A wild idea...

[JSPayne]

An idea suddenly dawned on me while reading Doak's "7000 yard mandate" thread...

This idea has been played out to some extent already at a few courses, and I know the basis of the idea is generally well received on this board, but I now lean toward thinking about the extreme...

How would a new course fare, public or private, in which absolutely NO YARDAGE was posted....anywhere....for anything. No total hole yardage, no 150 stakes, no sprinkler yardage, no yardage on the scorecard....I would even go so far as to say they should ban range finding devices to stay true to the idea, but that may be impractical. And even more than this.....what about not posting par for anything? MAYBE a total par number, just to get a course rating for handicap purposes, but no pars for individual holes.

I would be EXTREMELY interested to see how this would be received. Given that everyone nowadays puts so much emphasis on numbers, would people complain nearly as much about total length or the struggle to make par if none of those numbers were ever given?

This idea does not at all seem impractical to me. It may be a shocker and hard to envision by owners and golfers initially, but just as Ballyneal has no set tee markers, and SFCC has no yardage markers on the holes, why not even a scorecard absent of all number save a total par?

[JESII]

A fun experiment on top of that would be to see if anyone could guess the actual yardage they had played...

[John Moore II]

Novel idea-I'd like to see it done, but I am not certain if it every will be.

[John Kavanaugh]

This was done at The Warren Course and failed miserably.

[henrye]

I've played courses where I've never looked at the yardage (total course yardage being the exception) and don't know if the course had any indicators or not.  A good caddie makes all that obsolete.

[Mark Smolens]

Where do the holes fall on the card where I get my strokes, or is gambling to be precluded on your magical experiment as well?

[JSPayne]

JES...

My point exactly....I've played many a "short" <7000 yd course and felt it played extremely long, regardless of weather. I've also played 7000+ courses where I didn't even feel like I struggled even though I'm not the longest of single digit handicaps.

After having played SFCC, and even as another example...playing without the flags in, I feel like a round of golf and the course is approached in an ENTIRELY different manner and viewpoint in the absense of numbers, and pinpoint targets, and EXPECTATIONS. If you start out at the beginning, merely attempting to get from there to the end, and not have to place, shape, crush and aim shots all over the course, the game and the course you play it on seems to become alot more enjoyable.

I think a concept like this would be HUGE toward getting people to recognize architecture and the art of the courses alot more as they would not be as fixated on how far their ball went and whether or not they are "on par" for the hole.

[Joel_Stewart]

How would a new course fare, public or private, in which absolutely NO YARDAGE was posted....anywhere....for anything. No total hole yardage, no 150 stakes, no sprinkler yardage, no yardage on the scorecard....

Already done.  Friars Head.

[CJ Carder]

I think it's a fantastic idea.  

Most of the rounds we played in Scotland, no one ever looked at a scorecard before we teed off.  The course was setup so that it was implied that players play from 1 tee box and 1 tee box only.  The caddy hands you a club to hit or tells you how far you need to hit it and off you go.  Many times, had I known the actual yardage of the hole, I would have hit driver, but my caddy had me hit 3-wood or a hybrid to position myself better, avoid a bunker, or keep the ball in play, and I ended up scoring better for the advice.  

I do think your idea almost requires the use of a caddy though.  Without caddies who know the course, carts and players might resemble the highway at rush hour.

[Mark Bourgeois]

JS (and JES and Johnny M),

Get over to the UK, and you'll get to play courses like that. (Some will go one step further and supply you misdirection in the form of a hole's bogey rather than par.)

Click  here for a thread describing what Rye takes away from the golfer.

Mark

[John Moore II]

Mark-I was meaning that this idea would not work well in America. We, as golfers, are too target oriented and distance oriented.

[Jim Nugent]

This was done at The Warren Course and failed miserably.

Can you tell us what exactly they did there, and how it turned out?  

[JSPayne]

How would a new course fare, public or private, in which absolutely NO YARDAGE was posted....anywhere....for anything. No total hole yardage, no 150 stakes, no sprinkler yardage, no yardage on the scorecard....

Already done.  Friars Head.

Thanks Joel.....checking Ran's review now I see that it seems that you are correct. He mentions no yardage on the scorecard. I would just have to assume this means no marking of any sort out on the course.

Any idea how this concept has played out with the membership? Is it received fairly well? Do they employ caddies?

[Tom_Doak]

I have to admit, the first time I went to Friars Head and they told me there were no yardages, I suspected right away that it was "too short" for public consumption so they just didn't want to fess up on how long it really was.

[Sam Morrow]

I think it's a neat idea but would anybody outside of the GCA community like it?

[Bill_McBride]

I have to admit, the first time I went to Friars Head and they told me there were no yardages, I suspected right away that it was "too short" for public consumption so they just didn't want to fess up on how long it really was.

How about the second time?

