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Played Any Quirky Courses? Name and Details!


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Wolf Creek in Mesquite, Nevada is pretty different in my book. Lots of blind carries. Also alot of stair climbing to get to some of the tee boxes. 

It's one of those long 7K+ courses, that even the pros would find tough to equal par, or better. 

I have played a few cow/sheep pastures that have been converted to golf use.

One in particular near Ontario, Oregon has no fairways. The owner just mows the whole pasture like fairways, but keeps the greens really fast. You can reach a green with your second from anywhere. No bad lies any where, excep for a few bunkers. You can see all 9 holes from anywhere. You look at it, and think it's going to be a piece of cake. Easy peasy. Then you have to putt on greens that resemble a basketball court's flooring . 

 

 

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Meadows Farms in Virginia.....defines quirky....A par 3 built with a little league baseball field on the hole. Tee behinf home plate, green in center field...another par 3 with an island green set inside the foundation of an old mill. So you face a waterfall with the moat around the green. And then there is an 800 yard par 6...It's a decent course otherwise with these few surprises. 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Played Pinehurst number 1 pretty quirky after playing number 2 and 4.

Shot 84 on number 2 from the tips, birdied 18. Had a caddy that couldn't read a green if his life depended on it. Stopped asking him questions after 5 holes.

Shot 70 from the tips of 1 and 78 all the way back on 4. Number 1 was pretty short. 2 was the toughest course I've ever played. 4 was just right.

Live from the doghouse.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anything by Robert von Hagge....way too much mounding and too many elevated greens for my liking. Houston National was ok before it went under the first time. Its back up and running and can be fun to play, but still not one of my favorites. I feel like his shaping of fairways is quirky at best...

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  • 1 month later...

Inniscrone Golf Club outside Philly.  Quirky and difficult

 

#5 is downhill 3 par about 112 from tips.  You cant see the green, its about 10 yrds in depth and it slopes from front to back.  Behind the green is a good drop off into the woods.

#10 is a 4 par, downhill 400 yards.  You cant see the fairway and can only hit it about 200-215 before reaching the hazard.  You are then left with a 190-200 yard approach on a downhill lie, full carry to the green.

#16 is an uphill 4 par, 385 yards with 2 fairways.  If you can get to the top of the right fairway, you can see the green on your approach. If not, you face an blind approach to a dime size green.

You can see the split fairway in the photo

 

#17 is a 4 par, 472 from tips.  The tee shot as you can see in the photo is just difficult.

 

Gil Hanse design.  First opened as a private club with $50k initiation fee.  Course is only 6600 from tips but par 70.

Inniscrone 17.jpg

inniscrone 16.jpg

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A couple of courses I have played in the past:

Raintree Country Club, Hillsboro, MO. (Circa 1985)
A very hilly course, it has some odd holes as a result. Two holes have small lakes right where the landing area should be. One is a short par 5, where most people hit a 4H followed by a FW to come up just short of the green. The second is a 380-yd par 4, a pair of 4Hs.

Also, the front nine had several holes that ran up and back through a wide trough. A westbound hole ran parallel to the returning eastbound hole.

GolfRock.jpg.6b725bc9cc7b9778bb75ab6500a16576.jpg All the surrounding rocks had been pushed down into the bottom of the trough and separated the holes, with a few trees scattered in between. A local rule: you got a free drop out of the rock trough, if you could find your ball. And, the ball you found often had a cut in the cover from the rock encounter.

Hummingbird Golf Club, Cache, OK. (Played circa 2000; it appears it has been bought by another group)
Center of course was in bottom of bowl, with higher land around the sides. A homemade course in its original form: odd holes from both play and maintenance standpoint.

  • Hole No. 2 was a 215 (?) yd. dogleg left par 3.
  • Odd routing with no concern for drainage. Hole teed off on hilltop, had green down in flat. Tee box for next hole down in flat, next to a creek. So, 24 hours after a rain, the green and tee were both mushy underfoot. (Solution would have been to bend green into raised shelf on the hillside, and have the next tee box 40 yards to right and also slightly elevated.)

I don't claim to be Pete Dye, but I could out-design about 80% of misguided golf entrepreneurs who build their own homemade courses.

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On 2/7/2018 at 2:22 PM, HJJ003 said:

Anything by Robert von Hagge....way too much mounding and too many elevated greens for my liking. Houston National was ok before it went under the first time. Its back up and running and can be fun to play, but still not one of my favorites. I feel like his shaping of fairways is quirky at best...

Reminds me of something I read in a David Feherty essay. A reader had written in and asked about the kinds of courses to avoid. One of his categories was "Anything designed by Arthur Hills". He said that if Adolf and Eva were trapped in one of his bunkers, they'd have committed suicide long before they actually did!

