Diamond Country Club Atzenbrugg Austria

[avrag]

As promised in the thread about the Lyoness (=Austrian) Open in the Tour Forum, this is the review of the course as it played two days after the Circus (European Tour) left town.

The course is a great course. It provides fun, even if you do not play your best, and it has some character. It is a very fair test, and you have to use your brains a lot, but it is playable for everyone.

But I still think that there are four courses in the area around Vienna, which are better than this one (Fontana, where the tour event was played before is certainly NOT one of them). Three of them are more beautiful and all four of them are in slightly better condition all year round (which means perfect condition), which might have to do with the fact that they all are much older and therefore better grown in.

But only one of those courses is long enough for a tour event, three of them would not have enough space for all the infrastructure, and to be honest, I also think that the membership would not want to host a tour event.

If anybody who visits Vienna is interested, I will be happy to provide information about those courses.

But back to topic, the Diamond Course is a great golf course and the condition right after the tournament was extremely good.

As for the pictures, I know they are crappy, I am sorry about that. I took them with my old phone, which has only a wide-angle lens. And on top of that, as my wife, who is the photographer in the family, would point out:

It is crazy to make photographs in mid summer between noon and 3 pm, when the sun is glaring. Worst light possible.

 

For those of you who saw coverage of the tournament, the course was played the other way round in the tour event, the back nine played as the front nine. They said they did it because they wanted to have a stadium finish at the short par 3 9th over water, and it is true that there is more room for grandstands there than around the 18th. But I think the move was a good one for another reason, because the mid of the back nine has the only three weak holes of the course. They don't look good and they are not really interesting, albeit hard. But the front nine with their back to back par 5s (6 and 7), which played as 15 and 16 in the tournament and with the newly designed 8th make for a very exciting final stretch in a stroke play event.

So, let's get into details. I will review the course in the order, in which members and guests play it all year round, and I will point out some of the events of the tour event for those who watched it and then I'll mention which hole this was in the tournament.

 

So, upon arrival, there was still work going on everywhere around the clubhouse and in the parking lot, workers removing all of the tents and pavilions which were needed during the tournament. Even though the premises are spacious for our standards, I got the feeling that it must have been pretty crowded during the event. I had been to the club once before, for a demo day, but I had a bit of a hard time getting around, because of all the detours I had to take through the rest of the tented villages.

 

 

 

The staff is very nice, and as is the custom in Europe, even on high-end courses, they leave you to yourself. If you ask for something, you'll get it immediately, but nobody tries to force unwanted service onto you. So, if you are used to the typical sort of "service" you get a high-end resort courses in the US and like that sort of thing, forget about it. You are supposed to be able to take the bag out of the trunk of the car on your own, and you are also supposed to put it onto your push or pull trolley on your own. There are carts to ride in, but frankly, if you are not over 70 years old or have some sort of condition which makes it hard for you to walk, people will look at you a bit surprised, if you choose to "ride". On the other hand, all of this saves costs, like for fees and tips.

 

The driving range is spacious (grass, of course), and there are two chipping and pitching areas and a huge putting practice green, as is the standard. It is also standard in Central Europe that the range balls are not included in the green fee. € 2.- for 30 balls, which you get our of a machine on the range. Green fees are € 65.- on weekdays and € 80.- on weekends, which is normal for the better courses in our area, only Fontana is way beyond that, but then again, it was conceived and founded by the Austrian version of Donald Trump. As you have probably realised, I don't like the man, and I don't like the course, so this will be the last time either are mentioned.

 

So, on to the first tee, it is. This is the view from the the tee they played in the tournament (as the 10th hole), and I definitely would not want to play the hole from there, with my most common miss being a hook.

 

 

 

The far more benign look from just in front of the everyday men's tee on the first. A very nice starter simply assured us to aim at the bunkers on the right, which did not keep one of my threesome from pulling it into the water. I managed to hug the left hand side, and just stay on the fairway.

 

 

 

I made a bogey after pushing my 7-iron approach into the rough on the right, and was then very much surprised that my pitch from there stopped extremly quickly about 20 feet short of the hole.This was something which surprised me all day. The greens were still very firm and fast, like in the tournament, but pitches, chips and bunker shots stopped very quickly. The greatest challenge for me when putting was the fact that on these fast greens, there was always less break than I read.

 

The view from the 4th fairway (the 13th in the tournament):

 

 

 

It shows the typical character of the course, especially of quite a few holes on the first 9 (the second 9 in the tour event). Some of it looks like a links course. There are no pot bunkers, but the dense bushes on the sides of the fairway and around the greens (particularily behind them), give some of the holes that look. Also, the fairways are very dry and hard right now, which is the way the course was designed to play.

