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Niall C

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I was just thinking how the course that you were brought up on might influence your thoughts on what was good, or bad, in golf course architecture. Was that influence a subconscious one that you only became aware of later in life or was it something that you were aware of from the outset ?

Thoughts ?

Niall

Ally Mcintosh

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #1 on: March 03, 2011, 10:33:52 AM »
Niall,

I suppose so to the extent that I was brought up on links golf... But aside from that, not really.

I didn't start getting influenced or forming my own ideas about GCA until I started to study it a little more...

Niall C

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #2 on: March 03, 2011, 10:44:32 AM »
Ally

Likewise, experience of other courses and study of gca helped form my ideas more but certainly the course I grew up playing, Bothwell Castle a David Adams design from 1922, was at least initially how I perceived courses should be. I think that was more a subconscious thing than anything. There was at least one blind green but mainly the greens tended to slope down from back to front and with a slight angle in orientation of the green. The idea of angles creatign strategy has stayed with me.

Niall

John Kavanaugh

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #3 on: March 03, 2011, 11:04:41 AM »
I don't like OB right because my home course had none of them.  It is for this reason that I think the tee shot on the first hole at St. Louis CC is the hardest in golf.

Philippe Binette

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #4 on: March 03, 2011, 11:21:08 AM »
My home course had huge influence on me..

2, 18 hole courses, about 6100 yards long each

one course with 18 holes in the woods
one course with 9 holes in the woods and 9 holes in the open field.

the nine in the open, which I played a lot since people didn't like it, is wide open but:

1) wind
2) firm ground
3) capricious inverted bowl greens really hard to hold made it hard. Everybody thought it was easy because it was wide, but come the club championship, everybody was shooting 40-42

the other nines had small steep back to front greens with steep banks on the side and the back, which often made me play "front-edge golf". Try to hit short of the green and let it release to the front edge of the green, then facing easier straight uphill chips or putts

Out of bounds everywhere on the right.... hard coming down the stretch, no lead is secure at the club championship.

Eric Smith

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #5 on: March 03, 2011, 11:37:01 AM »
I don't like OB right because my home course had none of them.  It is for this reason that I think the tee shot on the first hole at St. Louis CC is the hardest in golf.

Interesting. I suppose I learned to play a draw primarily because my home course had OB right on the first 5 holes.

As far as influencing my thoughts on GCA - I attended the Pinehurst Jr. Golf Advantage School during my 8th grade summer and learned that being able to play your ball out of the woods is pretty much a normal occurrence there and shouldn't always be penalized stroke and distance like at my home course. Though in fairness to my course, it was more often than not because you were on someone else's property. Damn real estate courses.

Niall C

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #6 on: March 03, 2011, 11:38:26 AM »
Philippe,

I might surmise from what your saying that you have a preference for relatively easy tee to green but tricky greens, would that be right ? I think I'm right in saying you are a gca, do you have a tendency towqards this type of design or are you more influenced by other considerations ?

Niall

Mike Tanner

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #7 on: March 03, 2011, 12:55:01 PM »
 I didn't take up the game until I was in my early 20s. The courses I played as a beginner are flat; the majority of those rounds were on a municipal course designed by George Cobb. I didn't seriously start studying golf course architecture until about ten years ago.

I think most of my ideas about GCA have been informed by reading rather than playing. Of course, when playing now, I'm conscious of the principles of CGA and how they affect the way I try to plot my way from tee to green.

My particular circumstances do have an effect on the way I respond to course architecture. Because I'm at home on flat coastal courses, hilly courses give me fits. I think I'd like links courses, but the closest I've been to one of those is Kiawah's Ocean Course. Desert courses appear completely alien to me.

Thanks for posting this interesting question, Niall.
Life's too short to waste on bad golf courses or bad wine.

Philippe Binette

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #8 on: March 03, 2011, 03:39:33 PM »
Niall

what my home course taught me was that firm ground, wind and greens tough to hold can create more strategy than a lot of fairway bunkers and other features.

