Stephen Sullivan wrote: ↑September 26th, 2020, 12:49 pm
I ask, as once I finish the current real course I am working on, I want to carry on designing, but find doing real courses difficult and constraining.
I like both, but as others note, sometimes a fictional course is tricked up in some way, and what's most annoying, the particular trick used tends to run through the entire course. For example, a tiny landing area off the tee is appropriate on a
few holes, but not on every single non-par3. That just becomes tiresome, both to play and to look at, hole after hole. On the other hand, a fictional course has more freedom to do things that would be either impossible or simply too costly to do on a real course. If you consider some of the muni's you've played, the ones with no bunkers or water whatsoever, and tiny greens, to cut construction and operating costs, a fictional course can go to the other extreme and can be very good if it's done properly. An example would be Crouching Beast. No real golf course is going to have all those bunkers, a large percentage of which are not even in play for most golfers. But they look good, and don't affect playability. It all comes down to how well-designed it is. And let's be honest, some real courses are quite boring visually, and you're not likely to see them replicated here. (I've never been a huge fan of links courses for that reason. I like to see trees, ponds/lakes, and I like to see clearly demarcated fairways.)