Mike Clayton - Conclusion

I will finish up my views on Mike Clayton’s changes with a bit of an overall summary. There’s three points I’d like to make.

First of all, there are too many (one would be too many) cases of tees being too close to the preceding green. Examples of this are 6, 7, 12 South and 3, 8, 9, 14, 17 North.

Sooner or later someone standing on a tee is going to get bonked on the head by someone playing to the adjacent green. I hope the club has good insurance.

Secondly, golf is after all a game, and the purpose of a game is to be enjoyed. After Mike Clayton’s handiwork, there are far too many instances of the course handing the player bad breaks, thereby diminishing the enjoyment of the game. I’m thinking of all the times a well-hit shot can catch a slope and run into trouble.

For example, the tee shot and approach shot on 1 South, the domed shaped green on 2 South with slopes into the bunkers on either side, the runoffs into bunkers on either side of 3 South, and so on. You get my drift.

I’ll finish with a couple quotes from Dr Alister MacKenzie (who designed Augusta National and Royal Melbourne golf courses, just to name two).

“Remember that golf is a game and no player ever gets any fun in searching for lost balls.”

- the thick rough very close to the fairways on both our courses leads to far too much searching for balls.

“Most courses have too many bunkers. They should be constructed from a strategic and not from a penal point of view.”

- way too many penal bunkers, ones that catch good hits.

Finally, I want to discuss what I believe constitutes a conflict of interest for Mike Clayton – stay tuned!