Played the purple tees at Raindance National, so ~7700 yards. Holes 4 and 5 at 552 and 542 for par 4's were nuts. There wasn't much wind, but one of them was into it. The thing about this course is its surprisingly narrow and has hazards everywhere. It plays through a lot of arroyo and in a lot of places there is native just off the fairway, and then a cliff. Any significant miss is usually off the planet. But the toughest part of the course was the greens. They were very undulated and kind of Pete Dye style. They had a lot of spines in them and if you hit on the wrong side the ball could move 50 feet. The really dumb thing was there were a lot of pins at the bottom of a tier with steep slope, and if you were on top putting down it was literally impossible to stop the ball within 15 feet unless you hit the flag. Lots of approaches where the green is behind a bunker or a feature so you can just see the flag made it tough. I really didn't expect narrow fairways with hazards on both sides with crazy greens on some stupidly long holes.
I ended up shooting 86, and there may have been a mulligan or 2 in there..... My handicap is 0, and I played about the same as I did yesterday on my home course when I shot 75. I can't imagine playing that place if my game was off, or there was any kind of bad weather.
It was fun to play once as a novelty. I would never want that as a home course. Overall I think while its really interesting, but the design is pretty dumb. It's like they looked at everything that can be done to make it more difficult and just checked all the boxes. It was the hardest course I've ever played, tougher than Whistling Straits and Erin Hills that I played this summer. I have a feeling they will eventually redo the greens to make them more rational. The problem is I don't see how they can fix the tight landing spots on long holes with all the arroyo. When they finish building all the houses planned and the course gets busy, 6 hour rounds are going to be standard.
This is the clubhouse. It lets you know right away when you drive up that this is going to be different.
Even the tee markets were dangerous.....It's probably a matter of time until a drunk person trips on one of these and impales himself.
>200 yard par 3
Nice wide fairway on the 506 yard par 4 15th
Last edited by campfirewest; 09-25-2022 at 11:30 PM.