Routing 10 can be seen above. We started clearing and some preliminary site work - we were looking to find all the sand. There was a great deal of sand beneath a layer of clay throughout the site. We were looking for the best sand.The biggest change is the new loop of 15-17. It now goes around the creek counter-clockwise. This is still a proposal and we didn't commit to this version until several months later. We started construction in the ranch and by the time we got to the creek we decided. This was a definate benefit of building it slowly - it was much easier to make changes based on how the course was developing.
“The ultimate character of the course must be developed as the construction progresses” - William Flynn
Another major change was the conjoining of holes 2 & 11. It was the repositioning of the 3rd hole to make use of a nice stand of trees that drove the shift. And the benefit was a really large fairway. The left side of #3 also became much straighter. The goal being when standing on the tee the green looks like it is sitting directly on top of the fairway bunkers - along the line of charm.
You may also notice a lot of bunkers out there - that have been shrinking and shifting quite a bit - for now they are just looking good on the page - we will build what makes the most sense in the field.
I have a few more routings to share and will continue to discuss the evolution as recently published in Paul Daley's new Golf Architecture - A Worldwide Perspective.
Mike - I've noticed that you have a lot of alternate tees drawn for many of the holes - some are in what you would expect are normal locations for "forward" tees, but others completely change the character of the hole, as in going from a straight hole to a significant dogleg.
ReplyDeleteCan you explain whether these "way-off" tees are just you experimenting with the routing, looking for options, or was it something driven by the client - having a course with holes that could change dramatically depending on the tees chosen for a given hole? Or was it to enable the play of different/shorter "loops" of holes?
Thank you John - I like your question.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to answer you on Monday in detail.
I hope the new format for posting wasn't too bothersome.
I got spammed last week and it took a while to clean out all the junk posts.
So I've added the ability to approve comments first.
Cheers