The
Wizard`s Hat by:
Wild Turkey Design
Review
by: Bruce Ryder |
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Wild Turkey Design is the creation
of a very talented course designer who has made in excess of 168
courses for Tiger Woods PGA Tour, countless excellent
libraries, written some excellent tutorials, etc. I have known
him since his days as a course designer (38 courses) and tutorial
writer for PGA 2000 Championship Golf by Sierra Sports. Who is
the man responsible for the wizard's hat? M.G.A. Hover.
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For
this review, I played 3-click as an online player (where most
players play a course they download) and used the following
conditions. One thing you notice right away about a Hover course
is the design excellence. You will not find any anomalies, objects not to size,
water that is not flat, etc. As a course architect, I really
appreciate that! However, one thing you must be careful about on
this course and on quite a few of his most recent ones is the speed of
the greens. He uses a custom library and the greens tend to play
faster than normal. You have to
get used to this rather quickly or you'll be cursin' up a storm and
piling up bogeys! Also, Mr. Hover has a tendency to place quite a
bit of his PIN positions on mounds on the green and there are not many
flat greens or greens without undulations to give you a break
either! As you can see on the conditions screenshot to the left,
I played my 18 holes with the Easy Pin Placement option and still I
ended up in situations like in the next picture. On the 4th hole, I
put my approach shot on the green to a spot which I thought was
safe. Well, it rolled off the green into a sand trap (lots of
stragically placed ones on this course) and even though I reached the
green on my second shot, I only managed a PAR. See the following
picture: The
mounded PIN placements are most prominent on holes 4 - 6, 8 and
15. I did not score too well on those holes! The course has 3 PAR threes, 3 PAR fours and 3 PAR fives on both the front and back nine. This gives the player several chances to score well. Hover does an excellent job using and placing water hazards and you must be careful to stay away from the edge of some fairways because they slope towards the water. The fairways are pretty much standard in width, but the landing area for your tee shots is usually guarded and it takes a precise tee shot to set up a clean approach to the green. This course doesn't have any radical height changes and is realistic in the ones it does have. The next screenshot of hole 11 illustrates some of the water hazards, design excellence and overall hole design of this course:   I
give The Wizard's Hat high marks for its design elements, a little less
than a thumbs up for the play ability because of the faster than normal
greens and mounded PIN placements and a thumbs down for realism because
of the lack of sounds and a CLS. So overall, my score for The
Wizard's Hat is: 
Of course, your opinion will differ and all in all I would highly
recommend the majority of M.G.A. Hover's courses. One ordinary
apple does not make a whole batch uneatable! |