Is Penal Architecture "dead"

[Mike_Cirba]

On an earlier thread, one of our most knowledgeable and contentious posters contended that most new courses, primarily those of a resort or public nature, were toned down from a penal perspective simply because that type of demanding design wouldn't go over well with the paying public.

I disagree.  

In fact, I'd contend that through the use of water, wetlands, difficult topography, increased distances, need for "making a name" and faster green speeds, I'm seeing more courses built in the "135 and over" slope rating than ever before.

I could name names, but will only mention two regional courses built recently to make my point.  Is there anyone here who has played either Bulle Rock or Links at Lighthouse Sound in Maryland?  

How about in your area?  Are the "latest and greatest" courses built as reasonable, but interesting strategic challenges for all levels of golfer, or are they being built as difficult tests of golf that are meant to be talked about for their reputation for "wow factor" and difficulty?

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mike, this is a freekin' great topic!

I couldn't agree more. the penal nature of wetland/eco areas is a ruining the game from every aspect on MOST new courses here in SoCal.

Absolutely horrible stuff really and one only has to thank friends of the environment Damian, Art and Ted Jr. and Sr. for giving us such ilk.

[Peter Goss]

Tommy,
I'm interested in your link between penal architecture and friends of the environment.
Notwithstanding the penal nature of water hazards, are  you suggesting a great strategic/integrated design  cannot be also environmentally friendly? Or is just the designers creating penal design because they want to?

[TEPaul]

Personally, I think environmental restrictions causing what some might consider design problems which adds difficulty for  a golfer might have a bit to do with penal architecture or the "difficulty factor" but not that much.

The far more prevalent reason is these types of courses actually attract golfers--and they always have. There's a perception among the great American golfing public that difficulty, even extreme difficulty is completely synonymous with QUALITY, and it's a perception that's very marketable!

Difficulty in golf and design is also a most fascinating subject in an historic architectural context probably going all the way back to the debut of Pine Valley and some of the other early courses following it that were designed as almost exclusively "championship caliber" courses and designs.

Why they evolved is also historically fascinating but some of the severe debates on their value and usefulness are evidenced in some of the early written material among such as Tillinghast and J.H Taylor. This debate does not appear to be incidental either, it appears it was very fundamental!

I've been thinking about writing an "In My Opinion" article on this very subject but first it will require some good in-depth research to support the point, but I really do feel all the evidence of it is there!

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba,

Could you name me a penal community/residential golf course built in the last ten years.  Start in Florida and work your way north and west.

For profit courses need to get substantial numbers of golfers through all 18 holes as rapidly as possible in order to achieve profitability.  A penal design hinders that objective.  Could you name me five penal, for profit courses built in the last 10 years.

I consider a resort course to be one affiliated/attached to a hotel.  Could you name me five penal resort courses built in the last ten years.

More couples play golf today then 40 - 50 years ago.
Penal design and couples golf don't mix, hence the trend away from penal design.

If you look back at all the alterations made to the great or classical courses we tend to love, would you say that most of the modifications over the years were an attempt to make them "more fair" to soften them, to take away some of their penal nature ?  Or do you feel that these courses have had penal elements added to their design ?
Which way is the trend going ?

But, that's just my opinion, you could be wrong  

[SPDB]

I may be splitting hairs here, but I think a distinction needs to be made between penal architecture (as practiced by its founder, Walter Travis), and the type employed in building new courses, such as Bulle Rock.

I'll use Bulle Rock since I've played it.

I'm not sure that stretching a course out to 7400 yards (including a 665 yard hole) has really anything to do with an architectural style. I think citing length is just a straw man in arguing that penal architecture is still alive.

None of Travis' courses are over 6800 yards (and, yes, that was probably pretty long at the time they were built) and yet they are unmistakably penal in their architecture. By that I mean things like bunker construction and placement. These things all contribute to a penal architectural style that makes a course tough under normal circumstances without relying merely on length as the toughness multiplier.

Don't get me wrong, i like Bulle Rock, but I thought that its toughness (or penalty) was only a product of its length. I don't consider that architecture, or strategic architecture for that matter.

