"It almost wasn't real golf."

[Peter Pallotta]

Something strange is going on. The pros have been playing JN's courses for years, but I don't think I  remember hearing them ever being so openly critical of his work as they were this week.  And with so little cause -- I thought the course played well enough, the low scores were there for anyone on his game, and the greens, while maybe not being perfectly realized artistically, looked interesting and fun and designed to run at a reasonable speed. Why now of all times does it seem like open season on JN I don't understand.

Peter     

[Rob Rigg]

Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Two things hurt Tiger's return. One, the lack of course knowledge, which was aggravated by the conditions. The course is at a bit of altitude, and the ball was flying six or seven percent farther than usual. But when the wind kicked up, it was heavy, which you don't expect in the warm air of Tucson. The most common denominator in Tiger's bad shots was distance control.

Second, the greens. They were goofy. Tiger didn't like them. No one did. And that didn't help Tiger's enthusiasm. No matter how good of a putter you were, you couldn't hole much outside of 10 feet on those rollercoasters. It almost wasn't real golf.

Michael Bamberger, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: I'm right with Gary about Tiger and the greens. He didn't like them, and he could never get it close. They say greens are to a golf course what eyes are to a portrait, and it's a funny thing, why some work and some don't. You could say that the Augusta National greens are massive and slopey, and they are, and you could say that the Dove Mountain greens are massive and slopey, and they are. But the Augusta National greens are among the most interesting in all of golf, and these greens were criticized even by the winner.

Asked to explain the difference, Geoff Ogilvy said, "The greens at Augusta look right. Most of them are built on the hill that they're on, the slopes are natural. These look a little contrived." Jack Nicklaus, the course designer, has of course done a lot of great things in golf. This Dove Mountain course, in my opinion, is not one of them. I don't see the players eager to come back here year after year. Although $1.6 million to the winner could change a lot of opinions.

So are pan flat greens contrived as well, or is Ogilvy correct and these just seem very artificial and unnatural based on the environment.

Did Jack and Co take an idea from Doak, C&C, etc. that natural greens with undulations that fit into the environment are really cool, and push it to far or use it out of context?

Or are these guys really just babies. They must play on "contrived" greens 40 weeks out of the year?

[Joe Hancock]

Does anyone else feel like they want to resist the notion that the greens must be poorly designed just because the tour guys said so? I bet they have a much different criteria for liking greens than I do.

Joe

[Peter Pallotta]

Does anyone else feel like they want to resist the notion that the greens must be poorly designed just because the tour guys said so? I bet they have a much different criteria for liking greens than I do.

Joe

Ah, a counter-indicative, as Bob Crosby might say.  (Best we leave it for Bob to say it, Joe - we'd probably get a hernia trying...)

Very insightful, and quite brief

Peter

[David_Tepper]

Joe -

But it is not just the "tour guys" who are saying the greens are poorly designed!

Did you read Brad Klein's comments about the greens being "amazingly over busy?"

How many people who have commented on this thread or the "Greens at Dove Mountain" thread have actually seen these greens in person?

I find it laughable that some here reject out of hand comments & criticisms from PGA tour players as being self-serving or cry-babyish, especially when they have played a given course and many here have not. Touring professionals play a wider variety of courses, with a wider variety of greens, in one year than most of us will play in a lifetime.

Geoff Ogilvy is one of the most thoughtful, GCA-sensitive guys on tour.  If he thinks the greens are Dove Mountain are not well designed (in contrast to the greens at AGNC, TOC, Royal Melbourne, etc.), I would be inclined to think he has a valid point.

DT         
 

[JNC Lyon]

Additionally, "playability" can't be legitimately applied to putting greens the way it is to the tee to green.  No matter how severe greens are, there is nothing that can place a physical strain on players the way forced carries or excessive hazards do.  Severity on the greens is more fair than on any other part of the course.  This is because every golfer will have to deal with the green contours on a golf course, regardless of distance or skill level.

How much more severe are the Nicklaus greens than the 4th at Lost Dunes or the NLE 18th at Sitwell Park?  If Dove Mountain had been designed by GCA gods Doak, Mackenzie, or even a Mike Strantz, people would be praising them as "bold and imaginative," and rightly so.  However, Nicklaus seems to face a double standard.  Why, why, WHY? 

If you are to be a good judge of architecture, you need to examine golf courses separately from their architects.

Slope in and of itself does not make for fun and interesting putting surfaces. Quite honestly, I think the ROUTING at Lost Dunes is what makes the course a great one--I thought the greens there were a bit much too, although there were some that I really liked. If I played Dove Mountain, I might say the same thing--its hard to tell on TV.