I don't mind long courses, but I hate over-designed course where the architect puts hazards everywhere and say, ok the hole is going to be played from this point to this point to this point..

simple but smart stuff always work, no matter the lenght

Pat Burke

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #9 on: March 03, 2011, 03:50:51 PM »
Growing up in New Jersey, being the child of a mom AND dad that were golf professionals,
I was blessed with playing what I still consider many of the best courses in this country.

There was a catch.  Deal GC in central NJ, was a tight course with very small, well guarded greens.  This is the course I learned to play on, and my game still reflects it.  I learned to drive the ball straight, and had pretty good control on my irons.  Never really developed in to a good medium to long putter, as we rarely had putts of these lengths!

The other challenge as I grew in to a tournament player, was in New Jersey, we were always playing tournaments on great courses.  Ridgewood, Plainfield, Montclair, Essex County, Morris C etc.   It was a great, spoiling pleasure to compete on the courses we played, but there was enough difficulty, that I never got totally comfortable with really low numbers.  Even par was ALWAYS competitive.

It took me a long time to LEARN to shoot low scores, and to this day, I am more of a consistent scorer than low scorer

Steve Lang

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #10 on: March 03, 2011, 04:00:38 PM »
:<))  Hit it straight or lose it was one of several mottos learned on my beloved tree-lined muni Ottawa Park Golf Course.. so gca was always simply about forcing shot making or not..  flat and open was boring
Inverness (Toledo, OH) cathedral clock inscription: "God measures men by what they are. Not what they in wealth possess.  That vibrant message chimes afar.
The voice of Inverness"

Michael Goldstein

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #11 on: March 03, 2011, 04:07:14 PM »
The answer used to be yes but now is a resounding NO!

In New Zealand many local courses (not the 8-10 great ones mentioned on GCA) are tight and treelined.  Trees that overhang into playing corridors are celebrated.  No one dares to cut trees down as that would make the course easier.  Over time the trees become overgrown and they eradicate any strategy to a hole.  I used to be a fan of trees encroaching everywhere and tight shutes off every tee but this opinion has changed.

Interestingly, as (field) hockey players, my mates and I were quite adept at rope hooking the ball out of the trees and onto the front edge of the greens - a skill that was handy when visiting Pinehurst last year!  But hitting 50% of your approaches in this way - because of the narrow tree lined fairways - is just not golf.


@Pure_Golf

Patrick_Mucci

Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #12 on: March 03, 2011, 10:36:40 PM »
Niall,

I think this is a great topic, one I can get into.

But, It'll have to wait until this weekend.

I was lucky, my home course was a 1927 Tucker, with many classic (Golden Age) features that shaped my views on golf courses, from debris mounds, to back bunkers, to fairway fill pads, to greens emerging seemlessly out of the fairway and on and on, the influence was pronounced.

63 years later, I still enjoy playing the course as much as I even have, it's a wonderful, sporty golf course, challenging but not overpowering and fun to play, day in and day out.

JR Potts

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2011, 10:46:27 PM »
I think this is a great topic as I've often wondered the same thing.

I grew up on a few courses - the first of which had very small greens and a lot of risk reward.  However, I always yearned to play the big course so I had to learn to hit the ball a long way.  Big, championship courses is what I learned to love.  I began to expect long, hard golf courses and that how I used to judge courses.

For some reason, I still find said courses to be my most enjoyable but now I can surely appreciate and love the antithesis and the subtle architecture that I never gave much attention to.

And candidly, I don't think I realized this until I started reading this site and the related info therefrom.

mike_malone

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #14 on: March 03, 2011, 11:08:09 PM »
 DuPont CC had 4 courses so I had a variety of experiences. Most of the time I played either the main course or the "sportier" one across the street. I found the main course to be rather dull because the greens were rather flat except for #10 which stood out because of its interest. The secondary course had many fascinating greens and even had one with a severe dip of probably 4 feet in it. This intrigued me constantly. The secondary course did not have a watering system so I also got the chance to experience firm and fast conditions which I loved. 

    The secondary course made you think about what shot you wanted to try and seasonal conditions or wind changed the holes playability.

    Later I would travel the ten plus miles to the other course which was right up the road from college. Here my love of architecture blossomed even more. This course had much more elevation change so I fell in love with the idea that the best course to play is the one where the terrain provides challenge every inch of the hole.

