Playing from one tee into the fairway of another hole?

[TEPaul]

"TEPaul,
Do you recall the sign on the 3rd tee at Seminole?"

Pat:

I do not. There was never anything like that when I was last there, but of course I don't think I've been back to Seminole for maybe ten years now.

When I played there all the time, believe me no one ever would've thought to go down the 4th fairway as a shorter and better route to the 3rd green. Perhaps they've removed too much vegetation between those holes down past the bunkering on the right of #3.

You tell me if all that's still there as it was perhaps 10 years ago and more. I think you said you've known that course for some decades, as I have.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

I hate internal OOB, but just as much I hate it when you can play a hole down another fairway..it sort of feels like cheating..I think there should be one of those "gentleman's"agreements that say you never play a hole down the wrong fairway written into the rules of gole.....just kidding.
I just like it when you play the course the way it was intended , even if that is disadvantageous at times..
I have never played at Somerset Hills, and can quite understand the scenario Jamie is talking about..under competition you do what you have to do...but the hole was designed by the sounds of it as a 3 shotter and by playing down the wrong fairway it becomes a mid length par 4..that just does not sit well with me...{that does not mean I would not do it, if my skimpy length off the tee allowed it}
However, i dislike internal OOB more than I do playing down the wrong fairway, hence the "gentlemen's" agreement theory

[JohnV]

If it weren't for trees, what other holes could be played down an alternate fairway?

The one I've often thought of is #12 at Pasatiempo which could by played down the 11th fairway if not for the trees.

[Tom Huckaby]

If it weren't for trees, what other holes could be played down an alternate fairway?

The one I've often thought of is #12 at Pasatiempo which could by played down the 11th fairway if not for the trees.

JV:  YAHOOOO!  Say it again and give me an amen, brother.  I've been preaching for that one for years.  Remember also sans trees in the barranca, a very viable way to play 11 is hitting the tee shot over into 12 fairway and playing up that side, eliminating the carry for the 2nd shot.

Which is apparently how Bobby Jones played 11... but what the hell did he know anyway?

TH

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

There's now a sign that indicates that play down # 4 fairway is forbidden.

The area between # 3 and # 4 as well as many other areas, was cleaned out rather nicely years ago.

It's mostly sand, with some low lying Sea Grape, some Palmetto and an occasional Palm.

But, with a north wind, or no wind, playing down # 4 provides the shortest distance and the optimal angle of attack into # 3 green.

[Tom Huckaby]

Patrick:

So Seminole has invoked this "gentleman's agreement" that MWP describes?

Fascinating.

So what happens if an errant shot ends up in 4 fairway?  Does one just hang one's head in shame?  Move it back?  Or is that so far away that an errant shot there is impossible?

I've obviously never been to Seminole, but I've seen enough wild shots to believe that NOTHING is impossible on a golf course.  I also play golf with way too many lawyers to believe any gentlemen's agreement could work.

 

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Huck & Pat
I knew it was a good idea....

[Tom Huckaby]

Huck & Pat
I knew it was a good idea....

Michael - it is a GREAT idea!  I just fear if the lawyers and/or big bettors and/or unscrupulous get involved.  

 

[Geoffrey_Walsh]

One example immediately comes to mind...

Playing down #1 on Bethpage Green to #1 Green on The Black.  This isn't an issue at the Open due to the corporate tents but many a player has taken this route (though most do it because of a wicked slice)...  It leads to a shorter approach shot, its easier to hold the fairway, but it requires precise distance control and brings the front right bunker and the OB more into play.

I think they make the first fairway on the Green OB in MET events.

[David Druzisky]

Several years ago the Wendy's Three Tour Challenge was played at the course I designed in Las Vegas.  The 12th hole is a long par 5 with a wash running across the fairway at 280 from the back tees.  It is also up hill but often plays with a little wind help - sometimes opposite.  The par 4 11th play the other direction adjacent on the right.

John Daly (or was it Rich Beem) hit it over to the 11th, allowing him to get a little closer to the green off the tee.  Up to that point no one else had ever thought of that option.  I just laughed, shook my head and put it in the memory banks for future scenarios.

On my recent visit to Oakmont I also picked up on the ability of players to hit into 10 fwy for an approach into 11 green.  I would like to know more about the design of the holes in that area before all the trees were planted.  ??

DbD

[Mike Boehm]

Tom - will you explain the Lon Hinkle reference please. I remember the name, but no more.