[Mike_Cirba]

Sean,

Course rating is largely based on yardage, as you know, so it's no surprise that Bulle Rock has a rating of 76.4 against a par of 72.  

However, let's look at slope rating...the yardstick that attempts to measure the degree of difficulty for the handicap golfer vs the scratch player.  Bulle Rock comes in at a hefty 147.

Just by way of comparison, "penal" courses like Garden City and the Concord Monster come in at par 72, rating 76.4, slope 142 and par 73, rating 73.8, slope 139, respectively.

Patrick,

I'll be back with my list after lunch..  Please be patient, as I have a LOT of typing ahead of me.  

[Joel_Stewart]

I mentioned a course in Northern California on the other referenced thread, The Dragon at Gold Mountain.  

My question is why do it in a resort environment?  Of all the places we can go in Northern California, Monterey-The Wine Country-Tahoe, I would never go back to The Dragon because it is NO FUN.  I have to play my ass off to break 90 and I'm a 3 handicap.  

[Mike_Cirba]

Ok...to sum up, Patrick asked me to name "for profit" courses built in the last ten or so years that are penal in nature.

Since "penal" itself is a rather subjective term, I've chosen to use the rather quantifiable "slope" rating as a yardstick.  Since the USGA contends that the 'average difficulty course' in the US would slope at 113, and that the top end of difficulty is 155, I believe, I am going to use a slope of 135 and above as my indicator as to a course's degree of "penality".

What's more, I've already indicated the course and slope rating for two courses cited here as penal and difficult in the past, Garden City GC, and our old favorite hobgoblin from the 60s, Concord Monster in upstate NY.  They are as follows for comparison.

Garden City - Par 73, rating 73.0, slope 139
Concord Monster - Par 72, rating 76.4, slope 142

Ok...Fair enough?

Ok...I'll be even more fair.  Following Patrick's dictate that one must "play to assay", I will limit my examples to only courses I've played.  

All are for profit courses.  I have them keyed as follows, based on my understanding of their "type".  

R = Resort
M = Municipal
C = Community
P = Privately owned/Publically operated

Aviara (CA) - (R) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 141
Barefoot (Love) (SC) - (R) - par 72, rating 75.1, slope 138
Barefoot (Norman) (SC) - (R) - par 72, rating 73.5, slope 137
Beechtree (MD) - (P) - par 71, rating 74.9, slope 142
Blackwolf Run (River) (WI) - (R) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 151
Breckenridge (CO) - (M) - par 72, rating 73.1, slope 146
Bulle Rock (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 76.4, slope 147
Cape May Nat'l (NJ) - (P) - par 71, rating 72.9, slope 136
Center Valley (PA) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.1, slope 135
Chisel Creek (PA) - (P) - par 70, rating 70.0, slope 140
Glen Dornoch (SC) - (C) - par 72, rating 73.2, slope 141
Great Bear (PA) - (C) - par 71, rating 74.6, slope 139
Greystone (MD) - (M) - par 72, rating 73.5, slope 139
Heritage (SC) - (C) - par 71, rating 74.1, slope 142
Iron Valley (PA) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 138
Legacy (NV) - (C) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 136
Lighthouse Sound (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 73.3, slope 144
TPC Myrtle Beach (SC) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.0, slope 145
Nemacolin (Mystic Rock) (PA) - (R) - par 72, rating 75.0, slope 146
New Jersey Nat'l (NJ) - (P) - par 72, rating 73.7, slope 137
PB Dye GC (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.6, slope 141
Pilgrims Oak (PA) - (P) - par 72, rating 73.4, slope 138
Pine Hill (NJ) - (P) - par 70, rating 74.2, slope 140
CC of Poconos (PA) - (C) - par 70, rating 71.2, slope 137
Prestwick (SC) - (C) - par 72, rating 74.2, slope 139
Queenstown (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.2, slope 138
Redhawk (CA) - (P) - par 72, rating 75.7, slope 149
Reynolds Great Water (GA) - (R) - par 72, rating 73.8, slope 135
Stonehouse (VA) - (P) - par 71, rating 75.0, slope 140
Texas Star (TX) - (P) - par 72, rating 73.6, slope 135
Thistle (SC) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 136
Tidewater (SC) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.9, slope 140
True Blue (SC) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.3, slope 145
Whiskey Creek (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.5, slope 137
Whistling Straits (WI) - (R) - par 72, rating 76.7, slope 151
Woodlands (MD) - (M) - par 72, rating 74.4, slope 143
World Wood (Pine) (FL) - (P) - par 71, rating 73.7, slope 140
World Woods (Rolling) (FL) - (P) - par 72, rating 73.5, slope 136
Worthington Manor (MD) - (P) - par 72, rating 74.0, slope 143


