For the love of golf....

[Don_Mahaffey]

...I wish everyone would stop worshiping at the alter of everything on a golf course has to BIG!. All we read about is scale (slang for bigger is better) and huge fwys and huge greens...Old Mac has huge greens, Ballyhack has huge greens, Prairie club has huge greens...can anyone build a small green anymore? is it really always great when we have to state the average square footage of the greens when we describe a course. “What a great course the greens average 12.5K”...seriously, I'm hearing this more and more. Golf is going broke and the only thing these guys know how to do is build bigger more expensive greens?...and for the hell of it lets walk mow them too...recession, what recession?

And don't tell me it’s not partly about ratings because when it comes to raters, bigger, wider, huge is always better.

For the love of golf can anyone build a quality small green anymore?

[Mike H]

Speaking of small greens is there championship quality course that has smaller greens than Inverness?

[George Pazin]

Well, Pebble has small greens and a solid rep...

It's hard for me to comment on this, as big greens are something I really enjoy - not necessarily a big course, but big greens.

Yet I can recall walking Applebrook and seeing the beauty in some of the short par 3s which looked downright tiny.

In the real world, it's always tough to separate marketing from genuine substance.

[RJ_Daley]

There must be a pretty good back story on this rant, Don.  

Were you doing some budgetting projections for greens maintenance?  

To be honest, I'm not enamored with overly small greens from a fun perspective, unless the surrounds very wide and collar length.  Small greens with 2" blues rough isn't my cup of tea.  Which small green courses (aside from Pebble) would you cite?

[Don_Mahaffey]

RJ,
No, no budget stories. Here at Wolf Point we have some big greens, average size greens, and some small greens. All the greens here have short grass around them so you can putt, chip, flop, bump, whatever you want in your attempt to get close.

No, my rant is directed at those who think that going big is a sure way to get good marks. We've known for awhile that modern large courses in large settings get more recognition. Now, it seems like going big in everything is a sure way to success and I think it's being overdone, a lot.

I think it takes more talent to design and build really good average sized (6k) to smaller (4K) greens. You certainly need to know, or rely on someone who knows, good agronomics. You need to know how to site a green. And, here's the big one since large contours seem to be all the rage, (and very poorly done in many cases IMO) it's a lot harder to build really cool internal contours in a small green. But, it can be done. But first one has to show enough restraint not to think the new average sized green is 10K.

[Jim Briggs]

Have not played it, but have gotten the sense from Ran's write-up that the Chechessee Creek Club, while not without a couple of large greens, tended to average on the smaller side by todays (or what you consider to be todays) standards, and they sound to be pretty quality to me.

[Mark Pritchett]

Harbour Town comes to mind as a course with small, fun and challenging greens.

[Dan Herrmann]

I like what Hanse did at our club (and, no, I'm not sayinig it's unique to him.  Shorter hole usually means smaller green.

We have greens of all shapes and sizes, and, to quote from Genesis, It Was Good

[Peter Pallotta]

Don - this is going to sound like a flippant answer, but I don't mean it to be. Sometime soon, someone is going to build a modest, low-key, gently undulating, English-style parkland course with small, at-grade greens and simple grass-faced pot bunkers, and it is going to be a very, very good course, and then things will get back into balance.

Edit: Well, probably not back into balance, but maybe close. The home run ball has always been here; it's just taken a different form now.  And from egg-head to lunk-head, everyone seems to love the home run ball. Me - I was always old before my time in this regard: I like the single, and the sacrfice bunt, and the stolen base, and the line drive to the opposite field.  

Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Don:

I tend to agree with you, even though the one thing I've noticed as a trend in the rankings for the past 20 years is that in general, bigger-scale courses get better votes.  [One exception of sorts is Sebonack ... small greens but BIG fairways.]

Most architects today are afraid to build small greens.  I once saw a copy of Tom Fazio's construction specs and he INSISTED that every green be at least 6000 sf ... if the plans said the green was to be smaller than that, the contractor was still required to get special permission from them to build a green that small!

My friend Tom Mead always notes with glee that Crystal Downs' greens only average 5000 sf, even with all of the undulation in them.  And 5000 sf used to be considered "medium size".  For modern courses that would be considered small.  Then again, 8 used to be "fast" and 9 "very fast" on the USGA's Stimpmeter chart, and you guys sure changed that!

[Mike Nuzzo]

Peter
How will that one course change the current direction?

[Peter Pallotta]

Mike - my thinking is that the same dynamics that got us into this will get us out of it, and that those dynamics include the functioning of the herd mentality working (at first against, but then putting its full support behind) the new-best-thing mentality. 

I know that's not much of an answer, and I assume that you are asking about bigger issues - but I do think that, especially in the internet age, 'concepts' and 'courses' can catch fire and spread faster than ever before.

Peter 

[Andy Troeger]

I'm a rater and I tend to really like small greens. I think that's a large portion of what makes Pebble so interesting...and different.

But admittedly its hard to find good modern courses that have them...

[Adam Clayman]

Engh's new one in Kearney Ne. Will have several small bowled greens. There's also one 18k sg\ft.