Richmond Hill Golf Club, Richmond Hill, GA

On the positive side, the course is in excellent shape. The superintendent is obviously competent and has sufficient capital to make the course nice. Fairways are very good and the greens are like a pool table. While they would take a little getting used to for an accurate read, they do roll true. Missed a lot of putts and it was very annoying, but if I played the place half a dozen times, I'd make better reads and it would no longer be an issue. Also positive, the course has very few of those punitive forced carries over marshland or water, you usually have a bailout area.

On the negative side--and unfortunately this dominates my memories of the round--the place isn't all that pretty. It winds through some of the blamed ugliest cookie cutter houses I've ever seen, all of them cheaply slapped together and for some reason painted a color that should be known as "Purgatory Gray." The course itself is not all that pretty, though they're trying hard to make you think so. It's pretty average, and aside from the fine conditioning, most goat track munis are as aesthetically pleasing with trees and views.

The layout ranges from decent to acceptable to idiotic. The design of the holes is generally alright, though nothing special. Pedestrian is a word for it. Some of the holes appear as if they were once bland little holes that have been tricked up unnaturally to be tough. That par 3 may be only 110 yards, but is it really necessary to bury an elephant under the green to trick it up? That's lazy design. In one place you have back-to-back par 3s that virtually share the same tee box, yet tee off in opposite directions! So, you play the shorter of the two (which has a green which appears to have been designed to receive shots from the opposite direction), then double all the way back the full length of it and play the second par 3 from basically the same tee box heading the other direction. I don't know if this was an architecture-by-default move when they redid the course a few years back and the people involved didn't have enough talent to do anything differently or if this was part of the original concept. If the latter, I hope the original architect is doing well in the institution, because that's where he belongs.

Overall I was impressed with the conditioning but unimpressed with everything else. The place in sum reminds me of one of those builder-designed houses (like the aggressively ugly housing development the course winds through). They often have pretty facades but when you look closer, the rest of the house has cheap siding and tiny windows in random, lunatic positions. They're overpriced. They have the appearance of beauty, but it fades upon closer inspection. They are created by those without taste for those without taste. That's Richmond Hills G.C. It was designed by those not clever enough to realize they're not clever.