Overall	Open Men	Pro Masters Men	Advanced Men	Open Women
Average	2.9 (18)	2.4 (18)	2.8 (17)	3.1 (18)	3.0 (16)
Eagles	1	0	0	1	0
Birdies	45	27	5	13	0
Pars	125	18	14	90	4
Bogeys	11	1	1	9	0
Doubles	4	0	0	4	0
Other	2	0	0	2	0

 

 

 

 

 

Our entire pro women's field, Courtney Peavy, drive on hole 5.

This hole played extremely easy and was pretty clearly the easiest hole on the course, I think. The only difficulties would be to left-handed players playing for the birdie. Several players birdied it all 4 rounds and several more birdied it 3 times.

I don't like this hole very much and would like to change it or get rid of it entirely. I do think if I could plant just a few trees to the right of where the current tee is I could make it a pretty interesting par 4 that tees off from where last year's hole 5 was (the short anhyzer), which was on the right side of the fence not too far from hole #4's basket. We'll see.

I really do like the green and, as an aside to all would-be course designers out there who have seen the course I'd like to say that if you would put the basket in the middle of the horse circle you need to seriously reconsider designing courses. I bet ten different people suggested that this weekend. My response... well, my first reaction is my whole body shudders at the thought. However, some may feel that is inadequate as a reason for a pin placement (although I'm not so sure) so...

There's a story about a physics professor asking Richard Feynman to explain something to him. Feynman said he'd go whip something up, but comes back a few days later (all details in my version of the story are wrong, by the way. I'm incapable of remembering things like that) and says he wasn't able to do it. He then said that if we can't reduce something to a freshman-level lecture it means we really don't understand it very well. Well, I've been making an effort to think through all the little things on the course and to give good reasons (or what I consider good) for my decisions. So here goes:

Sean Warley putting from the "interesting" part of the hole. The photographer is relaxing in the horse circle, which is why there's a large wooden beam obscuring/adding texture to your picture.

There are only a few things on this hole that provide difficulty. The first is the uphill-ness of the shot. It's not particularly hard to reach but I've seen quite a few people under-throw it. The second is the line of trees on the left, but really, if you're in those, it means you threw a really crap shot. The third is the OB line just to the left of those trees. This does make you think about how much you want to flirt with the left side of the green and it's not too hard to have what you think is a good shot hyzer a bit much and end up OB. That said, if you throw OB you probably didn't throw a great shot. The fourth, and my favorite, is the contour of the green. There's that nice ridge 20 feet or so before the basket. There are the 2 evergreen bushes to the back-right of the green. There are the trees on the left. There's the horse circle.

Now, if you take that basket and move it into the horse circle you: Take the trees on the left out of play. Take the OB out of play. Make it a longer throw. All of which means your drive is not only a bigger crush but it's even more mindless. There's no danger to worry about (and if you're going to suggest calling everything outside the circle OB you should keep it to yourself, you're likely to get slapped) anywhere. You also take the subtlety out of the green to the point where the only interesting thing is the horse circle.

So that's my thinking on the matter. Just thought I'd share.

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