redanman: Crail Craighead

What do I look at?

I am always asked: What do you use to determine your best or favorite courses?

Routing - How and where the course goes onto the land, use of natural features and shaping of man-made features blending into existing contours

Overall quality of individual holes, par3's and 5's as sets, overall design variety and inclusion of strategic features in a cohesive fashion.
Cohesion of the course. How much is it a Golf Course and not a collection of holes?

Green Complexes - variety, quality, mix of contour, speed and relative penalty for missed approaches. This includes not jsut the greens them selves, but the surrounds. The best green complexes require you to think the hole backwards and the best greens need very few if any bunkers.

Bunkering schema - appropriateness to the site, especially appearance. One style does not fit all. If appearance were all then the Old Course would be total crap. I prefer bunkers without a ring of rough, no matter how wispy and beautiful.

Conditioning - Must be of an appropriate standard of quality. Site appropriate grasses must be used.

Appropriate Vegetation - Useful trees and avoidance of horticultural decoration
Ideally (rare)- A challenge for the talented player, creation of joy for the less-talented one.

the rest of the Club - easy does it. One needs a proper locker room, bar, place to eat and the rest is personal choice. 20 different whiskys and ten gins are essential, solid wines expected and Kummel where available. Would I personally be happy here?
Milieu - How, as a place away does the course and club succeed or not?

Recommended Outside US

Brora

Carnoustie

Crail Balcomie (#18 above)

Crail Craighead

Glasgow Gailes

Gleneagles King's

Gleneagles Queen's

Gullane #1

Hamilton (CA)

HCEG

Kilmarnock (Barrassie)

Kingsbarns

Luffness (New)

Lundin Links

Machrihanish

Mid Ocean

Nairn

North Berwick West

Panmure

Port Royal

Prestwick

Real Golf de Pedreña

Renaissance Club

Rowallan Castle

Royal Aberdeen!

Royal Dornoch

Royal Troon

Turnberry Ailsa

Torrance Course (St. Andrews Bay)

St. Andrews Eden~most of it

St. Andrews Jubilee

St. Andrews New

St. Andrews Old

St. George's (Canada)

St. George's (NY)

Toronto Golf

Western Gailes

Please Invite Me - I need to get my Passport Stamped More

Spain this Year (2011 & 2012!)
England , OZ, NZ pool will include next abroad choice.

US Courses of Note

Some already profiled on redanman.com
U.S. Classic Each Group as Equals - architect

***
National Golf Links of Am. (NGLA) - Charles Blair Macdonald
Pine Valley - multiple, but Crump conceived
Shinnecock Hills - Flynn

-current edit-

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Modern - post 1960

***
Bandon Dunes - Kidd
Boston Golf Club - Hanse & crew
Ocean Course - The Dyes
Old Macdonald - Jimmy U & Doak's Bunch
Pacific Dunes - Doak's Bunch
Sebonack - Doak's Bunch & Jack's Entourage

Sand Hills - everyone tells me, haven't been yet ***?

**
Friar's Head - C&C
Golf Club (The) - Dyes
Kingsley Club - DeVries
PGA West Stadium - The Dyes - THE Best US Housing Track

*
Royal New Kent - Mike Strantz
Rustic Canyon - Hanse

TPC Sawgrass - The Dyes

*0
Hidden Creek - Coore & Crenshaw
Carnegie Abbey - Steel
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Lastly! ... I didn't forget - I'm just not including some fan favorites - Fatal flaws noted.

-Black Diamond Ranch (Quarry) - Tom Fazio - Quarry holes quite over-rated, remainder is just hamburger helper.
-Castle Pines Golf Club - Jack - A reasonably fine collection of very beautiful holes not constituting a "golf course"
-Harbourtown - Dyes - Considering that Dyes' course at Colleton and the at least one other better course in the area don't make it, it can't possibly. So much is and has gone wrong there I need two pages, not two lines
-Muirfield Village - Des Muirhead and Jack - A couple of absolutely wonderful holes, but the routing is horrid and a poor venue for patrons of Memorial. There are just too many ordinary holes and this is no Pebble Beach to tolerate that many so-so holes.
-Old Sandwich - C&C - A property not at all well-utilized despite top notch routing constituting perhaps my biggest personal disappointment of realisation vs. potential.
-Pacific Trails - C&C - The weakest link of Bandon Resort, however by no means skip it! About par with Talking Stick. Too inconsistent.
-Shadow Creek - Tom Fazio - It is now nothing architecturally special, but was once a landmark engineering feat. Never an outstanding golf course.
-Victoria National - Tom Fazio - Another - not utilized as well as should have been. Phenomenally cool property.
-Whistling Straits - Dyes - Special mention for this very-highly ranked course which the PGA of America has thoughtlessly narrowed fairways to remove strategy in teh name of difficulty. The site of the most over-done hystrionic non-functional bunkering on the planet. Also a blank canvas used badly with two just awful holes #5 & 18 and a missed opportunity to build a skyline par 3 looking at Lake Michigan. Hall of Shame.
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Scale inspired by Michelin

*** Best America has to offer - Go yesterday
** Full notch below - ASAP
* Second Class - not in a negative way - Definite to-do list starter
*0 Still Extremely good - someday

Some courses aspire greatness, are built on wonderful properties and yet somehow fail to extract enough from the potential. That extraction is critical. On the opposite end, a top example is what Steve Smyers did at Old Memorial in Tampa, Florida, or Kelly Blake Moran's The Hideout (Naples, FL) - each a dull and uninteresting site yielded a marvelous course and club. We're looking at the apex of successful extraction at the site.

redanman

My Top 100 Played

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Crail Craighead