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Post by cwifa on Oct 8, 2023 5:13:53 GMT -5
Fair enough
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Magyk
Caddy
Posts: 20
Tour: Challenge Circuit
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Post by Magyk on Oct 9, 2023 15:11:36 GMT -5
Great golf course, Satan
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Post by jisgator on Oct 9, 2023 18:45:58 GMT -5
This looks stunning! Can’t wait to have a go!
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Post by geordieboy85 on Oct 12, 2023 14:05:22 GMT -5
Quality track as usual, played the tour brute with high winds, was -7 with only one bogey, cracking test that kept me on my toes until the very last putt on the 18th, so many thinking shots with the elevation, side lies and small pocket on the greens, the tour course deffo wont be everyones taste due to the difficulty, but you certainly hit the brief, great job and not that you need it but best of luck in the comp
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Post by chatgptgolfklubber2.0 on Oct 12, 2023 19:59:41 GMT -5
I have been learning a little bit about the ancient Greco-Roman philosophies and Marcus Aurelius' Ten Lessons On How To Handle Disrespect is a perfect mentality and strategy to incorporate before and during rounds at this rollercoaster of a golf course. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about and have time/care/would like to watch a ten minute video... I will link after my spiel.
If the criteria for judging in this major contest (which is one of our communities' "majors") is to create the best test of golf combined with a sense of a sunday afternoon, white knuckled. hang on for dear life, cross your fingers, get a good bounce, stay on the teter-toter, hanging by a thread, 1 shot lead, on the 16th hole,...mission accomplished Ben.
This course is terrifying, difficult, very strategic, can be incredibly penal at times and asks you hard questions, shot after shot and hole after hole. It is aware and unapologetic of its vision and execution (it knows it's a d1ckpunch and doesn't care) and is a true major test which enables the cream of the crop to rise to the top. Anyone who shoots a great score over four days is good at this video game and may have benefited from a members bounce along the way.
So, my play by play of my round, or any round at Stillwater reads like this.
Hole/Lesson #1: Control your emotions. You will hit bad shots. A bad shot or decision can easily turn into a big number. Shake it off. This course intentionally hurls disrespect at the golfer.
Hole/Lesson #2. Acceptance. Every shot will be hard and will require though and execution.
Hole/Lesson #3. Maintain Your Dignity. Our dignity is a reflection of our character, our inner strength and of our resilience. It is not a reflection of those who choose to disrespect us. (Doesn't really apply here as much but lets just stay on board.) I see what you are trying to do here Ben making me hit off that 30 degree caaaaambaa and aim 45 yards left of the green. If I want that eagle...challenge accepted.
Hole/Lesson #4. Practice Forgiveness. The person who disrespected us may not deserve our forgiveness, but we deserve peace. We deserve to be free from the toxicity that holding grudges brings. Forgiveness is not for the disrespectful, it is for us. I have not played the members version but I hoped you were in a better mood then when you designed this cause yeesh there are some dicey shots. Some of the shots here are very challenging (and rewarding) and have a recipe for disaster and any major will have that.
Hole/Lesson #5. Reflect On Your Own Actions. This is about awareness and introspection. Maybe the reason I just doubled that hole was a bad decision that could have been avoided. Realize this before you hit the shot.
Hole/Lesson #6. Embrace Humility. When we do so, we acknowledge our imperfections and accept that we are no better or worse than anyone else. Side tangent...I got tangled up in your rocks along the beach in a glitchy spot that was sending my ball every which way and exceeded the shot limit on a hole. 2K could be at fault due to their system of designing rocks but also it may be interpreted as a minor oversight on your behalf. My shot wasn't too far off the beaten path. I know you can't be blamed for a glitch or may not have been aware of it but you need to compensate for 2K errors in your playtesting or visualization of potential shot outcomes. An incredibly picky thing to say, but I think you want someone to criticize you whenever you release a course and that is getting harder for people to do. Get better at designing Ben hahaha.
Hole/Lesson #7. Practice Patience. Time is a river of passing events and only as strong as its current. This current, is life's inevitable disrespect and challenges. But with patience, we become the strong unyielding rocks against which the current breaks. This course forces you to not force it, and to capitalize on any scoring opportunity you have. And there intentionally will be few.
Hole/Lesson #8. Seek Wisdom. It is about understanding life, people and the nature of things. This course tries to coax you into making bad choices and gives you a false sense of security. If you want to shot 66 here, you need to hit 66 challenging well thought out shots.
Hole/Lesson #9. Show Compassion. The ability to understand the emotional state of the architect behind this helps. Like I keep saying, major test.
