Hamilton Golf & Country Club

[sagevanni]

Thank you very much John.

I hope at some point to get my head around a proper planting........Jimbo is providing a lot of info for me and Mike Trendocher has provided a mass amount of pics........Thanks to both of you...!!!!

Sage......

[Jimbo]

Sorry for the delay in finishing my "once-through-I only have a couple of holes left-foot I suffered a broken right hand the other night so I'm working "Southpaw" right now.
On the good side I'll replay it with my bad hand and will be able to go deep into the woods-or into peoples' backyards-or into the highway traffic. I hope it's not rush hour out of Brantford! (Wayne Gretzky fans will understand...)
I repeat-Canadian golf fans-heck, all nationalities ) will love it...
...and we Canadians get right back into the game after going to the dressing room for repairs!)

[Jimbo]

Hi Sage-the cast is off and I'm going to play a full practise round...I figure that I'll be spending quite a bit of time in the "deep stuff" until my hand becomes "Linksworthy"! I'll also try to find the other pin placements in addition to the Canadian Open ones that I sent to you. I'll also get some pictures of the clubhouse-because I know how much you love them!

FYI, 4 Canadian courses have made it onto Golf Digest's top 100. Two of them are in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Cabot Cliffs #19 and Cabot Links #93) as well as good old St. George #41, The National just north of Toronto #66 and another new course located in Magog, Quebec near the Vermont border and ranked #78.The me of the club is Memphremagog - it's not a typo.

Anyway, I'm setting up a link to the "Canadian Clubs" below.

[Danny D]

Hi Sage-the cast is off and I'm going to play a full practise round...I figure that I'll be spending quite a bit of time in the "deep stuff" until my hand becomes "Linksworthy"! I'll also try to find the other pin placements in addition to the Canadian Open ones that I sent to you. I'll also get some pictures of the clubhouse-because I know how much you love them!

FYI, 4 Canadian courses have made it onto Golf Digest's top 100. Two of them are in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia (Cabot Cliffs #19 and Cabot Links #93) as well as good old St. George #41, The National just north of Toronto #66 and another new course located in Magog, Quebec near the Vermont border and ranked #78.The me of the club is Memphremagog - it's not a typo.

Anyway, I'm setting up a link to the "Canadian Clubs" below.

Hi Jimbo. What do you think of Shaughnessy CC? I see where it was listed in the top 10 of the pros favorite courses.

Dan

[Jimbo]

Hi Dan-I'd love to see Shaughnessy...right after St. George! As I recall it's on the list of upcoming Canadian Women's Opens too. The Canadian Open is by-and-large restricted eastern Canada because of its position on the PGA calendar. Given the uncertainty of Glen Abbey they may have to look at places like Montreal and southwest Ontario too (Hamilton will be hosting again in 2023). It also won't consider courses that are less than 7,000 yards...Shaughnessy meets that requirement-just over 7K from the tips ..not to mention a gorgeous setting-don't forget Capilano-even more dramatic...with an endorsement from no less than Sean Connery...although at 6,700 yards is would also fit the criteria for the LPGA...same for Niklaus North at Whistler. Heck, I'm starting to sound like a member of the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce...and don't forget Vancouver Island! We've been fortunate to have the senior PGA Open over here too...a few times at the Niklaus Bear Mountain course here on the island...it's a brutal walk for spectators!!!!
MYGAWD the Pacific Northwest (actually it's our Pacific Southwest ) is gorgeous...and out here you can golf all year! Not bad for a kid from Toronto!
As for those amazing courses on Cape Breton Island there simply isn't enough "city" to accommodate a pro tournament...finding a place for the cameras would be an interesting challenge too!
But they look amazing!
As I've said elsewhere Canadian golf is the most underrated in the world-people look at us as being a land of ice and snow...their loss, right?

[Danny D]

Hi Dan-I'd love to see Shaughnessy...right after St. George! As I recall it's on the list of upcoming Canadian Women's Opens too. The Canadian Open is by-and-large restricted eastern Canada because of its position on the PGA calendar. Given the uncertainty of Glen Abbey they may have to look at places like Montreal and southwest Ontario too (Hamilton will be hosting again in 2023). It also won't consider courses that are less than 7,000 yards...Shaughnessy meets that requirement-just over 7K from the tips ..not to mention a gorgeous setting-don't forget Capilano-even more dramatic...with an endorsement from no less than Sean Connery...although at 6,700 yards is would also fit the criteria for the LPGA...same for Niklaus North at Whistler. Heck, I'm starting to sound like a member of the Vancouver Chamber of Commerce...and don't forget Vancouver Island! We've been fortunate to have the senior PGA Open over here too...a few times at the Niklaus Bear Mountain course here on the island...it's a brutal walk for spectators!!!!
MYGAWD the Pacific Northwest (actually it's our Pacific Southwest ) is gorgeous...and out here you can golf all year! Not bad for a kid from Toronto!
As for those amazing courses on Cape Breton Island there simply isn't enough "city" to accommodate a pro tournament...finding a place for the cameras would be an interesting challenge too!
But they look amazing!
As I've said elsewhere Canadian golf is the most underrated in the world-people look at us as being a land of ice and snow...their loss, right?

