Some of my favorite holes in golf are uphill par threes, and the last two posts mentioned two superb ones, 11 at Shinnecock and 13 at Sand Hills (17 is uphill there as well).
A really great one is the 15th at Philadelphia CC by William Flynn, which is almost a three and a half shotter, and the 3rd at Merion is quite the interesting test, as well.
Alex Findlay seemed particularly partial to them, and despite Donald Ross's written contention that he liked visibility on par threes, many of his courses feature uphill par threes (Mark Twain GC has 4 of them!).
When I first started appreciating architecture, the dropshot par three was one of my favorite type of holes, for the obvious scenic and "hang time" reasons. Over the years, I've become much less enamored of them to the point where I find myself impatient with them, at times. They've become almost a cliche, in fact...oftimes not much more interesting than a photo op.
I see one and start looking around to see what went wrong with the routing that the architect now has to take me down a cliffside to continue my trek.
Or, worse yet, I'm carted back up a hill only to take advantage of what someone considered a gorgeous view, the playability and continuity of the golf course be damned. One of the worst offenders I've seen that describes this is the 13th and 14th holes at Pine Hill GC in NJ. After a downhill par four, with a "gorgeous view", architect Tom Fazio backtracks from that green about 190 yards back up the hill, only to create another visual extravaganza drop shot par three. Two holes later, he features another one.
I'm beginning to think that the drop shot par three is sort of like a kid's meal, filled with sickeningly sweet confections. They are only initially and temporarily satisfying, but over time and experience, one grows to develop more sophisticated tastes, and I think anyone who objects to their uphill counterpart because of blindness and fairness issues is simply missing out on some of the spirited adventure in the game.
Ironically perhaps, I find myself appreciating the drop shot par three more if there is some element of blindness involved, not so much involving the tee area blocking the view like the 5th at Stonewall, but perhaps more like the 5th at Inniscrone, with some natural feature fronting the green...perhaps a slight rise or valey, or some other element that tends to complicate depth perception as well as causing a twinge of doubt in the player's mind.
I don't mean this to sound harsh and I hope it doesn't. There just have been so many compromises made to architecture during modern times in the spirit of equity and elimination of uncertainty that I thought the opposing viewpoint should be strenuously stated.