  Later on, thanks to John Gosselin's efforts and Lester George's, I learned that those greens that were flat weren't designed or built that way. A renovation brought them back to life.

    Also, on the secondary course road widening forced removal of a few holes and the addition of others. My favorite hole was gone. I could see that the new holes were out of character. But there was one interesting thing about the new holes. Two parallel holes , a slightly downhill par five and slightly uphill par four, generally led to the same score. So I began to question "par".

     I was blessed to grow up on a course that was private but not exclusive so that all kinds of kids were out there banging balls around.
AKA Mayday

Doug Siebert

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2011, 12:04:56 AM »
I started playing as a teenager but it wasn't until I was past college age I started really thinking about/noticing architecture.  I think my first push towards that direction was due to the constant addition of trees in any place that didn't have them on my home course.  Back in the day I thought it was good, and I was actually kind of pissed when they removed a few pine trees on one hole one year (maybe more because they ended up as Christmas trees in the hospital...)  Many of the courses the pros played were tree lined so I thought the fact there were some spots where you could hit a wild shot and miss a fairway were a shortcoming of the course.

It wasn't until the course was just choked with trees (which, unfortunately, it still is - they keep finding spots to add more!) that I realized that it really hurts the course.  Sure, the course is more difficult, but I guess the first thing that set me on the right path was to realize that more difficult didn't equal better!  The play became very one dimensional, and it becomes down to luck more and more whether you find a spot where you have a halfway decent play at the green, a "I'll try for the green but almost certainly won't hit it, but I think I can get around it somewhere where I can take my chances for an up and down", or just having to get out as best I can to somewhere I think minimizes the chances of getting worse than bogey.

Certainly some of the spots they filled in, like corners on doglegs that became easier to carry as equipment progressed, needed some defenses.  But other spots were bad enough in their own right that it takes options, variety and interest away when you end up where your play is totally dictated by your position relative to the trees, rather than your lie, your stance/slope, and your distance/angle to the green.

I wonder how much different my outlook might have evolved if the course was left with many open spaces in the rough without trees like when I first played it, or if it had always been thick with trees.
My hovercraft is full of eels.

Kevin Lynch

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #16 on: March 05, 2011, 11:30:53 AM »
Niall,

I've been fascinated by a similar question and had a similar thread in August (didn't get as many bites as this recent iteration).

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,45595.0.html

My first course gave me a love for Heroic half-par holes, and built up a tolerance for "sporty / quirky" holes that may drive some traditionalists nuts.  And because it was a new course with no irrigation, it gave me a love for the ground game that I probably wouldn't have developed if I'd started at a traditional "aerial" course.  For that reason alone, I'm grateful for my first course.

But, some of the recent comments have me thinking from a slightly different perspective - that being, what don't I like that can trace back to my first course?

The ninth hole alone developed my hatred for "corridor golf."  The left was OB and the right was a thick wall of evergreens that had absolutely no chance for recovery (sometimes even a punch-out was out of the question given the density).


Sorry I'm late to the party on this one.  I noticed Pat Mucci said he may be able to add something this weekend, so maybe I'm doing a good thing bringing this back to Page 1.

Anthony Gray

Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #17 on: March 05, 2011, 12:08:49 PM »


  There was a small creek that ran thruogh the course I learned to play on.It came into play on every hole in came into contact with.I thought it was the coolest thing back then.And now today I hate when I see a course that does not take full advantage of natural hazzards.

