[Ajay Yadav]

I have noticed that Golf architects tend to believe in the following rule of thumb:

A public course generally has to be designed with less subtlety whether it’s around the greens or on playing strategy. A private course on the other hand can have more subtle greens or strategy or quirks because the same members regularly play it and hence they have time to discover the course


However, with the exception of the destination courses (say Bandon), most of the public courses do get regular play from a core group of members within the neighboring area and they in many instances (if not in most) account for the majority of the playing members.

However, the public courses on an average are not as challenging (and the above reason is a probably a major contributing factor), making them not as interesting and consequently, possibly contributing to the eventual decline of the game.

The public course is the first canvas for the new golfer, the occasional golfer and the only canvas for a whole host of players. Instead of being less challenging and more in the face, I think it needs subtlety, less in the face and more architectural traits that bring people back again and again

Thoughts?

[Ian Andrew]

…there is no reason that any well-designed course should be boring. Public access courses can and should be designed using the same general principles as those at the best private courses, only in a more judicious manner. Public courses hosting greater numbers of players with a greater variance in abilities require more room to play, more forgiving hazards and somewhat more apparent strategies.

Bill Coore 

[Ajay Yadav]

…there is no reason that any well-designed course should be boring. Public access courses can and should be designed using the same general principles as those at the best private courses, only in a more judicious manner. Public courses hosting greater numbers of players with a greater variance in abilities require more room to play, more forgiving hazards and somewhat more apparent strategies.

Bill Coore 

exactly my point and excatly what I am questioning. with the exception of a few clubs, variance in abilities is wide at most clubs (perhaps not as varied as those playing on public courses, but they are quite varied)

Greater number of players does not mean more forgiving hazards and somewhat more apparent strategies........ Over time that will lead only to a lesser number of players as more people don't stay playing....

[Tom_Doak]

Ajay:

I've always treated public courses pretty much the same as private courses from a design perspective, although if you are in a high-volume place like Myrtle Beach, you have to be more cognizant of traffic concerns and walk-off areas which will likely reduce the number of greenside bunkers you employ.

[Jason McNamara]

Tom, are there any more subtle things?  Maybe a fairway bunker is slightly smaller, or has a lower lip to reach the green?  Or perhaps a green has a wider run-up space in front?

[Tom_Doak]

Jason:

We vary that sort of stuff from one course to the next, but I don't think whether the course is public is much of a factor.

As Ajay says, some architects seem to believe that private club players are better golfers, but there is such a wide range of players in either category that I don't put much stock in it.

I guess, though, I would only tend to build a really difficult course for a private club ... because it only has to sell to 300 members and not to 30,000 golfers per year.  The latter is harder to succeed at, in my view.

[Mike_Cirba]

Ajay,

Very nice post and certainly one I believe to be a theme of increasing prominence in the near future.

As a public course golfer all of my life, I find it difficult to understand how some architects and owners seem to feel we want a dumbed down experience.

[Eric Smith]

Ajay:

I've always treated public courses pretty much the same as private courses from a design perspective

Beechtree was a perfect example of this.  During my one and only play back last fall, I had a very difficult time putting the greens, the subtle breaks were mind bending for me (and for the others in my group as well).

We also noted the close proximity of greens to tees.  Some just steps away.  Most often I would expect this to be a design trait found at a private club, but they were there at Beechtree.  Maybe that's not a big deal.  What I do know is that I don't see that very often on public courses, if at all, where I live.

[JeffTodd]

Ajay, would you agree that there is a place for the dumbed down, easy, uninteresting course? Having spent the vast majority of my golf time on public courses, with private and notable public courses only sprinkled in, I can emphatically conclude that there is overwhelming empirical evidence supporting the notion that the 120 slope goat pasture kicks the crap out of half the golfers out there.

I do not have a regular foursome, and play with different friends.  I also play quite a bit of golf as a single at any course within a two hour drive. I’m not big on conversation out there, but I’ll always ask partners if this is their home course, and what other courses they like to play. I love seeing courses through the eyes of others. Once again, using my arbitrary yet defendable 50% estimate, half the guys have negative opinions about courses that I find to be well done. The reasons for their opinions are not very varied; the course is either too expensive or too hard, or both.

There are a lot of bad, but regular, golfers out there I can assure you. When I look back on the interesting or worthwhile public courses that I’ve played in the last few months, I just cannot see your average public golfer, who surely carries a handicap of the bogey golfer (at best), really having sustainable fun out there.

