Design Your Own Hole Contest

My friend Jack sent me an email today notifying me of an Armchair Architect contest being held by Golf Magazine. I jumped on it right away and began designing a hole from scratch. It took me about 30 minutes to get all of my thoughts and a sketch down on paper. I'm pleased with my draft and will make only a few minor edits to it over the next day or two.

For the contest, you are asked to design a par 5, which is supposedly the most difficult type of hole to design. The gimme is that you have a blank canvas from which to create your hole; you don't have to put it in the woods, by the ocean, or on rolling farmland. It can feature any landscape you wish. This is obviously much easier than doing what professional architects do. They have to design holes around the land they are given with. Here, you can design the hole AND the land that goes with it.

My hole is a slight dogleg left that plays up a hill off the tee. The fairway then flattens out after 265 yards. From there on in, there is all kinds of excitement. The hole is punctuated by a double green, thus inspiring the hole's name, "Two For One".

Contest entries are due by end of day, September 15, 2005.