A Tillie Quote - Does It Stand To Reason?

[Sean_A]

Often when reading old Tillie articles one gets the impression he was waging a war on the old guard of golf - ie the Brits.  It almost comes to the point where he overplays his most ambitious card.  However, sifting through the articles reveals some little gems.  

"If the putting greens are trapped properly fewer pits along the fairway are necessary.  But the contouring of greens is quite as important as the scheme for guarding hazards.  Often, it is considered sufficient enough to raise a green in the back, but the flares on the sides are vital factors, holding on one side and throwing off on the other."
- Golf Illustrated August 1921

I know most on this site would expect any self-respecting archie  to adhere to the second principle of the quote.  One element of the quote is a bit surprising and it makes me think that perhaps our modern idea of why greens were often given higher backs was to save help keep balls on the putting surface.  I wonder if that was indeed the case.  I expect drainage flow was helped, but could there be other strategic reasons for higher backs?

As many of you know I am very skeptical of the way bunkers are often employed in design and in fact, I think the heavy reliance on sand has been bad for architecture.  In effect, design concepts can be stifled because its easy to stick in bunkers when perhaps a bit more creativity would do better.  This is why I am very intrigued by the first sentence of the quote.  Many of you support the idea of defending courses at the greens.  This first sentence "If the putting greens are trapped properly fewer pits along the fairway are necessary." is such a breath of fresh air.  How do people feel about idea?  Does it stand up to scrutiny and is it a realistic concept in the modern game?

Ciao

[wsmorrison]

I suspect the green complexes at Augusta National were the reasons there were so few fairway bunkers (as well as greenside) in the original iteration and even through today.  Gravity golf was enough for that topography and proper restraint was shown in the fairway bunkering.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Sean,

For such a brief quote, there is a ton of thought.

I'm all for the strategic school of design, which is I think how you would characterize his comments regarding bunkering around the green minimizing the need for fairway bunkering. (Of course, the terrain will have something to say on this, yes?)

The discussions on changes at Augusta led me to believe that, for the pro game at least, many on here believe these concepts such as espoused by Tillie no longer are effective.

Regarding green backs, I'm very interested in amphitheater greens given recent discussions on MacKenzie.  My sense is he selected green sites for natural amphitheaters, then bunkered the back to add challenge and fear.  I also wonder whether back bunkering contributed to the visual deception you see on so many of his greens: huge greens that appear small.

(I am just fascinated by his use of greenside bunkering to utterly change the appearance of greens -- often making greens appear, and sometimes even play, smaller than their effective square area.)  Some of those bunkers start right at the back of the greens, presenting the golfer with a sand shot to a downhill green.)

Mark

[wsmorrison]

I think most greens slope back to front, so I don't know how that is such a revealing comment.  I know one exception.  At Tillinghast's design for Sunnehanna CC, many of the greens were not raised in the back but instead the greens sloped front to back.  

While I recognize it is preference and there's no right or wrong, I think MacKenzie's desire to use natural amphitheaters was taken too far as he also had a propensity to make wholly unnatural berms behind greens with bunkers.  I cannot see how there was any deception in the design practice.  Many of these clearly framed the greens and gave a definite distance perspective.  Granted, bunkers behind greens lead to a difficult recovery back to the greens.  In MacKenzie's era, with little irrigation and firm greens, hot running shots would skip over the greens and probably ended up on downslopes at the back of the bunkers.  This was far more penal than the fate suffered by average golfers that were short of the greens on their approaches.  I like shallow bunkers behind greens at green level.  There is a chance for recovery without hitting off a downslope and controlling the ball flight is a bit harder than on a steep upslope to the green if the ball just trickles over.

[Mike_Cirba]

There are a number of greens at Philadelphia Cricket Club that have pronounced back to front slope, as well as others with some significant side to side.  

What a set of wicked, wicked greens and fantastic use of natural topography on a very undervalued course.

[Mark Bourgeois]

I think most greens slope back to front, so I don't know how that is such a revealing comment.  I know one exception.  At Tillinghast's design for Sunnehanna CC, many of the greens were not raised in the back but instead the greens sloped front to back.  

While I recognize it is preference and there's no right or wrong, I think MacKenzie's desire to use natural amphitheaters was taken too far as he also had a propensity to make wholly unnatural berms behind greens with bunkers.  I cannot see how there was any deception in the design practice.  Many of these clearly framed the greens and gave a definite distance perspective.  Granted, bunkers behind greens lead to a difficult recovery back to the greens.  In MacKenzie's era, with little irrigation and firm greens, hot running shots would skip over the greens and probably ended up on downslopes at the back of the bunkers.  This was far more penal than the fate suffered by average golfers that were short of the greens on their approaches.  I like shallow bunkers behind greens at green level.  There is a chance for recovery without hitting off a downslope and controlling the ball flight is a bit harder than on a steep upslope to the green if the ball just trickles over.

