McBroom's Whitewater; McLay Kidd's St. Andrews; Canada's toughest holes

• Had the opportunity on Tuesday to fly to Thunder Bay and play Tom McBroom's interesting new layout, called Whitewater. I've got to catch up on writing some course reviews at some point, but I'll say this for Whitewater -- it continues McBroom's progression of recent quality work. The standouts, to me, were the holes that played down toward the water -- specifically the 4th and 5th on the Forest nine, and the fine fourth on the River nine. Everything else was perfectly fine -- there are no clunkers out there -- but some of his was pretty standard parkland golf. Still, McBroom mixes it up with a short four, some long fours and a nice mix of threes. It would be interesting to see Tom get a bit more extreme with his greens, which are occasionally subtle to the point of being bland these days, but then he'd have to revisit his early years when he claims to have built wild, drug-induced greens. Still, Whitewater is a strong course in the same league as Peterborough's Wildfire and better than McBroom's work at Glencairn. Now if anyone gets to Thunder Bay to see it....
• Canadian golf writer John Gordon has a list of Canada's toughest holes appearing on Sportsnet's website. You can find it here. Like any list, it is open to debate, but it isn't a bad one.
  
• SI's Gary Vansickle writes an interesting take on the new course at St. Andrews, being designed by David McLay Kidd, who was responsible for Bandon Dunes. Best quote from the story: Everything else I've done, there wasn't much pressure. Bandon Dunes, who the hell knew who I was? After that, it's been relatively no pressure. Maybe developers wondered, 'Is he a one-hit wonder and am I going to have to fire him halfway through and hire Tom Fazio?' You can find the entire story here.