Reviewer's Brief:
The Edgewood by Marvin Monroe is this designers attempt at creating a fictional course with a real feeling. Let's take a look at this one and see what we find out.

The Review:
Mr.. Monroe is a fairly new designer Edgewood being his second release. The first for PGA 2000. Being a new designer, Marvin had some very good ideas but needs improvement with his implementation. This course looks like an attempt at a fictional could be real effort.

Overall Tightness: For the most part, Edgewood is a fairly wide open course. Occasionally, it will choke down on you just a little.

Attn. to detail: Most inexperienced designers suffer with this element. Detail is hard to explain but starts with things like properly set water, believable tee's, and how textures are put together. I like to refer to it as overall professionalism. In this aspect Edgewood needs some more finishing.

Greens and there settings: Marvin did one thing with the greens I really liked. There was always some gentle tilt in one direction or the other. I would like to see him take the next step on his following design. namely a few tiers, ridges, hollows, and maybe a backstop or two. To keep it simple, add more interest.

Elevation work: Edgewood is a gently rolling course. It does have some simple cliff work on the back.  Overall needs some gentle mounding to frame fairways and greens. Some holes were good in this respect, some were not.

Tree's, Shrub's, & Bushes: At times the tree's looked to be mostly the same height. At others they were ok. Trees were nicely placed.

Bunker's: Bunker's needed to be set down more, lips were to wide and not refined.

Water: Set of the water is reasonable, I did find some ripples. Remember new designers, when setting water, flatten it to the highest setting. This will help keep it flat. Another good idea is to leave water at the default height of 1000' and raise all the land up around it when possible.

Strategic Design and elements: For the most-part Edgewood is a straight forward design. A couple of holes to note. #5 was a very interesting par 4 with three different options. The first was a 8 iron lay-up forcing the player to hit over a lake running parallel to the fairway and carrying a bunker just short of the green. Option 2 is to hit it further up the fairway resulting in an open shot to the green. Option 3 is to blast a driver at the corner of the offered piece of fairway by the green leaving a short chip on. On the 9th hole we have a interesting option gone awry. Player has two fairway choices. Player needs to examine where pin is, then choose fairway that gives best angle. Nice concept. Where the problem lies, if you take the right option there is a big tree at the end of the fairway virtually blocking any shot to the green. Was this an on purpose sucker play or a mistake?

Sounds: None applied that I could hear.

Crowd's & Tourney objects: None used.

Custom Objects and placement: No custom objects were created for Edgewood. Overall placement of stock items was done ok and sparsely used.

Horizon: Stock background fit course well.

Textures and there Usage: Not all the stock textures balanced well with each other. Designer used a ring of dirt around each tree.

Overall beauty: Not a wow course, not terribly ugly either and Edgewood does have its moments.

Playability: This is a difficult category talk about. Is playability one's enjoyment  of whacking the ball around. Is it a rating for how penal a course is. Ill call it enjoyment of playing. I could play this course a few times but not continually come back to it.

Computer A.I.: Computer players handle Edgewood Perfectly.

Summary: I realize this review is somewhat negative, I dont want to discourage this designer from further efforts. There is a huge learning curve with this hobby. Keep with it! I would recommend Edgewood to beginning players because its friendly. Good for off line against A.I. play. And of course as alway's. A picture say's a thousand word's.

E-mail me: dano@bmi.net