Thanks Jimbo. Last week I had some spare time, and I ran across a list of the pros top 10 favorite courses. It listed all the usual, Pebble Beach, Augusta and so on, but then I spotted Shaughnessy. I'd never heard of it before, so I took a look at it on Google Earth. Looks like a real nice course, but it's laid out in an oblong square with each 9 hole sides being placed end to end. It's a little over twice as long as it is wide. I started wondering how an overlay could be created for it, what with it being so long end to end. I had an idea I wanted to test out, so I set out to create an overlay for it using a new idea that I'd not seen done before. A typical overlay is made up of screen captures of overhead views of the course in Google Earth and maximum size allowable is 4096x4096. Capturing that entire oblong plot and squeezing into a single 4096x4096 overlay would not have done much for clarity for a designer to be able to work with. I had an idea to use two 4096x4096 overlays, and placing them end to end. One for each 9 holes. Just for grins, I tried it, and wound up with a beautiful and clear overlay of the entire plot that looks really sharp and clear, and ideal to use to create the course. I have the overlay available for anyone that would like to take it on. Here' what the overlay looks like...

So for all of you designers out there, it is possible to use more than one overlay on a course....

[Jimbo]

Hi Dan-nice job with the overlay. Merci beaucoup! It's too bad that Shaughnessy doesn't have hole-by-hole flyovers. Those flyovers are the greatest thing since sliced bread!
For those who haven't visited Vancouver, Shaughnessy is just southwest of downtown Vancouver near the University of British Columbia and the endowment lands.

[Adelade]

This reminds me, I was going to post this tip about overlays but I forgot so I do it now instead, sadly the "Course design using Google Earth elevations" thread is locked so I cant post there, mods feel free to copy or move my post there if you want.

When creating overlay from Google Maps or Google Earth, temporarily turn off globe view in google maps at bottom right, or turn off "Terrain" in the layers menu bottom left in Google Earth. You'll need to turn it back on to see elevation readings afterwards, but turning it off for the overlay screen capture creates a much more accurate overlay.

With Dan's help I recently started a crz for Jeju Island Nine Bridges, which is on quite mountainous terrain, and when I tried to size it to fit distances in APCD, it was simply impossible to get the distances right. No matter how I fiddled with it, If I got a distance between 2 points right, another distance between two other points were far off from what they were supposed to be. I think the difference was as much as 3% incorrect (and may have been even slightly more on other places), which may sound small but on a certain 237 yard distance it was 7 yards off. That would definitely be noticeable and affect gameplay, some distances would simply be all wrong. Perhaps not the end of the world, but still a pretty big inconsistency compared to the real thing. I knew this would haunt me forever so I set out to try create a new overlay to see if that would fix it, but I quickly realized the same thing was happening again, and realized the problem was the 3d terrain. Imagine a mountain, if you have 3d/terrain turned on, the distance between the tip of the mountain and the foot of the mountain's north side will appear shorter if the viewpoint/center of image is slightly south of the mountain. Nine bridges has around 180 yard elevation difference between lowest and highest point, and even more than that if counting nearby terrain, so it should not be as big of a deal on most other courses, but viewpoint still skews things, so I highly recommend turning globe view/terrain off for satellite image capture for highest accuracy. With the overlay I created after turning terrain off, all the distances on the course suddenly fit as good as perfectly. Absolute night and day difference.

[Danny D]

This reminds me, I was going to post this tip about overlays but I forgot so I do it now instead, sadly the "Course design using Google Earth elevations" thread is locked so I cant post there, mods feel free to copy or move my post there if you want.

When creating overlay from Google Maps or Google Earth, temporarily turn off globe view in google maps at bottom right, or turn off "Terrain" in the layers menu bottom left in Google Earth. You'll need to turn it back on to see elevation readings afterwards, but turning it off for the overlay screen capture creates a much more accurate overlay.

With Dan's help I recently started a crz for Jeju Island Nine Bridges, which is on quite mountainous terrain, and when I tried to size it to fit distances in APCD, it was simply impossible to get the distances right. No matter how I fiddled with it, If I got a distance between 2 points right, another distance between two other points were far off from what they were supposed to be. I think the difference was as much as 3% incorrect (and may have been even slightly more on other places), which may sound small but on a certain 237 yard distance it was 7 yards off. That would definitely be noticeable and affect gameplay, some distances would simply be all wrong. Perhaps not the end of the world, but still a pretty big inconsistency compared to the real thing. I knew this would haunt me forever so I set out to try create a new overlay to see if that would fix it, but I quickly realized the same thing was happening again, and realized the problem was the 3d terrain. Imagine a mountain, if you have 3d/terrain turned on, the distance between the tip of the mountain and the foot of the mountain's north side will appear shorter if the viewpoint/center of image is slightly south of the mountain. Nine bridges has around 180 yard elevation difference between lowest and highest point, and even more than that if counting nearby terrain, so it should not be as big of a deal on most other courses, but viewpoint still skews things, so I highly recommend turning globe view/terrain off for satellite image capture for highest accuracy. With the overlay I created after turning terrain off, all the distances on the course suddenly fit as good as perfectly. Absolute night and day difference.

Hi Adelade. I learned soon after I started creating overlays that the real hilly terrain would cause distances to be off in parts of the plot. I also learned that in some cases I could use the MAP view. Most of the time it was perfectly flat and didn't cause that distance difference. One of the biggest problems caused by hilly terrain is getting the edges of the multiple screens captures to line up perfectly with each other. I can work with one like that and improvise. I just hated turning one over to someone else like that. It looked like shabby work...

[hopeless@golf]

For those that remember the KISS Tours I actually created Shaughnessy for one of its Tours. Its pretty rough and it also has concrete trees lol, if someone wants a copy to try and redo it just ask and I'll send the file