New courses
I THINK I’m going to try my hand at writing a course planner. I say this because so many of them seem to be completely inadequate and don’t tell me anything that I actually need. For instance, if there’s a stream running across the fairway ahead, the only thing I want to know is how far away it is, so I know whether I can carry it, or what to lay up with. And I want to know this from the ladies’ tee, instead of needing to take a calculator and slide rule with me to work out lots of large mathematical equations based around the men’s tees. In fact, separate course planners for ladies and men would be even better.
I also want a course planner to show me distances from things I can easily decipher, rather than having to have a degree in horticulture before I can get to grips with the finer points of tree distinction. I’m OK differentiating between a holly and a silver birch, and as long as it has acorns on it, I’ve got a fighting chance of identifying an oak. But that’s pretty much where it ends. Planners not only use obscure trees from which to take their yardages, they also take them from the middle of a clump of trees, where one is no different from another.
Where the yardage is taken from undulating fairways isn’t much better. I’m not going to count humps as I’m striding off in pursuit of my ball. I won’t know if a slight ripple counts as a hump anyway, so I’d be totally lost. Featureless courses could be helped by adding the odd water fountain or, say, an abandoned greenkeeper’s cottage, not to mention the odd strategically sited pile of stones here and there. However, much as I want to know accurate yardage, I also want to know where I am going on a strange course, and if there are any hidden dangers I should be aware of.
I say this because this summer I played the newly refurbished St Mellion course in Cornwall – the first European course that Jack Nicklaus designed. The first hole is blind, and without so much as a marker post to point you in the right direction, I consulted my course planner for helpful advice. There were two lots of comments.
One from Jack Nicklaus, telling me where the prevailing wind comes from, and that a big drive would go over the hill and run a long way down leaving a short iron into the green. The pro tip then followed, assuring me that the beautiful downhill par 4 plays shorter than the yardage suggests, so recommended looking for position from the tee. As neither of them said where this magical, recommended position was, I then looked at the attractive accompanying picture, which showed that it was a dogleg to the right and so, as it opened up, the best landing area seemed to be down the left.
Thus, confident after all my background research that I had picked the perfect line, I launched into a full-blooded drive down the left half. My smugness was further reinforced by one of my companion’s comments that he was going to have me drugs tested. Alas, my smugness was very short-lived.
As I crossed over the brow of the hill, down which my ball should have skipped merrily towards the green according to all and sundry, I realised that I was never going to see my ball again. And it was a new ball!
What the course designer and the pro had inadvertently failed to mention was that if you hit your ball anywhere left of centre, it would disappear down a cliff face, never to see the light of day again! At the very least, they could have drawn a skull and crossbones on the planner to give you a sporting chance.
I must confess, as I circumnavigated how to scale the cliff edge, complete with thigh-length rough, I was chuntering to myself that Nicklaus should have stuck to playing rather than trying his hand at course designing!
Judging by all the comments afterwards, I would estimate that around 60 per cent of the field lost their opening tee shots, so I wasn’t the only one lulled into a false sense of security by the course planner.
Fortunately, though, this was not indicative of the rest of the course, which I found delightful. I was quite surprised to see that readers of ‘Fore!’ magazine voted St Mellion the hardest golf course in England.
Clearly, their readers aren’t as good as Lady Golfer readers, since I didn’t think it was a particularly hard course.
Don’t get me wrong, you have to be a straight hitter (which is probably why the largely male readership of ‘Fore!’ went wrong), but as long as you keep it on the straight and narrow, it isn’t intimidating. True, the fairways are tighter than many courses, but the greens are large and receptive, and what I particularly like is that it isn’t especially long.
I hate the modern trend of building ever-longer courses, and there is nothing more tedious than being faced with 160 yards for my second shots all the way round somewhere. I carry 14 clubs in my bag, and to me, the sign of a good course is using as many of them as possible – something I duly achieved at St Mellion. The par 3s are all short, and as long as you don’t choose to go for the death-defying options of trying to reach the par 5s in two (which really are risk or reward) they are comfortably in reach for most ladies in three.
Faced with death or glory options at any time, I invariably opt for death but, for once, I finished in a blaze of glory, getting on the par-5 18th in two. I did this as much to spite the course planner as anything else.
It told me that “a tee shot played as close to the right-hand bunker as you dare leaves a fantastic second shot.” Well, I didn’t! My tee shot finished down the left-hand side, miles away from the said perfectly positioned right-hand bunker.
Admittedly, from my angle, I only had a strip about five yards wide on which to land my ball with a 3-wood to thread it between the water and some fearsome mounds. However, the course planner did get something right. The final words state: “If the ball lands on the green there can surely be no better feeling.” How right they are!
So, Mr. Nicklaus – I guess you’re OK at course designing after all! Just stay away from writing course planners!