Phillip -

Here is some background to the Hinkle Tree from the Inverness Club website:

The 1979 U. S. Open, for better or worse, is remembered fondly because of a tree. The Fazios designed the 528 yard 8th-hole to be a classic, three-shot 5-hole.  The Inverness Burn slices across the fairway beyond the landing area.   It has five tough and deep bunkers in the proximity of the green,

Lon Hinkle saw the hole differently.  He discovered during practice that nothing prevented a player from hitting a tee shot through a narrow opening onto the adjacent 17th fairway, then lofting a long second shot over trees onto the eighth green, a shortcut that cut about eighty yards off the intended track.

After several other players following Irwin used the same shortcut, the United States Golf Association and the tournament called an emergency meeting even before the first round had ended.  Concern for the safety of the gallery and the golfers playing the seventeenth, they considered substantial bushes into play blocking any access to the seventeenth fairway.  Or a tree could be planted overnight to the left of the tee box to plug the existing gap. The latter was the alternative chosen.

Wilbert Waters, the Inverness superintendent, was charged with finding, transporting, and transplanting an appropriate tree. Work had been completed about 5:30 a.m. with the planting of a 25-foot Blue Hills spruce which stood looking a bit scraggly and very out of place.

 - Mike

[JohnV]

Speaking of Daly, I believe that it was he and Greg Norman who both took a route down the 14th hole at the Oregon Golf Club while playing #15 back when Peter Jacobsen's Fred Meyer Challange was played there in the mid-90s.  It seemed crazy given the trees between the holes, but they were able to hit the green in two without having to take on the creek that ran in front of the green.

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

Removing the large (or all) of the trees on a golden oldie turns it into a heathland course which it was when its life began and before architects and green chairpersons started planting trees in fairway bunkers.
I am sure before the trees were planted there were lots of holes that were played from ajoining fairways.
What goes around, comes around.

[Jeff_Mingay]

In regard to Inverness... look at a routing plan of the course.

The Fazio's 8th hole is goofy, 'cause it bends back toward the adjacent 17th hole at left. In other words, the 17th fairway is in the crook of the 8th fairway. Of course a thoughtful golfer (or two, or three, or more...) drove into the 17th fairway to reduce the distance to the 8th green; that's no surprise to me.

With all due respect, those changes made at Inverness during the mid-1970s are a very, very clear "warning" to all clubs with classic courses to be very, very careful when considering changes.  

[Tom_Doak]

The course I grew up on, Sterling Farms, had parallel first and ninth fairways which were very close together.  There was a boundary fence immediately on the left of the first, a 30 to 40 yard wide landing area, and then it fell down a slope to the ninth fairway in the valley below.

It was as dangerous as you might imagine.  Average players sliced down onto the ninth all the time, and also sometimes sliced their tee shots at the ninth up onto the first (or at least onto the bank); good players who had any fear of a hook just aimed down the ninth from the first tee.

I have always tried to avoid such situations as a result of my upbringing.

[Jeff_Mingay]

There's another course I know of with parallel first and ninth holes, where there's a distinct advantage driving into the first fairway from the ninth tee.

The ninth hole, at left, plays straight off the tee then swings right to a green located near the first tee. This is a major error in routing, in my opinion. 'Cause by driving down the first fairway, you can cut off a lot of yards.

So, you know what this club did? Made the first fairway out of bounds when playing the ninth! How goofy is that?!

[Jerry Kluger]

Why am I troubled by what is being written here?  How many threads have there been yearning for the good old days and the great classical courses, the need for tree removal to bring courses back to where the designers had intended them to be, and oh how awful what technology is doing to the game.  Now, everyone is jumping in on how they can cut across holes because trees have been removed and they're using the new balls and drivers which allow them to get into positions which the architect never conceived as a possibility. I think internal out of bounds is wrong but you guys are quickly changing my opinion.

[TEPaul]

Tom H asked;

“Patrick:
So Seminole has invoked this "gentleman's agreement" that MWP describes?
Fascinating.”

TomH:

In most every instance Patrick chooses his words very carefully and for a good reason. Patrick said about playing down Seminole’s 4th fairway from the 3rd tee;

“There's now a sign that indicates that play down # 4 fairway is forbidden.”

If Seminole just wanted to make the 4th fairway OB from the 3rd tee that’s what they would’ve put on the sign on the 3rd tee. But according to Patrick the sign says it’s “FORBIDDEN” to play down the 4th fairway from the 3rd tee. Do you know what that means at Seminole? No, I didn’t think you did. Well, I’ll tell you what it means. It means if you play down the 4th fairway from the 3rd tee Seminole will dispose of you within 24 hours, sell your wife and children into white slavery and take every single asset in your name.