I live and play in the NJ area. Of late I’ve played Heron Glen (yesterday), Sand Barrens, Cape May National, Olde Homestead, Renault Winery, Royce Brook East, and Seaview Pines. I’m not sure of your precise criteria, but I would not consider any of these courses to be lacking in qualities that make them potentially interesting, depending on one’s taste (I would pass on Cape May in the future, however). Yet each of them could wear out a higher handicap player quite quickly, as I've witnessed first hand on too many occasions.

I’m having a hard time seeing a nexus between the existence of less challenging courses and the decline of the game. In truth, I think the inverse might be more accurate. If you present many of those public golfers with the kind of subtlety I think you’re suggesting, I think many of them would call it “tricked up”, which is another comment I have heard from some of my random partners regarding features that I find alluring.

Golf is different things to different people. Not everyone has a love for the course like we do, and that is ok. As long as the interesting public courses exist, and I believe that they do, then there will be quality golf available for those who seek it, but that usually comes with an associated cost. I think we need to accept that some golfers come back again and again not for thoughtful strategy or subtlety, but because they can break 90 and spend under $50 for the privilege.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Ajay,
What brings people back is how well suited a particular course is to their game. Very few golfers consistently play where they get beat up, or where they feel that the test is too easy, they do return to courses where they can usually score in a range that pleases them.

 
 

[Ben Sims]

Well said Jeff.

Ajay, trying to fit into the niche I presented myself into in my first thread, my first thought as "The Retail Golfer" is balance.  I know that particular word is boring, as is the word moderation. But both are needed by architects wishing to please the general public, the enthusiast, and the obviously the client. The average golfer in the US scores somewhere in the 95-105 range.  That means that almost EVERY course they play "beats them up."  As Jeff said, the average golfer doesn't pay attention to the same things that members of this site might on a golf course.  I think quality public golf with interest and subtlety exists, though not as plentiful as the dreaded runway tee box, and containment mounding of the 70's-90's boom. 

I think places like Rustic Canyon, Long Shadow and even Chambers Bay to an extent have provided us a roadmap for the future of public golf.  Let's hope it catches on!!

[Philippe Binette]

Funny enough, I often find that public courss are the ones full of lakes and bunkers everywhere and narrow holes... and private courses are more players friendly

[Jeff_Brauer]

There is little correlation between the size of a man's pocketbook and that of his golf handicap, so yeah, there is no reason for most public courses to be overly easy or for most private clubs to be overly tough.

As mentioned above there will be as many regular players at a local public course as at a club, maybe more. I've always felt they want a little more contour in the greens so the putts are a little different every day. I do pay attention to walk up areas and circulation quite a bit, always leaving a wide, fairly level swath from cart path to green, somewhere back of the center of the green to keep play moving forward.

I also generally keep bunkers shallower (I am not a huge fan of other than the occaisional deep bunker anyway - if you can't recover going forward is the bunker any more fun than a water hazard?) and reduce placement at such places like the front right of the green where poor players shots tend to congregate.

To take it back to my earlier postulations, I focus on "design interest" rather than designe in difficulty.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

I must have lost something between paragraph 1 and paragraphs 2 & 3.  Or do you design that way for private courses, too?

[Matt_Ward]

Gents:

Public golf today provides a wide array of entree points for those who are just starting to those who wish to be entertained with layouts that have a good bit included.

Years and years ago when I started playing the range of public courses was quite ordinary and fairly nondescript.

That has changed and with the surge of players tied to the TV time of superstars like Arnold Palmer the masses became more and more involved with the game.

In the distant past -- you had the taxpayer-owne courses which likely were quite pedestrian. Interestingly, some of them were quite good and were then dumbed down because of the ignorance / stupidity from the people who were entrusted with keeping them up. A great example is the former Essex County West Course (now called Francis Bryne) in West Orange, NJ. The course, at one time, was the equal, to its big broither on top of the hill where the courses are situated. After public control -- bunkers and other design features that came from the hands of Charles Banks were removed -- nostly for the sake of speed of play but rather because you had people running the joint who felt that anything more challenging than moving the tee boxes every few days was just too much of a demand on them.

Grass on these courses grew by accident -- not by design.

Public golf in the '80's opened up the door to the CCFAD and you then also had the acceleration of quality piublic courses at the taxpayer level. Public course design years and years ago did have a smattering of layouts (like Eastmoreland in Portland, Memorial in Houston, Bethpage on Long Island) that did provide a better design than the horde of other courses that were nothing more than rat traps.

The marketplace further evolved in the '90's as more and more courses entered the scene -- unfortunately, too many of them had price points which further segregated lower income golfers to places that were often badly kept and had little worth seeing and playing after the first time.

