The Crossings at Carlsbad, Carlsbad. Greg Nash, 2007.

The front nine here is pretty boring. The back nine is anything but.

The Crossings in the name are the multiple crossings of a deep arroyo that created a lot of routing problems. For instance, you start the back nine by driving the length of the 10th hole in reverse before reaching the tee and playing the hole. You do this again, to an even worse extent, at the 12th—after leaving the 11th green, you drive past the 13th tee, over the arroyo, then down the entire length of the 12th hole along a section of cart path fenced off to protect you from people playing the hole. Then you actually play the 12th hole, go back across the bridge and play the 13th.

You also get blind shots, blind hazards, awkward uphill and downhill holes and basically a whole inward nine of holes built on land that just wasn’t really suited for a golf course. I admire the city’s desire to develop municipal golf and this site has beautiful qualities, but if it’s this hard to squeeze 18 holes onto a property, sometimes you simply have to step back and ask if it was really worth trying so hard.

California 5th Quintile [2008]