New LiDAR course, RB Golf Club & Resort LDR, in Runaway Bay at Lake Bridgeport, TX

[sirish19]

Hi All,

I have finally published the finished course of my local course back in TX. I live in Japan and generally get back home once a year or so and try to get out and play here a few times during my stay. It is usually my go-to solution for getting over jetlag as I can get around 18 holes before the rest of the family is up in the morning.

If you have some time, I would appreciate if anyone could play it and give constructive feedback on how to improve things. I am working on a few of my courses here in Japan and would definitely appreciate any tips and advice.

Cheers,

Stephen

[SkeetShooter]

whats the course listed as in TGC2019. I'll give it a run today.

[sirish19]

whats the course listed as in TGC2019. I'll give it a run today.

Great. thanks. It is listed as "RB Golf Club & Resort LDR. I appreciate your feedback.

[SkeetShooter]

Ok just got done playing. Very challenging greens. Lack of bunkers on the front 9 is intriguing. Hole 5 has a green that I couldnt for the life of me hold. Really a lot of the greens were very difficult to hold. Played at default settings and 6 ft gfimmies. +12. I will say though that with the course being so firm, you get one hell of a roll out from drives. Also I love the elevation changes. Nice placement of trees, and there are some good ones in the distance off the tees that give you natural aiming points depending on shot shape. I liked it but I would soften up those greens a bit.

[sirish19]

Ok just got done playing. Very challenging greens. Lack of bunkers on the front 9 is intriguing. Hole 5 has a green that I couldn't for the life of me hold. Really a lot of the greens were very difficult to hold. Played at default settings and 6 ft gfimmies. +12. I will say though that with the course being so firm, you get one hell of a roll out from drives. Also I love the elevation changes. Nice placement of trees, and there are some good ones in the distance off the tees that give you natural aiming points depending on shot shape. I liked it but I would soften up those greens a bit.

Great, thank you very much for the feedback. I realize that I should have published a "beta" titled version first to get this kind of feedback. Yes, indeed, the greens are a bit too firm and a bit too fast I am afraid. I haven't actually had a chance to play it on the SkyTrak yet, only the Steam game version (I am designing it on the Steam version for simplicity. On that, I shot a fairly low score (again, that's just the game version so not close to my game IRL since I don't hit 315 yard drives, haha) so I firmed up the greens a little. I think I put the speed and firmness at around the 7 or 7.5 mark. What would you say would make the course more fun and playable? This is my first course so really trying to get a feel for what those numbers really mean. Also, as this is a LiDAR course, I mapped out the tee boxes on OSM and it seemed that the yardages were quite a bit shorter than what was posted on the scorecard so I thought that a little faster and firmer would sort of balance things out and make it a little more challenging.

This course does have some significant slopes and undulations in the greens IRL so I had a challenging time finding pin positions that weren't outright frustrating. #5 is probably one of my favorite holes with the significantly elevated tee, sloping fairway (my IRL drives are around 230-240 total or so but I have hit 285 on this hole on a few occasions) and the green shape is really unique with the humps (pin position is almost always in the valley between the two humps so it generally stays there once you get it there and it usually makes the next put a little easier). I do see what you mean about holding that green though, I have noticed that the ball tends to slope right to left towards the water, perhaps slightly more so than IRL.

Other than #5, I really like #8 and #17 for the same reasons, elevated tees, good roll out on drives, interesting greens, etc.

Since this is a LiDAR course, I really wanted to make it as accurate as possible so left the bunkers as is, you are right, not many on the front 9 and most are relatively vanilla stock bunker shapes. I also left the rough natural as it usually is (brown).

It is also good that you pointed out the trees to use as natural aiming points, that's something to keep in mind when designing my next courses. I used the LiDAR imported trees for the most part and I think they came out fairly accurate. I did have to move quite a few off of cart paths or right in front of tee boxes or other problem spots. For the courses I am designing in Japan, I didn't have data classified for trees so I need to plant everything by hand for the most part.

[SkeetShooter]

BTW i really enjoyed #5, for what its worth. My drives were going gang busters on the slopes... I think on one of them I rolled out to like 330. I felt pretty good about it haha. What I really like about the course is that there are several times if you are off the fairway in the trees, you really can't cheat it. You have to chip out to the fairway or go backwards. I think that would be a great equalizer for many people in the sim world who tend to cheat it by blasting a 3 wood or 4 iron from the heavy rough through a near impossible gap in the trees/foliage.

