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Trip---Starting in Cabo, Mexico April 22, 2016
With the light getting brighter at the end of the tunnel, I
figured it was time to knock off a few more.
So here I am, the morning of April 22 on a flight to Cabo, Mexico
(actually two flights to get there, Raleigh-Durham à Dallas and Dallas à
Cabo. I have been to Cabo once before, in
November 2014. That trip started my
final push to finish the Golf Magazine 2013 World 100. Pat and I had been to Cabot Links two months
before and we had the opportunity to have breakfast with Ben Cowan-Dewar the
visionary behind the Cabot courses in Nova Scotia. Playing Cabot Links brought my “unplayed”
from the GM 2013 list to 9, and Ben asked me when I hoped to finish the
list. I told him that my missing nine
were all over the place (Cabo-2, Japan-6, S Korea, S Africa, and Ireland) and I
wasn’t sure if I would get all that traveling done. He responded with “you’ve gotten this far and
are now saying you might not finish it?
That is crazy!” Pat (perhaps to
her later regret) agreed whole-heartedly, and I was off to the races.
My November 2014 plan was to arrive and play Querencia
(which was not on any World list at the time) that afternoon, then Davis Love’s
brilliant Diamante course the next morning and Jack Nicklaus’ Ocean course the following
morning, and catch flights back to NC…spending some 49 hours on the ground in
Cabo playing these 3 tracks (two of which were on the GM World list). However, due to bad weather around Houston,
my first flight was late getting to Houston and I missed the connection…and
there was no way to get to Cabo till the next morning. A flurry of phone calls ensued and I stayed
in Houston with old friends that night.
I notified Querencia and explained why I could not be there, and moved
Diamante to the following afternoon. I
ended up on the ground for all of 25 hours and got in both of the World 100
courses (Diamante and Ocean), thinking it would have been nice to have played
Querencia, but not important. That
changed when I decided to create and go after the World 100 Ever—Eight Sources
bucket list and then Querencia appeared on Golf Digest’s 2016 list published 3
months ago (at spot #98), necessitating another visit. Since a 24-28 hour visit (given flight
schedules from the USA it is essentially impossible to get in and out the same
day) allows for two rounds, my choices were (1) Quivira…a controversial
Nicklaus course that opened about 18 months ago, (2) replay Davis Love’s course
at Diamante, or (3) play Tiger Woods’ first design, also located at Diamante
which opened late in 2015. I chose the
first alternative and having heard some stories about it since, I was wondering
if I made the right choice.
I was leaving RDU at 5:53am and Pat suggested I get a hotel
room for the night before, which was a good idea. Also, her brother Henry (who lives in Chapel
Hill) was coming over for dinner that night and to see Hunter, Kinston, and
Duggan, so he was able to drive me up to the hotel.
Querencia Golf Club April 22, 2016: My flights were on time Friday morning and
everything went very smoothly. Querencia
is only about 20 minutes from the airport and is built on a huge plot of land. Tom Fazio designed this course and it opened
around 2000. The club is now planning to
break ground shortly on a second course, to be designed by Gil Hanse.
It plays to 7050 yards (par 72) and was built on very rugged
terrain…similar to the northern portions of Scottsdale, AZ. The views are superb and flat lies and holes
are difficult to find. The greens are
very large and can be difficult to read because of the overall influence of the
slope down to the sea.. Best holes to my
mind are #4 (a 552 yard par 5, relatively flat, and turning left all the way
with an infinity green that can be difficult to read (I can testify to that,
having had one of my three 3-putt holes there), #14 (a 164 yard downhill par 3
to another infinity green sloping sharply back to front…playing into a mild
wind I nuked a 6 iron carrying it about 160 to the back edge), and #16 (an
uphill from the tee and then downhill to green 466 yard par 4 to a wide but
shallow green open on the left and protected on the right…this was the only one
of these three that I parred). Course
was in excellent condition and is very fair. I liked it but would not even consider it in a
World 100 category. Hard to describe why
but I guess it somehow lacks subtlety and mystery…it just didn’t seem to play
with my mind the way great course do.
