In response to those posts I pose this question:
Is it possible that your preference for wooded courses on coverage is related to your experience with wooded courses over layouts built on existing golf courses? Do you think that there's a possibility that in a hypothetical scenario where the two types of courses in question existed 50/50 in your local area and you played both that your preference might be closer to even split?
My theory based on seeing golf around the world (and playing many types of courses) is that our preference in this game is often based upon a familiarity with what we know. You'll notice that I'm not saying that I prefer one layout over another, or that one is easier, and I believe that is due to my experiences shaping my preferences.
I think that if people had a personal understanding of the challenges presented by a course like the Headrick course at St. Jude's they would appreciate it more, and actually I found that to be true. Many of the AM's got out on the pro course to play on the practice day and loved it.
Really, if you take the Headrick course and move the trees much closer together, you would have had exciting golf. Was it just a bunch of hyzers? Not really. But did it seem like the course was overall pretty fair? Ehhhh, that's debateable; I really hated the one hole that Simon threw OB twice off the tee on that destroyed his round. The Re-tee rule on that left a lot to be desired, because to me, if you throw in the bunker, there is nothing wrong with taking a mark from the bunker. I realize that the retee rule is there because it is possible for a disc to never cross in bounds, but would it really have been a huge deal to let players take a mark from the bunker? Yes, that makes it a real easy three, but who gives a turkey? That's the way golf is played, and darn it, that just really got under my skin.
But to get back to moving the trees closer, let's talk about Jarva. That is, undoubtedly, a beautiful course, and one which is not as heavily wooded as a course like DeLa or anything in Charlotte. SpinTV seems to have done a fantastic job at that course last year with their coverage, and you guys only had one camera. The handful of times where we didn't see a finish, a two camera set-up like Jomez or, on occasion, Mcfly, would have had all the disc landings. We don't need to go to these wide-open courses that were designed for a ball to be hit with a stick to showcase disc golf; instead, focus on building championship courses like that, where the land is wide open, but, at the same time, still has plenty of trees and elevation change to make it possible. Is that necessarily going to be possible? It probably isn't realistic, but we can certainly try. Perth, which was mentioned as a hyzer fest earlier in this thread, seems to have hit that mark as well, where it is a good, solid, tree-filled disc golf course which isn't insanely wooded. To get away from the trees is to essentially take away one of the things that really gives disc golf challenge, and I'm not totally convinced that having a bunch of 800 and 900 foot holes where a bad lie, while bad, is still pretty easily recoverable (you can say it isn't, but for these pros, it honestly isn't going to be a huge deal) is an acceptable trade-off.
Now, if you want to see a golf course which I think did an excellent job of creating a temporary course,
watch this video. Are the holes perhaps easier than the St. Jude's holes? Probably so. Is this better DISC golf than St. Judes? I would argue that yes, yes it is. You might disagree, and reasonably so.
And so in response to your original question, no, we are not voicing dislike of the St. Jude's course because it isn't a woods course like most of us are familiar with. It's because it produces the same boring disc golf that The Memorial and the past couple Texas States tournaments have produced; there are a few challenging holes and then a bunch of holes where you grip it and rip it, try to place your disc ideally, but then can still easily recover from a bad lie. And I'm sorry, but that isn't the same test of skill as a course like DeLa, or Maple Hill, or Milo Park, or Trojan Lake, because those are DISC golf courses, not a ball golf course where we are playing ball golf with discs.
All that being said, I am not trying to take away from what the St. Jude tournament did, nor take away from the hard work Jussi put into designing that course. What I am trying to say is that, it wasn't the ultimate test of disc golf skill that everyone, including myself, thought it would be. Watching the tournament, it did seem rather boring, and like it wasn't necessarily skill as luck and wind, that would produce some of those scores. And yes, Will was OB.
