C&C and internal green contours...

[John Kavanaugh]

I hate em...what do you think..and why..

[Ryan Farrow]

WHY.

[John Kavanaugh]

They are not natural and slow down play..

[Patrick_Mucci]

JakaB,

What about the greens at Sand Hills is unnatural ?

In the same vein, what about the greens at Friar's Head, Southern Hills and Hidden Creek are unnatural ?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Barney is right that internal contouring, which is great, has some practical problems on any course not intended to be "top 100" in maintenance, cup areas, and speed of play.

It is no longer possible to build a course that is all things to all people.  Green contours and a lot of other things are dictated by the design program and intended clientele.

I hate to debate what is natural.  I guess Sand Hills comes as close as any in many cases.  

In other cases, the little "Internal Bumps" could be very unnatural on sites with long flowing contours.  Do we build steep greens on steep greensites, and flat greens on flat holes, or build the same contours (or perhaps more to compensate for the otherwise easier flat hole?) on each?

[Bill_McBride]

Jeff, are you suggesting that green designs be dumbed down if the course is not intended to be Top 100?

In my opinion it works the other way -- the really interesting greens complexes and course designs overall lead to high ratings.  

I don't play enough of the moderns to really know that's the case, but I've played enough C&C and Doak courses to know the greens aren't flat by any means.

[SPDB]

John:

Since when did you become such a naturalist?

[cary lichtenstein]

I've posted on this before, so I repeat, a 35 foot putt with 5 breaks is impossible to read, so I just take an overall look and hit it. Otherwise, I'd have to spend all day, calculating each break.

I can handle 2 breaks, that's enough and I give more credence to the 2nd one as the balls slows down.

Dye did this on the 14th hole of the River and I hated that green and he did it early on at the TPC but the pro's rebelled and he changed the contours.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff Brauer,

I think the critical phrase in your response is:

INTENDED CLIENTELE.

Which begs the question.

Is it all about the money ?

Is good, or creative golf course architecture compromised by the need to get X amount of golfers around the golf course in Y amount of time ?

[John Kavanaugh]

Patrick,

I have only played Bandon Trails and Cuscowilla..

[Peter Pallotta]

"Do we build steep greens on steep greensites, and flat greens on flat holes, or build the same contours (or perhaps more to compensate for the otherwise easier flat hole?) on each?"

Jeff,
for what it's worth, from an non-architect to an architect, those seem to me the important (and practical, and unavoidable) questions. As I asked about on another thread, right now 'heavily contoured" seems to be the answer most often given. I'm not sure why.

Peter

[John Kavanaugh]

Barney is right that internal contouring, which is great, has some practical problems on any course not intended to be "top 100" in maintenance, cup areas, and speed of play.

It is no longer possible to build a course that is all things to all people.  Green contours and a lot of other things are dictated by the design program and intended clientele.

I hate to debate what is natural.  I guess Sand Hills comes as close as any in many cases.  

In other cases, the little "Internal Bumps" could be very unnatural on sites with long flowing contours.  Do we build steep greens on steep greensites, and flat greens on flat holes, or build the same contours (or perhaps more to compensate for the otherwise easier flat hole?) on each?

I can't even begin to explain the genius in the above post.  I am afraid we are beginning to see courses built for raters that suck for the members.  The formula to make one time visitors happy that are too cool for the golfing room is killing the everyday player who would love to grow old at a club.  Nobody eats pheasant and caviar everyday..or wants to.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

I can't even begin to explain the genius in the above post.

This is because you are a complete idiot.

[Patrick_Mucci]

JakaB,

MY test of a good to great golf course is:
Do I want to go to the 1st tee as soon as I leave the 18th green ?

That was my feeling the first time I played Maidstone and Hidden Creek, and a few others.

Hence, I don't think courses are built for the one time player.
Noone wins if that's the case.
The lure is the desire to play the golf course again,  and again, and again.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Barney is right that internal contouring, which is great, has some practical problems on any course not intended to be "top 100" in maintenance, cup areas, and speed of play.

