Castle Rock

"The Man" pulled off a wild course here. The course features lots of water, tiered greens, risk reward situations, and beautiful scenery. I love this design that put together well matched objects, background, and pallete.

The course did feature a few to many lay up shots but it was so well designed that I got over it. The 18th is just the perfect way to end the course. Holden put rivers accross a ton of fairways leaving beautiful approachs. He set the rivers on some pretty tight holes that would not allow 300 yard drives regaurdless of the river cutting accross at about 300 yards. It makes the course look perfect. This isn't my favorite Holden design, but any Holden design is great in my mind.

The scenery is great, the objects blend well, background is fit in perfect, pallette looks spectacular, but I still don't like the course. The course was just too much of the same kind of creative, yet limiting holes. Holden screwed up.

Don't take me the wrong way, Holden is a great designer, but his layout on this course was horendous. He didn't even offer the golfer a chance to crank it off the tee, even if he could, because on almost every hole there was a lake, or a river cutting right through it. The course was too much. I like tricky shots and creative designing, but this course didn't cut it for me. There wasn't enough variety. I really liked some of the holes that forced a lay up off the tee, but I felt that it was used way to frequently. I liked the course, but when it comes down to it, the course could have been ten times better.

I gave it a 3 out of 5.

Scenery wise, this course was spectacular. Holden had a very solid pallette, combined with a great background (although because of trees, it was almost unnoticeable) and a good choice of objects.

The course was a target golf course (my favourite), at least from the tee. You had to make sure to hit the fairway. And on the long par 4's, he had large enough greens so that the course played fair.

Beyond that, I thought that the course lacked something. I felt that I was getting bored of the course after the front nine. There was nothing that really made the course that exciting.

The part of the course which I disliked the most was the par 5's. He had 5 par 5's (good), but only one (#7) can be reachable in two, and even that is a stretch. Having two 600+ yarders wasn't that good. I feel that par 5's are the best for risk/reward, but this course lacked that. Laying up gets boring after a while.

Still a decent design from Holden, but I'd rather play his Riviera.