Personally, I think that a lot of members of this website overvalue the short game and putting--put me in Hogan's camp evidently. I don't have a problem with that seeing as the whole thing is subjective, its just different from my own thoughts. The short game is an important part of the overall game, but courses that overvalue it, or any other aspect, lose points in their overall variety.

The short game area of the course is highly valued because, like I stated before, it is the area of golf courses that must be faced by all golfers.  Thus, to appeal to all golfers, it should have the most interest and variety of any part of the course.  I agree that tee-to-green strategy is very important and must be considered.  I also variety is essential to golf course architecture.  However, long game features will not hold all golfers accountable.  Certain hazards are out of reach or negligible carries for good golfers, whereas they are in play for the high handicapper.  Others are in play for the good golfer and out of play for the shorter hitter.  Only at the green are all golfers treated as equals.

How do a set of thoroughly vexing and varied green complexes detract from the overall variety of the course?  I assume from your post that you are not a fan of Ross course.  In my experience, green location and contour are what makes Ross courses great.  Furthermore, these courses are more fun to play than modern courses that focus on ballstriking.

The best courses are not defined by one aspect, even if they have definite strengths. They do all have a great routing and a great variety of holes and shots required.

Regarding these last few posts, if all you guys can come up with is that overly-severe greens are better than forced carries then I'm glad to agree with you. But who cares? Just about anything on a course is a better feature than ridiculous forced carries. If that's the best of the worst then its still part of the worst. Do you want to be the group playing behind the group of duffers that all 5-putt every green?

I tend to think slow play on the greens is caused less by multiple putts and more by long routines.  This isn't a green contour issue, but rather a slow play issue.  I don't think flattening the greens will be of much help.

[Andy Troeger]

JNC,
Certainly a good set of greens adds greatly to a golf course--they are very important. However, sometimes I think that aspects gets overemphasized. I also think what makes a set of greens is not simply the presence of contour. There are some greens that are relatively subtle that are wonderful and others will significant contour that just don't work that well.

The best set of greens that I've seen usually have a great variety of pin placements. Some of them are very difficult to access due to slopes and surrounding bunkers and such, but others use slopes and interesting features to allow the ball to get at certain pin positions. I didn't see enough of that at Dove Mountain--it sure seemed like the greens were designed to feed the ball away from the green and away from a large majority of the pins. I didn't watch nearly as much of the event as some of you, so perhaps I missed the "helper" slopes.

I don't really care for courses that overemphasize ballstriking either--especially if they have bland or dull greens. The best courses have interesting features in all parts of the course. I like a lot of courses with bold greens, but I do believe greens can go over the top, same as any other aspect of a golf course.

[Adam Clayman]

Don Mahaffey's comments are most interesting.

Team Jack, appears to be trying to emulate the concept of interior contours. But are having difficulty in the final implementation. As Don intimates, without tying them into the natural terrain they become contour for contour's sake.

[RJ_Daley]

Other than Crystal Downs, I haven't seen other Maxwell roll greens.  I believe that some of their style is emulated in Wild Horse greens.  They don't suffer from too much contour to too much speed ratio, and they keep them pretty fast there.  While one can't really tell much from the TV, it just seemed to me that the greens and their surrounds and maintenance there in was pretty darn good and exciting.   We saw a lot of shots hit on the green, but wrong place and get tossed askew to a collection area below and off the green platform.  Or, they got bounded to a bunker.  Isn't that the whole essence of fun greens?  I wonder if Ogilvy did well because this had something of the features of Royal Melbourn with the contours and slopes to green surround hollows or bunkers.

I think this is a case of getting more familiar with where you can miss it, and learning the course.  It seemed to me that the course played completely fair and I liked what I saw.  I didn't see a quirky outcome, the best players for the week, seemed to earn it, not back into it with dumb luck.  Ogilvy and Casey live part time near by and may have had more playing time and familiarity than most of the others.

[Sean_A]

Did someone just compare the greens at DM to those at TOC? Whoever that was...you’re kidding...right?
Contour is great, but contour just to make things more difficult, and with little tie in to the native ground...looks odd.

Don hits it in a nutshell.  Contours are great, but they have to make sense with what is happening out to the edges.  Ok, its fair enough to throw in the odd ball green, but a steady diet of roller coaster greens not linked properly with the surrounds is the pits so far as I am concerned.  Putting is a mini the ground game and I think it is bets when one can read the ground.  If the greens are separated from the tie ins it makes reading a green much more difficult because one really has to rely heavily on experience rather than on the spot figuring it out.  So for me, its not a question of contours, but how the contours work with the surrounds.

