Reversible Courses

[Mark_Rowlinson]

A number of British clubs that I know of play occasional competitions (very likely in the Christmas holidays) over cross-country courses, not reversible, but playing from the 2nd tee to the 17th green and the 18th tee to the 3rd green and so on. You think you know your course well until you take part in one of these. And there are options - lots of them - one of the things we seek most in golf course design. You could not do it on a heavily wooded course but even quite a well-treed parkland course can be put to such use, and many a links is ideal. There is a particularly good 9-hole cross-country course at Conwy.

One of the more interesting aspects of this form of game is trickling into bunkers - you may have no lip in front of you, but you probably don't have a backswing.

[Bill_McBride]

Ultimately, a reversible design is only a gimmick unless there are a few holes which are better in one direction, and a few which are better than the other.  If that's not the case, then why play it the wrong way around?

I really enjoyed playing the "left-handed" Old Course at St. Andrews last year, but there were only 2-3 of the holes which could make a case for being better in reverse.  If we build the project I'm looking at now -- though it's 2-3 years away from construction in the best of circumstances -- we'll have to make sure the backwards loop is just as compelling.

When I played last year I wasn't really able to directly contrast holes of the same number to each other, so couldn't one was better than its counterpart.  I thought the approach to R-1 was pretty daunting with the OB left and Road bunker right and not much green in between, but hard to contrast to normal #1. By that I mean there was little to compare between the two first holes and therefore hard to pick one over the other.   I enjoyed the shot into #6 from over the gorse on R-12!  I guess it was just a completely different experience for me.

It must be easier because I was about 4 strokes better than the regular routing two days earlier!

[Ian Andrew]

Travis originally designed the Westchester west course to be reversible. He was paid $3,000 for the original and received an additional $1,000 for a second course. The second course being the reverse of the first course. A course that could be played in both directions by enlarging the teeing ground as the target and positioning bunkers to influence play in both directions.

(Source: The Old Man by Bob Labbance)

I have the plan - I will see if there is a way to post it so it can be read - I may have to post a piece of it.
Look for it later tonight - it may take some work.

[Geoffrey Childs]

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/opinionprystowsky.html

[wsmorrison]

Here is a routing map that was in the collection of Flynn drawings in the Gordon family barn.  Flynn built the golf course for Travis and may have made design changes later on.