Highlands Links Retrospective – Part 5 – The Work

Dragon and Fireball

 Daily Update: I found everyone struggled to find the enthusiasm with the biggest factor being an unusually hot day that took its toll on everyone including me. We have a long way to go and only a day left to get there. Sod and sand will be next week. The good news is everything is shaped, generally edged and one great push will get the necessary work done.

There are holes that are great. The 17^th, for example, clearly looks like the old image. I’m proud of how much we were able to return many of the holes to their original form. A few could use some more tweaking to be better.

The 1^st is rock solid although the sand build-up on the faces worries me. The 3^rd is fine but would have been better if we had more soil available to blend the forms back into the existing grades. We now have the soil, but I don’t see us going back. The 4^th is really good and I’m still pleased at the results. The 5^th is great out front with the work on the Dragon and Fireball being super fun, the back bunkers seem a little out of scale, but the building foundations on the right and access requirements on the left were an issue for the back bunkers.

6th Hole Progress

The 6^th, 7^th and 8^th are all really good. The 11^th may be accurate but I find the bunker really bland and wondered whether that one bunker should have had a different look to add something. The 13^th is the one place where I worked with what was there and perhaps should have rebuilt the entire area. It’s the place I would like to go back on and touch up a bit. The 15^th and 17^th have some of the best work and only a bit of dead sod holds them back from being super impressive. The 18^th is pretty damned good too but all the dead sod hurts the overall impression.

The work was built largely by hand, just as it was before. It’s not perfect, but we also lacked the advantages of earthmoving equipment, a trencher, topsoil, sod, etc. A good construction team would have done a bit better by having all the ideal equipment. Having all the materials we needed would have made many steps easier and faster. But given what we had to work with, I think we did a petty damned good job.