Least favorite design feature?

[Mark_Fine]

Doug,
You are right about using grading to direct water.  Flynn did do that with great success at Lehigh, however, I'll let in on a little secrect.  Some of that "stairsteping" as you called it was put in by the Super  

Regarding the interrupted fairways, I am talking particularly about using "rough grass" as the break.  Mounding, bunkers, ravines, quarries, wetlands,...are different and if used sparingly and placed properly are great.  

[ward peyronnin]

Drainage inlets in front of run up greens which means the archie did a bad job of choosing or designing the green site

[Mark Pearce]

"Backwards" holes where you are required to hit a short club off the tee then a longer one to the green are a real bugbear of mine.  The Hunting Course at Slaley Hall, the only recent European tour venue in the North East of England has two of these, the worst being the 13th which, off the yellow tees can play 7 iron, 3 wood.

As to interrupted fairways, the 18th at Ganton has OB crossing the fairway at around 280 from the tee.  Wind behind this can mean hitting a 3 or 4 iron off the tee.  Still love the hole.

[Mark_Fine]

Mark,
I like the 18th at Ganton as well.  Again, I am talking about interruptions like this  



This rough grass interruption of the fairways makes little sense to me?  


That backwards hole you are referring to is "the cart before the horse" style design discussed on the other thread.  

Ward,
I agree with you about drainage basins in front of greens!  To me it shows that the architect never really intended the approach area to play a key role in the design of the hole.  Aerial design!  

[Phil McDade]

Mark:

My local nine-hole muni put in two of these a few years ago, and they are the single dumbest things I can ever recall seeing on a golf course, and I've seen plenty of waterfalls. A strip of rough, 15-20 yards deep (to prevent balls from running/bounding through), across the entire width of the fairway, at the exact landing area for even hacks like me (and I'd wager the average handicap of this course is upwards of 20). And they are on holes with no real strategic options to avoid them -- either purposely hit short of them, or try to fly it, or settle for a good straight drive that ends up in rough.

(One of them is really particularly dumb, because the hole -- a sharply doglegging par 4 -- has some decent strategic merit, at least for a muni -- OB left for a really pulled tee shot, trees bordering the OB, a sizable trap with a high lip at the crook of the dogleg, with some of the longest rough on the course fronting and behind the trap. If you want to avoid the trap and the trouble around it, just aim right -- but that lengthens your second shot -- an uphill one at that -- into a green with a fair degree of slope framed with traps left and right. IT'S A DECENT HOLE, for a muni. With a stupd strip of rough sitting in the middle of the fairway.

[Mark Pearce]

Mark,

I agree, that's idiotic, serves no purpose whatsoever and detracts from the hole.