Those bushes are really close to the greens, going long usually means a penalty stroke.

The design of the par 4s makes for a very interesting strategic play off the tee. Usually you have quite wide fairways to begin with, but they start to narrow very much, where the average tee shot with a driver would end up. The different teeing areas are spaced very cleverly, so that the challenge of the tee shot is the same for elite players who play from the back tees and for average players who play from the yellow tees. If you tee off with a hybrid or a fairway wood, you can usually aim at a generous fairway. But if you miss even this, you are severely punished. If you are off to either side, you usually have to play over some of those bushes or small trees, which encroach from both sides further up the fairway, and there are also small ponds left or right next to the widest area of the fairways. You'd have to be really wayward off the tee with a hybrid or fairway wood to find them, but Miguel Angel Jimenez for one did it on at least one occasion during the tournament.

The picture above also shows another challenge, which is a very well used feature in the design of the course. There are many "dead" areas in front of the greens, swales, hollows, bunkers which are well short of the green, but look like they are right up to the front of the green. Your depth perception is constantly challenged that way. I was dumb enough to forget my Garmin Approach at home, and as a result, I really struggled with this. There are distance markers on the sprinkler heads, but those don't help you too much, if you have an angle as well. Also, the small trees and bushes often shield you from the wind on the fairway, and they also shield the flag from the wind, but once the ball gets into the air, the wind affects it.

The rough was still like it was for the tournament. Surprisingly, I did not find it too difficult around the greens, even in the areas where it was trampled down, where players and spectators walked off the greenside areas. It was long and dense there, and the lie often looked horrid, but it was not all that hard to play out of. On the other hand, I thought that the rough along the fairways was extremely tough. It was long and thick, and you often got lies, in which the ball went down in the rough about 2/3 of the way, so you could not see it from just behind, but it was still a good amount above ground. At least three times, I tried to dig it out there with a wedge to just hit it down the fairway 60 or 80 meters into a safe spot, but the danger was always to get too much under it, and then it went nowhere.

 

Onto the 5th hole, the 14th in tournament play:

 

 

 

This is were Lundberg hit his marvelous fading tee shot to 6 feet in the final round and made birdie, while almost everybody else struggled. There are no back tee boxes on this hole, so what you see are the full 200 meters. The back tees for the tournament were only 6 to 10 meters behind the normal markers, on the same teeing area. I was very fond of my bogey on this hole, after hitting a 18°-hybrid into thick rough left of the left greenside bunker. I played a pitch from there, which once again stopped inexplicably quickly and left me in three putt range, but my first 50 footer stopped on the lip just right of the hole.

The two guys I played with were mid- to high-teen handicappers just like myself, and we all enjoyed it immensely, because the course always provides satisfying moments like that, if you make a bogey (net par).

 

 

 

One of my proudest moments came on the par 5 6th hole (15th in the tour event), where I hit a career drive to the perfect spot. The lense of the camera distorts things a little, the bunker to the right was not far in front, maybe only 15 meters or so. This was the bunker into which Wiesberger hit his tee shot in the final round and then hit a long iron from there to get a good eagle chance, which he sadly missed by inches.

Anyhow, I was really happy to end up in the area, where many of the pros had hit their drives as well. Sadly, it has to be said that their tees were 70 meters back from where I played. :D

But the fact that my drive drew "Ooohs" and "Aahs" from my playing partners just shows you how much the average golfer overestimates the length and quality of his drives.

BTW I proceeded to follow the drive with a perfect 3-wood, very long for my standards again, just right of the trees, which unfortunately bounced into the rough. A wedge hit high on the face (see above), into the greenside bunker on the right followed by timid bunker shot to the fringe because of the massive slope down to the flag. Then came a useful chip to 8 feet, which was the best I could do, and once again a putt missed on the high side for a 7. And aside from the bunker shot (which was not all bad, just too cautious) and reading too much break into the putt, I really could not say that I had done anything bad on the hole.

 

There are two par 5s back to back. This is the look on No 7 from the right rough, just over the fairway bunkers on the right hand side. I hit it pretty much to the same spot Wiesberger did in the final round of the tournament (16th hole), of course he did it from about 60 meters further back:

 

 

 

I also pulled it left from there, just like he did, but mine stayed on the fairway, about 110 meters from the green, just short of that big round tree you can see on the left side short of the green. Wiesberger had hit it into the rough further left, which leaves you no shot at all. Since there is water long and right over the green, you have to either hit it short or left from there. But don't overdo it like I did, because you might end up in the left hand bunker just like I did. Bunker shots all the way downhill towards the water are never fun, and of course I went on to do the same thing as on the previous par 5, hit it just out of the bunker but short, had a chip steeply downhill from there and a two-putt for another 7. After that, I knew what it must have felt like for the pros who did not make birdie on either of those two par 5s down the stretch.

