Great holes new tech has made BETTER?

[Jim Nugent]

In the thread on Pebble's par 5's, I asked whether the new balls and clubs have made number 18 there a better hole.  My reasoning is that pre-modern tech, virtually no one went for the green in two.  Until the late 1990's or so, the pro's virtually always played it as a 3-shot hole.  (Or so I saw on TV.)  The new tech has brought the green more within range:it seems like more players now gun for the green.  More options, more excitement.

Am I right?  More generally, are there any good-to-great holes that the new tech has made better?  For example, is 17 at Baltusrol now a better hole, since more players besides John Daly have a chance to hit it in two?  What about full courses?  Do any courses play better, due to new tech?  

This question might be answered differently for pro's/top amateurs on one hand, and the average-to-good golfer on the other.  

 

[wsmorrison]

Holes where technological advances lead to temptation and a more complex risk/reward equation and resulting scoring disperson are made better.  You mentioned par 5s that used to be 3-shotters and now can be had in 2-shots.  I think short par 4s benefit the most from technology.  Think of the 10th at Riviera.  Although I've never been there, the distances people hit bring a lot of features and options into play that weren't available before gaining so much yardage.  I think a hole like this is probably better than it ever had been and better than intended.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Wayne,

Here's one for you: the 293-meter first at New South Wales.



It's driveable (at least under drought conditions and from the 278-meter blue tees!) but the green is perched up a hill, with a false front, and that bunker front right has its own gravity.  Your drive must take perfect line and speed.  It must make it all the way; if you look closely at the pic you'll notice the green's false front.

Mark

[Lloyd_Cole]

Mark
One great thing about new tech is that plenty of folk now think they can fly a 3 wood 230...

[Tom_Doak]

Wayne:

In that piece I did for LINKS on the tenth hole at Riviera, I was shocked to find out the club and Tom Marzolf are considering lengthening the tenth hole, because they think it's getting too easy for the pros to hit driver up to the left of the green.

But, I asked the Tour for their Shot Link data on the hole, and the facts seemed to bear them out.  Nobody is laying back any more, and there are a lot of cheap birdies on the hole.  The diagram we used for the piece was for the day when the hole was jammed in the back right and cheap birdies are hardest to come by; on other days the players were much more aggressive.

Perhaps for the members it's a better hole because driver is slightly more within the realm of reason, but not for the pros.  Unfortunately, Riviera is thinking about the pros and not the members.

I do agree entirely with Jim's point that the 18th at Pebble is a much better hole because of technology, proving C.B. Macdonald's point that some holes would be better if shortened.  When Watson played it 3-wood, 7-iron, 9-iron with his one-shot lead in the Open, I had serious doubts about the quality of the hole.  Not anymore.

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:

a)  They're good for variety.
b)  People think they are good holes for long hitters, but the opposite is the truth.  They reward a player who hits his drive in the fairway so he doesn't have to give up a lot of length on the second shot.

[Brent Hutto]

This is a dumb question: could someone please explain the purpose of a true three-shot par 5?  I've always thought of them as holes designed to punish the worse golfer without necessarily testing the better golfer.

Well, for short-hitting high handicappers a good solid-length Par 5 is sort of the ultimate test during the round. Every shot I hit from the fairway has about a 1-in-3 chance of being either way short or way offline and maybe a 1-in-8 chance of being an outright duff. So longish Par 5's are exponentially more difficult than even long Par 4's because I know I'll have to execute a tee shot and two fairway shots to get anywhere around the green in regulation and I don't have any length in reserve to make up for a bad shot.

A shorter Par 5 that's "reachable" for the longer hitters loses that unique challenge for me. If I hit a good tee shot and good second shot then I'm rewarded with a wedge approach but if one of the first two shots are bad I can still reach the green with a fairway wood or something. So shorter Par 5's tend to have less dispersion of scores for me than the long ones (with "long" meaning anything over about 460-475 yards depending on terrain).

What I can't judge is whether a similar dynamic applies to players who are both better and longer-hitting. How about the case of a 5-handicapper who can hit driver plus fairway wood 490 yards...when he plays a 560-yard Par 5 is there any significant risk of misplaying his tee shot and/or second shot badly enough that reaching the green with his third shot is a challenge? Because if that would happen even one out of every five or ten times he plays the hole it would be a legitimate test that neither the long Par 4 or short Par 5 varieties of "Par 4.5" holes can provide.

The old truism is that high handicappers love Par 3's and hate Par 5's while good players are just the opposite. I guess that's rooted in the odds of making up for a poor shot by following it with a better-than-usual one. So my question is whether the strong player likes Par 5's because of the possibility of covering "three shots" with two very long ones does it also extend to the case of making a spectacularly good third shot to recover from a poor first and/or second on an unreachable Par 5?

[Mike_Clayton]

The 10th on the West Course at Royal Melbourne is a more dangerous hole now a lot more of the better players can reach the green.
It's 278 meters from memory but it is very difficult to hit the green and unless you find the bunkers itr is usually easier from 70 yards away.

Mark,

The 1st at NSW is not as dangerous at the RM hole and they have now cleared the bush form the left of the drive - it is now more of an open sandy waste but still a really difficult shot from there.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Mike, do you know if 1 NSW originally intended to play as a driveable par 4?

Also, why did they clear the scrub and do you think it improves the hole?  Before vs. after, what range of scores did / do you feel are possible?

I see from Ran's writeup you're a huge fan of RMW 10.

Mark

[Mike_Clayton]

Mark,

I like the 1st at NSW and it works as an opener.The fundamental difference between it and 10 West is that there is only one option of line at NSW - straight.
The only decision is how far along the hole you are prepared to drive.
Downwind its easily reachable for longer hitters and they all go but into the wind no one can reach and probably a long iron is the shot so to avoid the right bunkers.
Clearing the scrub makes the hole look better because the sandy waste looks very good - and what they cleared was not indigenous and the best vegetation at NSW is indigenous.

At 10 West there is a choice to make regarding driving the green but the hole has a mulititde of choices of line - from the front of the green to the right edge of the fairway.
Probably it is about 80 meters of choice with 30 of those meters involving carrying the fearsome diagonal bunker in the hill.

It is a great 10th hole (8th on the original Composite and 12th on the Presidents Cup course. Confused?) and it is clearly much better positoioned where it is than as an opener.
Probably it would be even better positioned as the 15th or 16th for tournamant play.