Anthony and Tyler,
Good to hear about your recent nine holer, Tyler. I agree with you, there is definitely a belief that nine hole golf courses are an inferior substitute to eighteen hole golf. As Anthony observes, much of that belief is founded in experience—so many nine hole courses really do suck. They certainly wouldn’t have anything remotely interesting like your Biarritz green.
It’s almost as though there’s an underlying assumption that if you halve the number of holes, everything else must be accordingly diluted. So we get featureless, drab little (literally, LITTLE) layouts that don’t for a moment even pretend to be anything but a diminished version of the real thing. The opposite assumption could prevail, where the goal of building the best nine holes possible might actually be thought of as an advantage, reducing the odds of weak, filler holes arising. But the examples of this attitude, like Maxwell’s original Prairie Dunes and Kaiser’s realized vision for The Dunes, are so few and far between, the motivation to create really good nine holers has never really taken root.
Tom Doak started a thread a few months back about best alternative courses, for a situation where it sounded like some really good holes could be found and developed for his potential client, just not eighteen. I was surprised how many responses suggested creating a high quality “executive” or par 3 experience. Given a beautiful piece of ground lacking room for eighteen holes, to me, it’s a real shame any time nine impressive holes of Prairie Dunes or Dunes Club quality would lose out to eighteen downsized holes, but I bet that’s happened many dozens of times in the modern era. The problem is not so much with designers, for as Doak wrote in “Anatomy of a Golf Course, “Few developers with modest aspirations hire a golf architect with imagination and give him the license to design something worthwhile.”
I think Tyler is right, that nine holers are a good fit when golf is just one of many activities, for instance in cottage country where people are hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, etc., and not prepared to devote virtually the whole day to golf. With modern lifestyles, this may have similar application in urban settings, too.