Hole/Lesson #10. Stay True To Your Values. When faced with disrespect, it is easy to fall into the trap of retaliating, or of abandoning our principles to meet disrespect with disrespect. Your values are your compass in the stormy seas of life. They guide your actions, your reactions and ultimately they shape your character.
So there it is and I admit, I have reached quite a bit to find a correlation between the two, but if any course has "rage quit potential," this unequivocally falls into that category. And in my humble opinion, that is what majors are all about. It is a grueling demanding endeavor and whoever wins proved themselves in a lot of ways and earned the win.
Oh ya, I aesthetically liked 17 Mile Club much more than this take on Monterrey, but I think that was more of the point of that course and this is just more about the golf. Best of luck man.
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Post by b101 on Oct 13, 2023 12:37:16 GMT -5
Thanks for the detailed post - I think I probably understood about half and appreciate all the positive comments. Always good to get some critiques as well. A few comments on those below:
Annoying that you had that with the rocks. It’s a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ scenario. If you sculpt too harshly near the waterline, the surfacing near the edge gets messed up, so there’s the risk of staying in the rocks; OB is impossible to place accurately, so you can’t have that too close either for risk of a ball in the fairway landing OB. I’m sure it’s imperfect, but in this instance, it’s a case of choosing between two bad outcomes.
As for 17 Mile, I deliberately didn’t want a dunescape here as I’ll never do that as well as Jamie did and I don’t really want to repeat a course idea. The grandstands are also murder on the meter - you’ll see that with the YouTube series. So planting definitely isn’t the most detailed of my courses, but I think it should hold up 🙂
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Post by Australian on Oct 13, 2023 20:18:34 GMT -5
Rockin' course dude. Absolutely loved it. ✌️
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Post by chatgptgolfklubber2.0 on Oct 13, 2023 20:27:23 GMT -5
"I think I probably understood about half"
Haha well put, after reading what I said again today I have to understand that people can't understand half the things that go on in my headspace and I have terrible writing skills. My original intent of the post was in good fun. In all honesty I played terribly here for the first 2 rounds. I've been using your recommended settings, and your very high winds on day two... crushed me. To the point were I had to look inward for answers. Then I remembered that the Philosophy of Stoicism has been a very effective technique for me.
Stoicism is a set of beliefs and techniques used to overcome life's challenges that a lot of time are out of our control. Bad things will invariably happen to us and it is how we respond to these trial and tribulations which define us. I am a firm believer in cause and effect and golf is a perfect example of this.
So Marcus Aurelius was a Stoic Philosopher and "The Last Good Emperor" of Rome. He has many lessons and his approach on how to handle disrespect was the one I read to ease the pain of shooting +8 and +12.
I then played 2 more rounds with this strategy and played much better.
So you really made this hard on the player to shoot well here, as you should have because this is a major test. And that is how I feel where the metaphor or correlation of disrespect comes into play.
The hole numbers or lessons in whichever order or combo are irrelevant, because they all apply equally. Every hole is hard. Similar to how Old Ainsdale was intentionally hard. Did you intentionally name it Stillwater to mock all the golf balls that this course invariably gulps up?
The rocks thing was not a big deal and I actually was laughing the whole way through mostly at their physics and that the ball was shooting every which way. And how Hackey McDufferton was standing on the rocks in his various shot types. I wish I took a video. And I should have just took an unplayable but was having too much fun.
We live in an era where you are one of the ambassadors of this game and you have done a great job spreading knowledge and fun around to all but with that comes fanboys haha. Ones who don't want to criticize, due to fear of being ostricized. There are really probably only less than two handfuls of people who can actually give you design tips you havn't thought of already cause your a detail freak and have a knack for designing. I see you as a normal human who is capable of great feats and utter failures, kindness and cruelty etc. The rocks situation is an utter failure on your behalf to not anticipate that I could end up in a glitchy spot. And I say that in a joking matter. It's hard to find things I don't like with your courses.
Planting looked good, its just obviously more understated than 17MC cause it needed to be both technically and "atmospherically." I have yet to play the members version also so...
Long story short, and probably all I needed to say originally was nice course, feels like a major, bar set, better bunkers than pebble, and I hope you lose, make a video about your loss and do a playthrough showing why the courses that beats you is better.
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Post by mpad on Oct 19, 2023 10:38:06 GMT -5
Just played the Members version. Wow, what a test and what an environment.
I am interested about the green on hole one. It made me check that I was playing a Ben course because it seemed a bit unbelievable. Sorta a dome. Everything thereafter was pure Ben genius.
