What tends to happen on a course that turns out to be kinda' odd

jnug

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How do things go for you guys and gals when you happen to be on a course that you really do not like or more specifically don’t know anything about but as the round unfolds you simply find yourself disliking.

I have been making the rounds of courses that I either have not played yet this year or ever and in some cases courses that I had played a bit when I was playing sixteen years ago. So in truth I have been more or less leaving myself open to issues of the sort that I have been running into lately, more than anything preparing for next season.

Today I played a course that was interesting to me because of its location. It is not that close to me but it is close to places where there are service providers for the kids. So I could get in a round and get over to where I needed to be to pick up the kids as an example.

I absolutely grew to dislike the course I was playing for a number of reasons. The layout was nonsense. The course condition was substandard. You could easily lose balls right in the middle of fairways and it was clear to me people were doing so. There were numerous ruts and furrows right in the middle of fairways and if you were on one side of a furrow or a series of furrows and your ball was on the other it was very easy to lose it right in the fairway. If you did find your ball getting into any sort of a reasonable address position was difficult again right in the middle of the fairway as you often found one foot at the bottom of one furrow and the other foot on top of a different furrow with the ball anywhere in between. It is pretty easy for me to grow to dislike courses that punish you for hitting the ball right down the middle.

At any rate, my game disintegrated today as my interest in the course waned and my dislike for the course grew. I was just wondering if anybody else has had a similar experience of a disintegrating golf game under those sorts of circumstances and what tends to happen. Walk off the course.......watch the crooked numbers pile up on your scorecard.......make the best of it.....any comment you would like to make at all. My putting turned out to be the only thing that survived the experience as everything else went way downhill including my iron play (usually the strength of my game). I began trying to drive to parts of fairways that looked safe from where I was standing and that was the end of my driving for the day.
 
I do not care for golf courses with gimmicky holes. Courses where there maybe wasn't enough room to make it difficult, so whomever built it put in driving areas where there are no options but to lay up or your ball bounces out of play or into trouble. Most golf holes should have a risk reward aspect to them. I do not like holes that go up ridiculously steep hills with a green you can't really see at the top. Stupid and unrealistic. I also hate courses where dirt was pushed into round mounds in any old place. As if that makes it a links style course.

Oh, and I hate, hate, hate golf courses with 27 holes where one of the nines is greatly inferior to the other two. Then they try to always combine one good nine with the bad one. No thanks.

Kevin
 
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Greens where you cant see the surface (like Kevin mentioned), uncreative holes (meaning I'm just walking up and down fairways of approx. the same length, shape, BORING!), and blind hazards. I especially hate blind hazards. What's the point of putting water beyond the crest of a hill if one cannot see it from the fairway? Cost me 4 freakin' stokes once, and since then, on new courses, I carefully watch my GPS. That put me on tilt for about 4 holes.
 
I absolutely agree on all scores. Courses that are just up and back and up and back, straight and flat are a bore and courses that just include a bunch of gimmicky junk make me want to go find the guy that designed it so I can chase him down with a 3 iron in hand.

The furrows in this particular course are a matter of poor construction and maintenance. They are not designed into the course but while it was being built nobody cared enough to get them the heck outta’ there. This course also had its fair share of design features that were a consequence of trying to shoehorn something in, doglegs in particular. I like doglegs but I don’t like it when the designer looks at a design issue and just resorts to the same damn solution every time. “I know, I will put a dogleg there.” Brilliant, boy am I surprised.

This course had a hole that was dogleg right, severely slanted from left to right, with a hidden green and half the fairway hidden by a mound only about 75 to 100 yards from the tee box. When I finally got out onto the fairway I realized I had way overcooked my drive and had it well into the woods regardless of the fact that I was trying to control my drive! I had hit the thing about 200 yards tops thinking that there could be anything from another hole to piranhas out there in the landing area and still way overcooked it. You will be interested to know that this particular beauty of a hole only had one spot of any reasonable distance from the tee box that you could see and it had a fairway bunker right there! It took me a period of time to stop laughing before I hit my drive and I was still laughing while I was making my way out onto the fairway after hitting it. However as my first post indicated, eventually none of this was very funny as the whole course is like that in one way or the other. I did not even mention yet that you have to cross a main road three times to play 18 and twice just to play nine.
 
Oh yes, i think everyone thinks the same and hate diffrent type of courses.

