This probably seems like a bizarre and/or ticky-tack question to toss out, but I played Piping Rock Club yesterday in the Met PGA Pro-Am and some idle time there left me wondering something...can/does the presence/absence of a good yardage book impact one's general assessment of a golf course?
I'd noticed that of the various places in the Met Area I've played over the past few months, a very slim few seem to offer players much in the way of yardage maps. Now, there are plenty of golf courses I've seen where that wouldn't really matter in the least...but Piping (to me) is definitely not one of them. The various changes in elevation and doglegs up and down and around the awesome piece of land they have combine to demand that a player be very precise in choosing his line off most of the tees. Five yards too far on this line, too short on that line, too far left at X distance from the tee or too far right at Y distance from the tee could often be the difference between a reasonable birdie opportunity or an unlikely chance at par.
Courses like that (or many of the other yardage book-less old school clubs around here--e.g. Inwood, Metropolis, Quaker Ridge, Rockaway Hunting Club, ect.) are really introducing the element of chance into non-members' rounds by asking them to grab the driver and fire away without much of a basis on which to formulate any kind of strategy as to the best way to attack a given hole. I wonder if any of you folks agree with me that oftentimes this little oversight on the part of some similar venues can actually influence the way your critical eye assesses the quality of the golf course.
I don't mean for this to sound like a knock on the courses for not having them, I just wonder from a course architecture standpoint if sometimes I've given too much/too little credit to courses I've played because the lack of detailed information about the layout has kept me from being able to come to a well-informed judgement as to the strategic appeal of the place.
For example, one of my favorite golf courses anywhere is Tobacco Road--which I've seen very conflicting opinions about over time. I've heard and read opinions about it ranging from full-blown shreddings of what a joke it is to the kind of praise usually reserved for courses with a whole lot more pedigree. I've wondered why that might be and started to think about how I experienced playing that place each time.
Without fail, every round I've ever played there, I literally carried around that yardage book like it was the nuclear football the entire trip around the place. Every tee box was so much fun because you'd look up at what you'd see and then look down at what the hole actually looks like and realize the giant catalog of choices balancing risk and reward that exist on almost every hole out there. Holes like #16 from the tee look absurd, but when you glance down at the book you realize that no matter what your eye may tell you the reality is that there are TONS of options to be considered and there are quite a few very safe plays among them. I was tickled reaching each successive hole and going through the internal debate we all have when deciding between various tactics on the golf course.
Without that book, however, I'd estimate that well over 50% of the various strategic choices available would NEVER have occurred to me had I had only my eyes to rely on. I can totally see why a lot of people would hate Tobacco if they had to play it without that book. Holes like the par-4 15th can be completely overlooked for their brilliance when you haven't the slightest clue standing on the tee what your options really are. At that hole, only a yardage book or a SkyCaddy or any of those other GPS devices could make you aware of all the things you must be aware of when standing on that tee.
The top of the two photos at the bottom illustrates the view from the tee.The colored dots denote possible lines you could take off the tee. The photo below shows where shots played on those lines would end up.
I don't know about you guys, but I know that I would never in one million years not just hit the ball on the lighter blue line if I didn't have any knowledge or understanding of the other ways you could actually play the hole. If I played my first round out there and got to this hole, I'd probably have hit driver on that line and run through the fairway--finding out the hard way that really you can't hit the ball much further than 225-ish on that line. As quickly as I know I can often rush to judgement, I really might under those circumstances just launch into a tirade about what a bunch of BS the golf course was and how all these blind shots are really lame and so on and so forth. Could have easily ended up hating the place...all because my not having the road map to the course put me in a position where I couldn't at all experience what Tobacco Road is all about.
At face value, it really doesn't seem like a course having a yardage book should or could be a thing that makes or breaks one's opinion of the layout. But the more I got to thinking about it, I really started feeling like there could be a chance that a lot of courses all over the place are getting bad reviews or ratings when something as simple as the commissioning of a yardage book might provide the further illustration required to shift the balance of public opinion towards the positive.
You folks on this site are much more astute observers of all things golf course than I am--so I'm highly curious to hear what you think. Can the absence of the key information one finds in a yardage book at all influence your experience playing a golf course? Is it possible that the lack of detailed yardage information could be seriously impacting the reputation and therefore the bottom line of many public and private clubs across the US?
Does anyone know why EVERY decent golf course doesn't have at least a bare-bones yardage guide? I mean, it's astounding to me that any private club or high-end daily fee track doesn't at least have something available. Even if they couldn't sell them, are these seemingly inexpensive items really not worth most of these places peeling off a tiny fraction of the yearly budget to ensure that nobody plays the golf course without being fully apprised of every possible strategic nuance to it? Are there any specific courses you can think of that the details provided in the yardage book/device made the experience more enjoyable to you?
Maybe I'm making an issue out of something that's not an issue...but either way I'm intrigued to hear your opinions...