What WOULD a Tour pro shoot at Gamble Sands?
To answer TD's question, IMO I don't think a pro gets as big an advantage from the layout as an amateur, because they already hit fairways and greens, and get up and down like crazy, so their rounds are dictated by how well they putt. So the ease of recovery shots for the amateur is not a benefit for the pro.
As you may know, I weighed in with my thoughts about GS on the previous thread after my first play; I have now played it a second time with my wife. That means a 6, 12 and 22 handicaps have played it in my family. All of us loved the course.
Yes, my wife shot the lowest round of her life, so you can add her to the list. She attributed it to her ability to recover and make bogeys where she would have often made a double or worse. What kept her score down was really the elimination of the big numbers, 7-10, that appear on her scorecard a few times every round.
What makes GS easier is the recovery shot: harder sand, and with large greens and no rough around the greens, you are putting a lot. And with a putter in your hand, that means an amateur can get up and down or at least eliminate the double bogey most of the time.
As someone previously said, he made triple(s), and the first time I made two doubles on the way to a 75, so there is danger out there.
What I found interesting was watching my wife tack around a large bunker, BECAUSE SHE COULD! There was space to play away from the bunker (and the hole) to avoid the trouble. At 99.9% of courses that is not physically possible. She would have been forced to go over a bunker she would likely have hit and would have typically taken multiple strokes to get out of. Instead, she aimed about 45 degrees away from the pin to avoid the bunker, then reached the green on the next shot and two putted for a bogey. On some other course, she either must attack the bunker (a fight she would lose), or her angled play would have been a 60 yard shot hoping to not hit it into the woods or some deep rough. And who thinks about doing that when they are playing? But she saw her predicament, realized she had the space to go at an angle, and then still play to the green from the fairway.
But it wasn't a walk-in-the park for her. Next hole, a par 3 with a forced carry over a wash, she proceeded to hit it into the wash. She said she psyched herself out staring at the forced carry and all the junk down in the wash. She made double.
The take-away is that the tee shot psyched her out. Does that sound like a comment someone would say about an easy course?
Same par-3 hole I am hitting a four-hybrid on a hole playing 220 yards, while aiming 30 yards away from the pin trying to use the slope of the surround to feed the ball to the hole. On the day, I hit between a PW and a 4-hybrid on the par 3s. That is variety, and that's what, IMO, makes it fun and playable.