A form of visual deception

[TEPaul]

I'm one of those golfers who actually likes visual deception in architecture even blindness---not always but certainly enough to provide a real spectrum of variety.

A form of visual deception in architecture I do not recall ever being discussed on here is visual deception as to where a flag is on a particular green even you you can clearly see the flag or a portion of it.

I could probably list hundreds of examples but I'm sure you know what I mean. A real skyline green is probably one of the best techniques and easiest to get this effect but there are all kinds of visual tricks to use to accomplish it.

How do you like this kind of visual deception?

I'd be particularly interested in what Tom Doak thinks of it. It's always interesting to ask him questions like this because frankly it's alway pretty tough to tell where he comes from on all types of things to do with architecture.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Tom,

Could you further explain an example or two of how this is accomplished? Can it still be done while a course is using a "red, white, blue" flag system?

A

[Joe Hancock]

Tom,

I thought this thread was going to address the illusion that a post with a lot of words in it is always correct.

 

Joe

[Adam Clayman]

The best example I have seen of this type of deception is on a par 3 hole where the green slopes away from the player. I honestly cannot telll when the flag is center, up front, or in the rear.

[Forrest Richardson]

I agree that both skyline and back-slope greens are some of the best examples. Logically, the verrrrrry long (deep) green is a prime candidate.



Here we built about 180-ft. of green (back to front) and opened the front, but concealed the back portions. With the oncoming wind and green depth, knowing in advance the yardage becomes essential. Also, the large dunes play tricks with scale — what is a 170-yard shot often looks here as if it is just 130-yards. Even when the golfer knows the yardage, a closer-appearing hole will prompt a lighter swing and thus: the tendency to hit shorter.

[Jeff Doerr]

I've always like the partial flag visual deception. A front or side pin that is hidden gives much to think about. Should I play to the middle and take the two putt? If I go at the pin, how far is it from the edge, from the hazard? Can I remember what the slope is like? If I land just long of the hazard/mound, will it kick me beyond the pin? If I land short, could I get up and down?

I like the mini mystery of the partial visual deception.

[TEPaul]

I guess one of the best ways to effect all kinds of visual deception in architecture as to where the flag is happens when you begin to get old and your eye sight begins to go like me these days.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I think the 8th at NGLA accomplishes the deception rather well

Certain hole locations make the flagstick look like it's suspended on a gang plank far removed from the putting surface.

That deception leads the golfer to play overly safe which tends to leave them with an exceptionally long putt that feels uncomfortable, especially when thoughts of DE-GREENING the putt, and the consequences thereof, filter into the golfer's mind.

Some form of blindness, or unusual front and/or rear features can create or add to the deception.

I like the situation where a golfer reads the yardage off the sprinkler cap and still remains uncertain as to how to play the shot.

# 2 at PV might create a similar deception.

The other deception occurs when playing from a highly elevated tee to a lower green.

The 12th at Roxciticus would be a good example.

The yardage is useless and feel alone will determine the outcome.

[TEPaul]

"The 12th at Roxciticus would be a good example."

Patrick:

Excuuuse me?!?

Roxciticus???

Don't you go throwin' around fancy-smancy Latin words with me, Pal. Roxciticus my ass!

[Dean Paolucci]

Tom - The 15th at GRCC creates an interesting deception.  Although the green is quite large, the front bunker runs across the front of the green and continues past to the left.  It gives the player the false sense that a pin on the extreme left has more room to the left and actually obsures the bottom of the flag stick.  The player finds that this front bunker actually fronts and hides another bunker on the left of the green.  Shots played a little to the left are surely in the bunker.

[peter_p]

Tom,
Salmon Run in Brookings OR, Hole 7. The hole is 169 yards and the green depth is 50 yards. The green is flat and level, and the green is at (my) eye level when on the tee. The V brothers would have an advantage Absolute loss of depth perception, even with trees to the side. The only saving grace, if you are smart, is checking the hole location when playing #6.
Mackenzie did a good job at Pasatiempo #7.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom:

There are lots of forms of visual deception which I like, including:

Bunkers which look closer or further from the tee than they really are;
Bunkers which look close to the front of a green, but aren't;
Overlapping bunkers which blend together to distort distance perspective;
Greens which break differently than they look to most people, including greens which fall away from the line of play but appear not to.

However, I am not a big fan of greens where you can't judge the hole location.  I build them often, unintentionally, because I tend to choose slightly elevated locations for greens and any green at or above eye level makes it hard to judge the hole location.  [Macdonald's elevated greens are deceptive for the same reason.]  But I'm doing it to find a well-drained green site, not to fool golfers.  I actually think it's a weakness of my work.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Generally, I find bunker-distance illusions contrived and easily put out of one's mind upon subsequent rounds.

I prefer the absence of visual cues to active deception and for this reason I find elevated greens (often) fun.

Isn't the absence of visual cues an important minimalist strategy to defend par yet create interest (or is it the other way around); i.e., not "minimalism for its own sake" but minimalism as an actual school of design?

Mark

[Jeff Doerr]

I'm a fan of designs that give great visual perception with a good drive or layup, but provide visual deception for a poorly struck or place ball.

So many well designed holes have this critical feature.

[Mark Bourgeois]

I'm a fan of designs that give great visual perception with a good drive or layup, but provide visual deception for a poorly struck or place ball.

