High fescue rough and the Parkland look

[TEPaul]

Marc Haring started a recent thread about parkland style courses playing like links style courses. His question seemed to be; should a parkland style golf course be allowed to brown out like a links style course to allow it to play as firm and fast as a links style course can and should get?

That's an interesting question and my feeling is a parkland style golf course should not be allowed to brown out to the extent of a links style course.

My reason would be browning out is just not the classic look of the "parkland" style which is a direct golf course architecture adaptaton from some of the great old English and American parkland estates that were generally massive amounts of impressive buiding architecture, English and American landscape architecture complete with huge areas of beautiful lawn interspersed with beautiful gardens, mature trees in various formal arrangements (like the seventeen hundred foot long "allee" of linden trees lining the driveway of The Creek Club), and other more informal and random arrangements.

That type of parkland style and look is impressive but generally a fairly clean look with huge stretches of short mown grass and mature formations of trees.

Do you think high fescue rough areas belong in that aura or environment?

I don't, not at all---it seems to me to be sort of antithetical to the classic parkland look and style.

The fascinating thing about The Creek Club's course (Macdonald/Raynor 1922) is that when one proceeds to the 6th tee and faces the stretch of holes up and down the hill to the Long Island Sound with Connecticut stretching across in a generally bluish hazy hue 5-7 miles on the other side of the LI Sound, the look of links golf takes over with some real visual drama.

From a perpindicular line below the clubhouse stretching from the 6th tee across past the 18th green to the right and down the hill high fescue areas of rough look to me to be a very natural occurence.

At this point, the impressive parkland look of the first five holes is behind you and you are on to a very different aura for a time.

When you reach that perpindicular line that stretches from the 8th green across to the high 14th green, the land breaks down again into the flat sandy wasty natural look of the seaside of the Long Island Sound.

The Creek is really fortunate to have three totally distinct natural looks like this on their course.

It is my feeling that they should continue to highlight those DISTINCTIONS and never try to meld them together in look or homogenize them in look or aura.

In my opinion, high fescue rough areas definitely belong at The Creek but not on the first five hole or on the seaside holes----eg only on the rest.

The first five should have that magnificent parkland look and aura of mown lawn and mature trees, and the seaside holes should have as much exposed natural sand as they can manage combined with natural seaside reeds which they certainly do have in that stretch by the Sound.

The rest should have the high fescue roughs of the links style of golf.

What do you think? Would you rather see and play one melded look and aura, or three naturally distinct looks and auras?

[Jon Wiggett]

Good points made. I can understand the argument against having high rough on such holes but I am not sure that a course going brown is exclusively a 'links look'. Even links courses are green during cooler or wetter weather periods. In summer when it is dry grass will naturally tend to go alittle brown even on Parkland courses unless you add water. So it seems to me to be more a question of how natural or artificial you want the course to look.

[wsmorrison]

"In my opinion, high fescue rough areas definitely belong at The Creek but not on the first five hole or on the seaside holes----eg only on the rest."

I definitely agree that the first 5 holes are of a parkland style and should not have any long fescue anywhere on the holes.  Not only would it be completely out of place, but the contrast when one reaches the tee on 6 and looks out over the sound with native fescue rough and stirring topography is that much greater.  But you say there shouldn't be any fescue on the seaside holes.  I didn't understand what you meant by the seaside holes...below the line between 8 and 14 greens?  If so, I'm not sure I'd agree.  I'll have to come up with some areas I think would look fine on 9,12,13 and 14 but I think there are.  I haven't been there as often as you, but I'll go through my files and come up with an informed proposal.

[JohnV]

Brother Bill,  I have to agree with you completely on that.  The tall fescues look out of place as Tom said and they also grow way too thick in most places in the US.

It is particularly annoying when a club grows the fescue right up to the edge of a cart path so that your drop is in the tall stuff or you are left with your ball on the path and the club having to do through the grass.  Superintendents should at least mow a strip about 1-2 club lengths in width alongside paths.

The other problem with it is that clubs start implementing incorrect local rules like the "Long Grass Rule" that Pumpkin Ridge used to have where you play it as a lateral water hazard, except you could move loose impediments and ground your club if you were in there and found it.

From a USGA Course Rating point of view, we do look at long fescues almost identically to an OB.

[Scott_Burroughs]

Someone who was at Pat Mucci's Hidden Creek outing last
year told me something that Bill Coore said during his speech
regarding this issue.  Bill said that when they put in "fescue
areas" such as described above, they seed them at 1/6th the
rate as 'normal' seeding.  After hearing it, it seemed so
blindly 'obvious' to be brilliant.  Cheaper to seed (and
maintain?) and a much higher chance of finding and playing
 your ball, as you often see in the British Open.  Also seems
like it would speed up play as well.

Might be fewer snakes, too, I don't know.

It certainly didn't surprise me to hear how they do it, since a
few wayward tee shots of mine were found and played from
the fescue areas at The Warren Course last year.

Happened to me on the right of #2:


and between #5 and #13 (on each hole, no less   )

[Dan Moore]

In the Chicago area they are many parkland courses that employ the high fescue rough look.  High praire grasses are native to the area and as such seem appropriate.  

Erin Hills in Wisconsin is touting its "Sea of Fescue" as a natural hazard on a course that otherwise does not have water hazards.  

[SPDB]

Tom: Have you been cribbing my old posts again?

Here's what I've wrote numerous times, most recently
last year:

I've always thought of the Creek as a course in three parts - almost like a symphony.  The first 5 holes on the upper part of the property give you no indication of the rest of the course as they are very different in character. Part of that is because of the parkland nature of the holes. Some people are also turned off by the row of trees guarding the driveway to the right of 5. I've always liked the linear order of  those trees and feel that they provide an interesting challenge off the tee.