  Anthony


Sean_A

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #18 on: March 07, 2011, 07:17:25 AM »
Growing up as a kid Grosse Ile taught me

1. Good drainage is essential for a good design to shine.

2. The land is the essential aspect of a course and added features (like bunkers) are secondary.

As an adult playing at Droitwich, Pennard and Burnham:

1. Grade level architecture is not inherently poor. 

2. Creating seamless transitions on a course trying to be natural is essential. 

3. Firm turf makes angles mean something.

4. Its okay to sacrifice the asolutely best possible hole now and again to create a good walk.

5. Short yardage mixed with short par is the best way to design for a membership if speed of play is important.

6. Its okay for one bit of space to be shared by more than one hole.

7. Trees don't make golf safer.

8. Bunkers should be a terror, but used in moderation.

9. Blind golf has its place.

10. Its good to use man made features such as walls.

11. Most features should be within the bounds of fairways.

12. Fairways should be plenty wide to accomodate the odd very windy day. 

13. Rough should be tightly controlled and used sparingly as a hazard. 

Ciao   
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

Carl Rogers

Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #19 on: March 07, 2011, 08:13:28 AM »
Playing the game for a long time on very run down tracts, I guess I had some sort of sense that there were 'better designed golf courses' out there somewhere that I would never have the opportunity to play. 

I moved to Virginia from Tennesse in the middle 80's and had the opportunity to play better tracts such as Sleepy Hole (it held LPGA events until the early 90's).  In the 2003 to 2004 time frame, I accidently ran into Riverfront, 10 minutes from home.  I was a deer in the headlights for an extended period of time.  One thing led to another ...

Coming from the bottom of the bottom of the game, I am continually mystified by those who bemoan the state of the game.

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #20 on: March 07, 2011, 08:20:33 AM »
Great topic.

I didn't really have a home course, growing up playing the publics.  But I do recall certain features of each that influence me.  My first rounds were as a Monday, unpaid guest at Medinah, and so the idea of tree lined fw don't bother me as much as some.  

In fact, I love a "chute" of trees to play through off the tee to a wider fw, at least once per course if I can manage it, while some hookers and slicers hate the concept because they are afraid they can't start the ball on the right line and get it through the trees.  Once per course, not a bad challenge, IMHO.

There were more than a few of these at Medinah, and having negotiated them successfully, I guess those positive memories inspire me, where others think I am nuts.

I also recall the 7th at McHenry CC, where I played often.  Its a straight, or "delayed dogleg" hole.  Fw runs dead straight for most of its 380(?) yards, but the green is tucked off to the right behind some trees.  The only clear line is to play to the far left edge of the fw.  I duplicated that hole at Villages of Lone Oak a few years ago, and look for that opportunity often, except I make sure the trees don't block the sun, so direction is key to taking advantage of this concept.

As Sean says, I noticed the effect drainage had on my enjoyment, and pay attention to that!
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Niall C

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #21 on: March 07, 2011, 01:52:17 PM »
Kevin

Sorry for knicking your idea for the thread. I wasn't conscious I was doing it but should have known that I couldn't think up a good idea myself.

Sean

Point 10 - explain yourself ! For instance would you use a wall if it was there or would you actually build it purposely to be part of the course ? Any other man made features in mind ?

Point 3 - very good point, and I would also suggest that firm turf negates the need to have super wide fairways which seems to be the fashion, at least for the ordinary player. The really good guys get so much check with the modern golf ball that I wonder if angles mean that much to them when the green is firm. When the green is heavily contoured then maybe angles come more into play for these guys.

Niall

mike_beene

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #22 on: March 08, 2011, 12:10:16 AM »
I guess this counts.Growing up the first course I played repeatedly was a par 71.In fact,Dallas is full of 71s.I don't like courses with more than four par fives,and prefer two or three.I love having a 35 par nine and some unbalance.

Tom Yost

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #23 on: March 08, 2011, 08:24:14 AM »
I believe that most everyone with an awareness of architecture likely had an early interest sparked by a disliked hole on their home course and visions of how they might improve it.




David Nelson

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Re: How has your home course design influenced your thoughts on GCA ?
« Reply #24 on: March 08, 2011, 10:11:02 AM »
I had 2 home courses.. 1 was a links/parkland course that was a James Braid design(1902) and the other a parkland course by Donald Steele(1991). The 2 courses could not be different in terms of architecture as you would expect but the biggest thing that struck me was how much better the Braid features would drain and not just because of the better soils but the way he moved the water away from his features. The Steele course was more receptive making the water move more into the playing areas creating constantly wet playing conditions.

So, yes my home course has influenced my thoughts on GCA, especially when building courses I am always looking at water surface runoff around features.

David