This ridiculous green is a Cool Golf Thing

When it comes to golf course design, it takes a lot to floor me.

I don't mean to sound like a snob, but having seen more than 630 golf courses so far in my life, true innovation just doesn't come up that often. That's not necessarily a bad thing - subtly mixing and matching established concepts can lead a golfer down a path to deep enjoyment, even if it means a course is not swaggeringly distinct.

Sometimes, though, you want to go off-menu. And Scottsdale National Golf Club's Bad Little Nine is way off-menu.

By design, the Bad Little Nine is the par-3 course from Hell. It's not one of the giggle-fests that festoon a growing number of golf resorts. It's consciously bizarre and inscrutable, with seemingly impossible shots at every turn.

That's what makes it so brilliant. Golfers rightly chafe at excessively difficult "big" courses, but the Bad Little Nine's ridiculous shot demands charm and disarm because they come in a small overall package. Keeping score is pointless (although there's a $1,000 bar credit waiting for any golfer who can break par on a Friday; it has never happened). On many holes, merely hitting the green from the tee feels like making contact with a Major-League fastball.

And then there's hole 5, with its P-shaped green hemmed in by man-made moguls courtesy of architects Tim Jackson and David Kahn. It is unlike anything I have seen in golf - positively alien in appearance. The mounds turn the large-enough putting surface into claustrophobic and half-hidden rooms, and their abrupt, near-vertical walls grate against the green's flowing lines while also referencing the gorgeous mountain backdrop. The hole almost looks like a Zen garden, although the feeling on the tee is anything but calm. The front-left panhandle, where the pin was cut when I played the course a few weeks ago, is about five feet wide; easily the skinniest section of maintained green I have ever seen. It's a tableau that could only work in such a naughty setting as the Bad Little Nine's. I'm smitten.

Scottsdale National Golf Club - The Bad Little Nine

Scottsdale, Arizona

Private

5.0

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