Alternate Greens: Extinct?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Bob Crosby,

The creation of an alternate green for the purpose of using different grass and thus seasonal playability is very interesting.  It would seem to be expensive as well, from both a construction and maintainance perspective.

TEPaul and Tom Doak have indicated why two alternate greens were created, for different reasons.

What are the reasons that these other greens were created ?
Agronomic, maintainance, strategic, marketing, etc.,etc. ?

I also believe Fazio has created an alternate green at the old Delorean property, now Trump something NJ.

[Paul Turner]

Tom Paul

Have you seen the very earliest pics of Pine Valley's 8th hole?  The green was significantly larger with an extra portion on the right, it looks almost like a double plateau.  The green then appears to have been shrunk to give that very narrow, pointed strip in front (which looked impractical) and then that pointed part was lopped off and so the green shrunk again to its current shape.  So small, the alternative green was built.

[Jim Sweeney]

The Old White course at the Greenbriar has an alternate green. Number 16, I think. The original green on the two shotter is a medium to long iron over a widw stream, difficult for resort golf. The alternate is to the right of the fairway short of the river, just a short iron, and the green sits right behind the next tee. I think the alternate was built in the seventies or eighties.

Also, Indian Ridge, a four or five year old layout in Oxford, Ohio, has an alternate on its par four twelfth. The "long green" is a reachable par five, significantly down hill. The "short green" is a mid-to-short iron par four, well bunkered. Sorry, don't recall the architect, but the overall course is pretty solid.

[TEPaul]

Paul:

I've seen all those photos.

Originally, that portion of #8 that stuck well out to the right was greenspace, then very early it was taken out of greenspace.

That portion was a lower tier with a rather severe drop off (from where the present green now is).

Combined with that severe dropoff tier to the right the original green (on the left side above that right dropoff) had a "hogsback" contour running the entire LENGTH of the green! The rear of the green was also slightly higher than it now is creating more back to front slope. It was also shorter back to front which exaggerated the back to front slope even more.

If you can imagine all that, you can certainly see why that original green was also not working very well (even with the far slower greenspeeds). The entire green (although still quite small) was sometimes refered to as an entirely "slippery slope", and there's no question that the portion that's still there was too sloped from back to front.

Alison made a preliminary recommendation to abolish the right section, to extend the green in the rear by seven yards and to reduce the back to front slope. Presumably he intended though to keep the general inline (front to back) contour of the "hogsback" in the basic green section that's still there.

This recommendation was approved and it very well may have been redesigned to Alison's recommendation and specs. However, possibly ten years later the green was again redesigned by Perry Maxwell, who obviously removed the inline "hogsback" and created the present contours which are basiclly two side to side tiers with a small false front.

But the green never actually shrunk, as you said, it was redesigned at least once, maybe twice.

In my opinion, Maxwell, was one of the most imaginative and best green designers and builders in golf architecture's history and what he did on both #8 and left #9 is truly brilliant!

[Forrest Richardson]

Tom's alternate at Pacific Dunes inspired me at a new project (under contruction 2003) to use the green for a short "Bonus 19th" as an alternate for the 18th.

Also, did not see a mention of Virginia CC in Long Beach, CA. I believe Tillinghast is credited with some of the earliest work at Virigina CC -- I've never been able to pinpoint the alternate green as being his work, however.

[Tom Doak]

Mike H.:  There would be almost no difference in the construction cost of two 3,000 square foot greens, as opposed to one of 6,000 sf.  I suspect it would be a little higher because you'd need to build hazards around two instead of one.

However, two 3,000 square foot greens do not provide nearly as many hole locations as one of 6,000 square feet, because so much space is lost on the perimeters.  (If you assume they're all round, and that you can't put the hole less than ten feet from the edge, the larger green gives you approx. 3300 sq ft of cuppable area; the two small greens give you only 1200 sq ft each!)  Therefore, if you're looking for a certain amount of useful area, two small greens are more costly than one.

[Bill_McBride]

I've never understood why the alternate island green was built for #13 at La Cumbre CC in Santa Barbara.  It was #3 in the original routing, a 239 yd par 3 over or along the lake, a sort of Redan with right to left slope funneling toward the green with the water serving as the front left bunker.   The island green wasn't there when I played on the golf team at UCSB (La Cumbre was our home course, this was in the early 60's).  In a number of rounds there during vacations over the years, I've never seen the pin on the island green, where I understand there are waterfowl guano problems.  The hole to that green is much more a modern, straight forward water hole.  Since there don't seem to have ever been guano problems on the original green, I have no idea why the apparently unused alternate green was built.  Maybe Geoff has some information, or perhaps a La Cumbre member visits the site and can fill me in.

[TEPaul]

Bill McBride:

You can find some info on the 3rd at La Cumbre on p. 131 of Shackelford's book "The Captain". It doesn't mention why the alternate green was built though, just that it was.

[Bill_McBride]

Tom, George Thomas built the course I'd guess in 1925 or thereabouts with just the original green.  The alternate was built after I graduated from college in 1964.  I'd guess probably in the 70's.  

[TEPaul]

Bill McBride:

This is what it says in "The Captain" about the original 3rd (now the 13th) at La Cumbre.

Originally built by Thomas as a "cape/redan" of 240 from the back tee, 214 from regular tee and 150 from short tee. There was also a tee at 320 making that option a short par 4.

"This the original third, became the thirteenth hole when the course reopened following WW2, and ultimately survived until 1993. When the club rebuilt the greens and bunkers at that time the supervising architect elected to eliminate the hole, and moved the green closer to the tee. Also built was an expensive alternate green on a small island, which has now been abandoned because the local coots took it over and rendered it unplayable by repeatedly defecating on the green. Who said birds can't express their opinion!"

It looks to me, then, that since Thomas built that hole that it's had three greens over time.