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20 hours ago, Buckeyebowman said:

Reminds me of something I read in a David Feherty essay. A reader had written in and asked about the kinds of courses to avoid. One of his categories was "Anything designed by Arthur Hills". He said that if Adolf and Eva were trapped in one of his bunkers, they'd have committed suicide long before they actually did!

I remember early in my golfing life getting my teeth slammed down my throat at Hills' local effort, Pipestone GC in Miamisburg, OH. There were a few tricked up holes out there to be sure, A long par four with a fairway tilted 45-degrees toward a water hazard sticks out in my mind. 

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Fortuna Del Ray Golf Course in Yuma, Arizona. The course is covered with a particular tree I forgot the name of, but it is protected. So, there are these trees in the middle of a few fairways and you have to get by them somehow. They're only about 20 feet tall, so it's not too hard to do. On a few holes, figuring out where the fairway is can lead to guesswork the first time around. The 9th hole is a dogleg left, about 115 degrees. You can't cut the corner because it is occupied by a cliff at least 100 feet high.

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The OP mentioned Furry Creek, I played that course a few years back, it was more than quirky it was downright stupid. But they did film Happy Gilmore on it so... 

Cattails in Alamosa, CO is quirky to say the least. Lots of 90° dog legs and forced layups with mid irons into par 4s. Pretty god awful golf course if you ask me.

Black Mesa Golf Course in Espanola, NM has a ton of blind shots. First time I played there on the #1 hole the starter told me to hit my drive over a little flag and I would be in the middle of the fairway. I did and I was 15 yards right of the fairway in the crap. He told me I hit the ball too far. WTF? 

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  • 2 months later...

Fortuna Del Rey in Yuma, AZ. The course has Palo Verde trees on it, which are protected, so you can't cut them down. There are more than a few in the middle of a fairway, but they're only about 15' high so you can hit over them easily. They can make it hard to  see where the fairway is the first time you go around the course.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 2 months later...

Cascades in northern NJ. 9 holes of blind tee shots, moguls and mounds that serve no useful purpose other than to shuffle straight as an arrow tee shots off sideways into the rough. Every green has two holes, a regulation size one and another the size of  a dinner plate. Add the foot golf platter to the mix and there are three flags that you're staring at on every hole and you really have to pay attention that you're aiming for the correct one.

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3 hours ago, xrayvizhen said:

Cascades in northern NJ. 9 holes of blind tee shots, moguls and mounds that serve no useful purpose other than to shuffle straight as an arrow tee shots off sideways into the rough.

I played Crystal Springs once with @Jeremie Boop and the course was peppered with mounds. They're dumb.

They keep sending me email deals and I'm tempted to sign up for their rewards program but then I remember I didn't really enjoy the course enough to want to see the others.

Bill

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9 hours ago, billchao said:

I played Crystal Springs once with @Jeremie Boop and the course was peppered with mounds. They're dumb.

They keep sending me email deals and I'm tempted to sign up for their rewards program but then I remember I didn't really enjoy the course enough to want to see the others.

Yeah, Crystal Springs has them too and yeah, they're definitely dumb. One of the golf pros told me the secret to Crystal Springs is to put away the driver on most of the holes and play "position golf". Unlike Cascades though I sort of like Crystal Springs but it took me awhile to feel that way. Wild Turkey, another course that's part of the Crystal Springs complex, was designed by the same architect as Cascades (Roger Rulewich) but unlike Cascades good shots get rewarded. And Ballyowen, another Rulewich course, is consistently rated one of the top public golf courses in the country.

My definition of "quirky" includes any golf course that requires a lot of local knowledge in order to avoid hidden hazards or landing areas that knock a well hit shot sideways into trouble.

 

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2 hours ago, xrayvizhen said:

Yeah, Crystal Springs has them too and yeah, they're definitely dumb. One of the golf pros told me the secret to Crystal Springs is to put away the driver on most of the holes and play "position golf". Unlike Cascades though I sort of like Crystal Springs but it took me awhile to feel that way.

Crystal Springs has a couple of spectacular holes but a lot of the experience for me was ruined by the mounds and OB being on half the holes being so close due to houses.

3 hours ago, xrayvizhen said:

And Ballyowen, another Rulewich course, is consistently rated one of the top public golf courses in the country.

Yea I'll have to go back for Ballyowen one day.

Bill

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” - Confucius

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Ballyowen, that's the one with the bagpipes right?

Steve

Kill slow play. Allow walking. Reduce ineffective golf instruction. Use environmentally friendly course maintenance.

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