The public marketplace for courses is rather diverse today -- the key issue for the public realm as I see it is the overall costs associated in playing the game and the lack of quality instruction that so many players at the introduction point are forced to overcome. Without attention to those elements the idea that the public course player will successfully become more and more involved with game will be much less so than it was with me and others like me years ago.

In sum, the marketplace can make the adjustments to what is needed -- taxpayer-owned facilities in my State of NJ are quite varied and more fun than the limited brew I had when I was just starting.

[Rick Sides]

Matt,
I 'm from South Jersey so I don't know if you see what I see, but in the South Jersey area, there are only a handful of decent public courses and they all cost over a hundred dollars in season to play.  The other public courses are usually in very bad condition because they either don't have large budgets for grounds or they force way too many rounds each year so the course gets torn up.  I guess you can't have your cake and eat it too. I wish we had something in New Jersey like the Bethpage Park System.

[Cliff Hamm]

The Monmouth County system has wonderful courses (Hominy Hill being the best) with reasonable rates for residents.  This is in southern New Jersey to us from northern NJ as it is south of the Raritan bridge ...There continues to be a place for government funded courses.  We have discussed this before but it can fill the void below the mom and pop operations and the CCFD charging $100+

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I had to run my daughters car to the shop for some repairs and my post was hasty.  As to the few private clubs I have actually designed from scratch, yes I focus on design interest rather than difficulty.

I do put more contours in all my greens that some gca's because I think that makes them more interesting for everyday play.  Of course, I put more contour in my greens on resort courses (ie the Quarry) figuring they should get something different if they drive 100 miles to play.

Bunker depth is pretty much the same from course to course.  It varies more with the site than the course (again, see the Quarry where I kept some old scars, some of which are 20 feet deep as bunkers)

I might take a few more circulation and safety chances on a private club, squeezing tees and greens together just a bit, for example.  As to walk ups, I have - surprise - a rule of thumb saying I need them one foot wide for every 1000 rounds - 40 feet wide for 40,000 rounds, so they generally get wider for public courses only based on anticipated play.  When I remodeled the Las Vegas Muni in the 1980's, they had 120K rounds and wanted virtually unlimited access to greens from cart path, which limited bunkers as you mention.

Green access is certainly an interesting issue.  On low dollar publics not in housing and in private clubs, I figure there will be more walkers, whereas high dollar publics I figure will be 100% carts.  Thus, not only do I allow for good access from cart path to green on those, with no bunkers or mounds blocking the path (golfers will take the flattest route, and even a 1" hump will cause a wear path on a busy course)

As a result, on low and high end courses, I rarely put a bunker on a direct line to the next tee, so as to encourage and allow for easy walking.  Sometimes, the question is a direct line to which tee.  It makes sense to me that back tee players will walk, and senior tee players will walk, while the guys playing the 6800 yard tees always seem like cart riders.  If on a public, I know how few players actually use the back tees over 7000 yards, and generally make sure the white/senior tee gets the most direct line possible.  

In truth, there are so few private clubs built today, and I don't get that many of them, so my design theories on private clubs are mostly just that!

[Lou_Duran]

Ajay,

Very nice post and certainly one I believe to be a theme of increasing prominence in the near future.

As a public course golfer all of my life, I find it difficult to understand how some architects and owners seem to feel we want a dumbed down experience.

Is it a matter of architects and owners seeming "to feel we want a dumbed down experience" or that they are sensitive to land, construction, and maintenance costs of the major design features that provide the interest and challenge, for which the typical public golf patron is unwilling to incur via higher green fees?  The other issue is speed of play.  Having played two very "interesting" public courses at the King Putter recently, Santa Anita and Rustic Canyon, in around five and a half hours each, I doubt that most folks have the patience or time for a regular diet of this style of play.

[Matt_Ward]

Rick / Cliff:

The issue in Jersey clearly has a price element to it -- as late as '06 the NGF listed the Garden State as the 8th most expensive place to play golf. However, there are alternatives in south jersey with the likes of Twisted Dune, RiverWinds, Buena Vista, McCullough's Emerald Links, Ocean County at Atlantis which all charge reasonable amounts to play. I don't doubt you have more expensive options -- Pine Hill, Scotland Run and the bigger ticket places in and around AC.

Rick, if time allows you should venture to the Monmouth and Somerset County Park areas where golf is a big time matter and is done very well as Cliff alluded to in his comments.

Clearly, you also have courses which are nothing more than rat traps -- barely maintained with a simple hole cut into the ground.

But, when you size up the state with where it was 30 years ago there's no contest as to the depth of offerings. Just try to realize this -- with the escalation of property taxes and the general cost of doing business here in NJ I do expect there to be some courses that will likely fade from view.

