In the real design world, the terrain on which the course sits and it's vegetation is unique. Not so in the virtual world where everyone's prospective masterpiece starts of the same - flat and very, very green!
So my first task was look for a course location and style which inspired me. I've long been a fan of golf designers, Coore and Crenshaw who have over the years designed some classic and unusual courses. They have recently been criticised, unfairly in my mind, for making their courses look too similar to each other. I think that's a ridiculous comment when you consider the varied terrain they have build their courses on. Few people could mistake their Nebraska course 'Sand Hills' for anywhere else.
Of course they have their own style which they take from course to course but I've yet to hear anyone complain after playing one of their courses!
I was taken with one of their more recent courses named 'Old Sandwich' which is in Massachusetts on the east coast of the United States. I loved it's rolling terrain, pine trees and whispy grasses which are punctuated with wild bluberry bushes which can be seen throughout the course.
It really does look like a wonderful course.
This looked exactly like the kind of course I'd like to design and so I set about the task of creating textures, making planting sets for the grasses and vegetation and practicing various techniques that I would need in order to create my course. That one sentence seems innocuous enough but I can assure you, many weeks of photoshop creation and experiments ensued and are still ongoing although I have a good set of 'work in progress' stuff to be going on with. I was, at that time, using an old version of one of my early 2003 creations 'Shadowlands' to experiment on and thus dug this practice bunker right in the middle of the first fairway!
I showed this pic around to a few friends and after a very positive response, decided that I was ready to begin work on my course in earnest.
Nice to see someone playing Powerstroke. I help Mick Lenton run http://web.bethere.co.uk/psl/PSL2005/seniors-index.htm
ReplyDeleteWith your comments on the Sand Hills, it has always struck me that Prairie Dog was a noble and successful effort to deal with that terrain.
ReplyDeleteYes Bill, Chuck did a great job with Prairie Dog and the pano for that course is actually of Sand Hills itself which does give it that distinctive look.
ReplyDeleteSully if you saw my powerstroke scores you'd know why I don't use that method online! It is a great way to play though and I'm glad to see people are still playing it on tour - good luck with that.