OLD MAC’S FUN ATTACK
Old Macdonald, the fourth and most recent full-length tune in Keiser’s never-ending hit parade, is Tom Doak and Jim Urbina’s paean to the classic work of Charles Blair Macdonald. It strikes a few chords heretofore unheard on this particular parcel of modern linksland — a big-banging old-school rocker to Pacific’s rolling symphony, Bandon’s angular jazz or the multi-part opera of Trails.
The course, which starts and finishes on the east side of a huge dune, with most holes zigzagging around a big, sandy bowl west of the dune, touching the cliffs twice — at holes 7 and 15, to spectacular effect — is an undeniable blast to play. It’s also a brilliant puzzle that, from the tee, looks like a big-hitter’s pushover until you get too aggressive with an angle. Then it’s time to wither in a giant blowout bunker (some of them big enough to house a small semi truck, others so deep that it’s easy to take four shots to escape) or deal with a blind approach to a green that’s virtually indistinguishable from the fescue fairway. It’s more Scotland than Ireland in flavor.
Old Mac is easily the most senior-, female- and kid-friendly course of the four, which is why you’ll see special family tees out there along with pre-teens eating up the place’s ragged beauty right next to mom and dad. Which is exactly what Keiser and his staff are shooting for as an overarching philosophy: a heady mix of fun, challenge and inclusiveness.
St. Andrews West, anyone? Yes, and probably the closest a North America course will ever come to emulating that hallowed ground.
