(05-18-2018, 09:17 AM)Spiny_Norman Wrote: Hulk, you don't expect this tournament to produce scores like the ones at the men's championship at Purdue in 2008, do you? UCLA won at +42.
The course has a lot of up and down and wind will be a factor especially in the afternoons. It will play longer than the listed yardage. It's going to take a lot of patience to work your way around the course. Not sure if Stanford has played a course like this during the season.
The Chronicle had a feature on Albane Valenzuela yesterday. She talks about her autistic brother and how he inspires her. She also reveals that she has been suffering from a nagging wrist injury.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/golf/...923374.php
Stanford's women have played quite a few Fazio-designed courses, but the courses are concentrated East of the Mississippi and the South. So the SEC and ACC players have seen more of them, but not enough to matter.
Most Fazio courses are designed to be photographed and to impress the club's members guests. This one in Stillwater was designed to attract elite college golfers to Stillwater, Oklahoma and, perhaps as part of that, earn a reputation for being a stern test of talent. To some, that means a course where par is a great score--courses that are simply too difficult for most of us to enjoy. The slope rating for this course alone tells me that's what Fazio went for here.
The Stanford practice facility has a Fazio section with the slopes and bunker configurations that Fazio favors. The players have gotten the feel for Fazio bunkers and sand. They'll be fine. Home, or even familiar course advantage, often isn't apparent in college golf. And by match play, a player has a very good read of how the holes play.
The men's set up will be even harder, simply because 320 yard drives can miss far more than 250 yard drives. It sounds like it's going to be fairways and greens, fairways and greens. The teams built around bomb and gouge aren't going to get to match play.
I just realized this. The first hole is a par five.
How many well-regarded courses start with a par-five? Riviera and. . . ?
Offends my perhaps old-fashioned sensibility. And reminds me, again, why I don't like Fazio's courses.