 

[Rick Shefchik]

To address the penal/wetlands/environmental issue raised in this thread, it seems to me (from my Minnesota vantage point, anyway), that we are seeing more courses with preserved wetlands because those parcels were previously (from the '20s perhaps through the '60s) considered unsuitable sites for golf courses.

With a dwindling supply of land -- and a new taste for creative use of wetlands among both golfers and designers -- these remaining parcels have been turned into golf courses, and often very fine ones. It's inescapable, however, that a course with water on 14 holes has the potential to be tougher than a course with only a couple of water hazards.

[THuckaby2]

That's a hell of a list there Mike, and speaks loudly to your point.  The more I think about it, the more it is "in vogue" to build courses that meet the "penal" definition of slope 135 or over.

I could go on at great length re "slope inflation" amongst course raters, but I doubt I'd convince anyone and maybe not even myself.  Yes, tough means good still, in a lot of ways.

Which makes unique those new courses that meet everyone's definition of "great" but don't meet this definition of "penal."  I can think of one really quickly:

Pacific Dunes.  72.9/133 from the BLACK tees, which very few people play.  70.9/131 from the middle GREEN tees, played far more often.

TH

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba,

If only you would have called me, I could have saved you all that typing.  

Sean is correct, your confusing slope rating with PENAL, and the two are not interchangeable.

I've played the Concord Monster dozens of times and definitely wouldn't classify it as a penal design.

GCGC and PV would fit my idea of penal design.

[Mike_Cirba]

I could have saved myself some typing...

A search on Golfcourse.com, looking for US courses that are either "public", semi-private, or resort, with slope ratings 135 or greater yielded 751 courses!!

Of course, some of those were likely built longer ago than 10 years, but how many do we really think were built before 1980??  Not many, I'm certain.  

[Scott_Burroughs]

I find that almost every new course that opens is in the 73.0+, 130+ range.  Rarely less.

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

You're a roar.  

While I agree that high slope rating and penal architecture are not necessarily interchangeable, it does follow that virtually every penal design has a high slope rating.    

Patrick, you are the one who is confusing "course rating" which is based almost single-handedly with length, with "slope rating", which is based primarily on PENALIZING ARCHITECTURAL FEATURES for the handicap player, which is at the heart of what we are discussing here.

So, rather than change the subject, let's stick with your original contention.  

You stated, "For profit courses need to get substantial numbers of golfers through all 18 holes as rapidly as possible in order to achieve profitability.  A penal design hinders that objective.  Could you name me five penal, for profit courses built in the last 10 years?"

Yes, I can sir, and I just did...in spades.  

By the way, what school of design would you call the Concord Monster (a resort course), for the average vacationer?  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Cirba,

I would classify The Concord as............long
not a course for the ordinary golfer.

On that list you provided, what was the criteria you used to classify them as penal ?  The architecture or the course rating/slope ?

Of those you've played, how would you describe their architecture ?

I would classify NGLA as a form of penal golf.

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

I've played all of them.  Most I would classify as having strong penal elements, with a few notable exceptions such as Beechtree and Great Bear.

Incidentally, the best of them share penal features with thought-provoking strategies, and give the weaker player a way around the trouble.  

Interestingly, some of the courses I listed are not long at all, such as Country Club of the Poconos, just over 6000 yards, but with such penality (impenetrable woods, wetlands, forced carries, water, mountainous terrain, severe greens) that the slope is still a staggering 140.

I thought the point of our discussion was your contention that "for profit" golf courses were not being designed to be difficult or penalizing because of issues such as speed of play and return play??