I find a green benched into a hill appears much smaller than it actually is.  I'm not sure whether bunkers in the back contribute to this deception, but they sure do make life tough.

Here are a few examples of what I'm getting at.  Doesn't the green appear the tiniest of slivers between these two bunkers?  There's actually a fair amount of room.



The green pictured below is around 10,000 sf, but it appears much smaller. In fact, this green on approach appeared to my mind's eye around 100 yards -- disbelievingly, I looked at the 150 plate near my ball.


As to back bunkers, how bout these nasty catchers mitts -- Sean, I don't think the purpose of high backs was to keep balls on greens, certainly not when bunkers were placed back there...









Mark

[wsmorrison]

Mark,

I think that skyline greens and falloffs behind greens lend a lot more drama and interest, in a sense providing the opposite effect of mounds and bunkers behind greens.  Removing the distance indications.

Sure, that's a great feature on occasion, but the steep upslope on the back side of such bunkers is overly penal.  Maybe he meant that for higher class players that didn't control the distance very well (higher handicappers probably don't go over greens).

Flynn used subtle pull-ups (as if a string was pulled and the ground rose) at points around greens (not just the back) a lot more than mounds and bunkers.  These pull-ups, like the systematic mounds/bunkers frame the greens, add slope into the greens and helped with drainage.  

Flynn and Wilson used bunkers behind greens; sometimes with mounds (#3) on holes (1,4,5,6,10,13,14 and 17) at Merion East for instance.  But the bunkers were shallow at green height.

[Phil_the_Author]

For Tilly, the most important aspect to designing a green complex lay in the entrance to the green. In fact, after choosing a location for a hole's green, he first planned the entrance before anything else.

One of the main reasons for this was the nature of the game when he was designing courses. Typically, second shots into par-4's were played with a longer club and fly into the green at a much lower angle and far fewer revolutions to it than today's balls. As a result, a ground game, at least at the green entrance, needed to be given some consideration.

Tilly, as your single quote shows, believed that the sides of greens were as important, and many cases even more so, than the interior undlations from front-to-back (or the opposite).

A great example of this is the 1st green at Winged Foot West. By flairing the sides of the green to the side, anyone whose shot would come from a dirction other than the extreme right side of the fairway would typically find their shots ending up of the green and possibly even in the bunkers on either side because of the angle of flight played into the direction of the undulations.

To me this aspect of course design has been effected more than any other by equipment advances. With balls coming into greens higher and with far more spin they can hold on greens even when played from angles that the designer wanted to punish.

With the ball flight lower and less spin back then, this also meant that the back side of green complex design carried a more significant role than in today's designing as balls would more often both go to the back and even go over. That is why Tilly designed many of his greens with severe back and side drop-offs and put many bunkers on the back side of the green. A very good example of this was at 5 Farms.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Phillip,

good explanation.  

I think in simpler terms, Tillie is saying that most greens are front to back to help hold/stop a shot but that you can create a preferred fw position simply by also sloping a green right to left of left to right, making it easier to hold from one side of the fw than the other by virtue of hitting into the upslope, rather than hitting into an effectively level, or slightly falling away slope to the far side.

I think if you look carefully, many greens by several designers are actually concave (raised a bit on both sides with a valley in the middle) as well as raised in back all to help hold any shot that hits the green on the green, which helps average golfers more than they know.

Making only one side concave does enhance strategy for the better player considerably, and they are probably the ones who would be most likely to notice that subtlety. However, its that kind of thing you need to incorporate if you want a great strategic course.

And, "purists" whatever that is, could argue that soley by tilting the green, you could create enough strategy to eliminate the need for fw or even green side bunkers, although they could easily complement the strategy, as could the axis of the green.

With the emphasis on designing for the better player, I think we see a return reverse slope greens, but the thinking is the margin of error is smaller and it will require a really high spin shot to hold the green or the golfer will need to play a bit short of the pin, perhaps bringing surround bunkers into play a bit more, because his ball will roll out a few yards, rather than stop dead or back up.

[JNagle]

I wonder if two other factors, coupled with strategy and ball holding charactersitics, we influential.  All these DOG stressed drainage, drainage and drainage.  In their routings many green sites were situated in sides of hills and more likely at the top of a knoll.  Tees were on the high ground, landing area low, back to the high ground with the green.  Many of the classic greens are sloped with the predominant natural topography.  Secondly, if the landing area is low the golfer is looking up to the green.  Often times the body of the green cannot be seen.  However, if you raise the back and false-front the approach, you know have visibility of both the front and rear of a green.