The issues, as I see it, is the increasing costs to play, the failure of instruction to really assist new players and the sheer amount of time one must dedicate to playing the game. That is where effort needs to be applied.
 

[Rick Sides]

Matt ,
Is the Ocean County Course at Atlantis pretty good?

[Matt_Ward]

Rick:

I would certainly include it on your play lists. Designed by George Fazio as one of his most earliest designs and now owned and operated by the County Government in Ocean.

If you head to Tuckerton be sure to head a bit further up state highway 9 and play Sea Oaks too.

[Ajay Yadav]

Ajay, would you agree that there is a place for the dumbed down, easy, uninteresting course? Having spent the vast majority of my golf time on public courses, with private and notable public courses only sprinkled in, I can emphatically conclude that there is overwhelming empirical evidence supporting the notion that the 120 slope goat pasture kicks the crap out of half the golfers out there.

I do not have a regular foursome, and play with different friends.  I also play quite a bit of golf as a single at any course within a two hour drive. I’m not big on conversation out there, but I’ll always ask partners if this is their home course, and what other courses they like to play. I love seeing courses through the eyes of others. Once again, using my arbitrary yet defendable 50% estimate, half the guys have negative opinions about courses that I find to be well done. The reasons for their opinions are not very varied; the course is either too expensive or too hard, or both.

There are a lot of bad, but regular, golfers out there I can assure you. When I look back on the interesting or worthwhile public courses that I’ve played in the last few months, I just cannot see your average public golfer, who surely carries a handicap of the bogey golfer (at best), really having sustainable fun out there.

I live and play in the NJ area. Of late I’ve played Heron Glen (yesterday), Sand Barrens, Cape May National, Olde Homestead, Renault Winery, Royce Brook East, and Seaview Pines. I’m not sure of your precise criteria, but I would not consider any of these courses to be lacking in qualities that make them potentially interesting, depending on one’s taste (I would pass on Cape May in the future, however). Yet each of them could wear out a higher handicap player quite quickly, as I've witnessed first hand on too many occasions.

I’m having a hard time seeing a nexus between the existence of less challenging courses and the decline of the game. In truth, I think the inverse might be more accurate. If you present many of those public golfers with the kind of subtlety I think you’re suggesting, I think many of them would call it “tricked up”, which is another comment I have heard from some of my random partners regarding features that I find alluring.

Golf is different things to different people. Not everyone has a love for the course like we do, and that is ok. As long as the interesting public courses exist, and I believe that they do, then there will be quality golf available for those who seek it, but that usually comes with an associated cost. I think we need to accept that some golfers come back again and again not for thoughtful strategy or subtlety, but because they can break 90 and spend under $50 for the privilege.

There is always a place for everything.....but I have to respectfully disagree that the "average (bogey at best) golfer" cannot enjoy interesting challenging designs.... (Btw, most private club golfers also are average (bogey at best) golfers").  My point is that the variance of experience and enjoyment may be wider at public courses, but its not much wider. On the other hand, the public golf supports a significant, if not, the majority of golfers and hence its critcal for it not to be dumbed down.....

Among the vast majority of public golfers I know, the lack of interesting challenging courses that entice one to play again and want to play again next weeekend is the primary reason why it slips to one round a week to a couple of rounds a month to the ocassional rounds... And I have seen the rounds go way up when one joins a good private course.... people work hard to find the time to play a round......

golf is as much a mental game as physical... dumb it down and one will lose interest after a while ....the result lower rounds..... in this day and age when there are competing multiple demands on one's time, good interesting challenging public courses are essential for golf to grow...

[Ajay Yadav]

Tom, I am heartened to note that your approach to design a private or public golf course remains generally the same.  I hope it catches on as we all could do with public courses that benefit from the approach

Matt, there are a  lot of reasons public golf is less compelling, but I believe that everything else can be addressed (for eg. maintenance can improve), but once designed its way difficult, if not impossible to change that.... if a course has been dumbed down by the architect at the genesis, then its an uphill battle, often unsuccessful to make it interesting and challenging

Also, the public golf courses in nj, although improved from yesteryears are still, on an aggregate, way behind the private courses. Exceptions exist, but they are few.


Lou,  Just because a public golf course is more interesting and challenging does not automatically mean a longer round.... for eg. rounds at the bethpage park's five courses generally take the same irrespective of the relative challenges of the various courses. If one has to spend 4.5-5.5 hours on a course, I am more likely to continue to do so at a more interesting design than at a dumbed down design.

[Anthony Gray]

  I think a Resort courses and Public (munis) should be seperate catagories in this discussion. Resort payers/players are expecting a grander scale than the muni players.

  Anthony

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