Great review and what an outstanding looking place. Plus, pump those above ground features straight into my veins.

I generally think “unfairness” comes from poor course setup or design involving slope or blindness. I don’t have sympathy for golfers who complain about a bad bounce or a putt not breaking the way you thought it would because of imperfections in the playing surface. That’s just nature. I’ll give some examples: 1. We’ve all seen the viral videos of pin placements on slopes with fast greens where it is impossible to stop the ball within 4 feet of the cup. Unless it’s a superintendent’s revenge scramble, truly unfair, especially if in competition. 2. Lac La Belle #2. Two-tiered horizontal green where the front tier slopes DOWN to the back tier. Short par 4 where a good drive requires a wedge or half wedge into the green. I once perfectly clipped a lob wedge from the fairway with good height to a pin on the front tier. I knew my pitch had plenty of spin because of the contact and it even landed on the fringe just short of the green to take some velocity off the shot. No matter, the ball rolled all the way to the back tier with no real chance of staying on the front tier. No one in my group got a ball to stick on the front tier. Good example of when a perfectly struck shot could not be rewarded because of course design. 2. Lawsonia Links #2 tee shot (rest of the course is fantastic). Completely blind dog leg right. Two large bunker mounds with a mowed path in-between create the blindness. You would think a safe shot would be right up the mowed path, but you’d be wrong because that is essentially the line for the left edge of the fairway. The slightest pull and you are in the rough. Anything over the left mound is in the fescue and a pull hook over the left mound might actually hit a golfer on the 4th green. By looking at the course map, you know that you can cut off yardage by aiming further right, but you have no idea how much to take off unless you’ve played the course before and this is not a private club where member knowledge can be an advantage. In fact, too far right and your drive will end up in an intentionally designed grass ditch. It is never a good sign when the course stations a ranger on the 2nd hole to tell you where to aim so pace of play slow to a crawl on hole 2. 3. Blackhawk Country Club in Madison, WI #15. Narrow par 4 on a severe right-to-left side slope. A tee shot to the right-center of the fairway will roll all the way down to the left and off the fairway or up against the rough line. You can tell this is a common outcome because of all the divots right against the rough line or 6 inches into the rough. The course is over 100 years old and I understand that earth-moving wasn’t as easy back then (or even outlawed because there are Native American burial mounds on the property), but the slope makes the tee shot unfair. Raising the left edge of the fairway so the collection area still ends up the fairway or even mowing a first cut of rough to capture balls rolling down the slope would improve the fairness.

Going from almost no real professional (or former professional) golfers to a dozen or more of them (including from the LPGA, which was nice - I particularly liked Nelly Korda, Parole Board member) was a positive update. I particularly liked casting Bubba, Bryson, and Brooks as members of the PGA Tour against the young upstart Maxi Golf League.

I love the short grass around the elevated greens at Memorial, especially when a young buck tries to flop at 60, while I'm using my Texas Wedge.

We played Knollwood a couple of times for high school matches. I don't remember anything about the course because they made us wear pants in August, so it was always a miserable, hot slog. But I do remember it being the first time I realized that country clubs had "really" rich people, as Knollwood's valets used to park their members cars according to make, and they had rows and rows of Cadillacs, BMWs, Mercedes, Porsches and then a separate section of Ferrari's and Lamborghinis. Everyone I knew in Detroit drove modest American cars because their parents all worked for the Big 3 automotive companies. It was definitely a "there's a world out there that you know nothing about" moment in those parking lots.

Thanks, Pete! It was a genuine surprise for me as well. Very cool place

Yep totally agree there. The last 30 mins almost completely ruin any good will that had been built up. There are scenes that are quite bad

I think you can say "it had a low bar, and got over that bar" and still think the movie was overall "good" and worth watching once. Will I watch it five times in my life (I'm sure I've seen Caddyshack, Tin Cup, even The Greatest Game Ever Played > about 10 times each in cumulative if you add up the times I turn the TV on and watch the last 3/4 of one of them because it was on…)? No. But it was worth the 90 minutes once, and if someone in a year says "I never saw it" I may watch it with them. My wife enjoyed it, even though silliness wasn't that far from ridiculousness ("Guy Fieri? Really?" she said at one point.)

Echoing other comments, I’d never heard of Tamarack before, but was surprised and thrilled when I visited last fall on a local recommendation. What an incredible setting for golf! To me the property as a whole never really felt flat, more like a giant bowl with distant hills, large trees, and long slopes completely surrounding the property. Add an amazing set of bold features and a high level of detail in the presentation and Tamarack is a treat. And, to me, an almost perfect mix of playability, interest, and challenge. The highs points of the course are super high. And the lows, when viewed through the lens of embracing a quirky/old school approach and the added strength of having a bunch of different looks through the property, are easily enjoyed. Very nice write up, Will!

What an absolute beaut. That green on 13 looks like a doozy.