Is 7900+ yards enough for college players?

[Scott_Burroughs]

Pete Dye's renovation of Ault/Clark's River Course in Radford, VA, Virginia Tech's adopted home course as of a couple of years ago, is going to be a doozy, apparently.  The new version of the course (awkwardly renamed "Pete Dye River Course of Virginia Tech") will be over 7900 yards long from the tips.  That's not a tyop.

Will be interesting to see the course rating from there, when finished.  The addition of 3500 trees to the layout won't help.  

There will be approximately 900-1000 yards difference between the back tees and the next set up.

Originally scheduled to re-open this month, it has been delayed until late July/early Aug due to the cool, wet spring.

Construction pics here:


The original course wasn't short, 7074 yards, but was "easy", at 72.5 122, despite 3 long finishers at 610, 245, and 476.

So, is 7900+ yards enough for the young bombers?  We'll see, I guess.  First should be home matches, maybe an ACC championship within 5 years.  Unlikely to get NCAA's any time soon (if ever), given VT was the host school last year (despite not qualifying   ) at The Cascades.

[Bill Gayne]

Scott,

I was just looking at the distances for a couple of the upcoming Div 1 championships. This year at Caves Valley 6,942 yards and Golden Horseshoe Gold Course in 2007 at 6,817. I've never been to Caves Valley but par for these College Kids at Golden Horseshoe might be around 67-68 with two par fives playing as fours (holes 2 and 6) and two par fours that some may reach off the tee (holes 5 and eight).

Also Caves Valley has a good website for course pictures. www.cavesvalley.net

[Scott_Burroughs]

Bill,

Last year's NCAA Championship was at The Cascades, which is only 6679 yards (though a par 70).

[Sean Leary]

I think it depends on how fast the fairways (and rough play).  If the fairways are firm and the ball is running, it won't be too long.  If it is very wet, and they don't get any roll,  then it would be too much.

Actual yardage often can be misleading based on the conditions.  A 7000 yard course in the NW where I live is brutally long most of the year until it firms (and warms) up.  Then it doesn't play that long

[Scott_Burroughs]

Let's see how 7900+ yards breaks down as a per hole
average.  Assume the course is the "normal" 4 par 3's, 4 par
5's, and 10 par 4's (the original course was).

Par 3's:    4x215 yard average=860 yards
Par 4's:  10x465 yard average=4650 yards
Par 5's:    4x600 yard average=2400 yards
---------------------------------------------------------
Total:  Par 72                              7910 yards

Keep in mind that the per hole average means that
approximately half of the holes will be longer!

[Lloyd_Cole]

Scott
Happy to say I won't be entering any tournaments there... 215 for the average par 3!! Good to break it down this way to see what those numbers really mean to us mortals.

[Lloyd_Cole]

Just a thought that occured to me when thinking - where are the short par 4s?? which made me think of Ganton - which made me check the yardage so I could happily post - Glad to see the kids couldn't win on 6800 yds against a bunch of limeys and older limey dudes..

[Tom_Doak]

As Mike Clayton has pointed out innumerable times about Barnbougle and St. Andrews Beach, it is the shorter holes which have been the most interesting for the good players to play.

All this focus on length [in and of itself] is misplaced.  It's the character of the holes which counts.

[Scott_Burroughs]

Sorry, I didn't mean to confuse anyone with the yardages in the previous post.  I don't know the yardages of the individual holes and thus the actual averages, I just made up some hypothetical numbers to get something around 7900 or so.  The par 3 average could be "just" 200 and the par 4 average higher, for example.

[Jim Johnson]

To quote a couple of GCA posters...

Bradley Klein has written…
“Long holes are boring, or at least they are interesting for only some players some of the time. The best thing that ever happened to tournament golf was the advent of the reachable par-5, what came to be called the par 4 ˝. One of the many ways in which Augusta National revolutionized course design was by championing the cause of the short par-five. Besides, reachable five-pars are fun for middle-handicappers who can have a fair go at the green in two, achieving, for the moment anyway, what they have dreamed about for years. The same now goes for the short four-par. It breathes new life into that great majority of us golfers for whom a green hit in regulation and maybe even a birdie are the exception rather than the rule.”

Tom Doak has written…
“Alister Mackenzie, noted course architect of Augusta National was probably the first golf architect with the perspective of providing fun for the average golfer. He knew there must not be impossible carries to frustrate the golfer, but that there had to be enough formidable hazards to excite the golfer. He knew there had to be potential birdie holes – par-3 holes & short par-4’s – to encourage the weaker player, and that the beauty of the golf course could inspire and console the golfer off his game. Mackenzie’s courses are always sure to include at least a couple of short par-4 holes, relatively easy from the standpoint of par.”

