 |
Here's my take on the Joe/Kevin 18 hole layout.
Good stuff:
Seems beginner friendly and easy to navigate.
It uses the land well; you walk over most of the land in PP and has pins on obvious greens for the most part.
The course plays consistently and isn't lucky, outside of hole 5. You are generally rewarded for an accurate shot and punished for missing.
Hole 6 is a solid technical hole. There is a wider lane on the left where you need to shape your shot, and a tighter lane on the right where you can throw a simpler RHBH hyzer but you need more accuracy.
Hole 10 is a really good hole. The straight shot narrows as you get closer, rewarding good shots proportionally to how well they hit the line. There are also high hyzer routes that are viable, and they are punished for going too long (jail) or coming in too short (taller trees) so they aren't too easy.
Hole 11 is pretty good. There is a tight straight shot, a tighter righty hyzer, and a more open route over the top. I personally would move the pin to the right more to add a bit more challenge to the over the top lefty hyzer and to reward the tighter lines more to balance out the hole more. This would also lower the danger of crossing into 12's fairway.
Hole 12 is a nice, fair tunnel shot.
Hole 16 has some nice technical aspects to it. The more open lefty hyzer that has to go wide vs. the tighter righty hyzer that can take a short path to the pin adds a nice balance to the hole. I also like shooting out of the woods into the open for some reason.
Stuff that could use improvement:
Relatively long walk to hole 1.
Safety issues with hole 2/3/4. An errant drive on two could hit people on 3 or 4's teeboxes. 3's teebox is mostly protected by a tree, but a LHBH could fade right in there and clock them. Any shot wide enough could hit the people on 4, and they would never see it coming.
Hole 5 is poke and hopey in the current setup, and the pin is hard to see from the tee. I think there might be better lines through those woods.
Hole 7 can get pretty nasty and swampy in wet conditions. Not a game breaker, but something to be aware of.
Safety issues with holes 9/10. My group had a long wait here during the round on Saturday. This area was a big log jam due to even slightly errant shots landing in each other fairways. Someone on 10 yanked their drive right onto our green, and one person from our group on 9 almost hit people putting on 10. I think 9 could be moved to go more east/west along the path rather than north/south along the knoll. You would have to make it so that you could easily see other park users on the path, however.
Safety issues with holes 11/12. I think this may have been one of the issues that Stimpi was talking about with the RHBH helix, but I couldn't tell from his description. Its possible to cross into each other's fairways. This isn't a huge issue, but something to be aware of.
The pin location doesn't feel right on hole 14. You can be 15 feet from the basket on either side and not have a putt. Pushing the pin back 25 feet would make it a much better hole. This would make driving the pin straight riskier, and gives a safe approach from the safe drive down to the right in the basin.
Hole 18 doesn't feel like a very good hole to me. The hole just feels cramped, especially the tee. The tee would still be cramped even after being leveled out. It just screams thumberphobia. The hyzer lines feel too sharp for how short the hole is. There is a fun big RHFH hyzer route, but it just feels stupid throwing it with that big branch right in the way.
This layout doesn't really leave a lot of room for improvement or alternate tees with different difficulty, which will hurt its long-term use and viability as a tournament course.
Kevin said the vision for this layout is that it is supposed to be short, technical, and for beginners. The main problem is that its not really technical. A technical course (even a short Red course) should require a wide variety of shots. You should often need to either shape your line, hit a gap/tunnel, or both. Also, this course is severely lacking in risk/reward options or choices in general, though can be a hard issue to overcome with such a short course.
Here's my count of some things:
11 pure straight shots: 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17
14 basically straight shots: Add holes 1, 5, 11
Line-shaping technical holes: 5, 6, 11, 16
Hitting a gap/tunnel technical holes: 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 16, 18
Basically, this layout comes out to a bunch of straight shots, and 7 holes (5 of which are good in their current incarnation) that are actually technical. The course lacks variety in a lot of ways.
I think you guys could improve this layout in a lot of ways and make it a pretty good technical Red course. However, as I've laid out in another thread, there is a better way to plan a course at this park.
|
|