For people playing that course for the first time who are in any doubt as to what the words that Seminole uses actually mean, they do have a little handbook that explains PRECISELY what they mean.

[Tom Huckaby]

TEP:

Aha.  Understood.  Yes the golf rules are very strong, but they pale in significance to Life Rules such as in force at Seminole.

 

Kinda like holing lengthy putts to take bet money from one's host at a certain wonderful 36-hole Pebble Beach private club... "enjoy the view, you won't be seeing it again..."

 

[TEPaul]

Jerry Kluger:

Way to go Pal. You keep right after all these purist hypocrites. You keep your foot on the back of their necks and do not let them up for a single second. There's nothing worse in golf and architecture than totally black and white, tree murdering, purist, hypocrites!

Trees have feelings too, you know?

[TEPaul]

"Kinda like holing lengthy putts to take bet money from one's host at a certain wonderful 36-hole Pebble Beach private club... "enjoy the view, you won't be seeing it again..."

TomH:

Uh-huh, they got some of them down there too, or they did. Now and then when I was down there for Xmas or Spring break my Dad would get me up there to play with this guy who's name I was going to put on here but on second thought, nah!

He was however, one of the richest men in the world. A couple of times before I even belonged to a golf club or had a handicap my Dad would just kinda give me a handicap he thought seemed right and apparently Dad and I beat this guy and his partner out of $6 or $10 one too many times.

So one time Dad sort of reminded me that maybe we should just tank a few bucks to them and we did. When I fished my two bucks out of my wallet and held them up in my hand, this billionare snatached those two buck out of my hand so hard I thought he coulda busted my wrist.

I'll tell you more later. Some pretty interesting stuff, like what he used to do to me later whenever I beat him and how it taught me to be an expert "back-game" player in backgammon.

[Tom Huckaby]

TEP:

Love it.  Fortunately my tanking comes honestly because I suck under pressure.  But stories like this do extend my education.  Please do continue.

 

[TEPaul]

"Please do continue"

Well, uh, I don't know, maybe it's not a good idea. Ahhhh, hmmmmm, let's see, let me think about that a while......

OK

The way he'd get back at me later when I beat him out of a few measly bucks is when we got into the locker-room and got a drink he'd make me play backgammon.

I knew a little bit about this guy all my life, not the least reason being he was so damned rich but Dad filled me in the first time I sat down at the backgammon board with him. Dad said to be careful because he was not only one of the best at Bridge in the country or even the world it was about the same thing in Backgammon (funny how those top players are good at both).

Anyway I had to play against him in backgammon, but don't get me wrong back then I was a pretty fine backgammon player both normally and in a few tournaments. Except when we sat down at the table it wasn't like a two buck Nassau on the course, the stakes were seriously high but I guess I must have been too shy to say I couldn't really afford losing big but seeing as I'd never played him before unfortunately I didn't say that.

Man, was he good---and fast, really, really fast. Later Dad told me he basically had a mind like a well-oiled IBM machine. He didn't have to think for even a second just boom, boom, boom and actually he got a little rude when I had to think by rattling the dice in his cup and figdetting around impatiently. And in about 20-25 minutes he beat me about 4-6 games in rapid succession where the cube got pretty far up there and basically he was skinning me alive monetarily---frighteningly high. And then all of a sudden he demands his money up to that game (had it all in his head) he jumps up and runs behind the bar and out the door.

I said to Dad---what the hell was that all about and Dad said his helicopter arrived right on the minute (as he demanded) and he was out here on his way back to PB.

So in the future when he made me play him for those high stakes in backgammon in those sessions that always seemed to last 20-25 minutes until his helicopter arrived (it was pretty interesting how you could hear it as it hovered down in the back of the clubhouse) what I'd do almost every time is take his double right out the gate and then I'd launch immediately into these mammoth rope-a-dope like "back games" that generally take about 5-6 times longer than a normal game and that way I could hold it to just the loss of  one game in those 20-25 minute sessions before the helicopter arrived and he'd jump up and run behind the bar and out the door. On the way home my Dad would always say; "You held it down to a dull roar again---pretty clever of you."

That's how I became a real expert in the "back-game" in backgammon and how I generally managed not to get skinned alive in 20-25 minutes.  

[Tom Huckaby]

TEP - your legend grows and continues.  Love the stalling techniques - very fine tactical thinking there.  But of course I would expect no less.

 

[TEPaul]

TH;

OK, enough of that stuff. It's time to get back to bombing it into parallel and contiguous fairways to see what might happen both strategically and also if we can avoid injuring anyone.