Golden Age fairways

[BCrosby]

Henry Picard said once that the biggest change in golf was the mower. He seemed to mean large, mechanized mowers used on fairways.

By coincidence, I was reading one of Bobby Jones's books recently where he said that a main reason for the rise of the aerial game was that fairways were being much more closely mown. Players were able to reliably spin the ball. He noted that in his playing days it was virtually impossible to stick a medium or long iron because of the length of fairway grasses. You were forced to find the open entrances to many greens if you were not hitting a highly lofted iron. In other wrds, strategy really mattered. Jones wrote this about 1960.

Picard and Jones seem to be saying much the same thing. They make sense to me.

Why not let fairways grow higher? Put them back to Golden Age heights. It will reduce roll, act as a governor on length and - best of all - make spinning approach shots more problematical. And the grass stays healthier.

What's not to like?

Bob

P.S. I'd bet a couple of beers that FAIRWAY heights at, say, the Masters this year will be lower than GREEN heights during a US Open in the 1920's or '30's.

[Matthew MacKay]

Makes a lot of sense to me as long as the course doesn't 'slow' down so much that it prevents a ground shot from freely running up to the green or that every shot becomes a flyer.  I'm sure there is a happy medium that can be achieved, especially if the ground is firm.

[Marc Haring]

Couldn’t agree more.

Also you’d get faster rounds with less balls running into trouble, and you would actually encourage the ground game big time. If you get fairways that stimp at around 9 as they did at TOC in 2000 no one can play a bump and run because the fairways are way too fast to control the ball. Slow them down and the ground game especially from 100 yards in becomes so much easier and fun to play. That’s one of the main reasons why the bump and run was played so much those old days. It was a much easier shot to play.

One other thing. You’d get the weaker players enjoying their golf much more. They love a bit of grass under the ball when they hit the fairway as it makes slightly heavy shots more forgiving.

[JESII]

Bob

Do you think Henry Picard may have been referring to the quality of mowers cuased the biggest change in golf. It seems that as mowers improved they would be able to cut grass at lower heights on both fairways and greens. Why do you think he meant "large mechanized mowers used on fairways"?

Oversaturation is the #1 reason the ground game is no used as frequently as in Jones' playing days. Fairway height does play a role, but it has become all too frequent for a player to hit their ball out of the rough with any club and land it on and keep it on the green. Take away that ability and you bring back the ground game and increase the strategic decisions that follow.

Jim

[BCrosby]

JES II -

Certainly over-watering is another reason for the rise of the aerial game. Jones talked about that too.

But new to me was the notion that fairway heights was also a factor. I was surprised to learn that fairways are cut appreciably lower now than they used to be. But apparently they are. Jones seemed to be saying that stopping a well-struck six iron from the middle of the fairway was a much riskier proposition in 1930 than it is today. (All other factors being equal.) Remember, he was writing in 1960. In terms of equipment technology it was still apples to apples.

You often can't control the saturation of a green. It rains. But you are totally and completely in control of how closely you cut the fairways.

On the theory that every little bit helps, why not let fairways grow? Make it part of the maintenance meld arsenal. (Used with permission from TEP.)

What's the downside?

Bob  

[JESII]

Bob

"What's the downside?"

I guess the downside is you are reducing the reward provided to the player who hits the fairway. Is this the end of the world? No. I am not suggesting it is a fairness issue, but to preserve the value of accuracy there should be a substantial reward for it.

I don't have a problem with fairway grass cut at a longer height, so long as a significant reward remains.

Could this approach pass the litmus test on a first rate course? Tougher question, but I would not have a problem with it.

Jim

[Mark_Fine]

Good idea but the type of fairway grass will play a roll especially if you have bent.

[TEPaul]

Bob:

What an interesting idea. I sure never thought of that. What's the downside? Who knows, maybe nothing except the world of golf seems fixated on grass that's shorter and shorter. As Mark Fine said maybe this new genetically whatever grass golf uses today has to be cut fairly short compared to the old days to do well. The only other downside I can think of is obviously TORO and Jacobsen would be madder than hornets and looking for someone to sue over restraint of trade!  