Ciao

[Lyne Morrison]

Guys, forget the contours - its simple really,

Ogilvy = pure aussie talent   

Cheers - Lyne

 

[Philippe Binette]

Had Tiger won, the same guy would have claim that it's a great course that showed who the best player in the field was... and it was due to Tiger proper ball striking and great short game that the course made him (Tiger) stand apart...

Maybe as I wrote before, Tiger should learn to play golf...

[Rich Goodale]

I like Macan's quote.  It is a good way to distinguish the often very subtle distinction between the interesting and the goofy.   I only saw a few holes last weekend, out of the corner of my eye (as I was sitting with fellow golfers who had much more interesting things to say than any commentator....) but reading what others have said, it does seem that Nicklaus hasn't quite figured out the intricacies of the interesting/goofy equation.  As Macan says, there are two elements to interesting--uncertainty and learnability.  Step one is understaning that the outcome of whatever shot you hit to an interesting green is uncertain--no matter how many times you play the hole and how well you hit the shot.  Step two is realising that the more you play the hole--IF YOU ARE WILLING AND ABLE TO LEARN!--the more you can reduce that uncertainty through knowledge and skill.  That's what the Old Course is all about.  If the uncertain is not eventually learnable (perhaps what Ogilvy and others are getting at), it is goofy.

[Scott Warren]

I find it laughable that some here reject out of hand comments & criticisms from PGA tour players as being self-serving or cry-babyish, especially when they have played a given course and many here have not. Touring professionals play a wider variety of courses, with a wider variety of greens, in one year than most of us will play in a lifetime.

Seriously? The average tour pro plays what? 20-odd tournaments a year? And many return to the same stops, by and large, year after year. I seem to manage 10 new tracks a year without even trying. I'm sure some on here play three or four times that.

[Rich Goodale]

Yes, seriously, Scott, even though my name is not David....

Most pros play 30-40 tournaments a year.  Many of those toonamints are on new courses.  On the weeks they are not playing (and when they miss the cut) they are doing outings on other courses.  And, mostly all the courses they play are set up as the archictect wished them to be set up.  If you have 20% of the quality and quantity of the average tour pro in the courses you play every year you are a very lucky boy.

[jeffwarne]

Kudos to Ogilvy for as always speaking his (what seems to be) educated mind.

I enjoyed the tournament and the greens-(and I hate desert golf)---but I wasn't playing the course and seeing it in 3-D.

It seems like Jack (and/or his associates) are trying to emulate what he/they feel the hottest architects in the game are doing-which they feel is being embraced by the critics and the more educated golfing public.

Jack's background--Playing golf at the highest level ever , raising a large family,running large businesses, and designing golf courses during an ugly era for architecture beginning in the 1970's is a dramatically different background than the one chosen by the most successful architects of today who took great pains to study and visit the the nuances of classic architecture on all types of sites, not just the famous ones prepped for a major championship.

They also had a chance to see all that was wrong about 70's/80's architecture and a reason to do something different
(which was of course not new, but the classic architecture of the past-but through the educated and hindsight filled perspective they acquired through their studies, visits,observations, and experience)

So, it seems with Dismal River(although maybe not as Jack didn't even visit Sand Hills) and Dove Mountain, he is attempting to go with the "new" look, but lacks the experience/feel to tie it all in to the landscape.
This could be for a variety of reasons-or it could be the result of being used to big budgets and never being forced to work with the natural lay of the land as the recently(by the public) recognized great architecets were forced to (and wanted to) early on in their careers-and continue to do so.

I have experience with a leading architect who attempted to change/modify his style on existing work in what  he thought was the "modern minimalist" fashion.
The results bore no resemblance to minimalism and were purely aesthetic and nonfunctional-and IMHO not even close. (and then he blamed the architect's style he was attempting to emulate)

Mostly a rediculous article though as the Tour plays plenty of bad courses

[Jim Nugent]

Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: "No matter how good of a putter you were, you couldn't hole much outside of 10 feet on those rollercoasters."

How did Ogilvy birdie something like 40% of all holes the last four rounds?  Did he hit it stiff every time?   

[PThomas]

ask Tiger and the rest if they want some cheese with their whines..

[JNC Lyon]

JNC,
Certainly a good set of greens adds greatly to a golf course--they are very important. However, sometimes I think that aspects gets overemphasized. I also think what makes a set of greens is not simply the presence of contour. There are some greens that are relatively subtle that are wonderful and others will significant contour that just don't work that well.

The best set of greens that I've seen usually have a great variety of pin placements. Some of them are very difficult to access due to slopes and surrounding bunkers and such, but others use slopes and interesting features to allow the ball to get at certain pin positions. I didn't see enough of that at Dove Mountain--it sure seemed like the greens were designed to feed the ball away from the green and away from a large majority of the pins. I didn't watch nearly as much of the event as some of you, so perhaps I missed the "helper" slopes.

