Mountaintop Golf and Lake Club - Beta

[Ian Wells]

This course will be added to the course list in the near future.
All comments will be considered.

Here is the Readme:

Mountaintop GLC is a private course located outside of Cashiers, North Carolina.
The course was designed by Tom Fazio, and opened in July 2006.

This rendition was created from a DEM download provided by Linkster, with a grid size of 10 m/10.3 feet.
Unfortunately because of my inexperience using DEM files some vertex elevations have been changed, therefore it is not an exact match to reality.
There is little or no information available for this course. For some holes I could not find any photographs to use as a reference and as such I had to use my draughtsman's license, which allows me to make it look how I want it to look.
I could not find an official club scorecard so I used the yardages as stated by Bluegolf.
Unfortunately with the yardages from Bluegolf there were discrepancies with what was available using overlays from Google Earth Pro. Theses discrepancies are:

• Hole 5 Links distance from the Gold tee is 333 whereas the card length is 328

• Hole 6 Links distance from the White tee is 325 whereas the card length is 303

• Hole 13 Links distance from the White tee is 271 whereas the card length is 284

• Hole 14 Links distance from the Gold tee is 184 whereas the card length is 188

Acknowledgements:

• Tom Fazio for designing the course

• Linkster for DEM file and providing detailed green contour maps.

• Lez Marwick for supplying the texture download from which I selected the grass textures . These textures were, I believe, supplied to Lez by McCoist

• Lez Marwick for the invaluable video tutorial.

• Daniel for his trees and grasses

• Daniel For helping me with the panorama

• Sketchup Textures, free textures library for 3D CG artists (sketchuptextureclub.com) for providing the textures that I used which didn't come from Lez's package.

References:
Golf – Mountaintop (mountaintopgolfclub.com)
Mountaintop Golf and Lake Club (davesansomphotography.com)
Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club - Detailed Scorecard | Course Database (bluegolf.com)
Mountaintop Golf & Lake Club | Courses | GolfDigest.com
Mountaintop Golf and Lake Club presented by Tee-2-Green - YouTube
Cashiers (28717), North Carolina Historical Weather Almanac (worldweatheronline.com)

[pmgolf]

Scorecard:

Mountain Top 2.jpg (146.68 KiB) Viewed 2480 times

Pete

[Ian Wells]

Hi Pete,
Are you sure that this is the official club card?
Ian

[pmgolf]

Sorry - no, Ian. I thought it looked pretty good, but I couldn't find the real one. I do have a cousin that lives pretty close-by and I'll check to see if they know where I can find one. Awesome course!

Pete

[Titus]

a jewel -

[pmgolf]

Sorry - no, Ian. I thought it looked pretty good, but I couldn't find the real one. I do have a cousin that lives pretty close-by and I'll check to see if they know where I can find one. Awesome course!

Pete

No luck, Ian. Cousin lives in western Carolina, but still too far away to help.

Pete

[Ian Wells]

Titus,
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed playing it.

Pete
Thank you for the effort. I guess when a club only has 350 members there is no reason to show the card in their webpage?

Ian

[Pete]

Stunning work so looking forward to final, many thanks

[gene_golf]

Diamond Creek also by Tom Fazio is in same area and is in the latest Golf Digest 100 best USA courses as is Wade Hampton.
https://www.golfdigest.com/places-to-pl ... mond-creek

[Weeler]

Well, Ian, once again you've managed to create an absolutely outstanding course for Links ! As I mentioned in a previous post, it seems that with every new project , your skills with the APCD seem to get better. The texture / color choices you've made for this course are just great, and the planting is spot on for the location, too. I also think that the rock outcroppings / ledges ( ex. hole 6 ), are some of the best I've ever seen. They look very realistic. It is was a pleasure to "discover" each hole with my first round of play.
I guess I can see why Tom Fazio is one of your favorite RL course architects. He has an uncanny knack for meandering through some very hilly and wooded Carolina landscape ( i.e. Wade Hampton, etc. ), and making it all come together. Some very scenic and interesting designs. Heck, if you want to continue doing "real" courses, you could probably stick with Fazio designs for a LONG time ! ( I think Danny D. is still working on Shadow Creek in Vegas ), but there are SO many others. Two current Fazio Links courses that could use a complete re-work from the ground up are Barton Creek and Pelican Hill ( which I didn't even know he designed ).
To be honest, I'm not sure that there are any changes to be made in my view, to make this into a "final" version. It looks and plays beautifully as is.

Thanks for your efforts !

Ron