Curious Golfer

With all of the talk about Lions Municipal Golf Course closing due to impending development, I have been thinking alot about the course that I grew up on.  Tonight, I was wondering what it would be like to redesign the course, even though that will likely never happen.  Here is what I would do if I could…  

hole 1:  leave it alone.  its a total classic, and sits still a very elusive birdie and not a really a gimme par.  the green is perfectly perched on a mound and nestled in an enclave or foliage that can really cause grief if you end up in it.

hole 2:  add fairway bunkers on left and right at the 260-280 mark from the blues.  extend the right green-side bunker around the front of the green a little more, and also widen that bunker so that there is a penalty for going at the green and missing.

hole 3:  add some sort of hazard on the right rough to penalize a bomb drive that goes right.  left can already be a penalty because those mounds tend to kick further left into the trees, but missing right is virtually unpenalized.  also, make this green a tad smaller since the hole is short and most of the time you will have a wedge into the green if you don’t miss the drive.

hole 4: leave it alone.  this hole is also a pretty decent test.  the bunker at left front of the green is a huge penalty for a miss and the green is large enough that you can have very long putts.

hole 5:  from the blues, nothing needs to be done to this hole off the tee; its hard enough to hit a long drive and keep it in the short grass.  From the whites, there need to be a penalty for long hitters going for the green.  adding a huge bunker of the right front of the green would add some danger for long tee shots from the whites and would also make approach shots for all tees require a little more precision.

hole 6:  leave it alone.  classic hole at muny.  its another very well designed hole that uses the terrain perfectly.  its not long, but still hard to birdie unless you get the perfect tee shot, in which case you deserve birdie.

hole 7:  leave it alone.  the encroaching trees make this a great par 3.  you are required to hit a great tee shot, or you won’t even make par here.

hole 8:  this hole is pretty much a par four with today’s clubs and balls, so making it a long par 4 is an option here.  that would take this hole from one of the easiest to one of the hardest.  I am partial to retaining as much of the original course as possible, so making it a par 4 and not changing much else would be good.  I would, however, deepen and lengthen the fairway bunker on the left of the fairway.  It need to be lengthened because today’s clubs can bomb right over that bunker with ease, so its no longer really a threat.  making this hole a par 4 would also make both the front and the back par 35, which has a certain symmetry that I like.

hole 9:  before this hole was changed from a long straight par four into a dogleg left about 25 years ago to make room for the little league fields, it was truly one of my favorite holes on the course.  that being said, its a pretty good hole now:  its hard to drive the green, but very possible and has a high risk/reward for going for it.  longer rives require advanced players to shape their drive and they are penalized if they mishit, go long, or don’t shape it enough.  because of this, I would not change it.

hole 10:  although this is definitely a classic hole at muny, I would change it because its just too short for a par four, and there is actually room to put the tee boxes just a bit further back.  even moving them back a mere 20 yards would take the hole from being a fairly easy drivable par 4, to a huge risk/reward hole.  But that’s all I’d change.

hole 11:  this is a great hole as-is, but I’d push the tee boxes back just a tad because there is room to do so and there it not much penalty for going for the green even though there are two sentinel trees protecting the green just in front of the green in the right rough.  if you are long enough and capable enough to hit a huge high fade,  you should be rewarded.

hole 12:  this is another par 5 that is just too short for the advancements in technology.  They already have the blue tees as far back as you can possibly go almost in the fairway of number 15, so you can’t make it longer.  I think about the only thing that you can do is make the pond/creek larger or reroute it so hat it is closer to the tee boxes in order to penalize long hitters.  you might also be able to elevate the green even more to make inaccurate approaches riskier (think long 2nd shot approaches).

hole 13:  don’t change a thing.  personally, I love one super-short par 3 on every course.  I hate courses that have all four par 3’s that are 180+.  Variety is the spice of life and this hole is fun as it is.

hole 14:  again, this hole has been left behind as technology has advanced.  I would add one fairway bunker on the left right at about 200-220 and another on the left at about 260-280 (from the blues).  This would require a pinpoint drive. a s it is now, all you have to do is bomb a drive anywhere close to the fairway and you can reach this green in two.  these greens would fix that.  The short bunker on the right would force players to think that they must stay left, which would direct alot of players into the longer bunkers.

hole 15:  I like this hole, but I would add a large bunker on the right front of the green.

hole 16:  because this is famous as “Hogan’s hole” because legend says that he asked where the fairway was when standing on the tee box, and because this is a perfectly designed par 4, I’d leave it alone.  the water keeps 99% of all players from going for it, and the approach requires a good shot.  what more do you want?

hole 17:  I’d leave this hole alone too.  I remember playing muny as a kid and thinking that pond was so huge that it was an infinite horizon of water, like the ocean.  Of course, its not that hard of a hole, but is a good par 3.

hole 18:  more than only other hole, this hole desperately needs length added.  I drive the green on this hole (or go over) virtually every time I play it.  However, I don’t think that there is room to add much length (but I’d have to check to be sure).  If length can be added, it should be done.  In addition to that, I would add a drainage ditch full of rocks running across the fairway about 10 yards in front of the green.  Of course the ditch should be engineered to be fully functional and look elegant with larger decorative rocks.  It can be dry unless there has been rain, the idea is to just to penalize those who go for the green from the tee.  when you ball is sitting on a palate of rocks, that should do the trick.

There you have it.  Its probably a long shot that any of these ideas (or any other modifications) would ever be implemented, but its fun to play the mental gymnastics since I’ve been playing the course for nearly 30 years.  If you have any comments or your own idea, please post them in the comments.