I don't really care for courses that overemphasize ballstriking either--especially if they have bland or dull greens. The best courses have interesting features in all parts of the course. I like a lot of courses with bold greens, but I do believe greens can go over the top, same as any other aspect of a golf course.

There were definitely some helper slopes, as Tom Doak noted in another thread.  I loved seeing the players use the sideboard on 17 to get the ball close to right hole locations.  Additionally, when Ogilvy and Cink both hit it tight on 15 in the semis, Ogilvy used the bank to the left of the green to feed the ball close.  I don't think you see that sort of thing at week-to-week tour stops.

The main criticism with the Dove Mountain greens, specifically from Ogilvy, was that the contours did not tie into the land.  Many other on here have made that point as well.  Personally, I think it is great to see bold green contours, but, from an architecture standpoint, green contours should reflect their surroundings to maintain subtlety, challenge, and variety.  Therefore, the Nicklaus greens won't be considered world class (Augusta and TOC comparisons are not fair or viable).  However, it is still better to see wild greens full of interest than flat surfaces where the pros can make everything inside of 30 feet.

[Garland Bayley]

...
Geoff Ogilvy is one of the most thoughtful, GCA-sensitive guys on tour.  If he thinks the greens are Dove Mountain are not well designed (in contrast to the greens at AGNC, TOC, Royal Melbourne, etc.), I would be inclined to think he has a valid point.

DT         
 

Yes, but don't leave the impression that he thought they were bad golf! They were unnatural! He mastered them better than anyone. There must be some good golf in there somewhere.

[JMEvensky]

Something strange is going on. The pros have been playing JN's courses for years, but I don't think I  remember hearing them ever being so openly critical of his work as they were this week.  And with so little cause -- I thought the course played well enough, the low scores were there for anyone on his game, and the greens, while maybe not being perfectly realized artistically, looked interesting and fun and designed to run at a reasonable speed. Why now of all times does it seem like open season on JN I don't understand.

Peter     

I sense the same thing too.Maybe it's Mickelson's implied diss of the set up at Muirfield which is providing cover.

[Jerry Kluger]

I watched some of the final match and the putts it was clear that the reason Casey had missed some short putts was his stroke and not the green.  Hole locations seemed challenging but they were not on the side of a slope, etc.  I think it gets goofy when you cannot find hole locations where putts inside of 10 feet have reasonable amounts of break. Some of these guys hitting 7 irons from 200 yards out and 3 irons from 240 - flat greens would have made it totally boring.

[Peter Pallotta]

JM - good call re Muirfield. Maybe the furrowed bunkers were the last straw. Whatever it was, though, something seems to have made it okay to slag JN. Maybe it's just generational -- fewer and fewer players have any connection to him at all.

Lyne - your man Geoff is well liked here. And he gives I think a well-balanced view on the greens -- i.e. a worthwhile and necessary attempt to bring back to the game slopey greens running at reasonable speeds, but one that falls a little short from an aesthetic angle.  (But even then, he notes that "You couldn't design Augusta right now, every player would walk off if we walked into Augusta the first time we had ever seen it, played a brand new golf course, we would all quit after nine holes. We would all say, "I can't play this, it's ridiculous.")

[Garland Bayley]

Nice post Peter. I hadn't seen that Geoff said that.

It is interesting that Alistair MacKenzie thought he had done well if the course opened and it was controversial. AM has 3 in top 10-12 of most US lists.

Pete Dye thinks he has done well if tour pros bitch when they first play his courses. If I remember correctly, Pete Dye course based real estate deveopments are able to demand the most money for the real estate. Won't take time to look up the rankings of his courses, but he has done well.

Kudos to JN for getting them to bitch about something other than you can only play this course with a high fade.

[Kalen Braley]

Nice post Peter. I hadn't seen that Geoff said that.

It is interesting that Alistair MacKenzie thought he had done well if the course opened and it was controversial. AM has 3 in top 10-12 of most US lists.

Pete Dye thinks he has done well if tour pros bitch when they first play his courses. If I remember correctly, Pete Dye course based real estate deveopments are able to demand the most money for the real estate. Won't take time to look up the rankings of his courses, but he has done well.

Kudos to JN for getting them to bitch about something other than you can only play this course with a high fade.

Garland,

In stunning fashion, I agree completely with everything you just said. 

Nicklaus should wear it as a badge of honor that these guys are bitching about his courses.  I also find it odd that GCA'ers are bitching about undulating greens that run slower than the typical PGA Tour greens.  Isn't this what we've been advocating more or less as a group for years?  So the greens don't fit perfectly into thier surrounds...last I checked, most desert courses don't fit into thier surrounds for a whole host of reasons.