I did feel that the yardages felt fine distance from the tees, but the roll out really helped keep most my approach shots around the 100 yard mark for a lot of the par 4's. I think if you continue designing the same way you did with this one, you will have a lot of the guys here playing them a lot. Thanks for designing this!

[sirish19]

BTW i really enjoyed #5, for what its worth. My drives were going gang busters on the slopes... I think on one of them I rolled out to like 330. I felt pretty good about it haha. What I really like about the course is that there are several times if you are off the fairway in the trees, you really can't cheat it. You have to chip out to the fairway or go backwards. I think that would be a great equalizer for many people in the sim world who tend to cheat it by blasting a 3 wood or 4 iron from the heavy rough through a near impossible gap in the trees/foliage.

I did feel that the yardages felt fine distance from the tees, but the roll out really helped keep most my approach shots around the 100 yard mark for a lot of the par 4's. I think if you continue designing the same way you did with this one, you will have a lot of the guys here playing them a lot. Thanks for designing this!

Thank you so much, I appreciate it. I did have a chance to get on SkyTrak and play on the sim tonight. I set the green firmness and and speed both to moderate and felt that it was quite playable. I didn't necessarily hold many greens (but I don't in real life anyway), but I could chip from off the green and keep it inside the 6 foot gimme range and not have to put on many of them. I played pin position 2 tonight and the pin on #5 is on the back of the green. Seems easiest to hit just over the green and the barely chip onto the green keeping it on the top level.

I can't really take much credit for the course design because I really just worked around the parameters of the course. The more I play on here and the more feedback I hear from others, the more I will be able to think and design more attractive courses.

[abirdie4me]

My father-in-law lived on the left side of the 10th fairway at Runaway Bay for years, I'll check out the course later tonight. Thanks for doing that, should be interesting!

[sirish19]

My father-in-law lived on the left side of the 10th fairway at Runaway Bay for years, I'll check out the course later tonight. Thanks for doing that, should be interesting!

Wow, nice. Let me know if I picked the house. I would appreciate your comments on the course.

[abirdie4me]

It was cool,most holes were spot in from my memory. However, the greens are WAY too fast, and the slope is more punishing than real life. I had a 13 footer run off the green!

[sirish19]

Great, thanks for the feedback. Do you think it would be worth slowing the greens down and re-publishing the course? Can you remember which greens had more extreme slopes? I believe that #5, #6, and 11 have fairly extreme slopes at parts and I tried to set the pin position to make those as playable and fair as possible. Did you play pin #1?

Do you thin I should flatten those parts or would just softening and slowing the green down take care of most of it?

when I played it on the sim, I slowed the greens down to moderate and it seemed ok. It would be nice if there was a place that you could add playing notes for everyone’s benefit.

[abirdie4me]

I just start up the SIM and go, I never change any settings. I would guess most people do that as well, so it may be better to just slow the greens down a touch. Fun course, I’ll play it again.

[sirish19]

I just start up the SIM and go, I never change any settings. I would guess most people do that as well, so it may be better to just slow the greens down a touch. Fun course, I’ll play it again.

Great, yeah, I think I will do that as I am sure that a lot of people (like I do as well), just play the course as it is set. Currently, I have the greens set to "firm" at 0.7 and the speed set to 7.5. This is the first course I have designed so not quite sure how to scale those values. Any recommendation on what I should set the speed and firmness in order to make it more enjoyable?

Was there anything else you thought could/should be changed? I am pretty maxed out on the plant meter but could probably add a few more things to clean or beautify the course a bit more.

[abirdie4me]

I’ve never designed a course, so afraid I’m of no use on that. I thought the course was fun and resembled what the real course, although I haven’t played there in several years. Once my wife heals from her broken leg and can crawl upstairs, I’ll have her look at it since she has played it dozens more times than I have.

[sirish19]

I’ve never designed a course, so afraid I’m of no use on that. I thought the course was fun and resembled what the real course, although I haven’t played there in several years. Once my wife heals from her broken leg and can crawl upstairs, I’ll have her look at it since she has played it dozens more times than I have.

Thanks. My parents live out at Lake Bridgeport and I get out there and play 3-4 times per year every time I travel back there from Japan. I think its got a very good feel as I can really visualize each as if I am really there. What I should have done when I played out there at Christmas time was take my go pro and walk the course. I did that for the course I am building now in Japan and it is amazing how much you can pick up on the camera.

I hope your wife recovers soon.