Uninteresting land

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Question for architects:

You have a site which yields a potential 15 or 16 holes of golf on interesting land, be it links, moorland, heath or whatever. Try as you may, you cannot avoid 2 or 3 holes on uninteresting land. What do you do?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Shape the dull land to make it interesting and create a planting scheme for the future.

[paul cowley]

Mark.....you do the same thing as when you have 18 holes of uninteresting land....you build a fort or a ruin! [joke ha ha]

Really, a bland nothing site creates a design freedom that can be much more rewarding than having to relate to existing site elements.

But there are always givens on even the worst site that one must adhere to.

Its really never a totally blank canvas.

[Garland Bayley]

You treat it like a potato field.

E.g.

[Steve Kline]

see #10 at Riviera

[Gary Slatter]

Best not to link the uninteresting holes, or modify the land to become interesting (more interesting).

[Tom_Doak]

If you try to do too much shaping in that situation, the holes will stick out like a sore thumb.  I would stick to creating one or two relatively subtle features which give the holes some interest, and leave it at that.  Most great courses have a handful of holes on uninteresting land -- think about the 6th at Ballybunion, or the first two holes at Westward Ho!, or the 9th and 10th at St. Andrews -- and those courses turned out just fine.

[Tim Leahy]

see #10 at Riviera

Great example, slightly elevated tee, but pretty flat, tee to green treeless compared with the rest of the course, but still one of the most memorable holes.

[Steve Kline]

#10 Riviera - For me much of the greatness was in the angles needed to the play the hole most easily contrasted with the desire to drive the green combined with the feeling standing on the tee that you really want it hit it to the right (your eye just screams hit it right which is of course dead). Very little earth needs to be moved to build a hole like this yet it is endlessly fascinating because you can make virtually any score no matter how you play the hole.

Comparing this hole to 9 and 10 at TOC shows how to do it versus how not to do it.