Dominique BOIS Designs presents :
History :
This
course comes again( as Golf Club des Volcans or The Planatation) from a
former
Jack Nicklaus design that I released years ago. The initial idea was to
create
a course on the chalk cliffs of the north of France. The design and
panorama
lead me to relocate the course on an imaginary island in the North Sea
near the
real Feroë islands. The challenge then was to design a course with
no trees and
still difficult enough to play. As you may know, JN6 was a one hole
course
designer and it was really frustrating to use all the gimmicks to
render
correcty the adjacent holes. So, I always dreamt of using a full
landplot
designer to render this course as I always wanted. That is done with
Links 2003
and I’m pretty satisfied of the result. The course really looks like it
was in
my mind...
For
those who played the JN6 version, the course routing is pretty the
same, except
for the 13th where i pushed the back tee over the 12th
green to make it play a lot longer and spectacular
Some words about Kurland :
The
“Kurland” name comes from a serial I watched at T.V. when I was a
child. I
believed it was an imaginary name. In fact the real dukedom of Curland
is a
part of the Baltic states.
Nerver mind, my
Kurland lies in the North Sea and has the look of the
islands of that part of the world. The “Royal” title of the course
comes from
the fact that the Duke of Kurland was somewhere a parent of the United
Kingdom
royal family and the King gave this honour title to the course built
for his
far cousin.
For this release, I
tried to find some local language and writing. I
chose the Tengwar/Sindarin from Tolkie’s books to name the holes. JRRT
specialists will forgive me the poor use of this language. I used a
program
called “Dragon Flame” to get the Tengwar scripting.
Some other words about the “Kurland
problem” :
You
will see that no statistics are available and despite a huge testing,
some cups
may disappear some times. This is due to the fact that I awkwardly
chose the
“non regulation fairways” option while begining the design. This is the
cause
of some silly things and I discovered
the whole story when the design was too far advanced to come back. I
was next
to give up, but I continued for me first, and I found it was not too
much a
handicap for a release. I hope you will forgive me those annoying
points and
that they do not deprive you of the pleasure to play the course.
A usefull tip : when you’re facing a vanishing cup,
just rotate your view for 5 to 10 degrees and the cup will appear again.
Local rules :
There
are some special “out of bounds” on the course. First, the road and the
other
side of the road are out of bounds for the roadside holes i.e. 2nd,
3rd, 10th,11th an 17th.
Second,
some fairways of adjacent holes are out of bounds to avoid the cut of
the
dog-legs on the 10th (11th fairway) and 17th
(18th fairway) and, last, any ball right on the fence on the
12th
is out of bounds (it is strictly forbidden to go beyond the fence on
that very
dangerous cliff)
General play tips :
Despite
several blind shots, you will find that Kurland is a rather easy course
to play
after one or two practice rounds to get the proper club selection on
slopping
holes. The par 5 holes are all reachable in two, it’s there that you
can build
your score. To get the real feeling of the course diifculty , you have
to play
it in the windy conditions. The recommended setting for the course is
WFS
Difficult pin settings :
on the 16th
and 18th greens the difficult pin setting is reserved to
swap the
greens between holes. Playing the 16th you have to go for
the rigth
lower part of the double green, and playing the 18th you
have to go
for the futher , higher part of the green making it a terrible long
shot. This
green sawpping set is traditionally used for the last round of the “Far
North
Open” the only pro championship played next to the north polar circle...
Credits :
Textures : most are
reworked from originals of Mike Jones, Kwixilver and Mitch Sirk, some
are
direct originals. The sod wall is mine (and not as good as I would
like) and is
from a scan of a Dornoch bunker.
Objects : from Göran Mentzer for
the flowers an the ancient stone next to the 2nd green
Playtest : Göran Mentzer, Lindsay
Addie, Kelly Beckham, Andrew Cray, Pecos Bill, Savery, Richar Mahatey
and John D. Esser. Great thanks to them
all, the design owes much to
them…