For example, this summer i played a course on a so called "fancy" Golf club. Worst. course. Ever!
It was basically just straight holes with a rough more like a djungle = instant loss of ball if you didn't hit fairway. And the even more disturbing part is that even if you hit down the fairway you would end up in the rough or edge of it because the fairways are not flat in one place at all. So you could hit your ball straight down the fairway and the ball would roll off it because of the uneven ground.
Will never play that course again i tell you.
 
I didn't have the exact same experience as the OP, but I played a course today that just had the greens aerated, and then sanded over as well. They were SO SLOW, and after the first couple of holes, it became clear to me that if anything went in outside of 5 feet, it was going to be luck. I actually had a decent ball-striking day, but had 39 putts! I'm not a good putter to begin with, but the greens were so slow and bumpy that it took the little confidence I had and threw it out the window. It was a little disappointing, but I tried to get through it because the weather was so nice, and because it was mainly my putting and short game that wasn't good, as opposed to my entire game being bad. I do need to do a better job at focusing throughout the round, I tend to get down on myself if I start out badly and lose my focus, then ending any hope of salvaging a good round.
 
Yea, there are a couple of those around here. One in particular has a par 5 that is ridiculous. The tee shot is above a big gully that you have to drive around 300 yards to clear. There is a layup area, but it is a blind shot and is only about 20 yards X 20 yards big. So to do well on the hole, you have to hit the ball with an iron to a small area that you can't see and you don't know how far away it is, then your second shot is to a fairway that you can't see. Stupid.
 
A few things that bother me are:
You call for a tee time, get it and then when you show up they tell you the greens have been aerated and/or temp greens. They should tell you this when you call and should also offer a reduce rate.

A course where you are playing a par 5 and you have to lay-up on your tee shot. Just plain stupid.

I played a course one month and it was in great shape. The next month, ALL fairways had WEEDS, no grass at all. On such a junk course, it just kills confidence.
 
While on my travels around to courses I had not played before I also ran into another bit of an oddity. One course had a Par 3, dogleg right! That was another one that had me laughin at the tee box. You had to either hit a wicked slice to a green you could barely see through some thin forest that turned into heavier forest the farther off the small landing area and green you got or you could try to hit over that stuff again to a green you could barely see. Too funny and one of those things that is real and too odd to make up. Designer must have had a bad slice he could not cure and decided that he was going to by God have one hole on his course where he could outplay everybody else.
 
My course 4th hole par four. There is rough in the center of what should be fairway. The hole lays out that it could be just a hugely wide landing area, but there are also some rather large boulders just at the surface in the center. So, some genius decided to split the fairway and put rough right in the center. I hate hitting what should be considered a perfect drive to end up hitting out of the rough. The fairway area to either side are about 20-25 yards wide, and center section is about 25 yards wide. Taking that rough complete out of play means you either have to bomb your drive or hit a 6 iron off the tee to lay up short of it. Then you have a blind approach to a green guarded by bunkers front and right, with patches of woods left and long.
 
Rough and granite in the middle of the fairway, that is a good one.

You guys are right about your confidence going downhill on these things. You just don't know what to expect and that is what is in your head as your standing over the ball.

I forgot to mention that this Par 3 dogleg right did have a baseball style backstop behind the green, the kind you see at every little league baseball park everywhere……hilarious!! I guess they either already had a few people nearly whacked silly standing on the back side of the green or knew they were going to get some of that.
 
Gimmicky holes dont bother me too bad. To be honest, some stupid holes are quite fun. Straightaway holes kinda bug me. I dont like seeing more than 3-4 on a course. Then its a snooze
 
It's a fine line. You should always have a reasonable chance to par a hole if you make good shots. For example, there is a "gimmicky" hole at TPC Deere Run. There is a huge tree in the middle of (I think) the 4th hole that is about 190 from the tee. Some people can risk it and try to carry it, but there is also ample room to hit a hybrid or 3W to either side. Depending on the risk you take, you can get on the green in two with a long or short approach.

The hole I mentioned earlier doesn't give you much of a chance of doing anything. I suppose you could get lucky or learn over time, but you still have a horrible, blind second shot if you execute the first one.
 
My intention here is not to offend anyone, but if you find a course full of a bunch of gimmicky drives, gimmicky iron shots, and long carries, there could be a great possibility that you are playing the wrong tees for that course. Definitely not all the time, because we all know that designers will be gimmicky every once in a while, its probably not an entire course, it could just be the tees your playing.
 
