Update and Upcoming

Streamsong - Black 

Coming this week or next.

Gil Hanse gets to add his work next to the enfant terrible and the Gods of Architecture from a shared routing adventure.  Gil's Courses and the opinions of them are all over the map. I've known him almost 20 years, been a member of one of his best clubs, think he truly revels in pushing the envelope and creating controversy. He does it well.

I'm most looking forward to finding the plethora of unfairness that reportedly exists on the Black Course.

Concept of the Day: Non-Linear Punishment -  lack of proportionality for missing a shot. Miss little, punish little, miss a lot, punish a lot. Golf isn't meant to be fair, a part of its charm is the greatness of the recovery shot. I have five aces, but I'd prefer to tell you the story of my five best recovery shots (Given my game, there is way more than those five). But I digress as I often do.

Hanse along with Steve Smyers to a lesser degree each has probably taken the mantle of proponent of this concept from Pete and Alice Dye. Sometimes Steve's course are just plain hard, but often I say that Hanse and Smyers build the hardest courses yard for yard today.  Gil is on fire with business, Smyers, less so although Hanse has been doing a ton of renovation/restoration/re-interpretation work. At the other end of the spectrum is the all there in front of you/linear punishment which is ironically shared by Tom Fazio and The Gods of Design, whose names cannot be spoken.

Just kidding, it's Bill Coore - Ben Crenshaw. Their names can be spoken. And of course you knew who I meant. What each of these two design teams provide you with is a lack of controversy, a certain safeness, predictability, linear punishment, and a modicum of boredom because of all that. I rarely dislike any of their courses, but rarely does the blood boil or the heart stir. One moves too much dirt, one moves too little. Gil moves it so you cannot tell it's been moved.

Much dirt moved to build this:

What I expect to find at Streamsong Black is non-linear punishment.

Here is some Pete and Alice Dye for you. I don't have anything from L.A.C.C. for you, they don't like that.

Cheers.