Scott Ransley  › Independence Lake County Park   November 8, 2010 at 7:15pm

I played the reds for the first time on Sunday. If the goal was to appeal to beginners, I think they succeed. I was hoping they might offer a little different shot variety, so that maybe I would have the urge to play them occasionally as a change of pace. I am not sure that will happen. Not convinced they will get much use except by beginnners.

I categorized the holes into groups as follows:

Cat 1: Deuceable by all. Average players kick themselves if they don’t deuce it.

Cat 2: Takes a good shot by a beginner to deuce. The average player expects to deuce it, but has an equal chance of a par.

Cat 3: Beginner is probably not going to deuce it. Takes a good shot for the average player to deuce it, but most of the time they will par.

I came up with two Cat 1, seven Cat 2, and ten Cat 3 holes, which I think is a pretty good spread for beginners, but maybe a little too easy for average players to bother with. Are you tied to keep the existing whites as the mid tees? There may be some opportunities to use the current white as the red tee, and come up with a new white.

Looking at the shot variations (from a RHBH perspective):

Six holes favor a hyzer, five an anny, and four straight. Two holes are about equally suited to a hyzer and a straight shot, and one favors a hyzer and an anny equally. Again, that is a pretty good mix.

Favorite Holes:

1, 2, 5, 13

Least favorite holes:

9, 17, 18

Individual holes that could use some tweaking:

Hole 4: Tee is tucked in so far that it is not visible from the long tee. This is really just a pet peeve with me to get to a hole, and not be able to tell if there is a group waiting to tee off. This is the shortest hole out there, so I don’t think it would hurt to move it across the fairway.

Hole 6: Not sure you want the tee on the upslope of the hill. I would like to see it moved to flat ground and across the fairway to shoot over the rough near the (now dry) pond. There is plenty of room for people to throw around, instead of over if they want to.

Hole 9: Red tee was disappointing. It is basically a 215 straight shot with a low ceiling. I am biased, because I love the white/black tee on this hole, with all the shot possibilities. Why can’t this be the only hole with just one tee?

Hole 11: Impossible to see people here from the black or white tee. Like the short little anny shot though.

Hole 16: Too close to the rough behind the tee. Not visible from the black. Probably needs to be moved up, but I had a hard time picking a spot that doesn’t interfere with 13.

Hole 17: Again this tee is so far from the others and concealed, it is almost a different fairway. That would be fine if the shot was interesting, but again it is just a 210 foot low ceiling straight shot. You could just move it back onto the fairway, and maybe offset it to the left of the other tees.

Hole 18: You have three holes that require a hyzer through a tight gap between trees. #1 and #13 are great holes. #18 seems redundant. I would rather see a hole that requires an anny through a tight gap, instead of another hyzer.