COURSE:    Saint Creek Golf Club

LOCATION:  Nagoya, Japan

ARCHITECT: Jack Nicklaus

JNSE DESIGN:  Scott Chesney

This course opened in 1989. It features lots of trees, water and
huge greens. I tried to capture the look of a Japanese garden.  The
course provides a great blend of hole types, some wide open, some
with tight, tree-lined fairways, and many with water.  Strategy
most often comes into play on approach shots. These greens are huge
and can sometimes result in putts over 100 feet if the shot is
misplayed to the green. Some other interesting side notes on the
course....One hole has a sand trap in the middle of the green. One
of the par fives has a large pine in front of the green.  In my
view the course has par fives that can be played under par, while
collectively, the par 3s will provide a real struggle. Three of the
par 3 holes I would term extremely difficult, which I think is
unusual in the JNSE game.

As for sources on building this course, I was quite fortunate. I
was able to obtain the actual course architect plans from the Jack
Nicklaus organization. These plans were very extensive and included
hole layout, accurate distances, elevation detail, and best of all,
significant green details. They showed actual green elevations and
breaks, as well as depths of sand traps around greens as well as
mounds and grass hollows. So I was able to accurately reproduce the
greens as well as is possible for the JNSE game. In fact, however,
I chose to make certain greens less severe than they are in real
life to account for some deficiencies in the game's ability to
reproduce green accuracy.  Tree and object placements were also
shown on the architect's plans. I can assure you that each and
every hole is drawn to exact scale from the architect's plans. I
have not tightened fairways, changed trap locations, or anything.
They are exactly as drawn on the plans and I used a special process
to insure this accuracy.  So from a playability standpoint,
including elevations, you can be quite sure you are playing the
actual course on the computer.

As for the objects and background, I must admit I had limited
information. Unlike every other course I have done, I had no
photographs. All I had was the original version of St. Creek
released with the JNUG game. I partially created the background
using a reasonable facsimile of scenes from that background. All
the objects are trees I did, most hand drawn, while the tall green
poplar was digitized and recolored.  

I hope you like the course. I believe it will render some low score
as well as some very high scores. I like it that way. I hope you
will too.