My intention here is not to offend anyone, but if you find a course full of a bunch of gimmicky drives, gimmicky iron shots, and long carries, there could be a great possibility that you are playing the wrong tees for that course. Definitely not all the time, because we all know that designers will be gimmicky every once in a while, its probably not an entire course, it could just be the tees your playing.

No offense taken, Thainer, but in my case that isn't the case. The course isn't long by any means and all of the other holes are quite playable. There is just one big stinker in the middle.
 
Hawk,

I am actually OK with a tree in the middle of the fairway as long as you can see it from the tee. I really have a problem with hidden issues that are issues of bad design, poor use or space or poor construction or maintenance. The furrows right in the middle of the fairway I referred to earlier for example, just don't belong anywhere on a golf course. In addition, at least in my case, that sort of thing 250 yards down range is just not possible to see either. As for the Par 3 dog leg right, I doubt that baseball back stop went in as part of the original construction and is likely as much critical of the design as anything else.

At any rate, point well taken with regard to boredom or the lack thereof vs gimicks, trickery or what have you. I expect to find a certain amount of visual trickery on a golf course and do not like courses that just go up and back straight as an arrow either.

I don't wonder that a number of courses that were built 30 and 40 years ago are not on properties choosen by proper course designers but in some cases somebody just thought he knew what a good property for a golf course looked like. Then when they got into it, turning it into a proper golf course may have taken much more of an investment than they were willing to make.
 
I really like tough courses almost to the point where it feels unfair, but I have issues with "blind holes". When you have no clue as to where you´re supposed to aim over a copse of trees and stuff(b/c you´re a guest and have no clue). I usually tend to remember those specific holes. You know: Nice course overall but a shame they couldn´t fix the 5th hole.....

Another turn off for me is when the speed of the greens varies alot on a course, putting is hard enough as it is.

These things doesn´t bother me much AS I´m playing, its more of an afterthought when the rounds finished.

Complete turn on: are elevated greens, I love them!
 
I played a course earlier this year because the green fees where drastically reduced and I had never played it.
What a mistake.
Worse round in 5 years.
No yardage markers on course.Almost every hole had a blind tee shot including the par 3's.There was the fairway and then the deep deep rough - no transition. Plus it had rained the day before and the course didn't drain well so was like hitting out of a puddle even when water couldn't be seen.
One of the guys I was playing with got so disgruntled he ended up throwing a club in the water hazzard and quit on 8.Another buddy and me troopered on for the full 18 but I was totally drained by the end of the round.
 
"Another turn off for me is when the speed of the greens varies alot on a course, putting is hard enough as it is."

Agreed.

I cannot stand "variable" green speeds or when the practice putting green speed is nowhere near the same as the green on the course.
 
Try to make it to the turn, and then regroup mentally.
 
Oh ya no doubt. Some people understand it, some people dont.
No offense taken, Thainer, but in my case that isn't the case. The course isn't long by any means and all of the other holes are quite playable. There is just one big stinker in the middle.
 
I am OK with the speed of greens changing during the course of a round if it is caused by the greens drying out as the morning turns to noon etc. That is actually a neat challenge I think. However I hate it when it is related to the way the course is managed or designed. I have seen a number of courses where the type of grass used varies from one green to the next as different greens keepers over the years have taken a different view of what should be used. One green type breaks a certain way, dries at a certain speed, putts at a certain speed etc etc and the other green type is totalling different.

As to some of the quirkier layouts I have seen, to be fair, sometimes especially with Muni courses, the original property was gifted to the town or the city as a donation specifically for purposes of building a golf course. While these are very generous gifts, I can tell you from being in school board meetings that regardless of the intended use, the land donated is rarely optimal for the purpose. Instead of bringing a real pro in to deal with the situation and allocate enough budget for him to do the job, often, folks will try to scrimp as much as they can. So while it was a donation, you start with a less than optimal piece of property and few resources allocated to achieving a really special result. You can't really blame the people stuck with making the decision that much. I just wish the dynamics were different such that they allowed for a different result.

I don't mean to imply that this is the case with all or even most muni coarses, but it is the cases sometimes.
 
I dont care for holes that are difficult to figure out from the tee box. I have played quite a number of holes where I can’t seem to make out what the architect was intending. A hole or two at Crooked Cat at Orange County National fits this description. I guess if I played the course regularly this wouldn’t be an issue…
 
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