Yes, as I described earlier, I am using "slope rating" as a quantifiable measure of the difficulty of the course for the bogey golfer.  Anything else we might use would be just highly subjective.  

If you cite NGLA as a penal course, where the bogey golfer is going to lose a couple sleeves of balls, perhaps we should start on equal footing as far as our terminology here.

Could you describe for me your definition of "penal" design?

Incidentally, beyond length, do you think that the fact the Concord Monster has water in play on over ten holes and that many holes are bordered by thick woods, that there are countless bunkers, and HUGE, severely undulating greens has anything to do with the fact that it's "not a course for the ordinary golfer"?

[Mike_Cirba]

Oops..I missed one.

Almost forgot about Woodloch Springs, a resort community in Hawley, PA.

Despite only playing 6500 yards from the tips, the slope rating is 143.  

Obviously, we're not talking only distance here.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike,

I don't equate penal with the number of sleeves of balls one leaves behind.

Forced carries over water or wetlands may be an environmental dictate for many of the courses you cite.

My thoughts had to do with a non-hostile piece of land,
where the architect made the choices, not environemtal agencies.

[Mike_Cirba]

Patrick,

Please provide me with your definition of "penal" architecture.  That way, at least we can be on the same page.  Thanks.

[Paul Turner]

Mike C is correct.  

Any course that limits recovery shots i.e. with lots of water, is inherently penal.

[THuckaby2]

Wouldn't this depend on perspective?  IE a lot of what's penal for the bogey golfer won't be penal for the scratch, and vice versa at least to some extent?

And gee, didn't Dean Knuth figure this out a few years ago?  

TH

[SPDB]

Mike - I think you are not properly assessing the impact that having 5 sets of tees on these courses, compared to the two at places like Pine Valley, and GCGC.
Taking the highest slope from the tips of some (if not all) of the courses you list is not really an accurate reflection of that course's difficulty (penal), or how it is normally played.

[Joel_Stewart]

I equate "penal" with "extreme".  A few courses would be,

Pine Valley
TPC - Sawgrass
PGA West
True Blue (in fact most of Mike Strantz courses)
Whistling Straits

I don't think World Woods, Avaira, Legacy fit into this area.

[TEPaul]

From reading through this topic it looks to me like Mike Cirba is a bit more accurate on what "penal" means, at least in the context of slope (or even possibly course rating). He certainly seems to have slope nailed with none of the misperceptions of most people.

A high slope generally means a course is penal, but in the context of slope, it might in reality mean it's far more penal to the handicap golfer.

A course that has a very high course rating relative to its par and also a very high slope rating can generally be considered "penal" to every level of golfer. A course with a high course rating relative to par with a low slope is generally not penal to any level. A course with a low course rating to par and a high slope rating would be a course that is probably not penal at all to a scratch player but quite penal to a handicap player.

I'm not certain of the mathematical sophistication of the slope rating system as it applies to architecture but this I do know, that course rating is based generally on total card yardage to the tune of about 75-85% today (basically for every 18-20 yd increase the course rating will increase 0.1 of a stroke).

Pine Valley would be an example of both very high course rating and also slope rating! The fact that it's not particularly long would logically indicate that it is tremendously penal to every level (the other 15-25% that is not the total card yardage part of the equation must be very high indeed!).

A good example of a course with a high course rating and a low slope would be Aronomink (7,000yd par 70) but nothing much penal about it.

As for a course with a very high slope and a low course rating, one doesn't come to mind right now but there must be some out there and somebody will identify one or some. It would logically not be penal for a scratch player but quite penal for the handicap player for some reason.

So course rating does not indicate penal, although it could. And slope does indicate penal, always for a handicap player but not necessarily for a scratch player.

But the perception of slope rating is interesting. At least half or more American golfers think a high slope rating indicates the difficutly of a golf course for all golfers and that's not necessarily so. There are probably a good number of clients out there who ask an architect to build them a course with a high slope rating so it can be considered difficult by everyone.

Who the hell knows what they architect might give the client  but when the course is rated and comes in with a high slope and a low course rating relative to par the architect probably didn't give the client exactly what he was asking for although the client may very well never really know that! In other words the course will probably be "penal" for the vast majority but not everyone!