A wild idea...

[Andy Troeger]

This was done at The Warren Course and failed miserably.

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

Warren very much always has had yardages included including on the scorecards. What they did not have the first couple years was par for each hole or a total. I think for most golfers it was pretty obvious what the par was, however, and I think the negative response outweighed the positive so par was included eventually.

What is the benefit of not having yardages? If one doesn't care or wants to play blind there is nothing forcing them to take a scorecard or use GPS or look for sprinkler heads. I guess the barber poles would be pretty obvious. Would make the game harder, but for most of us its hard enough when you know the approximate yardage.

[wsmorrison]

While you can avail yourself of a yardage book and scorecard, both with par displayed, you can play Merion East with no indications at all.  There are no flags, so wind direction is more difficult to discern.  Unlike Merion West, there are no yardages on sprinkler heads (they are not even numbered as at Pine Valley), no 150 yard bushes, birdhouses (as used on the West Course), or posts.  It is possible to play the course late in the day without caddies; simply by feel.  It is fun and beneficial to one's game.  Rather than getting dialed into a carry and roll number, you see the whole hole and make better strategic decisions over time.

[TEPaul]

Wayne:

Those jokers at Merion apparently thought way back when that no flags and just baskets would deceive golfers as to wind direction but they didn't count on constant smokers like me, did they?  

I was so damn good at it one Rules official once tried to penalize me for using some kind of artifical measuring device. I just took the flask out of my pocket and asked him if he also thought that made me artifically smarter in play? The little dictator that he was let me go but not before he tested the contents of my flask. Of course it was just Diet Coke.

[wsmorrison]

Well that makes one advantage to smoking    And to think you never tried the thinking man's cigarette  

[TEPaul]

You know Wayne, I always felt me and my mind had all the potential I ever wanted or needed without testing what it might be with that junk. Plus I never could stand the way those potheads talked---"Hey Groovy Man, Far Out!"

Yuckeroony!

[Dave_Miller]

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?

JS
This is actually a pretty good idea.  No par, no numbers, LOW SCORE wins.  The only bet would be on the end result.
Fairways and Greens.
Dave