TL;DR: I see some valid complaints about the design, but I think there are some really good aspects of it as well. Pointing out both what we should and shouldn't do is the best way to improve the courses on tour.
Details:
I agree that these courses lack the feel of a great course due to the OB. I also think that the OB is objectively worse because (and I'm reiterating Houck and I think Chuck K here)
- OB doesn't allow for a chance to recover from a bad shot
- OB doesn't allow a shot to be proportinately punished (1" OB is the same as 100', while 1" into the rough is much different than 100')
I think the biggest suggestion I have is that almost half of the throws (non-putts) overly exaggerate the risk/reward element. The last throw on 16 is a clear example: it's silly to try and land in that little strip of in-bounds, so everyone either has a stupidly short layup (Paige Pierce yesterday putted her second shot on a par 5), or goes for it. This is a great style of hole design, falling into the heroic school of golf design. But for half of the shots? No, that's not even how the heroic school suggests designing courses. They'd suggest building up to one hole near the end of the round that is an exaggerated risk/reward shot. The idea is psychological. You're either having a great round and have to make the tough decision of going for it and possibly blemishing your great round, or you're having a terrible round and can make up for it by making one incredible shot. These shots usually involve a water carry, and laying up generally requires the player to do something silly (like what Paige did yesterday). If hole 16 were the only shot like this all day, I'd think it was great. But almost half of the throws are this way.
With that said, I think there are some good things we can learn from the course about how to design a course well, such as how to do the risk/reward elements. I also think there are some really good uses of minimal amounts of elevation (the putting areas on holes 12 and 15 come to mind). I also like how 18 is a stupidly easy shot, but allows you to get greedy by playing closer to the OB creek and mando. If you get too greedy, you'll be punished. I also love the idea of "gates" on that hole. By that I mean points of the fairway that are tight, but the rest of the fairway isn't. I've also heard these called "pinch points." I think gate is a better term because it implies that there's little between them, and the trees around the gate act like a fence. I kinda stole this idea from Steve W. I like them for two reasons.
First, gates allows for bad shots to go further off course. Since there are few/no trees to hit between gates, a shot that's slightly bad will have a slightly worse angle to the gate, while a shot that is really bad will have a much worse angle to the gate. In other words, it adequately punishes bad shots while still rewarding good shot.
Second, having gates (and the corresponding tree fence) reduces the randomness brought in by throwing circular objects (discs) between circular objects (trees). It really stinks to see a competitor throw a terrible shot and get a great kick right back to the perfect landing zone, but then you throw a shot that's 6" off at the very end of the fairway and you get a terrible kick. DG will always have randomness (we're throwing circular objects between circular objects), but I think reducing it here is good course design.
(A third benefit is the ability to have spectators clearly see the shots)
What are some other good elements of design you have noticed?