[Tom_Doak]

Bill:

I think they have yardages on the scorecard now, or at least the caddies will tell you on every hole what the yardage is.  The latter approach still prevents you from obsessing over the total.

[Mike_Young]

I do the just the opposite....have the owner make a scorecard squeezing every inch he can from each hole....even a place behind the back tee where he could place a tee for some unforseen reason.....no one ever measures these courses....and I think many more people do it...

[Matthew Hunt]

Was there anything to stop a caddy pacing (or a range finder) the course and using a strokesaver-style diagram for a compeditive andvantage over other caddys?

[TEPaul]

JSPayne:

After almost ten years of GOLFLCLUBATLAS.com I guess it just shows the inevitability that an idea has been dealt with at length before.

Somewhere in the back pages is the same proposal as yours and the same discussion. Not that you shouldn't make yours and we shouldn't discuss it again because even I don't know how to use the search feature of this site, if it even works well.

But my recollection is that if a course simply had a couple of course rating--eg one for the scratch player and then one for the bogey player (similar to the way a course's slope rating is calculated) and no actual hole pars then it would just be a matter of all golfers doing what they thought best for the lowest score on any hole without some hole par reference to go by.

The only reference they would have to par would be the course ratings which are only in a whole course 18 hole number.

So the idea would be that you get as close to that any way that's most reasonable on any hole. That arrangement would definitely take out individual "hole par" fixation.

Unfortunately it might screw up match play handicap stroke allocations! One of the necessities of "hole par" is the match play format which is essentially eighteen little mini-matches each with a distinct beginning and a distinct end.

[Jon Wiggett]

TEP,

for matchplay you only need the SI, par is not relevent.

[JSPayne]

I agree Jon, and sorry for rehashing what seems to be an already discussed idea (the downfalls of being a relative newbie and yes, the difficult search feature), but for match play all you need is the course rating (to determined individual course handicaps for each player) and hole handicap number (#1-18) to determine on which holes the higher handicapper would get strokes. No need for par, you just need to beat the number of strokes of your opponent.

Inevitably yest, I understand that caddies, especially in a competitve format, would find some way to better determine the yardage and then the whole idea might be caput, but even with that in mind, isn't that the fashion of the older days of golf, when one of the measures of a caddie's skills would be how well or accurately he could determine yardage for his player without the help of any external devices?

Man, this idea of no yardage combined with this idea of only caddies providing accurate yardage might be a great combo to reintroduce caddying to the game, as most of us would agree that this "art" has been in decline for quite some time now and would assist to grow the game of golf if such caddy programs were able to be reinstilled in America's courses.

[jeffwarne]

Guys,
No members or guests play Friar's Head without yardage.
The caddies have yardage books and pin sheets.

The scorecards still have no yardages (or handicaps of holes-which is silly unless you enjoy debate and negotiation---of course I think it's all silly if the caddie's going to provide the yardage info anyway-lots of fun when you play an outing there and get a "borrowed caddie" from another course which is a common arrangement among Hampton's clubs))

Fortunately at Friar's Head you don't have to worry about the caddie being across the fairway raking a bunker

[TEPaul]

"TEP,
for matchplay you only need the SI, par is not relevent."

No, par, hole par or whole course par, isn't that important in match play but one wonders why it's still applied so much in match play. Something tells me it has something to do with modern handicap calculation!  

Frankly, it isn't even essential in stroke play. It should probably just stay where it first started---in stock price calculation.

Matter of fact, I prefer the Bogey idea if golf is going to rely on any mathematical number standard. I think "Bogey" lends a bit of mystery and it has the capacity and added benefit of scaring the pee out of small dogs and children.

[TEPaul]

JSPayne:

What you were saying there about caddies just providing yardages can be interesting.

Don't know whether you've ever played Pine Valley but you have to have a caddy there and there's not much way for a player to find out for himself what his yardages are except from his caddy.

But those caddies there do not just give you a yardage per se, they also tell you what the shot will "play like" (yardage-wise) and on some holes that can be waay different than most people are used to club selection-wise with just going on straight yardage numbers.

It's very interesting and it does take some time to believe them and trust them but if they know your game at all you can generally take their advice to the bank.

Unless of course something odd happens like the time Rocky, one of Pine Valley's ultra famous caddies told one of the two Japanese gentlemen he was caddying for what it played like and then just handed him a 5 iron. That Japanese gentleman hit the ball about thirty yards over the green and then looked at Rocky in anger and Rocky just said:

"Whoops, right club, wrong Jap."

(That joke has been told on here about a dozen times but since you say you're relatively new on here I thought maybe  you hadn't heard it yet. ).

By the way, if you are new on here let me welcome you to GOLFCLUBATLAS.com where every day is like a barroom brawl on a Friday night in Dodge City and where most all the wild and dumb ideas come from North Jersey's Patrick Mucci.