[BCrosby]

Another interesting twist to this:

If you let fairways grow a little higher, if you make spinning the ball a little less predicatable, you reduce the need for high, penal grass in the roughs.

Higher fairway heights would make wider fairways more feasible; and at the same time reduce the need for roughs where you grow grass to penal heights (3-4 inches).

Which, when you think about it, gives you exactly the kind of wide fairways found on Golden Age courses.

I think that is also part of what Bobby Jones was getting at.

Bob

[Kelly Blake Moran]

I believe the bents have a maximum height at which they can be maintained beyond which you begin having problems with thatch.  MacKenzie spoke of Machrihanish where the rabbits maintained the turf, the fairways were not cut or rolled, no fertilizers, other than natural, and he speaks of them being perfect "one's ball sat up on the closely cropped turf in a remarkable manner".  He did not mentioned the ground game but I assume maybe part of what made the turf perfect was that is allowed the ground game to flourish.  He spoke of the approaches being of the same consistancy as the greens, and that the texture of the greens and fairways should be perfect.  However, someone in the Doak/Scott/Haddock book said that he would be aghast at the effort and expense that is employed today to reach his ideal set out in his 13 principles.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

I can tell you the major down side, and anybody who listened to this weeks telecast will probably know aht I am going to say.
Faldo was talking about the lost art of hitting the fairways, following Vijay's remark that the most pointless stat on tour is % of fairways hit.
The argument is that the long hitters just boom it and dont worry, because they just have a wedge left even if it is out of the rough.
Faldo was saying speed up the fairways so that balls start running into the trouble areas..deepen the rough for the same reasons and then firm up the greens so that control of spin begins to matter again.

With longer grass on the fairways, you will again be punishing the shorter straight hitters, who hit the fairway and now have less ability to spin the ball ..thus limiting their reward.

I thought Faldo was superb this weekend, clearly he knows more about the golf swing than anybody on the air, his comments on Tigers swing were spot on and great.
He was able to make commenst about Tiger's ball flight as soon as the swings were over without having to see the ball..he knew that Tiger'shot on 18 was a shocker as soon as the ball left the clubhead, if it wasn't for his insight, one of the other commentators would have called it a great lay up!!

[TEPaul]

Regarding fairway widths, here's an interesting little nugget on that score from my course, Gulph Mills G.C. (Ross 1916) that was just supplied to me by that excellent Philadelphia researcher Steve Sayers of LuLu (the oldest Ross course in the state of Pennsylvania).

Ross routed and designed our course but his modus operandi back then was to recommend that as GMGC began to prepare to construct the course they go steal who Ross felt was the best superintendent in Philly at that time---the greenkeeper at Philly Cricket. That we did but the course's real overseer on a daily basis was actually a member of GMGC called Weston Hibbs. Hibbs was obviously sort of our club's little George Crump---he was there every day monitoring things as the course took three years to open (although this period was through the USA's 19 month WW1 participation when most golf course construction was basically shut down).

Anyway, our club minutes from the beginning show that Hibbs was a most comprehensive man about everything, he did extensive collaborating with other clubs in the area at that time as to how they did everything and he actually recorded the dimensions of everything including the averarge green size in feet, the acres of rough to be cut, the amount of seed needed for greens and fairways and the amount of fairway acreage and the average width of fairway.

(Steve found this recorded in American Golfer by "Hazard" (Tillinghast)).

As Ross designed the course and as it was built the fairway acreage was 45 acres and the average fairway width was 65 yards.

I think we're down to around 30 now, maybe a little less, and the average fairway width today is probably just a tad over 35 yards!!

[JESII]

As Ross designed the course and as it was built the fairway acreage was 45 acres and the average fairway width was 65 yards.

I think we're down to around 30 now, maybe a little less, and the average fairway width today is probably just a tad over 35 yards!!

