Color coded flags...front - middle - back

[Mike McGuire]

Our club switched from Red, White and Blue flags to all yellow. The members are whining.

 Do many classic courses use this method?

What are other alternatives? Pin sheets- something on the tee....?

Or let them get used to it?

[Patrick Hodgdon]

I have seen both pin sheets as well as color coded 150 poles.

[Tom Yost]

I've also seen a secondary, smaller flag that is moved up or down to indicate front/middle/back.

[Joe Hancock]

Mike,

How many of your greens have more than a one club depth to them?

I'm all for letting them get used to it...especially being a private club with longtime members.

Joe

[Paul Stephenson]

We have same colour flags but sequence the positions front-middle-back.

Once you have played the first hole then you know where the pin will be from then on.

Seems to work well for us.

[Joe Hancock]

We have same colour flags but sequence the positions front-middle-back.

Once you have played the first hole then you know where the pin will be from then on.

Seems to work well for us.

Seriously? I've never heard of such a prescription.

Joe

[Kyle Harris]

We have same colour flags but sequence the positions front-middle-back.

Once you have played the first hole then you know where the pin will be from then on.

Seems to work well for us.

Seriously? I've never heard of such a prescription.

Joe

I've never been fond of this, the par 3 holes will all play to three sets of distances with little to no variation. I've worked at clubs that do both, and prefer one color.

[Bob_Huntley]

The use of three colors at our courses are red, yellow and blue for front, middle and back. Unfortunately in the late afternoon it is sometimes almost impossible to determine if a flag even exists as the colors are indescernable from the colouration of the grasses and foliage at the back of the green.

I do think there should be one color only, either white or an irridescent yellow and leave it at that. Ninety nine percent of amateurs couldn't hit a ball within yards of their intended target anyway, if they could we would not have a handicap system.

Bob

[Mike McGuire]

The main reason we went away from the colors was to get away from locked in placements.  6 blue - 6 red - 6 white .  Or never 3 the same in a row.... etc

Our front nine greens have a lot of undulation. Trying to stay within some formula hindered the maintenance staff in putting the pins where it was necessary to put them.

[Kyle Harris]

The main reason we went away from the colors was to get away from locked in placements.  6 blue - 6 red - 6 white .  Or never 3 the same in a row.... etc

Our front nine greens have a lot of undulation. Trying to stay within some formula hindered the maintenance staff in putting the pins where it was necessary to put them.

Mike,

This has definitely become a problem at my present club. We recently resodded a good portion of the green on a par 3 that severely limited the hole locations to the middle and back positions for a time. One rule for our setup is that no two consecutive flags may be of the same color, and one of my rules is that the par 3s play to different colored flags because they are essentially the same length.

Here is the problem:

The hole with the new sod is the 13th, and the other par 3 is the 16th. That gives me two holes to setup between the par 3s. If I place 13's hole in the middle, the 14th must be front or back. If 14 is front, then 15 must be middle or back. If 15 is back, then my only option for 16 is front - so it's easy to predict the setup once one sees the 13th and 16th, which run parallel to each other. It also doesn't help that 3 of each color must be on each nine.

[Jason Mandel]

Mike,

Before we renovated our course we used the smaller flag to help determine the depth of the pin.  Since redoing the course, and building new greens we now use a number system, 1-5.  Each green has 5 different areas and they correspond to a card/pinsheet.  Overall it has worked pretty well, but I have brought up the topic of re-scrambling the numbers every few years so we don't get used to say a certain pin.

Jason

[Mike McGuire]

Mike,

How many of your greens have more than a one club depth to them?

I'm all for letting them get used to it...especially being a private club with longtime members.

Joe

Joe

 Greens are 25 to 40 y deep

The common theme is we took something away without substituting a replacement.

[Mike Bowline]

I am also a fan of a pin sheet shwoing each green broken up into several numbered areas and then on a given day the holes are all cut in area #3 for example.

I am not a fan of the little flags on each flagstick for several reasons: the little flags get moved up and down (inadvertently - I presume innocence) the flagstick throughout the day from where the maintenance person originally set them in the morning. Also, getting maintenance people to use the entire length of the flagstick for denoting the hole location vs. just the middle 18" is difficult.