 

Both of those par 5s have an obstacle right in the middle of the fairway, at a distance where normally the average golfer would end up after two good shots. The group of trees on the 6th, and a bunker in the middle of the fairway on the 7th. This makes for some interesting choices, but the idea is overdone a bit, because the par 5 13th on the back 9 has the same feature. In that case, it is a solitary big old tree about 100 meters short of the greeen, right in the middle of the fairway. I completely messed up that hole, because I aimed right at the tree with my second, thinkng I could not hit it that straight from 175 meters away, but I ended up hitting it bang on and was stymied about a foot behind the trunk.

 

On to the 8th (the 17th in the tour event).

This was remodelled by Miguel Angel Jimenez, and they also put a plaque with his handprints onto the hole, just between the tees and the fairway. MAJ urges to people to put their hands into his prints, he says it brings good luck.

 

 

 

I did, and realised that he has pretty much the same hands I do, quite big palms with really short and thick fingers, the same as Jack Nicklaus (if you have his "Golf My Way" at home, you can see them). I am afraid, this is where the similarities between me and those two end.

It is a good idea to go as far right as possible on that sharp dogleg right and cut off as much as you dare. Neither the shallow bunkers nor the small trees nor the rough in the elbow of the dogleg are a real obstacle, I managed to cut the corner nicely, but a lip-out kept me from making par (net birdie) in the end. Maybe MAJ's hands don't make you lucky after all.

 

So, now comes the 9th (18th in the tournament)

The hole in one prize was still there:

 

 

 

We played from the same tees as the pros did in the tournament in the final round, because the tee was moved up to the normal members' tee on Sunday. This makes the hole shorter, but a full carry over the water (the back tees are more to the left). I remember Jay Townsend as the on-course commentator with the final group on Sunday saying again and again: "It's 152 meters, downhill, downwind, it is just a simple, straight forward 9-iron", which was followed by both Luiten and Wiesberger hitting their 9-irons really short. I thought it was a straight forward 7-iron, because the wind was helping, and I also came up short. It might be that the helping wind swirls around at the green, when it hits the big trees behind the green. Again, I finished in almost exactly the same spot Wiesberger finished in regulation play, which prompted him to take 8-iron in the play-off.

Here is the look for my birdie putt (it is all green, the first part of it is newly sodded, because they wanted to extend the front of th green all the way to the water this year):

 

 

 

I made a nice par after missing the first putt way short.

 

As I stated before, the back nine are much weaker in my view, largely because the main thing you have to worry about is water. There are not so much strategic decisions to be made as on the front nine with their bottle-neck shaped fairways.

There are two outstanding holes, however, the first being the 14th. It is a gently sweeping dogleg left, with a fairway that tilts to the right and a huge slope on the left side oft the fairway. You want to catch that for a nice forward bounce, but avoid the big tree in the corner of the dogleg. Going long right through the dogleg will bring a pond into play. Good hole.

 

The best hole on the back 9 in my view, maybe the best hole on the course, is the 17th (8th in the tournament).

The view from the tee:

 

 

 

The fairway widens considerably behind those mounds on the left, and the pros try to drive it over those, get a good bounce and have a short iron in from the left side of the fairway. But there is thick rough on that left side, and also a very small pond which is hidden behind the mounds, so you have to be careful. I went the more conventional route down the right, and of course hit a tee shot that was way longer than I could have hoped for, which leaves you this:

 

 

 

Blocked out by the trees on the right, which is why you don't want to be there in the first place. I made an ill-advised attempt to fade a 5 iron around those trees, but since this is not my shot, I hit it straight into the trees and rough left of the green. To get up and down from there in 3 to make bogey was actually pretty good and satisfying for me.

 

The 18th is almost a straight hole, but it is best to play it as a slight dogleg right once again.

 

 

 

Hit your tee shot to the left half of the fairway if possible for a good angle to the green and because the rough on the right was really brutal. I hit it into that rough, hacked out about 70 meters down the fairway and was once again very happy to make bogey, net birdie to finish and win the drinks we were playing for on the final hole.

 

The 18th green from the left side, on the way to the clubhouse. Again, the pictures would have been much better early in the morning or late in the afternoon. I'll try to remember that, when I make some for another course review.

 

 

[imakaveli]

Awesome review, thanks!!