I’ve never seen a course where pretty much every opinion pretty much agreed with every other opinion! What everybody said turned out to be right. There’s a goodly amount of Emmet left there – especially in the green surrounds. There’s a smattering of really fun holes: 6-9 for example, and 11. They had good green contours, (They were doing some work, and they had just aerated so sadly, while I could see all these nice green contours, you just couldn’t putt them.)
But somehow the whole doesn’t feel greater than the sum of the parts, possibly because the parts differ so sharply. It’s not that some of the things Jones did were objectionable, they just didn’t seem to blend with Emmet. For example the second green has Emmet surrounds and shaping, but a sharply two-tired green that looks like quintessential Jones, Sr. 17 doesn’t fit with the course, even though it’s a good hole. And the routing is a jumble – I needed a sherpa, a map, and an archaeologist to find my way. There’s some long walks between tees, and you turn every which way at once, at one point even backtracking the way you came. I never would have guessed that one!
As for the “Is it a Reef Hole or Not” issue re: 13 – I’ll say this…it sure looks, superficially, like the drawing of the Reef Hole that Tillie did in his book. does it play like it? well no, because it doesn’t have the rise and ridge on the left, the sort of reverse Redan kickplate, but there were options here, and from the tee it visually had the exact effect Tillie was talking about. For me, that’s really too close to be a mere coincidence. This looks exactly like the visual effect Tillie was going for and which Tillie describes and which was and will be once again built at Paramount. Maybe – MAYBE what happened was Tillie saw the hole, got ideas for improving it, threw in his strategic modifications, gave it a name, and went from there, but who the heck knows? It’s an interesting question and one that has good arguments on either side.
I’ll post more pics when I get time. For now, that’s the “Reef?” Hole…get it? “Reef?” Is it or isn’t it?
CVC is a nice club, and with lots of good solid holes, but somehow nothing really really particularly memorable. I remember every hole at St. George’s perfectly, but some holes at CVC are mundane enough to sort of blend with others. (Four did nothing for me and while I like 15, I hate the blind pond, which rears its ugly head TWICE, once at 14 and again at 15. Still, there was a lot of Emmet influence and shaping at the greensites. I hope to see it again when the greens are rolling nice and true, and when it’s done with the restoration work. That’ll be more fair to doing a review.
