Ocotillo GC, Chandler. Ted Robinson Sr, 1986.

The idea here is to be an oasis; there’s no desert, but lots and lots of water. The trouble is that the water always seems to be in places where a good player barely notices it, but a lesser player is tormented. That just seems backwards to me. Most of the course plays through two hole-wide corridors between homes—one hole going in each direction, with a lake on the home side to protect the real estate from stray golf balls. Those lakes sometimes run up near the edges of fairways or greens, but not too closely. Worse, there are quite a few holes where an inlet of water crosses the hole in the intermediate area where a solid player never hits it but a lesser player could use the room to try to bounce a shot up. Or to put it another way, the course plays relatively easy for me, but it would be murder for my dad.

Arizona 7th Decile [2015]