Jeff,
I totally disagree with your analogies which wreek of a typical commericialistic golf architecture for the masses attitude. This is why most don't understand Great Golf Architecture when compared to mediocre new architecture whose only positive statement is in its newness, just like one sees in a brand new Yugo or new pair of Kenney's shoes.

It's not hard to examine that putting surfaces, while they do evolve during construction they work from every aspect of strategy in the fairways. This is why Hidden Creek falls on deaf ears for some. They don't understand that tacking the strategy in the fairways for the best approach to get to the hole is what GREAT golf architecture is all about. It's not just about a green built with a bunch of humps for all to go goo-goo-gaa-gaa over. It's about--as Wethered & Simpson detail it in 'Architectural Side of Golf,' ATTACK AND DEFENCE.

While it must be a great thing for some of you to get to realize the dream of designing and building your own golf courses--for a living no less, to agree with such an ludicris statement from someone that is only doing it for attention (a mental 'thing') isn't what I would call sticking to a principle. It's more of hiding behind a lack of knowledge of what made the Great old courses GREAT.  If you don't believe me, look at NGLA and Shinnecock and tell me that those two completely different types of architecture don't rely on strategy and defense at the green, from the fairway.

If your going to build a green, build one that works, not one you think looks neat but doesn't work with the architecture. Last year I had the unfortunate luck to see a green on a Billy Bell Sr. course that bore absolutely no resemblence to anything Bell had ever done in his career. It didn't work in any form other then maybe as a practice green situated next to a clubhouse--if it would have been near the clubhouse! From the fairway there was no definition to detail and strategy or challenge. It was just blind mounds and some severe humps in the green--not to mention it was bigger then the state of Indiana. Yet this green met so much favor with a participant here on GCA, tha he called it the new champ in greens for the area.

Statements like that prove that architecture talk on GCA have reached a all-time low.....

I'm going to leave you with two quotes which you should more or less get past who said it and mostly just study what they are saying:

“The character of the putting greens and their approaches mark the quality of a course to a far greater extent then anything else.  No matter how excellent may be the distances; how cunningly placed the hazards, or how carefully considered has been the distribution of shots, - if the greens themselves do not stand forth impressively the course itself can never be notable.”

and:

The right length of holes can always be adapted; after that the character of a course depends on the building of the putting-greens. Putting greens are to a golf course are what the faces are to a portrait.  The clothes the subject wears, the background, whether scenery or whether draperies – are simply accessories; the face tells the story and determines the character and quality of the portrait – whether good or bad. So it is in golf’ you can always build a putting green.  Teeing grounds, fairway, rough, etc., are accessories”

Now, which is the broader reasoning to define GREATNESS: Those two intellgient quotes or some derrainged lunatic who clearly has a penchant for creating mass havoc wherever he goes because he thinks he is smarter then everyone else and funnier then everyone else to coincide?

[Kirk Gill]

Mr. Kavanaugh - give them credit for being able to do different things at different courses. Colorado Golf Club opens this year, and from what I've seen the greens there will be a subtle bunch. There will surely be internal contours, but you'll find few if any buried elephants.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "not natural."

[John Goodman]

I don't understand why your principal points really relate to the question, Tommy.  I agree with the two quotes . . .

Ive only played Cuscowilla (I'm going to Bandon in the fall).  At Cuscowilla I didn't really notice internal contour very much, being more taken with the fine green surrounds on many holes as well as the puzzles that are out there on approach (thinking of 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14 and 15 in particular).  Such negatives as I have with the course don't relate to internal contour on the greens.

[John Kirk]

John K.,

For one thing, I'm not exactly sure what internal contour means.  Does this mean greens that possess additional ridges, slopes, and contours, beyond the gradual sloping that green uses to fit the land it occupies?  Or does it mean contours that do not extend all the way to the green's edges?  I'd like to see someone define this.

