Prevailing wind and GCA?

[Ken Moum]

Should architects take the prevailing winds into account when they are routing a course?

And if they do, should the prevailing winds "help" the golfer?

I ask because the course I play all the time is alleged to be a Donald Ross, and it is much more fun when played in the prevailing southeast wind of summer here in Topeka.

This time of year, with a cold northwest wind blowing it's a bear.

Last weekend I played two rounds at Faldo's Cottonwood Hills, one in 78* with a south wind, and one in the 50s with a north wind.

The the wind velocity was about the same, but the course is clearly easier in the south wind. And that's the prevailing summer wind.

Conversely, I have played some decent courses that have some holes that are ridiculously hard when the prevailing wind is blowing.

Is that "bad" design?

Ken

[Mike_Young]

I would hope they do.

[Mike Nuzzo]

What prevailing winds help the golfer?

At St. Andrews it was so much easier for me to play into a brisk wind (i could control my approaches) than back down wind.
That might just be for the better than average player.

I'd like a routing to go in all different directions to play in all different winds.  But The Old Course sure doesn't change as much as my ideal routing.

[Kyle Harris]

Less forced carries and more reliance on ground game hazards like bumps, swales, nooks and crannies would make the prevailing winds more interesting regardless of the direction.

I have no problem with playing in cross of prevailing winds, but having too many options for lost balls makes it extremely unreasonable. Any golfer worth his socks understand that wind changes par for the day, but it shouldn't hit the wallet.

[David Botimer]

Pacific Dunes is the perfect example of a course the architect studied prevailing winds.  Summer winds are out of the north.  Doak made this almost entirely a "north-south" course (none directly east-west, some with slight angles) and the long holes are southbound, short holes primarily northbound.

In the summer, #3 is a tough 476 yard par 5 straight into the wind, while #4 is tough but manageable 440 yard par 4 downwind.

It makes par truly a fluid number with the winter winds turning around from the south as they have recently.  For example, #6 is now a relatively benign 315 yards downwind, while #7 is a 430 yard into the wind beast, essentially par 5 on days like today with 3 club wind.

[Ken Moum]

What prevailing winds help the golfer?

The courses I am talking about have most of their longest par fours with the wind, making them reachable in two. They also tend to have more generous fairways, and fewer penal carries, on the holes into the wind.

A hole that appears to ignore the wind is a long par three into the prevailing wind (slightly quartering from the left). It has a water hazard right on the right edge of the green, and almost no place left to bail out.

Another is a long par four that requires negotiating both lateral water and OB on the second shot, which most average players will hit with a fairway wood.

In both cases, I think the holes ask too much.

Ken

[Mike_Young]

I have a course in Costa Rica where the winds are constantly off shore for half the year and constanly onshore for half the year and they can be extreme at times...sometimes there is a constant 40-50 mph wind all day in late Feb and March.....I designed the course at 7400 yards anticipating it to be played never longer than 7000.....but this allowed for the supt to set the course up for either wind.....

[Jeff_Brauer]

I'm not against putting at least some long par 4's into a headwind and short ones downwind.  It puts them on the proverbial "edge of par" and tends to stretch out club selections and make long par 4's long again for better players.

Its possible to have a nice variety of hole length, but by putting the short ones into the wind and long ones downwind, have most holes play with, say, driver six iron despite their varying lengths.

Ken's post is more along the lines of what I think it means to design features for the prevailing wind. In the par 3 he describes, I would make sure there was a fw bail out left.

And, as I have written before, I tend to align targets with the wind to encourage certain shots.  However, since its prevailing, not guaranteed constant, wind, and I try to fit the land, too, I usually end up with a majority of, but not all  greens and fw so aligned.  I think thats good, because a course can play harder in off winds, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Of course, the lesser and more variable the wind, the less I worry about green angles, etc. And, the greater the wind speed, the more room I give overall, as suggested.  There is the story about TPC that Pete was going to leave forced carries from the back tees of over 200 yards on downwind holes.  Somewhere early in the life of the design, a strong counter wind came up and some Tour Pros found they couldn't even carry it 200!

[Scott Witter]

David makes a good point...considering both summer and winter/seasonal prevailing winds is one of the many ingredients to be utilized and essential to achieve the best routing and therefore the most interesting playability.  But prevailing wind needs to be factored in with other site conditions to be most effective, whether downwind, cross or into.  The design and playing balance achieved throughout the flow of the routing by the architect is a true test of his/her merit and understanding IMO.

No matter what, any decent architect MUST take into account the prevailing wind--they should consider themselves fortunate to have a site that has a noticable prevailing wind, along with the plethra of other site parameters thrown into the design mix, or else they have missed the full potential of the site.

Sounds like Mike Y. has as good handle on it

[Jeff_Brauer]

I consider both breezes which vary.

For example, in the Midwest, summer may be SW and winter NW, but many holes running anywhere near N-S play similarly, but with added/reduced club.

In Texas, winter winds often switch from S to N so its completely different animal to accomodate both.  With the wind strength, it really calls for more room.  And, it gets harder to, say, front a green with a pond into the summer breeze, which plays well, knowing that this green may not be able to be held in winter in a reverse wind.  At the very least, the green shouldn't often sit across the line of play, since shallow greens are impossible to hit in late fall when everything hardens up, speeds up, etc., and they just need to be deeper.

[Michael Ryan]

I had a great experience with prevailing wind direction on my second trip to Newport Country Club.  It being primarily a town founded on Sailing, many people talk about the "southerly", which is the normal breeze coming in from the ocean, and it kicks up nearly every afternoon.  The America's Cup races used to start around noon as was the standard time for the breeze.  I feel that Newport Country Club was designed so that the prevailing wind assisted players for the most part.  The long par 4's, #5 and #17, play with the prevailing wind at the player's back.  The shorter par 5 #1 (which they played as a par 4 in the '95 am) plays into the wind, and the long par 5 #7 plays downwind under normal circumstances.  I encountered this south wind on my first trip to Newport a few years back.  This June I played it with a strong North wind and found that it made the course so much tougher, lending me to believe that the architect factored the prevailing breeze heavily into the routing.  The wind from the opposite direction made the long holes longer and actually made the medium to short holes even harder, as the shorter par 4's #2 & #3 were playing viciously downwind.  I had trouble keeping wedge shots on the proper trajectory to hold the greens and a few in my group had very high wedge shots actually knocked into bunkers surrounding the greens.  There are only 4 holes that do not run either straight into, or straight down from the prevailing breeze.  The par 3 #8 faces West as well as the par 4 #16 and the par 3 #4 and the par 4 #18 comes back and faces East.

I would love to hear about the routing at places like Seminole and how they relate to any prevailing breeze in that region of the world.