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Mountain Branch
by Jassi (ToppBanana) Harding
| Links Corner Course Database ID Number - 601 |
Release Date |
CRZ Filesize |
Par |
Course Length |
| 2001-10-12 |
38,059,714 bytes |
72 |
7360 yards |
| Type |
Style |
CRZ Filename |
|
REAL |
PARKLAND |
mountainbranch.crz |
| Course ID |
Course Key |
| af63aec7e49241ed9941cb8eee179ff6 |
51e285be9c3f2ab2b275a04ca1698187 |
|
LINKS CORNER REVIEW |
Reviewed by Mike Nifong
November 2001
Course type: This is a real, parkland-style course situated in Joppa, MD
Historical perspective: The name Jassi Harding is probably about as well known here at the Links Corner as, say, Mike Jones or Lacy Gearhart, although not for the same reasons. Mountain Branch is the 11th of thirteen courses he has submitted to this site (not counting betas and earlier versions) in the last six months. Of those thirteen, only the last six remain available. In terms of file size, it is second only to Hartefeld National Fall, version 2, in Mr. Harding's output, and, at 36.2 Mb, is approximately 1.5 times the size of the average course in the Links Corner archive. Those of you who frequent this site are undoubtedly aware that Mr. Harding's previous efforts have generally not been received with enthusiasm by either official reviewers or users, although there seems to be some evidence of improvement more recently. My only other experience with any of his courses was the aforementioned Hartefeld National, which I found to be fairly well executed but possessed of too many obvious flaws to be worth keeping.
What is included: The read-me file contains only brief information on the location of the course and acknowledgements. Two .jpg files depicting the front and back of the actual course scorecard are provided. Both the cameo and the splash screen appear to be derived from the scorecard photo. There are no hole previews.
First impressions: The initial view of this course from the first tee is not too bad, at least until you start to look a little closer. The fairway is broad and flat, and the colors and textures look pretty good at first glance. But then you notice the raised tee boxes with wood textures on the side and grass on the top. Should there not be a top surface to the wooden walls of the tee boxes? Or, if the grass really extends to the edge, should there not be some depth to the turf? Maybe it looks like this in real life, but I doubt it. And then you notice that little stream. You know it is a stream because it is blue, and because the top camera shows that its point of origin is a pond, but you certainly will not know it is a stream from its appearance. It looks like a blue stripe painted over the rough texture (literally - I can tell no difference other than the color). It has no depth and refuses to be bound by the laws of gravity, following the contours of the rough exactly. And I begin to think that I, like the stream, am in for a shallow and bumpy ride.
What comes next: Assuming that this rendition is reasonably representative of the actual appearance of this course, Mountain Branch is rather unremarkable. Fairways tend to be rather forgiving of less-than-perfect snaps, and the bunkers (which have orangeish sand when located along the fairways and white sand when located next to the greens - presumably the course actually looks like this, because I can fathom no reason to render it this way otherwise) rarely come into play. As a matter of fact, the only time I landed in one without trying to was when I went for the green from 264 yards out with my second shot on the par 5 12th hole. I did intentionally hit into several and found them to be both consistent with each other and consistently below average in terms of construction, with the rough texture apparently dropped straight down about six inches to form the walls - not very realistic looking. Later in the round, there are some hazard areas which break up some of the fairways and which actually threaten the carelessly planned or struck shot. But for the most part, this course provides little in the way of tee-to-green challenge.
By the second hole, you will begin to notice some repetitive planting, and you will continue to notice it to some degree for the remainder of the round. The lack of under planting and the very sharply delineated bottoms of the tree trunks tend to exacerbate this problem. There are also numerous bad mesh shadows, primarily noticeable in the fairway-to-rough and green-to-fringe transitions. And for me, at least, the texture transition between fairway and rough (there is no first cut) suffered from the choice of less-than-ideally-matched textures.
There are a number of custom sounds. I really liked the sound of geese in flight on the second hole, for instance. And then on the 4th, where one side of the green is near a pond, I initially was pleased to hear a bullfrog. But only initially: the sound clip was too short and quickly became quite repetitive. And then, after I had hit my putt some twenty-six feet away from the water, I was amazed to notice as I lined up my tap-in that the sound of the bullfrog was considerably louder. (On the other hand, perhaps the bullfrog wanted no part of those water textures either.)
The attached screenshot, which shows the view from the tee of the par 3 11th hole, is both typical and atypical of what you will find in this course: atypical in the sense that it does not really look like any of the other holes (which tend to resemble each other to varying degrees), typical in that it illustrates the way in which even attractive objects, if used repetitively, can end up detracting from the viewing experience. Note how the geese are lined up like little soldiers, varying not one iota in pose, and that this is true whether they are swimming in the water or 'swimming' in the grass.
One more comment about those tee boxes. On the first hole, they are evenly sized and shaped. Thereafter, they begin to vary in both size and shape on each hole. On one hole, a single undulating tee box contains all four tees. And then on the 18th hole, there are no tee boxes at all, just four sets of tees in four equally sized ground level hexagons. Curious.
Well, after all those negative comments, perhaps you are wondering if there is anything I like about this course. As a matter of fact, the greens are surprisingly good - well contoured, varied in size and constructed so as to present a variety of challenges. There are very few flat putts, but the undulations and slopes do not seem at all contrived or unreasonable. And even long putts seemed amenable to being accurately read, making for an enjoyable experience once you reach the green.
The bottom line: So, can a good putting experience and creative use of sound make up for all the shortcomings in this course? In a word, no. If this were the first course submitted by a designer, or even the second, I might be able to muster a little more enthusiasm about future potential. But by the eleventh, it begins to appear that maybe this is as good as it gets. This course is not terrible. I have downloaded worse, and I have read reviews of much worse. But there is also nothing about either the course itself or this rendition of it that I find particularly compelling, and at this file size, I cannot recommend it to anyone other than the real course aficionado with a broadband connection or the 'completist' who insists on having every APCD creation.
Course Statistics :
Par 72; 4 sets of tees; 7360 yards from back tees; holes not handicapped |
This course is available as a FREE download.
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