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Hackers Heaven
by Neal Parnell

Links Corner Course Database ID Number - 741
Release Date CRZ Filesize Par Course Length
2002-01-05  21,386,688  bytes 72  6945 yards
Type Style CRZ Filename
IMAGINARY  WOODLAND  Hackers Heaven.crz 
Course ID Course Key
80b96e4a58b64df6aa921eb4168323db  1bc3506ac77dab0183d115562d8ae864 

COURSE SCREENSHOTS

LINKS CORNER REVIEW

Reviewed by
Mike Nifong
February 2002

Course type: Hackers (sic) Heaven is a mountain forest course with that most (in)famous of panos. In the very brief read-me that accompanies the .crz file, Neal Parnell describes it as a fantasy course. Although it shares little or nothing with the usual fantasy course, I am inclined to agree with him.

Historical perspective: Insofar as I have been able to determine, Hackers Heaven, which was released to Links Corner on January 5, 2002, is Neal's first course. My recollection is that, for a brief period of time right after its release, it enjoyed a very high user rating based on its initial review and then proceeded to fall rapidly as other opinions were expressed. In my experience, that is usually not a good sign. At the time of this writing, it enjoys(?) a 1-star rating after 5 reviews.

What is included: Not much. There is no cameo, and there are no hole previews. The splash screen loads in one of two forms, one of which was made for the course and is serviceable, the other of which consists of the New York Jets' football logo. At 19.6MB, the file size is smaller than the current (and ever-ballooning) average size, but a little more in these categories would be nice. I would have to say, however, that if there were ever an APCD course that could get along just fine without hole previews, this one is it.

First impressions: After not having been bowled over by the (non-existent) cameo and the splash screen, you find yourself standing at the one-size-fits-all tee of a rather nondescript course - stock pano, stock textures, you get the picture. The hole is a slight dogleg left with bunkers on either side of the relatively wide fairway at the 225-250 yard mark, pretty much out of play for clickers at any level. There is no first cut, exacerbating the plainness, and the bunkers are of the flat, lipless, cut-out-and-paste-on variety. You have seen this hole a thousand times before.

What comes next: You are going to see it several more times (could you see that coming?). Most of the holes are either straight ahead or doglegs so gentle that it is unnecessary to shape your tee shot at all. As a matter of fact, the use of a draw on #13 was the only such shot I hit in any round, and on that hole, a straight-ahead 5W would have worked about as well. And in terms of variety, check out this fact: the 10 par-4's on this course vary in length from 398 to 407 yards. The fairways are not always as wide as they are on #1, but they are never exactly narrow, either. On the whole, about as much grip-it-and-rip-it as you could have in this setting.

The greens also share some similarities. They are generally large and very flat. I had one 54-foot putt that had absolutely no break whatsoever - even I can hit those. There was the large, flat green on #5 that had a small, flat bunker on it; the bunker had a toy bulldozer in it. Of course, I had to hit the ball about 50 feet out of my way to check it out, so it will most likely come into play only if the pin and your ball wind up on opposite sides of it.

As a matter of fact, about the only break in the monotony is the occasional what-is-this-doing-here? object. In addition to the bulldozer, there were a couple of abandoned cars, a large piece of farm equipment, and an outhouse, among others. But my favorite had to be the graveyard right off the tee on #4. I could not help but wonder: did they build the golf course on top of the graveyard without bothering to relocate the graves or put up a fence, or did the graveyard spring up after the golf course was built, presumably to provide a convenient location to bury any golfer who died of boredom while playing it? There was also a random grave in the trees to the right of the fairway on #13. Placing the graveyard on one of the greens instead might have led to more interesting play. Of course, when I saw the cannons lining the fairway of #18, I thought of another reason an on-site graveyard would be convenient.

For anyone who has persisted this far, I will tell you that the APCD work is fair. You will see the occasional shadow or patch of bad mesh, but nothing egregious.

The four par-5 holes all fall into the category of perhaps reachable. They always played into the wind for me, and I always fell just short of the green, but within chipping range, so eagle is not out of the question. As you have undoubtedly gathered, the philosophy of risk/reward is an alien concept here.

The bottom line: You may recall that early on I said that I agreed with the designer that this course falls into the fantasy category. Here, the fantasy is that anyone would ever bother to build it. Not a terrible course, but a terribly uninteresting one. Perhaps the name says it all: on this course, even golfers of the most dubious accomplishment have the opportunity to score well. And it might be an acceptable practice ground for neophyte powerstrokers as well, but the rest of you will probably want to pass.

Course Statistics :
Par 72; 6945 yards from the only set of tees; holes are not handicapped.

This course is available as a FREE download.


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