Whilst we wait on results, I came across these sketches of my first efforts routing Marlette earlier as I started to draw up a few ideas for the WC course I've got in the mixer. I thought I'd post a couple of these here on the off-chance that they might help people, as I've had a couple of questions about how I went about it
. I know a few people got to see the tail end of Marlette coming together on stream, but the bigger work was right at the beginning. Given the number of comments about strategy and hazard placements in the playthroughs, I thought I'd share as thinking about the course before stepping into the designer was comfortably the biggest step I took in getting a little better at hole design:
A few thoughts:
1) I did this on paper whilst using the designer measure tools to check it worked. Nothing worse than finding out it doesn't...
2) You may notice that the routing stayed exactly the same up to hole 3. Hole four and on was totally different. If it doesn't work, don't keep it.
3) There were a few key things I knew I wanted. The high point on 12 (later became the par 5 eighth hole) was a focal point on the course and the coolest point on the original plot. Everything worked around that and I wanted you to get as many views of different holes from there as you could. I ended up managing to get views of 12 separate holes from that one green
4) I originally had a creek and ditched (pardon the pun) that as I thought it didn't need it. With hindsight, I
really wish I'd kept it as I think it would have added a little more around the 5-7 stretch.
5) It's always worth paying attention to distances of holes and the flow of the routing. The major issue I noted early on was that 5 and 13 were both short threes in pretty similar directions.
6) set lighting early. That way, your worst lit holes can be designed to ensure they are of strategic interest (on Marlette, that was 4, 5 and 14 (short four and two par 5s)
7) By all means take inspiration from other holes you've seen elsewhere. For example, with hole 3 (Lytham), I'd challenge anyone to tell me which hole actually inspired that, but there was a base strategy I liked with that hole that I thought I could use. I note them like this as a reminder to myself.
With the individual holes, I'd end up doing something like this:
A lot of this was working out where position A1 was, deciding how to defend that and then working out alternative routes through a range of hazards (plus the occasional dueling centreline bunkers
). My CC course got a few (totally justified) critiques for not necessarily sticking to one coherent design philosophy and so I had one major aim in mind here: risk/reward on nearly every tee shot, which would yield your best chance at birdie, but always providing a safe route to par if you could stomach not hitting driver every time. For those of you that spotted the number of times driver was threatened - that'd be why
.
Anyway, I cannot recommend drawing holes out enough and adding lines to work out angles of attack - most holes at Marlette went through about four or five drafts on paper/in game and it's easily the most fun element of the whole process. In actual fact, six didn't vary too much from the hole above, but five was a right PITA as it played so similarly to two of the other par fives. Moving the entire green complex twenty yards shorter and 30 yards right, whilst angling it more, did the trick here and it's now one of my favourite holes on the course.
Oh, final thing I'd say I've learned the hard way is, when you're not sure on something, save, make a radical move like changing the green position, creating a massive hill, moving the entire fairway to a different angle, moving the tee forward/back 20 yards and then exit if you're not happy. One of them will be a hit and you'll have the spark right back!
. I know a few people got to see the tail end of Marlette coming together on stream, but the bigger work was right at the beginning. Given the number of comments about strategy and hazard placements in the playthroughs, I thought I'd share as thinking about the course before stepping into the designer was comfortably the biggest step I took in getting a little better at hole design:
). My CC course got a few (totally justified) critiques for not necessarily sticking to one coherent design philosophy and so I had one major aim in mind here: risk/reward on nearly every tee shot, which would yield your best chance at birdie, but always providing a safe route to par if you could stomach not hitting driver every time. For those of you that spotted the number of times driver was threatened - that'd be why 