Hit the ball fairly well and had a 41 -39 = 80. Not bad right off the plane. Played with a wonderful member who moved down
here 15 years ago from NW Ohio. He had
fired a 69 (to shot his age) the day before and had the 77 this day. After the round talked for a while with the
pro, Erik Evans, who had been at Diamante previously and LACC before that. Then pushed on to my hotel which was within
the Cabo del Sol resort. As usual got
lost trying to find it but finally made it to my room, very very tired. Was in bed by 9:30.
Quivira Golf Club, April 23, 2016: Am not quite sure how to react to this Jack
Nicklaus design which opened in late 2014.
It lies along the beach and on a mountain along the Pacific coast and
must occupy well over 500 acres. It
plays to a par 72 and totals 7139 yards.
Sometimes in this blog I describe courses as being unwalkable…and
generally this has meant that they would be very difficult to walk. In the case of Quivera…this one is truly unwalkable. The cart ride from the 4th green
to the 5th tee must be at least ¾ of a mile and must encompass a
vertical rise of about 500’. Over the
past few weeks since I planned this trip, several people have questioned why I
chose to play Quivira, and as I stated above, I was having my doubts…but the
truth is that there are aspects of this course that I have not seen in JWN
designs before…very very positive aspects.
First…most of the par 4 and 5 holes have great width and angles become
critically important...design aspects usually found on older classics and
Coore-Crenshaw and Tom Doak designs from today’s crop of architects. Additionally, the fronts of most of the green
were open and on many holes, the fairway “bleed “ into the greens at prescribed
angles, thereby encouraging use a the ground game. And in a few cases, adjoining fairways
“bleed” into each other with no rough in between (a technique used superbly by
Coore-Crenshaw in their renovation of Old Town Club in Winston-Salem, NC as
well as by Mackensie at Augusta National before it was lengthened, and probably
first employed so well at the Old Course in St. Andrews). There were a whole bunch of holes that I
thought were superb…in particular #3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 12, and 13…that is a goodly
number. I thought the best were #8, 11,
and 14:
·
#8 plays 399 yards, and rises sharply uphill
especially on the approach to a wide green (interestingly, I thought there were
a lot of very narrow, deep greens…I counted 5 on the front nine);
 |
| Approach on #8...do NOT be short or it may come back to your feet! |
·
#11 is 375 yards with a blind tee shot to a
split fairway; the right fairway is wider but is lower than the left and
presents a blind approach to the green;
·
#13 is a short 148 yard par 3 over an ocean
chasm to a two tired green…in some ways the hole reminded me of #15 at Cypress
Point (see pic below).
 |
| Remind you of #14 at Cypress Point? |
And the views are quite simply too great to describe.
On the other hand, there are things to criticize:
·
long distances from green to tee often break up
the “flow” of the course, as well as making it impossible to really “feel” the
course by walking it;
·
the 5th hole is a disaster measuring 310
from the tips with almost no place to hit your tee shot and a severely downhill
2nd that is often blind; to be fair, JWN clearly had a transition
issue getting over a mountain; but maybe Jack just tries to build course where
they were not meant to be;
·
a little bit of Jack’s traditional design style seems
to have crept in on 16 and 17 (and too a small extent on 18)…which are too
narrow (IMHO) and don’t seem to fit with the rest of the course (16 and 17 are
sharply downhill and were heavily influenced by the mountain that created #5).
 |
| #17...much narrower than most of the holes |
One other aspect was very surprising…the course was in good
shape but not the excellent shape one usually seeing at Jack’s creations. The
greens were relatively slow (I am guessing 9.5-10.0 on a stimp) and too
soft. Finally the fairways were also too
“thick” and slow.
In summary though, I was very pleasantly surprised. I would not include this in a World 100 (it
has not appeared in any to date), but it is worth playing for the views and
perhaps a transition on JWN’s architectural style.
Ended the day with another 80, this time 39 - 41 (but then
again the par split is 34 -38 = 72).
After the round showered and had lunch, then was off to the
airport…to places I promise to reveal in my next posting...in the meantime, some other pics:
 |
| #6...180 yards downhill on side of mountain. Had no timer to move the sun or my cart. |
 |
| #3...316 yards...be careful laying up to right of that bunker in center of fairway...it slopes right there big time |
 |
| #12 635 yards down hill winding thru bunkers left and right to green in distance. |
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