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The Bitch ver.1
by Patrick Alexander
| Links Corner Course Database ID Number - 701 |
Release Date |
CRZ Filesize |
Par |
Course Length |
| 2001-12-14 |
7,919,080 bytes |
72 |
7695 yards |
| Type |
Style |
CRZ Filename |
|
IMAGINARY |
OCEAN |
The Bitch ver.1.crz |
| Course ID |
Course Key |
| d1a5ed0558244514b25284fe7d8e7535 |
6546cbbe5177a31db6de4676eb8116ed |
|
LINKS CORNER REVIEW |
Reviewed by
Mike Nifong
February 2002
Course type: This is an imaginary, island course set on a series of lava islets in an unspecified ocean. No pano is employed, leading to the often-present light blue band between the horizon and the sky (see course screenshot above)
Historical perspective: Released to Links Corner in mid-December, The Bitch is Patrick Alexander's third course, following Guts & Glory and Doink Masters, but is the first of his courses that I have played. At only 7.7MB, the file size is considerably smaller than either of his previous courses and less than one third as large as the average APCD course. Neither of Patrick's first two courses has fared well with the official reviewers at Links Corner, although Doink Masters has garnered a three-star user rating (based, however, on only two reviews). His current offering has thus far achieved a not-very-promising single gold star (50-59%) from the players.
What is included: There is no read-me file, and there are (not unexpectedly, given the file size) no hole previews. The splash screen is derived from a course screenshot. The cameo depicts. well, just what it depicts is a bit of an enigma, even after I found the actual object(s) beside the #1 green. It appears to be a plant of some sort on which has been hung a (tribal?) shield and mask, but other explanations are certainly possible.
First impressions: You find yourself on a flat, rounded patch of grass atop a lava mound that juts out of the sea. You notice several similar lava mounds of varying sizes arrayed before you. You see a couple of flags on two island greens ahead; neither, as it turns out, is the green for this hole, which is hidden from sight on a smaller, lower island behind the island directly in front of you. You probably wonder how you got there, and how you are going to get to your next shot, and the one after that, but for the moment let's suspend disbelief and play a round of golf. That, by the way, will just about require you to use the top camera, since often as not the lava mounds you see in front of you in the main view are not the ones toward which you will want to be hitting, and there will often be several options for approaching each hole.
What comes next: I suppose that it is only fair for me to start off by talking about my own preferences. When I play Links, I am usually looking for an experience that, if only for a moment, convinces me that I am doing something I could be doing in real life. Consequently, the courses I find most satisfying to play are the ones that look and feel the most natural. Sometimes the whole point of a fantasy/imaginary course is to not be restricted by the boundaries of nature, to provide an opportunity to do something that you could never do in real life - Michael (Damaze) Savicki's courses Space and A Wacky World come to mind here - and sometimes those courses can be fun, too. But the courses toward which I have the least positive feelings are those that fit into neither of those categories - those courses that could not really exist, but pretend that they could. And I am afraid that The Bitch falls into that category.
I suppose that it would be possible to build a golf course on a bunch of lava knobs sticking up out of the ocean, although why anyone would want to is beyond me. But I would hope that anyone who did so would keep in mind that the purpose of a golf course is for people to actually be able to play golf. And I am not sure that that is what you would call what you play here. Entirely too many of your shots off the tee are of the all-or-nothing variety, as even a slight miss on a snap will send your ball bouncing down the lava slope to its watery grave. Most of the longer holes give you no option to lay up safely, forcing you to attempt shots that are high on risk and low on reward, even under benign conditions. I would not even attempt this course under windy conditions. What it is not, in other words, is very fair, even for pro clickers like me. And while the misogynists among you might ask what else one could expect from a course with this name, I doubt that was the intent.
While we are on the subject of name, I wonder what to make of the 'version 1' tag. Does Patrick Alexander plan a version 2? Certainly, the course could use some cleaning up: the mesh work and the edges are well below the current standard and point to the absence of beta testing and/or the insufficiency of experience with the APCD. But if there is such a plan, I hope that, rather than merely making much-needed cosmetic changes, he will consider adding a more substantial border of rough or some other texture that can actually be played out of between the fairways and the rocks. The margin for error here is just too slim.
All that having been said, it is possible to score pretty well on this course (my best round was -11, back tees, b/m/m/d). The greens are not as unfair as the fairways, so you should be okay once you get there. It will just take you several tries to figure out the best way to play each hole, and my guess is that most of you will tire of this course's modest pleasures before you reach that point and move on to a more rewarding course.
For those of you who are still reading, I offer the following observations. The course plays a little shorter than its length because of the elevations, which make 350+ yard drives possible on some of the long holes. As a result, three of the par-5's (#3, #6, and #18) are reachable from the back tees, and one of the par-4's (#16) is drivable. The windows of success, however, are relatively narrow. Most of the bunkers on the course are of the semi-pot variety, with sod walls. If you land in a fairway bunker, you will almost certainly not be able to reach the green on your next shot. Moreover, most of the balls that roll into the bunkers (as opposed to landing directly there) do not make it all the way to the sand, lodging in (on?) the sod walls; this can lead to a very problematic recovery shot. (By the way, the huge fairway bunker on #15 is really a mess: both its sod walls and the sand itself assume configurations normally reserved for solid rock.) As I mentioned earlier, use of the top camera is pretty much essential for finding the best path to a green, which will often require rotating your golfer about 60% from straight ahead. On #10, you will need to draw your tee shot around a stand of palm trees (you cannot go over them with a wood, and even if you could you would then find yourself behind another similar stand); if you hit this shot correctly, you will have an easy 8/9I to the green. On #13, which is not reachable anyway, your best chance for birdie is to draw a 5W around the palm trees that guard the leftmost fairway. And on #18, aim for a spot on the fairway that takes into account the 66-yard elevation drop or you will go off the other side into the water; a good drive here will put you in position to reach the green with a 3W fade.
The bottom line: Not really my cup of tea, but if the concept sounds appealing to you (and you don't play champ or powerstroke), you might as well try it. At this file size, even at 56K you can get it in less than 30 minutes, and you may find it enjoyable if you are hitting your snap (or downright laughable if you are not). Still, it is hard for me to imagine that you will play it more than a few times, or that it will find a permanent home in your collection (it did not in mine).
Course Statistics :
Par 72; 5 sets of tees; 7695 yards from back tees; holes not handicapped |
This course is available as a FREE download.
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