Talk me through Green 1 Ben!!
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Post by b101 on Oct 19, 2023 13:06:57 GMT -5
Just played the Members version. Wow, what a test and what an environment. I am interested about the green on hole one. It made me check that I was playing a Ben course because it seemed a bit unbelievable. Sorta a dome. Everything thereafter was pure Ben genius. Talk me through Green 1 Ben!! Really interesting that you mention the first green of all of them, as it's one of the ones that's closest in my mind to actual Pebble (not having played it, but from research, watching rounds etc). In terms of the contouring of the green itself, I wouldn't say it's a dome, but the main feature is that it's heavily back to front and has some movement towards each side on the lower half. As for the hillside that it's on, that's definitely on the extreme side, but a) it was generally there from the start and b) it's that extreme due to the ball physics in-game with the sticky fairway... I wanted the first hole to have hints of Pebble (e.g. iron off the tee, short four, small green) but also introduce the mindset of the course, namely that it goads you to try to take on that bit more to have that control over a wedge into the green - you can lay up easily enough but the more cautious you are off the tee, the harder that approach shot. As for the Pebble greens themselves, thought these heatmaps might be interesting to show just how severe they are and how little pinnable space there is. I wanted to keep the severity but increase pinning options, whilst having some small, some large and just all sorts of variety.
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Post by mpad on Oct 19, 2023 13:48:50 GMT -5
Wow Ben. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate the time and attention you give to this game and, in this case, my post
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Post by chatgptgolfklubber2.0 on Oct 19, 2023 16:40:15 GMT -5
Ya he's a nice guy. Great photos, I like the 2nd one the best! It shows a 3/8" = 5 yds ratio. Very useful information to have if ever playing pebble or any course with these awesome thermal diagrams at their disposal. Makes me wonder if a scale of sorts would apply to this game with its varying green speeds or maybe the vibrate on putting does that for you. But if you turn that setting off... I know what you are talking about mpad with the wicked false front on #1. The first round I played here I messed with it, and I believe my approach, and 2 more chips got swatted away before I got it to stick up there. Its not a fun spot to be lol. But doable. Left me thinking "Well, welcome to Stillwater, you were warned about this and still agreed to it so... Course definitely goads a guy for sure. All that still water just waiting to be rippled, and rocks to get stuck on.
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Post by b101 on Oct 30, 2023 11:55:16 GMT -5
Meant to link the YouTube series. I would estimate it'll top out at around 40 episodes. The opening episodes are much more discursive - a lot of my work in the first week is simply thinking about things and considering alternatives, which isn't necessarily that great to watch, but I wanted to convey some insight into the thought process. After about episode 3, you get much more in the way of timelapses. The real point of the series was to show that these sorts of courses are ALL about editing: trying and refining different ideas. It's rare that the first idea works and sticks. With this course, I think it ended up being just holes 3, 5, 12, 16 and 17 that avoided major edits of the initial idea and, even then, there were lots of iterations of each of those holes to get them to where they are. www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsuNZuawe0H2Bfpaiv9RhxWhTkelsbOLD
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Post by blindwolfgolf on Oct 30, 2023 14:01:51 GMT -5
Meant to link the YouTube series. I would estimate it'll top out at around 40 episodes. The opening episodes are much more discursive - a lot of my work in the first week is simply thinking about things and considering alternatives, which isn't necessarily that great to watch, but I wanted to convey some insight into the thought process. After about episode 3, you get much more in the way of timelapses. The real point of the series was to show that these sorts of courses are ALL about editing: trying and refining different ideas. It's rare that the first idea works and sticks. With this course, I think it ended up being just holes 3, 5, 12, 16 and 17 that avoided major edits of the initial idea and, even then, there were lots of iterations of each of those holes to get them to where they are. www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsuNZuawe0H2Bfpaiv9RhxWhTkelsbOLD May be in the minority here, but personally I enjoy the discursive episodes the most as you can understand the nuance of the entire process. You're very good at explaining in a way I can learn from it; Don't quite get that out of a 20 min bunker sculpting time lapse lol. Overall really enjoying the series.
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Post by ddixjr509 on Nov 5, 2023 7:53:07 GMT -5
Loved, Loved, Loved (with a tinge of hate) every aspect of this course. Sensory overload with the aesthetic element. Every single shot has to be well thought out- and in many cases is scary AF. 3 rounds in our society event- and on 3 or 4 holes I haven't been able to figure out the shot you were looking for (here's the shot, can you pull it off")... I look forward to 10 more rounds and trying to sort those things out. Brilliant and thank you!
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