A nice, easy touch for any course is a system where the distance from the middle of each green (+ or -) could be easily given to every player on a 3x5 on the 1st tee. Now that would be easy.

[Bob_Huntley]

I say to hell with all the pimping of the flag information. Look up, there is a flag, have a guess and let fly. Who said you have to know to the last inch the position of the flag?

Gene Andrews ruined natural golf.

Bob

[Mike McGuire]

A nice, easy touch for any course is a system where the distance from the middle of each green (+ or -) could be easily given to every player on a 3x5 on the 1st tee. Now that would be easy.

Mike-

Easy, but still a couple hours work every day. Someone has to log everything, put it on paper, copy it, etc.....

[Dan Herrmann]

Flag colors?

Ugggly. 

It's a resort type of thing, in my mind.   

[Mike McGuire]

I say to hell with all the pimping of the flag information. Look up, there is a flag, have a guess and let fly. Who said you have to know to the last inch the position of the flag?

Gene Andrews ruined natural golf.

Bob

Bob-

If you were responsible for the change would you phrase it the same way if a member questioned you?

[J_ Crisham]

Mike, We have color coded flags and due to some significant green depth variations, 26-70 yds- they are needed. I like the color codes but would prefer pin sheets. I also understand that this may be over the top labor wise.

[Mike McGuire]

Flag colors?

Ugggly. 

It's a resort type of thing, in my mind.   

Dan-

Thank you for hitting on another big reason for changing it.

[James Bennett]

I like the Henry Ford solution. 

"You can have any colour you like as long as it is black"

My club uses a movable ball on the pin on two holes only.  Both have skyline greens and there are no opportunities to see the hole location before.  Other requests for hole information have been resisted to date.

I also like those courses who are able to combine the colour schemes of their tee markers and pins/flags into a less intrusive combination.  I dislike seeing red/white/blue/black tees with yellow pins and green flags whereas Merion's use of deep red, red and white in tee markers, pins, flags (on the West) and baskets (on the East) is exemplarary.

James B

[Michael Powers]

We have the red, white, and blue, but I like all one color.  No little flag half way up the flag, no colored 150 markers.  How about you look at the green and try to figure out where the hole is.  And if you are willing to admit on this site that you have Mr. Bushnell at your side (like I do), there is no need for any of it.

[Andy Troeger]

I think it depends on the size of the greens somewhat. If the greens aren't excessively large, then lets do as Mr. Huntley so eloquently put things a few posts ago. 

If they greens are huge (Angels Crossing style) then I think having something to indicate pin depth is helpful especially on a public/resort course. The less obtrusive the better. At a private club the members should probably still be able to figure it out to a point.

In all seriousness, how good do most of us really think we are? As a single digit handicap if I'm far enough from the flag not to know its depth in most cases then I pretty well shouldn't be aiming at it anyway!

[Mike McGuire]

Thanks for the input on this. Keep it coming. We have a  committee meeting tomorrow to discuss. Its a privilege to be able to ask the whole world for an opinion.

[Jim Thompson]

Andy,

That's why we did the pin sheet back in my day. I don't know if they even do it anymore.  One thing that I thought was pretty cool about what we did at angels is the fact that if you pay attention throughout the round, you actually see every green before you play it and already know everything.

As follows:
1 green is visible from the tee and fairly visible from the fairway
2 green is fully visible from the tee
3 green is full visible from the tee
4 green is visible from the second shot
5 green is very visible from four green
6 green is very visible from 5 green
7 green was visible from 3 alt tee and green
8 green was visible from 2 tee
9 green was visible from the drive upto 1 and is a good look from the tee
10 green was visible from 1
11 is a clear view from 10 green
12 has been staring you in the face from 1 green, 8 green, 11 green etc.
13 takes a little more paying attention, but as you walk up the hill to you can clearly see the green.
14 green was visible from 12 green
15 green was visible from 12 tee
16 green has no distance change, but also was a good look walking to 12
17 green was visible from 10 green and 11 tee
18 green you saw on the ride up to 10 as well as is tilted to give a good look from the tee

Does the public need more than this???

JT

[Mike Nuzzo]

This may be a whole world - but it is a rather finely sampled one at that.

One color.

Give 'em a pin sheet as a last resort.

Your old why couldn't you have more than 6 blue flags?
No way the members can recall how many they saw that day.
Do you have spares?