Defending par at the green????

[Mike_Young]

Dave,
I agree 10 stimp is about it for most of us and in some cases too much.

I am saying that during a round there are two shots that Tiger hits to 10 ft while others are at 20.  I saw a statistic not long ago that stated that Tiger's average distance from the pin on shots of 125 to 150 yards was over 30 ft.  I would have thought closer.  

[Mike_Young]

Brian,
I think it is more about simplicity.  IMHO there is more that can go wrong with a 180 yd 8 iron than with a 150 yd 8 iron.  But I do equate simplicity to the distance remaining to a target, whether a pin or a specific part of a green.  What do you think?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Mike,
Here at Hotchkiss GC (Raynor/Banks/Bahto) it's mostly about the greens. At a tad over 3k yds. they are our main defense.
Next comes the wide variety of lies one experiences due to the terrain. Last but not least is the length of grass in the fairway. We're never hitting from 1/2 " or less.

Tiger once said that if ANGC let the fairways grow a bit longer it would be much harder to control the ball going in and this would make it much harder to score.
Maybe another 1/4" of height on the fairways would be an acceptable way to "defend" par?

[Ken Fry]

Tom,

The last time I played Crystal Downs, the greens were very firm and over 10.  The wind was brisk and any putt above the hole (a bad place to be anyway) had a non-stop ticket to the other side of the green.  The only times I've played up there have been in October if that may have something to do with it.

Mike,

We're on the same page regarding playing from the hole back to the fairway and back to the tee.  My wording my not have indicated that.  I agree with your comment regarding the classic architecture on older courses.  The classic style has endured for all these years while some of the fad styles have gone by the wayside.  Westchester C.C. is praised on the PGA Tour despite being one of the shortest courses on tour.  I know the course has nice terrain and an abundance of trees to add to the challenge, but don't the players often have driver taken out of their hands?  They apparently don't feel that's a bad thing as the play more for placement off their tee shots than length.

[Mark Brown]

Mike

How about long par-threes, like 220+ ? You can make them hit 4, or so, long irons or fairway metals.

Or pinching landing areas at 280 to 310 -- not my favorite option however

[TEPaul]

If you ask me the concept of pinching in landing areas for good long players at the 280 to 320yd area is more about, or mostly about what comes next than just the concept of doing it or not in a vacuum.

I think pinching in and creating potential penalty in that area for the good and long player is just fine if you really do give them a POTENTIALLY great reward on what comes next.

On the other hand, I think opening up the landing area for the goood and long player is fine too if you give them something that's perhaps somewhat neutral to what comes next---or even better yet something that comes next that's in some way may be even more complex compared to what comes next if they chose to lay back.

The latter concept is one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by the conceptual thinking of one Mark Parsinen!

[tlavin]

Clearly, the green is the only place where one can dependably defend par, given the ability of the touring pro to bomb the ball out of sight.  7300 yard, par 70 golf courses are reduced to driver/short-iron on the majority of non-par 3 holes because the Andre Stoltz's of the golf world can hit it 335 off the tee.  The real question is whether a golf fan will continue to watch that kind of golf on television.  Have you noticed that the ninety percent of the tv highlights are of made or missed putts?  That's the only real drama left in professional golf.

Now, if one is talking about amateur/club member golf, there is another easy and readily available way to protect against low scores: grow some rough!  This is a largely ignored aspect of golf course maintenance, because members complain loudly if they have to hack out of the heather, just to get back to the fairway, but heavy rough is at least a half-shot penalty.  If a traditional country club were to keep 3 1/2 inch rough and greens at 11 on the Stimpmeter, you would see handicaps and blood pressures skyrocket.

In the end, all I'm saying is that you can only defend par on the tour on the green, but you can torture regular golfers all you want, if the Grounds Superintendant and the Grounds Chairmen don't mind hearing all of the grief.

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

Why not deep Fairway Bunkers a la St. Andrews, Troon, or Westhampton C.C. that are the equivalent of a half shot penalty due to their depth?  These bunkers frequently guard the best location to attack the greens from.  Or they are at the lowest points of the fairway to collect rollling golf balls.  Ball speed control was never displayed by T. Woods in 2000 at St. Andrews without a single trip to a bunker over the 4 days - a feat that I feel was better than the putting display he put on at Pebble the same year.

I love the scalloped bunkers Raynor built at Westhampton:  Pile the dig-out in front of the bunker so that the player cannot reach the green.  Simple and effective.

We saw evidence of defensive driving at Troon this year, especially on the bank 9.  Look how Norman lost the Open there to O'Meara - A monsterous tee shot that trundled in the bunker on 18, leaving him no way to attack the pin.  O'Meara hit a great 5 iron from the rough (Which slowed his tee ball roll).  

So there are ways to defend par other than the green without using watering the rough to knee height (Oak Hill last year) or undue narrowing.

JWK

[Pete Lavallee]

Deep bunkers work great on links sites which sit on 20 feet of sand, but if you try that on a clay site you'll end up with mini-water hazards when it rains.

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

"Deep bunkers work great on links sites which sit on 20 feet of sand, but if you try that on a clay site you'll end up with mini-water hazards when it rains. "

Then we can always "Pile the dig-out in front of the bunker so that the player cannot reach the green."