Amazing Tom,

GMGC with 65 yard fairways, I'd would love to see it that way again. That methodology has vanished for a variety of reasons, what would it take at the club level to bring it back. HVCC would be a great place to have 50-75 yard wide fairways, because the combination of firmness and contour make it extermely difficult to hit many of them at their current 30-35 yard width.

People will argue that this plays more into the hands of the 'long and wrong' player, and to an extent that is true but the fairways could be widened so that the balls running away from the ideal approach position are met with increasingly difficult angles. Sure, Shivas may argue that his wedge is going to have no problems with the bad angle, but I think the heart of the game is (or should be) to reward the player that filters through all the visual distractions and finds the best way to play the hole. I am not a fan of the hole that punishes the player (with an extreme hazard of some sort) for hitting his ball off-line when he is not a player who should be expected to hit his ball on-line.

The width aspect of the Golden Age Fairways is the most appealing to me. I personally do not think longer fairway grass will accomplish the goal of reducing the distance gap, or have much affect on a players ability to spin the ball enough.

[TEPaul]

"Amazing Tom,
GMGC with 65 yard fairways, I'd would love to see it that way again. That methodology has vanished for a variety of reasons, what would it take at the club level to bring it back?

Jim:

What would it take for GMGC to bring that kind of fairway width back? Weeellll, it would take more of the same old nagging and pain-in-the-ass harrassing of people on my part over there to do it!

Actually, the last phase of the restoration was the restorative recontouring of a number of our fairways to more width but due to a budget overrun last year that's apparently put off until '06 which only serves to perpetuate another year of nagging and pain-in-the-ass harrassing on my part of people over there to be sure to not forget about it or put it off so long I'll be dead!

We never intended to go back to a 65 yard average though, just to do it on holes where it makes real strategic sense. I've never actually been an advocate of hugely wide fairways just as a standardization, though. I think the width of a fairway should be carefully considered from a strategic standpoint for all and logically some might be best very wide and others quite narrow----it all depends on what a hole and particularly a green and green-end is giving you or telling you strategically.

Plus, I feel varied fairway widths (some very wide and others not) is an excellent application of variety in golf architecture. It serves to keep golfers always thinking and hopefully always looking for strategic meaning on any and every golf hole----at the very least hopefully making them guess or question why some are wide and others aren't.

But if you haven't been to GMGC recently come on over in the spring. We did recontour #3 back to what it once was. We took trees out on the right and expanded the base of the fairway down near the creek back to 67 yards wide!!

I don't think anyone is completely sure today why most all those fairways back then were all so wide when strategically some don't appear to need to be. Some simply think it might've had a lot more than most realize to do with the fact that the big tractor drawn "add-on" gang mowers they used back then were just really wide----much much wider than anything you or me have ever seen today!

[JESII]

Tom

I was last at GM in 2000, I don't remember anything about the 3rd fairway then so I assume the expansion was made since then. Where did you add the width? To the right and short of the creek?

Using GM as our example, which holes would you change the fairway widths from their current? Which would you make wider and which would you make narrower?

I have always looked at fairway width in this perspective: If the rough is virtually no penalty, the fairway can be as narrow as you want. If their is a measurable penalty for missing the fairway, the fairway should have ample width for the bogey player to get a reasonable percentage of their drives in it. These wide fairways should provide an increasingly difficult approach for the scratch player the further he wanders from the ideal approach position on that fairway.

[TEPaul]

"Tom
I was last at GM in 2000, I don't remember anything about the 3rd fairway then so I assume the expansion was made since then. Where did you add the width? To the right and short of the creek?"

Jim:

I think we began doing the course restoration in 2002. The added width on #3 is way down on the right. Remember those pine trees down near the 150 yard stake? They're all gone now and original fairway is back where they were.

[JESII]

Is that on the green or tee side of the creek? I feel like the 150 marker would be on the green side of the creek, but maybe it's just because I typically lay well back off the tee.

[TEPaul]

It's on the tee side of the creek, but we've exapanded fairway on the right over the creek too (or we will) to match the line way right before the creek. I will go through the course and tell you where we plan to expand fairway and where I'd like to see it and why but I'll have to do that later.