Hey Dan,
Having just completed a course, I'm going to spend some time playing and reviewing some courses that I've been meaning to get to the last few months.
Saw this one and love the heathland vibe and had to give it a go.
Hole by Hole:
1. Intimidating opening tee shot forcing an aggressive tee shot to the right to have a chance of clearing the cross bunkers. like the diagonal nature of the cross bunkers that force the second shot to played as high to the left as possible to careen the ball onto the green. Fun start.
2.Lots of room right off the tee but the green pitch to the left makes long approaches from the right tough to control.
3. beautiful natural par 3 with redanish qualities
4.drive tempts players to play to the high side to the left, but lay up to the wide fairway to the right provides a great angle in. I laid up right with a 2 wood and striped a 3 iron to 1ft for a tap in bird.
5. another beauty par 3. some tricky shots if you bail left.
6. Super fun short 4. simple if you play short right and leave an easy chip up the throat of the green. most guys will bomb left though because they can leaving a potentially dicey chip towards the run off area to the right of the green. lots of way to play this one.
7.Massive scale on this par 5, although play similar to the 1st. fun to watch the air time on the drive.
8.Similar to 4 where the player is tempted to play left to the high side of the slope. unlike 4 there is a greater advantage for doing so as the angle favours a shot from the left.
9.super funky par 3. What do you call this?"snake" template? Huge variation in length. Love the wasteland around this hole.
10. best looking tee shot on the course. so natural. approach is lovely as well. beast of hole. requires two great shots.
11. Love the natural feel of this tee shot with the heather covered hill encroaching from the right. Similar approach as the 1 and 7 with the hip front left of the green
12. Another stunner par 3 . Love the how the green sits so naturally between the heather covered bank on the right and bunkers on the left.
13. another hole where you are fighting the left to right cross slope. reminds me of 14 bandon trails. I challenged the bunker on the left and held the upper fairway leaving a straight forward shot in. good stuff
14. Yale sized bunker to the right...which I found and took 3 strokes to get out of. true hazard. bad ass infinity edge green
15. Wild one. Love the sweeping tee shot. Played my drive high to the left and was left with a blind shot to a pin with a hill in front of it. the more dangerous drive right would have left a more visible and less obstructed pitch into this pin. Super fun hole with a heck view from the green.
16.Love the blind shot over the shoulder in front of the tee. lots of room off the tee but the pitch of the green is going to favour shots from the left, save for the back left pin. Love the planting above the bunker right of the green.
17. Heroic beast of a par 3. great hole to have at this point in the round.
18. another massive scale hole. got to challenge the narrow part of the fairway to have a good chance of attacking a pin. in a cross wind this might not be prudent. forcing a more conservative lay up to the acres of fairway short. I on the other hand hooked it hard left and ended up in the other fairway with a great angle in! reminds me of my IRL game.
Couple of critiques:
1. A few of the par 5's seemed to have similar approaches in with a hazard short left with fairway careening down onto the green to the right. A successful design element on its own but felt a bit deja vu.
2. due to the extreme nature of the site many of the holes were fighting cross slopes and at times this can impose a somewhat repetitive strategy of holding the high side of the fairway with the drive to gain the most leverage on you next shot. Not much you can do with this. Just a product of a severely sloping site. Which I think you were able to utilize extremely well without resorting to a lot of regrading which is to be admired.
In summary, this course is really about man vs. the landscape. I greatly appreciate how the course retains the raw essence of the landscape and doesn't blow it all up and re-sculpt it into something beautified, leaving the ruggedness to the periphery; This kind of approach may be visually pleasing to some but does very little to hold my attention through the round. I much prefer what you've done as there is so many more interesting opportunities when you force yourself to work with the constraints of the site. I think you've done a great job with the naturalized elements of the course and have captured the feel of the heathland courses. Really beautiful landscape.
-Rob
