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Fox Run Golf Club
by Chris Spriggs
| Links Corner Course Database ID Number - 1216 |
Release Date |
CRZ Filesize |
Par |
Course Length |
| 2003-01-23 |
16,618,381 bytes |
72 |
7167 yards |
| Type |
Style |
CRZ Filename |
|
FICTIONAL |
WOODLAND |
fox run.crz |
| Course ID |
Course Key |
| 06433a74f6364d0bbdb096512f697a55 |
72736bbb7c7ae34a9452a53fa7022fc6 |
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LINKS CORNER REVIEW |
Designer: Having designed two courses in 2001, being Forestlakes Golf Course (Top 25%) and The Woodlands (Top 50%), Chris Spriggs is not unknown to the Links community, and even though the designer originally released Fox Run Golf Club an early stage beta version, due to unexpected medical reasons, the designer has not been able to finish the course. Even though it has now been classified as a final release, hopefully in the future, Fox Run will meet its full potential and be completed.
Course: Being designed for all skill and swing types, Fox Run Golf Club is set in a 'dense wooded area far from houses and roads at the foothills of Maryland's Sugarloaf Mountain'. As the designer mentions, 'accuracy is a premium above distance' when playing this course, as with elevation changes, fairway and waste bunkers, high set trees, and water spread across many areas of the course, Fox Run will test the best of golfers. Due to the wonderful selection of colours and planting, the course can tend to distract the player from their round of golf, as each hole seems to generate its own unique beauty, which is quite good, considering the design of the course is very realistic. Each hole has a great variety in its distance, which is shown in both the difference between tees and the assortment of distance markers found on the fairways. Risky Par 3's (Screenshot 3), tricky Par 4's (Screenshot 2), and long beautiful Par 5's (Screenshot 1 and 5), the course design curves its way around through the trees and past the water, all the way to Hole 18 (Screenshot 5), an amazing finish to the round, capped off with a double green. Fox Run Golf Club could well be designed in real life, while in the world of Links, it is arguably one of the best course designs I have ever come across.
Favourite Hole: The Par 4, Hole 7 (Screenshot 2), was my favourite hole on the course, as even though the green is reachable off the tee, the bunkers and water looming around the corner make this hole one of the best risk/reward designs I've seen.
Playability: Even though the golfer will come across many types of challenges in the round, such as fairway bunkers (Hole 3), tempting Par 5's with trees awaiting (Hole 6), and holes with more bunkers than green (Hole 13), the course does not force the player to change their game, but rather allows the golfer to adapt their game to the course design, which although perhaps not intentionally done, is a great feature of the course. Birdie and eagle opportunities do exist on this course, but with long greens that have quite some curve and slope to them, draining the long putts is must. Disregarding the fact that the course is not yet completed aesthetically, the playability is quite amazing, as with the holes varying in design and difficulty, this course as well as being fun, can easily hurt players that don't concentrate properly when playing a round here.
AI Performance: The AI Golfer 'Simon' shot a -6 (66), with 71% Fairways and 83% Greens in Regulation, with a total of 27 putts.
Difficulty Index: 0.97
Technically: In many aspects it is evident that this course was still in its development as a beta version, but even without seam blending, the textures chosen looked great, and the lines were quite clean cut, so without purposely having to go and look for technical mistakes, this course in its current stage was already quite nice. The bunker lips weren't perfect, but the ripple effect in the sand looked great, while if this course is ever taken up again, and additions of high quality APCD techniques to the design are added, it could well be one of the best releases yet.
Other: As this course was originally a beta version, there is no cameo, handicaps, hole previews, or splash screen, but there are some objects such as ball washers and an electronic scoreboard spread around the course. Tournament options on Fox Run are imaginable, but I was happy to not see them added, as I rather enjoyed playing the round believing that my golfer was somehow the only person on earth that knew about this course.
Download Value: At just over 11mb, this course does not contain high resolution textures or seam blending, neither any extras in the zip file, but it still is simply one of the best courses I have ever played, and disregarding the speed of your internet connection, it is must download, while also being a course that will forever remain on my hard drive.
Information:
Course Statistics:
2003 - Fictional Woodland - Par 72 - 5 Tees
7167yds (Back) - 6467yds (Forward)
Par 3's: 4 - Par 4's: 10 - Par 5's: 4
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