I made my final trip to Nebraska last week. I worked in Nebraska City, and spent the week at the amazing Lied Lodge (
http://www.liedlodge.org) which gets you access to the private ArborLinks course. I took a few photos of it as I played, including a couple of the 18th missed in the original post. I didn't get pics of all of them, but I'll post what I have.
They had a tournament coming the day after my visit, so pins were cut in some tight locations.
#1
Approach from about 220 out.
Better look at the green and the slightly odd bunker style employed at ArborLinks.
#2
The very uphill approach.
A look back from the green.
#3 is 150 downhill.
Par 5 4th.
From 70 yards short of the green. It's a VERY tight target and the tournament pins cut on my visit made it even tougher. This course is a really tough test.
5th
Approach from about 150. It's been dry and hot in Nebraska, so a few greens were being syringed to allow tournament speeds. Not a lot of undulation, but they were running fast and very small targets mostly.
7
Another offset green with a very narrow opening in which today's pin was located.
430 all uphill at the 8th. Good, strong par 4.
The approach from 150.
9
The approach from about 200 with water lurking left. If you bail out, the very thick native rough will retire your ball. Narrower than it appears here.
Approach to 12, a 400+ yard par 4 with a huge waste area right. Hugging it off the tee shortens the approach dramatically.
Looking back 12, showing the huge waste area.
15 is a brute, some 450 yards and really tight for a hole of its length.
The approach from around 130. You can run one in off the mound left, which helps as you'll probably have a fairly long approach here.
Another tough right-to-left par 4 at the 17th.
With another approach to a small target.
18 plays along a ridge some 390 yards.
The approach. Photobucket really compresses the photo so it's hard to see, but the green has a cool valley in the middle so shots can run on and feed to the flag.
A few thoughts:
- It's my second Palmer course, and I've enjoyed both though neither has been otherworldly. Good risk/reward opportunities on several holes and a nice, walkable routing (rarely taken advantage of, but still). There's not much slope on the property, but what's there is used well. It's a good track on an average property, and that's a pretty good accomplishment in my book.
- It's a REALLY tough course, especially with the pins tucked tight. I hit a lot of shots about as online as I can reasonably expect, and missed by a few feet right or left and paid dearly. Greens seem very small by modern standards.
- The native rough is really the course's only drawback. I'm a scratch locator of lost balls, and I still lost 7, most of them no more than a few inches into the native. You'll need to hit it very straight here, as the corridors aren't especially wide and the long rough is virtually an automatic lost ball unless you're extremely lucky.
- Coupled with the excellent lodge, Nebraska City makes an excellent stop for anyone traveling to the sand hills courses from the East. ArborLinks isn't as good as Wild Horse, but it's not terribly far off and would make for a very good stopover between, say Harvester in Des Moines and Wild Horse in Gothenburg. I really enjoyed it and didn't find much not to like. All in all, Nebraska City makes for a pretty good business trip.