Dr. Mackenzie - Problems in Remodeling Courses

[Peter Pallotta]

An article I posted on another thread that I thought might be of more general interest. Written in 1933 by Dr. Mackenzie,  it's called "Problems in Remodeling Courses".  Nicely wrtten; and seemingly as true today as it was 78 years ago.

The link to the entire article is below, but here are two snippets:

"The so-called improvements of golf courses usually consist in making holes longer and in riddling the place with sand bunkers. If a hole is uninteresting to start with, it can only be made more so by lengthening it, and most golf courses have too many sand traps already."
 
"The majority of greens committees consist of men averaging from four to twelve handicap and they are usually subconsciously influenced against any handicap or hazard which will penalize themselves, but are unanimous in agreeing to the introduction of new hazards which will make the life of the long-handicapper a living purgatory".

http://www.la84foundation.org/SportsLibrary/AmericanGolfer/1933/ag368q.pdf 
 
Peter

[Rick Shefchik]

"The majority of greens committees consist of men averaging from four to twelve handicap and they are usually subconsciously influenced against any handicap or hazard which will penalize themselves, but are unanimous in agreeing to the introduction of new hazards which will make the life of the long-handicapper a living purgatory".

I think it's just the opposite today. While the handicaps of the greens committee members haven't changed, I believe they are now introducing new hazards that will make the life of the low-handicap bombers a living purgatory.

[Niall C]

Peter

Thats a very interesting article, thanks for posting. Its very Mackenzie like with his familiar refrain on the worth of professional advice and making courses more pleasureable and less penal. Any idea what the second course was, the one he mentioned after Palmetto ?

Also, I don't think their was mention of what publcation it was.

Niall

edit; just read the other thread that Peter referred to.

[Neil_Crafter]

Niall
The second course, as I think you have realised, is St Andrews GC, NY. And the Montreal one is Mt Bruno GC.

[Matthew Petersen]

"The majority of greens committees consist of men averaging from four to twelve handicap and they are usually subconsciously influenced against any handicap or hazard which will penalize themselves, but are unanimous in agreeing to the introduction of new hazards which will make the life of the long-handicapper a living purgatory".

I think it's just the opposite today. While the handicaps of the greens committee members haven't changed, I believe they are now introducing new hazards that will make the life of the low-handicap bombers a living purgatory.

I would disgaree. Most of the changes made in the name of "toughening" courses (adding yardage, more severe hazards, decreasing width) is much less likely to hamper the good player who is better able to avoid all that trouble and better skilled at escaping it if found. Meanwhile, the 20 handicapper who is terrified of even the flattest bunker now finds himself in 8-foot deep fairway bunkers from which he might never recover, which is little matter since he had no chance of reaching the par 4 in two anyway.

[Rick Shefchik]

Matthew -- Your right. What I should have said was that today's changes are intended to make the life of the low handicap bombers a living purgatory. Of course there's not much you can do to intimidate a really fine player, but the mid-range handicap guys who want to toughen up their courses don't realize that. They just hate seeing the occasional 65 shot on their course. I believe that's much more of a motivation for remodeling courses than punishing foozlers.

[Tom_Doak]

One of my favorite MacKenzie thoughts is that some holes would best be fixed by making them shorter, instead of longer.

I was reminded of that when we were doing the work at North Shore CC last year.  We made the par-4 seventh hole a bit shorter, so people would think about trying to drive the green, and gave up on trying to stop it from happening as they had been doing for the past 30 years.