Smudge. Someone asking me for planting tips and ideas? That's really funny, considering most of my previous courses had next to no eye candy at all. That said, I think the look of Doubtful Creek is reasonably good, so I can tell you what I found that worked for me personally.

I used three different grasses: on the menu, they were the 2nd row, 2nd column (middle of the grid); 2nd row, 3rd column (one to the right); and 3rd row, 3rd column (bottom-right corner). The mix of those colors really fit my eye, but I'd encourage people to play around with some other combinations and see if anything pops nicely for them. Oh, and don't abuse multi-planting if you can help it! Your plant meter will thank you in the end (I learned that one the hard way... )

Some of the trees can be divisive -- I don't hate any of them, but I know the orange willow is almost universally reviled, so I'd stay away from that one if possible. A lot of designers will intentionally use only the trees with more muted colors, which is their prerogative, but I feel as though it takes something away from the vibrant uniqueness of the theme. There was a good thread recently discussing Autumn and Harvest courses, so I'd check that one out and play some of the ones listed there. I think you'll find that they all have better-looking and more complex planting schemes than mine, so you're practically guaranteed to find some inspiration on those courses.

Hope this helps, and good luck. Happy designing!