JJ

[johnk]

This has been said before, Tom D. says it above, but I firmly believe that you CANNOT fight length with length!  

If it's college kids that you are worried about, you can exploit a lot of weaknesses in the other parts of their games, but length is not the battleground to fight them on. (Insert appropriate Sun-Tzu quote here...)

If you can get them thinking that things are unfair, or require precision and trajectory control, or encourage greedy plays, you have a much better chance.

College players are a far cry from the Tour top 10 all-around skill level, and so it's a much easier problem to build a course which doesn't depend on length to give them a challenge.

PS. If you changed the scoring system to penalize rounds over 4 hours, you'd have something...

[Matt Kardash]

at the same time, you cannot say that a course is not good just because it is 7900 yards...

[Ken Fry]

I agree that lengthing the course to combat distances the players hit the ball is a fruitless venture.

I will throw this out as food for thought.  Crystal Downs is a course I consider to be one of the most difficult 6500 yard courses I've ever played.  Tom Doak played a round there with Ian Baker-Finch last summer and was amazed at how Baker-Finch turned many of the holes into a chip and putts after his drives.

The college players were talking about are not Baker-Finch, but he's unfortunately not one of the world's best players anymore either.

Crystal's greens are still its best defense, but....

Modern equipment helps players hit the ball long and straight.  The beauty of Augusta's #13 is the risk and reward available, but more importantly the required ability to work the ball for the best position.

I've witnessed a lot of collegiate golf and one thing that amazes me is the kids can't work the ball well.  The equipment they are using certainly doesn't help either.  One dimensional golf with very little imagination.

Ken

[ChasLawler]

Before we denounce this course as stupendously long, isn’t it important to note that Pete’s Ocean Course at Kiawah stretches to a similar length from the back of each tee? But it's never set up at it's full length is it?

I don’t know the first thing about the new course at VT, but I would suspect that it will never be set up at 7900 yards (at least in the next 10-15 years). I would assume that Pete is just designing in a bit of elasticity. If so - this could, and perhaps should be, the design of the future.

Properly designed, wouldn’t a course whose holes could be lengthened or shortened by 80 yards or more with the simple adjustment of a tee maker, provide the ultimate form of variety?

If you have the land and the money, why not use it?

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

Will be interesting to see the course rating from there, when finished.  

To give you an idea, the very, very back tees at The Ocean Course are 7,937 yards.  Slope maxes at 155 and course rating is 79.6.

[Ken Fry]

To give you an idea, the very, very back tees at The Ocean Course are 7,937 yards.  Slope maxes at 155 and course rating is 79.6.

So Mike, what have you shot from back there??    

[Dave Kemp]

A colleague and I just played a new course set to open tomorrow. There are 5 sets of tees ranging from 5200 to 7500 yards.  We decided to play the 4rth set at 6997 yards which is a bit further then I typically would play from.

There were a number of par 4's in the 420 to 460 range as well as 2 par 5's over 660 yards.  But the hole that was most enjoyable, sticks in my mind and had us thinking the most was a short par 4 at 339 yards.  Downhill, sweeping right to left to a green tucked in to a pond right and behind.  Split fairway; left side wider, no bunkers, longer approach into open side of green. Rightside was much tighter, bunkered (including one that was not visible from the tee  )  but left a much shorter approach to green.  On the day we were playing the pin was tucked behind the front bunker so the right approach was a bit trickier.

Point is this is the hole I tell everyone about when asked how was the course?  Not saying the longer holes were a bust, I just appreciated the options and thinking aspects to this hole more than anything else.  

Here's hoping that these types of holes will still be built even when we get to 8000 yards (if we are not there already).  

PS the other joy of the day was explaining what a Redan hole was to my playing partner, something I would not have had a clue about a few months ago.

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

To give you an idea, the very, very back tees at The Ocean Course are 7,937 yards.  Slope maxes at 155 and course rating is 79.6.

So Mike, what have you shot from back there??    

Once, on a dead calm day, I played it one club-length from the back of the back tees (well over 8,000 yards).  I had one of the best rounds of my life and shot a 99.  Only par all day was on No. 2 (with a good up and down).  By the time we got to the back nine, there was a slight breeze into the closing holes.  Because of it, I could not reach 15 or 16 fairway...  It's like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer.  It feels so good when you stop.