Without some variation in contour, the greens will have constant slopes, and yield putts with parabolic trajectories all day long.  That's boring.

I like variety.
I like putts that barely trickle downhill, and putts I have to really hit hard uphill.
I like putts that are interesting and difficult to read.
I especially like putts that fool me.

Although I agree with Cary that putts that break five times are excessive, I don't think I've ever encountered a putt of that type.

I think I like internal contours.  And I agree that it can be overdone in places.  I liked the greens at Bandon Trails.  Some were pretty simple.  #11 is amazingly flat.  #5 and #16 are very complex.  Good variety, yielding a good variety of putts.

The other JK

[Jonathan McCord]

   Personally, I think internal contours in greens can be very interesting and fun.  The contours add a challenge and a welcome releif to greens that primarliy slope in one direction or have different tiers.

   The sixth green and Crystal Downs, is perhaps, one of the best examples of great internal contouring.  It sits just below the 4th hole on pretty mundane ground, and has a number of very small humps and hollow.  Even on this green, the only way you are going to get a "5 way-breaker" is to be at least 50 feet away from the hole.  I love internal contours!

   John K. - Is it C&C's internal contouring you dislike, or internal contours in general?

[Ryan Farrow]

I was recently looking through a resort golf book/ picture book and stumbled upon this quote.

“Every green is its own individual fingerprint. Some are undulating, some are two levels, some are three, some slope gently from front to back and some from back to front. You’ll never say, I’ve played this green already.”

-From John Haines, head golf pro at Teton Pines

JK, are you trying to say you want more variety and not just a roller coaster ride green after green?

[Kelly Blake Moran]

Green contours and a lot of other things are dictated by the design program and intended clientele.
  Do we build steep greens on steep greensites, and flat greens on flat holes, or build the same contours (or perhaps more to compensate for the otherwise easier flat hole?) on each?

Jeff,

When you come up with another formula(s) to address this situation please don't print it, just keep it to your self.

Tommy,

God bless you.  I was just perusing "The Spirit of SA" last night, it is the same as reading the Bible before bed, and read something regarding green contours and green surrounds and it really hit home to me and seemed to say what I am believing but so much better and more intelligently, and much to my chagrin all that I read I had not yet underlined!  The rest of the book has much underlined but not what I reread last night.  I guess we are forever growing...for better or for worse.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

KBM,
HALLELUJAH!

[John Kavanaugh]

If you have to read a book to like a green something is wrong.  I don't have anything against C&C in particular and have only seen a couple of their courses but just don't like some of what I have seen.  I'm a horrible putter and like to read break with my feet...sorry.

As far as my natural comment goes I'd like to see greens that appear to be the result of either wind or water erosion...kind of a constant flow here or there.  C&C greens remind me of the texture of kitty litter after you kick the box...no rhyme or reason for the flow.  I don't like this new fad of random randomness...sorry again.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

JakaB,

How do you read break with your feet on 10-20-30-40+ foot putts ?

Don't play WFW.
It's one of the most difficult sets of greens to read that I've ever played, and playing barefoot won't help you much.

If you read putts with your feet, which I doubt, that would explain why you call yourself a bad putter.

You start reading greens before you even reach them.
It's a process not confined to foot work.
It also involves the surrounds and sight.

See, see the ball, be, be the ball.

[Chris Moore]

John K.,

For one thing, I'm not exactly sure what internal contour means.  Does this mean greens that possess additional ridges, slopes, and contours, beyond the gradual sloping that green uses to fit the land it occupies?  Or does it mean contours that do not extend all the way to the green's edges?  I'd like to see someone define this.

Seems to me that all contouring on the short grass is "internal", and all contours not on the green are external.  I asked this very question a few months ago.  The answer I got was that "internal" contouring was not tied into the contouring in the areas surrounding the green, which makes some sense, but still doesn't make "internal" a proper word to describe the contours on a green.  Why not just use green contours?

I am just too stubborn to accept the term.