Clay always presents such as challenge.  I have been told that The Kirtland Club near Cleveland has a front 9 built upon clay.  I never would have known while playing it.

JWK

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike,

I was reading TD "Tougher but fairer " post and thought I would throw this up.  With the modern professional and young amatuers using the available equipment, and without lengthening a course to over 7500 yards, can par be protected anywhere other than the green.  I just don't see it.

How do you protect par, solely at the green, without unduly penalizing the higher handicap player ?[/color]

[johnk]

How do you protect par, solely at the green, without unduly penalizing the higher handicap player ?[/color]

See the 10 screen monster thread on "Do Highly Contoured Greens Favor the Bad Putter", paying special attention to the theories of Huckaby and Goodale.  Doak makes a cameo, too.

You can't be unduly penalized if the contoured greens close the 3-putt gap, can you?

[Patrick_Mucci]

John Krystynak,

"AT" the green, and "IN" the green are two different arenas.

When discussions focus on 30 foot deep bunkers, I don't think they're talking about internal contours and slopes.

There's more to the green area then the internal putting surfaces.

Jim Kennedy,

If fairway heights were higher, wouldn't the best players in the world, the PGA Tour Pros adjust their swings to a flatter plane, a more sweeping action to offset the effects of flyer lies ?

Those guys are good and seem to be able to adjust to most changes in conditions, save WIND.

[Mike_Young]

Pat,
I agree, there is a huge difference between in the green and at the green.  I think you keep from penalizing the higher handicap by making birdie a risky proposition.  The higher handicap in the same position will be satisfied with a bogey.  But I think it starts with the angle of attack from the fairway.  It becomes a game of knowing where to miss the approach in order to get down in two.  I think this can be done whereby getting down in three is easy and acceptable for the higher handicap much moreso than the low.  Example would be a green sloping right to left and back to front with wide bailout to the right for the high handicap slice....but a 2 to1 or 3 to 1 transition from chipping area to green surface...ideal fairway approach would be from left side. good player will try to hit it tighter for birdie and can easily miss right yet high handicap can slice ball into large right side bailout and find the surfafe on third shot plus 2 putt for bogey.  Doesnt take much internal contour just single plane slopes in the proper direction.  Just my opinion..

[Brent Hutto]

Mike,

How do you think front-to-back greens (sloping away from the approach shot) affect stronger vs. weaker players? That is one of my favorite underused design features because it makes the hole very challenging for my game. I wonder if a better player would find that no big deal.

One of the tougher holes on my home course is a long Par 4 that doglegs right at about 200 yards (around the halfway point) and then is uphill to a smallish green. The front half of the green is pretty flat but from about the middle to the back there's a pronounced slope down toward the rough behind the green.  When they put the hole in the middle you can keep the ball short but when they put it back you're tempted to let it feed back there and hope it stays on the green.

It seems to me that the single-digit players find that hole just as frustrating as I do although they usually end up on the back fringe instead of going all the way into the rough as I tend to do. I don't get many chances to see good players on that hole but maybe they can get it back there without going off the back at all. I just play it like a Par 5 and try to get just short of the green in two and then judge my chip better than I can a long approach shot.

[Mike_Young]

Brent,
IMHO that is one of my favorite green features. I don't care how good a player is he has to be close to the hole to make consistent birdies.  It is much harder for the good player to get close on these types of greens and yet the weaker player can still be somewhere on the green.  Take a front pin on 4 at Spyglass...I don't care how good you  are, if you start trying to get close for birdie a lot can happen..stuck short with a delicate chip or pitch or flop...so a good manager probably just plays middle...college kid at the pin..and weaker player just anywhere on green...the good manager probably takes par...weaker has a good shot a par and the college kid bogies1 out of 2 times.
JMO

[Steven_Biehl]

I believe to make courses tougher it needs to be done around the greens.  I don't think length makes the course that much tougher.  It is possible to add 100 yds to a par 4, and instead of hitting driver-wedge, the player would have to hit driver-6 or 7 iron, and players are still going to hit it close.

Perfect case for defending par at the green: (true story)
This summer at Crystal Downs, a professional player was playing on a Saturday afternoon.  He arrives at 13 and plays from the new back tee just added in the spring.  The new tee gives the hole an extra 40 yds and makes it about a 485 yard, par 4.  The pro makes decent contact off the tee and hits it 360 yards to the middle of the fairway.  From there he has approximately 120 yards to the hole.  The hole location on this particular day was in the back.  The pro hits his approach with a wedge and sticks it on the front to back slope on the back half of the green leaving him about a 13-15 foot putt for birdie.  He proceeds to three put for a bogey.

Crystal Downs tries to keep their green speeds between 9.5 and 10.5.  The greens are pretty consistently in that range.  If they are not, they are generally slower.  Many times in the afternoon the greens slow down to nine or below (the speeds were probably 9 at the time the pro played)

[Patrick_Mucci]

Steve,

100 yards is more then a 3-4 clublength difference.

How many pros with that fellows ability play the golf course on a daily basis ?

I'll take my chances from 15 feet ...... anywhere.
It sure beats 45 feet or off the green.

Contour and slope maintained at a reasonably high pace will always present a challenge, but, as speeds increase, the desire to eliminate contour and slope for the less talented golfer, the average member, will intensify, and the results of that process will be disastrous.