BTW, the caddie master at The Ocean Course has shot a 76 from back there.  The guy's got some serious game...

[Geoffrey Childs]

I asked Bill Coore whether he has changed his philosophy on design at all during the course of his career due to changes in equipment.

His answer was for the most part that he had not but he believed that adding yardage by itself would never be the answer and that this would only favor the longer hitters even more.  He said that creating interest in the greens and green surrounds was his method of challenging the "modern game".  I probably did not due justice to Bill's answer but it made great sense.  

PS- The NCAA eastern regionals at Yale last year (6700+ yards) was won by Bill Haas at 3 under par. Yale certainly has interesting greens complexes and defended par quite nicely thank you.

[Scott_Burroughs]

I checked up on this course, as it opened last August, and you'll be happy to hear that the finished course did not end up being 7900+ yards, as orginally published.  It opened up at a pawltry 7665 yards, merely a pitch-and-putt course.

Here's the scorecard:


Four par 4's 488 or longer.  Only one <400 yards....at 399.

CR from tips:  76.2, slope: 138.


Rates for students:  $32-$42.  Rates for students on old campus course in 1985 (my freshman year):  $4.

[Jason Topp]

I appreciated the responses from this old thread.


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forums2/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=17023;start=msg298895#msg298895

[Jeff_Brauer]

I recently did some quick math on how long a course might be using the old "every club in the bag" axiom, Bill Amick and other studies on distances actually played by most golfers, with the average drives of PGA Tour players at 291 yards.  I also used average drives of 260,230,200 and 140 based on a recent USGA study and other data.

Assuming the desire of each player to reach all greens in regulation with good shots while using a variety of clubs, I used:

• Par 3’s range from wedge to about 90% of driver distance,
• Par 4’s range from a potentially drivable hole (110% of typical tee shot distance) to the maximum distance reachable in two shots
• Par 5 holes range from reachable in two to Driver, Wood,  5I

The “ideal” total length might look like this table.  For the forward tees, I did have to adjust upwards to keep the USGA minimum yards for women's par, and on the Pro tees, I had to ignore the upper limits of par, and still, 510 yards might be too short for the longest championship par 4:

Par 3 Holes

260   225   190   170   125
220   195   170   165   110
180   165   150   145   95
140   135   130   125   80

Par 4 Holes

510   475   405   365   290
490   455   390   350   280
470   435   375   335   270
450   415   360   320   260
430   395   345   305   250
410   375   330   290   240
390   355   315   275   230
370   335   300   260   220
350   315   285   245   210
315   280   255   230   205

Par 5 Holes

710   625   555   480   420
650   550   530   470   415
590   525   505   460   410
530   475   480   450   405

7465 6705 6070 5440 4515

You may debate some assumptions – like the long par 3 which some don’t like, or using a wedge par 3.  You might not think that all players should reach all greens, but of course they wouldn't after a duffed tee shot.    

However, these back tee yardages are similar to current PGA Tournament course lengths.  I don't know how they break out their 7400 yards on a typical course, but at least my version has four sub 400 yard par 4 holes!

The other tees may surprise many at how short courses should be for most player groups, but management companies and course operators know that these lengths are pretty effective. In fact, most courses are a about 150-300 yards longer through the middle tees - more like 6850/6300/5700/4800, which is okay, as well.  

Of course, its a highly theoretical excersise, length isn’t everything in golf and neither is total yardage.  It’s not as important to get to any ideal yardage as it is to judge how each hole plays and fits the land. Nonetheless, I think it has some value to this thread.

[Jordan Wall]

Wow.  Looking at the scorecard it is really too bad.  The Par-5's have little and almost no variety in length.  Also, more than half of the par-4's are above 480 yards yet below 495 yards.  If you are going to make a course longer, why not make some diversitry, at least in length?

To answer the question though, yes 7900 yards will be plenty.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Scott,

That's a long golf course.

But, many on this site don't think there's a distance problem, hence, I wonder why they made the course so long ?

[Joe Hancock]

Wow.  Looking at the scorecard it is really too bad.  The Par-5's have little and almost no variety in length.  Also, more than half of the par-4's are above 480 yards yet below 495 yards.  If you are going to make a course longer, why not make some diversitry, at least in length?

To answer the question though, yes 7900 yards will be plenty.

Jordan,

Unless one knows the topography of the course, it is difficult to assume there is no variety in length. Some of those holes might be uphill, while others may be dramatically downhill...or doglegs that can be "nibbled at".

Keep an open mind and try to think of situations that might exist that can create variability.

Joe

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