Shot values

[Kyle Harris]

Shot Values as a concept were not sold on me until I read a Hugh Wilson quote about the nature of bunker construction.

I'll let Tom Paul post it, but I think it's by far the best definition of shot value I've read and may sway a lot of the naysayers.

[JR Potts]

Ryan,

Can you make a good hole that doesn't require some degree of good shots? Not Tiger's good shots, but the clientelle playing your course. Doesn't a good course rely on good holes and doesn't a good hole rely on good shots?

I think you can have a great golf course where the average guy playing it doesn't have to hit a good shot on a hole.  If par is largely unachieveable on the majority of the holes for the players, what "good" shots does he/she need to hit?  All he/she needs to do is not hit a terrible shot.

Let's take Chicago Golf for instance - you can play every single hole on that course, not hit a good shot a reach every green in two shots on a par 3, three shots on a par 4 and four shots on a par 5.  While we all know the course is great, not one of the holes requires a great shot...especially in the final shot to the green is some type of wedge (as the grees are big)...same for Pinehurst.

Now at Butler, Medinah, Olympia Fields, Whistling Straites, the River Course, Pine Valley, Augusta National that's not the case...an average golfer maybe does have to hit a great shot due to teh penal nature of the bunkering and hazards....but again, that doesn't mean anything as to the caliber of the golf course or even holde in my opinion.

[JESII]

Ryan,

Does this hypothetical player want to play well/improve? To do that, would they need to hit a good shot to make a par? I'm betting every hole at Chicago Golf would require a 15 handicapper to hit at least one very good shot (for them) to par the hole...am I right?

I'm not one to say Score should drag down the conversation, but if we're talking about paying no attention (zero!) to score whatsoever, I would ask what difference can you, the architect, make?

[Tim Nugent]

Well, Dick is in town today for his granddaughter's graduation.  I'll be having a "shot value" discussion with him tonite at dinner.

[JR Potts]

Yes, they would likely have to hit ONE good shot to make par.  But, an 18 handicapper would have a great round and make a lot of money if he made 18 bogeys. 

[Kyle Harris]

The Hugh Wilson statement:

“The question of bunkers is a big one and the very best school for study we have found is along the seacoast among the dunes. Here one may study the different formations and obtain many ideas for bunkers. We have tried to make them natural and fit them into the landscape. The criticism had been made that we have made them too easy, that the banks are too sloping and that a man may often play a mid-iron shot out of the bunker where he should be forced to use a niblick. This opens a pretty big subject and we know that the tendency is to make bunkers more difficult. In the bunkers abroad on the seaside courses, the majority of them were formed by nature and the slopes are easy; the only exception being where on account of the shifting sand, they have been forced to put in railroad ties or similar substance to keep the same from blowing. This had made a perfectly straight wall but was not done with the intention of making it difficult to get out but merely to retain the bunker as it exists. If we make the banks of every bunker so steep that the very best player is forced to use a niblick to get out and the only hope he has when he gets in is to be able to get his ball on the fairway again, why should we not make a rule as we have at present with water hazards, when a man may, if he so desires, drop back with the loss of a stroke. I thoroughly believe that for the good of Golf, that we should not make our bunkers so difficult, that there is no choice left in playing out of them and that the best and worst must use a niblick.”

-Hugh Wilson, 1916

[Kyle Harris]

I'm bumping. Feel there is more to be discussed.

[Adam Clayman]

Kyle, My reaction to your Wilson quote was that it defined a specific shot demand, not necessarily, a shot value.

Why did you feel that this quote opened your eyes to shot values?

What I'm sensing from other posts is that Any shot's value, seems based on outcome, rather than the architecture. 

[Kyle Harris]

Kyle, My reaction to your Wilson quote was that it defined a specific shot demand, not necessarily, a shot value.

Why did you feel that this quote opened your eyes to shot values?

What I'm sensing from other posts is that Any shot's value, seems based on outcome, rather than the architecture. 

Adam,

Because it essentially outlines that by limiting options, we approach the territory of forcing the option of the golf to "touch" the ball in order to advance it.

Shot values are the interplay between being able to advance the ball as closely to the golfer's ideal as possible, to the ultimate interruption of golf - the penalty stroke.

[TEPaul]

"What I'm sensing from other posts is that Any shot's value, seems based on outcome, rather than the architecture."


But Adam, I can't believe you may be suggesting that the two (outcome and architecture) are mutually exclusive. I would think you or anyone else would have to admit that to some relative degree the one is dependent on the other! 



As a side note----Hugh Wilson's remark quoted above is remarkable to me for a number of reasons, not the least being it is the only remark from Hugh Wilson we are aware of on golf course architecture rather than agronomy. The real irony is that he wrote that remark in a chapter he was asked to write on the agronomic development of Merion East, and apparently realizing it was not actually on the subject of agronomy he crossed out that paragraph and it was never actually published!