So many well designed holes have this critical feature.

Jeff, that's interesting.  Do you mean a poor / nonexistent view to the green, that you have to drive to a certain location to "open up the view"?

Or are you saying there's actually some deception from the wrong angle, like a view to the horizon, particular to the angle, that makes depth perception difficult?

Thanks,
Mark

[Jeff Doerr]

Mark,

Pac Dunes has a lot of what I'm talking about in the first few holes.

#1 is open to the right and short, but if you go longer and more to the left you get a view into the green for you approach.

#2 is safe away from the bunkers on the right, but you are left with an almost blind approach.

#6 Very safe straight away, but you'll have the very intimidating shot over the bunker. By braving the bunker on the right off the tee you are rewarded with a straight in approach to the green.

#9 All kinds of fairway up there, but you'd better be on the side that favors the green for the day.

And so on...

[Robert Mercer Deruntz]

In this era of exact approach shot yardages, the visual deception does a great job of playing with the golfers mind.  It is amazing how many top level players hit poor shots because they could not reconcile the difference between the true yardage and what their visual perception was registering. Barona Creek has a couple of greens where the pins can appear back when they are really front pins.  One of my friends hit it 70ft long on the 7th today because he thought the long miss was safer--wrong, he earned a snake.

[Mark Chaplin]

The simplest form of visual deception performed so well at Walton Heath by Herbert Fowler and James Braid at many his courses is the simple cross bunker 40-70 yards short of the green.

This deception does not take away the run in shot as an option provided you know your distances. Sadly the strokesaver has reduced the impact of this early deceipt by giving us the true distance even when our eyes say otherwise.

[Willie_Dow]

Mark: You and Tom have hit the nail on the head on this one !

Ross bunkering was always the most deceptive, but it has lost its input with the range finder in play.

[wsmorrison]

There is a way to use the toplines of greenside bunkers that gives the appearance of being perpendicular to the line of play when actually they are on a diagonal so that one side is a club or more longer to clear.  I've seen excellent golfers be fooled by such diagonals.  I've also seen them work well with green diagonals where ponds are fronting greens and the green diagonals themselves fool players because it is not apparent that the angle retreats along the line of play.  

With such features, even players that know the course succumb to what their see rather than what they know.

[Tom_Doak]

I agree with Robert, and disagree with those who say visual deception of bunker distances is a lost art.  Even with the yardages firmly in hand, those bunkers introduce an element of doubt, unless you are playing blind.  And doubt is much more dangerous than just guessing the wrong number.

I also agree with Jeff that holes which give you a better look at the approach from one side of the fairway than the other are compelling, which is why I build a lot of them.

[Jonathan Cummings]

I actually think it's a weakness of my work.

Why Thomas, have we found a chink in your armor?  

[Tom_Doak]

Jonathan:

No, you didn't find it, nobody mentioned it except me.

[paul cowley]

I am a fan of the occasional green that falls away from front to back with the green set on a diagonal, with a slight slope or series of level descents that require the player to leave the shot above the hole to get close.....ones that require a feed. In fact I enjoy any hole where I can see the ball run and move across the surface as part of the way to play the required shot. Although we have examples, #4 at Spyglass is probably more recognizable for most here and has some of the characteristics I describe.
Its tough to hit the ball short at times......and this is almost the reverse of what happens when a player has to hit an approach to a pin set on the front edge of a severe false front.

[TEPaul]

"However, I am not a big fan of greens where you can't judge the hole location.  I build them often, unintentionally, because I tend to choose slightly elevated locations for greens and any green at or above eye level makes it hard to judge the hole location.  [Macdonald's elevated greens are deceptive for the same reason.]  But I'm doing it to find a well-drained green site, not to fool golfers.  I actually think it's a weakness of my work."

TomD:

I wonder too why you think that's a weakness in architecture.

There's that old saying in architecture that in some cases it comes down to a form of a chess game between the player and the archiect or perhaps more appropriately between the player and the land. There's deception of all kinds in chess and there's sure plenty of visual deception on natural landforms.

I realize architects may not want to resort to just outright trickery (some may've called it flukishness) in some form of visual deception but nonetheless why not use all the forms of visual deception that various natural landforms offer on their own? (in that sense the tee shot on Maidstone's #17 is one of the best examples of totally natural landform visual deception I have ever seen---in other words the tee shot landing area looks from the tee nothing like what it looks when you get out there. Like the 13th and 14th at The Creek that is also very much predicated on how high they allow the reeds to get at any particular time).

There are a number of holes I know of, and some on my own course where despite playing the course a thousand times I still sometimes can't exactly figure out where the pin is on the green for a variety of reasons.

To me this is great stuff because unlike some of the other examples given on here of bunkers hiding open ground over and past them, for instance, or even the example of Maidstone's 17th those techniques really only fool a golfer once---the first time.

Those greens where it's sometimes hard to tell where the pin may be on them despite playing them hundreds of times are capable of "holding the con", if you know what I mean. I like that and I don't view it as some form of blatant trickery or flukishness in architecture and certainly not a weakness in architecture.

So, I wonder why you view it as a weakness in architecture.

Don't you think that designs that often make you use just your experience and your imagination are some of the best kind?