Replayed the course yesterday from the golds again.
You may want to define OB on the score card (are we playing rethrow from previous or from point it went OB?... I know there's some variance here across pro tourneys)
A few notes about the second round (I'd love others' thoughts, especially about #2,7)
#2 I tried a spike hyzer. It didn't work. I will try again with an understable disc. I still contend the distance from gold pad to basket is too long. Even a great player will not want to go hard for the 2. If it's a little closer (~50 ft) it would be close enough to tempt.
2 I would leave as is for a little while to see if traffic breaks it in enough b/c you can't undo too much trimming. I'd maybe think about cleaning up the putting area a bit so that if you actually do get down there you can get a putt off.
#4 The "cut line" rule isn't in play on this hole, right? Good hole, especially when there isn't wind.
Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not really sure but it was confusing to the group I guided around a couple of Saturdays ago.
#6 is great, but there will be many discs in the road (I'm 1/2)
#7 is simple, but good. Could make it more interesting with another tree on the right. Right now it's a little too vanilla because you just throw it as hard as you can with a virtually wide open fairway... and then you throw a wide open upshot. The answer may be to incorporate the monster tree ~300ft up the fairway.
#6 is pretty fun. An easy fix for the road problem would be to put a sort of OB bunker between the road and the basket to really dissuade mindless bombing and enhance the risk/reward of the hole. #7 is pretty much just a distance issue. There aren't really enough trees to factor in I don't think. I think the distances are about right, gold level players should be able to par it easily with the occasional deuce and blue level players should be able to get a lucky birdie and par it otherwise. This hole really only has a problem if you can't throw 300' back to back, then you get that NAGS (Not A Golf Shot) zone for shorter throwers. But this course isn't really designed for them and a short tee would be an easy remedy if they wanted to pour it.
#12 A huge upgrade for this one would be to put a tall flag on top of the basket. Assuming we aren't throwing ~450 on flat land, you're probably not able to see this basket for your 2nd shot, but it becomes a lot more fun of a 2nd shot when you can actually see where the basket is without walking 50'+ up a sloped hill and trying to remember that for the throw. having the basket on a hill makes for additional skill (if you're skillful enough with the throw it minimizes the luck) to prevent rollaway.
A flag on the basket would be a nice touch. An accurate tee sign will go a long way to remedy that also, especially if it's detailed enough to give distances to the fence corner. That basket is going to get flattened out by a erosion as the grass dies around it, I'd go ahead and start putting down some erosion barriers to preserve that slope and might double as rollaway catchers.
#13 May want to split this into 2 for safety. I've been to the course on two consecutive Saturdays and thankfully there were NO players on the fields! Having people bomb that close to back yards could be an issue as well... splitting it into two would help in both of those regards (but it would remind a lot of people of the 'filler' 16 and 17)
This has trouble written all over it. Splitting it into 2 holes is something I've thought about but I'm not sure it would do anything to really solve the neighborhood/soccer field issues.
#14 great hole, dont' change a thing.
#15 As previously mentioned, there is no fairway here. Am I missing something?
You know, a thought just struck me. Instead of having 14's basket pushed into the woods like I've heard some advocate, what if you combined 14 and 15 into one hole? Open drive with the challenge being positioning yourself to hit the alleys through the woods with 15's pin placement providing nice finishing challenge.
#16,17 are necessary filler holes. If there is some property room on the right, these should definitely be combined into 1 hole. You could cut out landing zones akin to what it being proposed for #8 (again, I'm available to help). Another option you may prefer is to plant two trees ~50 feet from the pad and have a mandatory through the two of them (Think Oak Hollow Open course at the lake... hole 11ish).
I'm not sure but I think the treeline on the right are out of Buzz's jurisdiction. Need some thick woods there a bit to keep discs out of that farmer's pasture anyway. I liked DSmith's idea of putting 17's pin past the bridge in that open low spot. The only issue there is throwing across the bridge but it's a thought. What I'd be okay with is moving the tee of 17 to one of the islands in the parking lot, making it slightly downhill and more importantly making it so that you aren't throwing parallel to the road so much. I hate holes playing across roads but not sure what else can be done here. 17 wouldn't seem so much like 16's shorter little brother either.
Here is my mockup of #11.
http://imgur.com/mTm1IzV
Green = Easy landing zones
Orange = Medium Landing zones
Yellow = What I'd expect from pros
Red = What would be a "great" throw when you include the risk of going in the junk... and should get you a stroke advantage over people in the green.
I'd propose moving the basket from the blue spot to roughly the other blue spot (exact positioning to be determined by Buzz.
Thoughts?
The only thing I'd do with 11 is move the basket a little bit away from the rough on the right and behind it. Punishing overshoots on the approach is a good thing but you need at least a 10 meter circle pretty clear and I don't think it is. I've landed in your yellow zone once, maybe twice and the green zone once so far. I can land in the yellow fairly comfortably and I'm definitely not a pro FTR.
