[Doug Siebert]

Carl, that's just a sucker pin.  You don't always know a sucker pin or false front the first time you play a hole.  In fact, you might play the hole several times, and if the sucker pin or false front didn't happen to come into play for you, you will be fooled by it the first time you encounter it.

If you took that green and also added a big false front onto it, so you needed to get the weight of the shot *just right* to be able to get it over the false front without running off the back of the green, THEN you'd have tricked up.

[Alex Lagowitz]

To me, tricked up can also be associated with really unusual or unneccessary..
The 12th hole at Trump Bed. New from the tips is tricked up.
380 yard hole that is approx. 260 to reach the fairway not to mention a hazard short and bunkers flanking both sides.
Most people have to hit a well struck driver (longest could hit 3-wood and barely carry) and then have a blind shot into the green.
To me, if I HAVE to hit driver on a 380 yard hole, that seems stupid/tricked up because the hole is so 1-dimentional and wayyy to penal

[Ulrich Mayring]

To me "tricked up" means setting a trap that even perceptive golfers will not be able to avoid. For example, one green being a lot faster than all the others. Having a marker post for a blind shot over a ridge and a hazard right behind that on the other side. A 200 yard par 3 with an island green that is so shallow that it will not hold anything longer than a towering mid iron.

Ulrich

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Tricked up is a term I’ve picked up from this site  - I suppose it is american slang.
 As a Brit I have translated it to to refer to  “a golf course that has been set up overly difficult”.

This can be the inadvertent or deliberate such as the placing of pin positions in “transition” zones on undulating greens OR unnecessarily fast greens OR difficult angle from a Par 3 Tee to an extreme pin location OR rough encroaching too close to the critical playing areas OR tee markers set too far back on long holes with a strong head wind OR pins set at the front of the green on downwind , downhill holes OR ?

[Jamie Van Gisbergen]

Tricked up is a phrase that a golfer uses when he doesn't like something or feels its "unfair." Blind shots, centerline hazards, deep bunkers, mounds in the fairways, island greens, forced carries, ultra fast greens, all these things are elements of trickery. And only because somebody doesn't like it. Its golf, its a course, and guess what, everybody has to play the same course. They're not unfair, not trickery, just simply the golf course as presented. Most of the time, in my experience, when someone says something is "tricked up," its because they played like crap and just didn't like it. Guy takes 25 shots to hole out on 17 at TPC Sawgrass and its unfair and a piece of crap, same guy knocks it in the jar off the tee and its the finest hole ever created. Using a phrase like tricked up usually indicates a lack of understanding of design and design intent, and it typically causes my brain to cease comprehension of the words being spoken.

[Adrian_Stiff]

Using a phrase like tricked up usually indicates a lack of understanding of design and design intent, and it typically causes my brain to cease comprehension of the words being spoken.

Jamie - That's your understanding, it would not be mine.

[Mac Plumart]

Tricked up...this week's RBC Canadian Open at Shaugnessy?  I'd say yes.  Tough to watch.

[Mark Saltzman]

Tricked up...this week's RBC Canadian Open at Shaugnessy?  I'd say yes.  Tough to watch.

Mac,

I haven't watched more than a couple of minutes of the event this week.  Could you elaborate?

[Mac Plumart]

The rough is ankle high...maybe higher.  And it seems they've pinched the hell out of the fairways.

It appears akin to a US Open set up...but even more severe.  Ball hits the rough...you can't see it...period.  And the rough is everywhere.

[Mac Plumart]

Perfect quote from Geoff Shackelford's site about this very topic...

The trend has been to make golf courses merely difficult to score upon. But to accomplish this requires no imagination or vision. The trick is easily turned. One has only to narrow the fairways, make the rough damnable, and restrict the size of the greens. And that is what we have been doing.  MAX BEHR

[Ted Cahill]

Ward:

"Tricked up" is not a phrase I have used to describe courses, although it's possible some have used it to describe mine.

I think it represents the crossing of an imaginary line of reasonableness, which would be different for each observer.  In other words, I think the features in question would be okay with most players at some dosage level, but would fall into the category of "tricked up" if a certain level is exceeded ... but that level is a matter of taste.  So, I don't like the term much.

I am sure some people have described Lost Dunes as tricked up, though I wouldn't agree.  As I remember, you are a fan of it, so you have a pretty high tolerance level.  So ... Tetherow?

Tom- I found Tetherow to be very tricked up. The "features" that look nice in pictures- add nothing to the course except pointless difficulty. I played it this summer with a nice couple in their late 50's- recreational golfers who I presume were the target market for this type course (2nd home residential course). They were OK golfers and the round was a complete struggle for them- it took a long time to play and was not any fun.

[Brad Isaacs]

I believe "tricked up" is more than just making a golf course hard by growing grass long etc.  The example of this would be  what they do to Pebble Beach to prepare for an Open.

Tricked up is trying to put to much golf course for what the land allows.  This is probably not disimilar to TOm Doak's description above. 

A good example, in my opinion, is Wolf Creek Golf Club in Mesquite Nevada.  I find many things disturbing about it and you can start with cart paths than run everywhere including crossing the fairways at odd yardages.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tricked up cart paths?  Hmm, did they mess with the signs, pointing golfers coming off the 4th hole to somewhere other than the fifth tee?

I always thought of tricked up as the use of slopes to direct balls off the fw or green, or away from the hole.  As the old quote says, "Putts shouldn't run from the putter like a pig posessed by the devil" (or close to that, haven't looked it up)

In general, enough golfers (to use TD's reasonable standard approach) think that if you hit a decent shot to the green it ought to generally stay on the green, especially if you are putting and then de-green a putt!  For that matter, most think putts and chips, that if well struck, there ought to be at least one way to keep it close to the hole.  Putting a pin on a subtle slope where a chip or putt accelerates away from the hole would be tricked up.

Of course, some golfers are so uncreative that they would think a shot should be aimed right at the hole and stay there, discounting the Redan concept, or any other similar concept where a putt needs to be aimed some distance wide of the hole.  That is where some of the disagreements come in - there is a way to get the ball to the hole, but some golfers just don't want to take the time to figure out what it is, and they they would never think to blame themselves.....so the architect gets it!

[BCrosby]

The "tricked-up" criticism sounds like the kind of criticism that MacK, Behr and others thought could be avoided by 'natural' looking courses (whether they really were natural or just built to look that way). The idea being that golfers will not criticize a feature if they think it is a part of the natural terrain on which the course was built.

There is something to that.

An example: The severe slopes and bunkering of the Eden Hole at TOC. On another course, it might be criticized as tricked up. Good shots will roll over the back or off the front all the way to the bottom of the hill. Recoveries from Strath are unlikely, and you don't have to hit a very bad shot to find yourself there. It has a severely domed putting surface.

Ditto for the 12th with its hidden center line fw bunkers and the little humps and swales in and around the green. (A vastly under-appreciated hole, imho.)

I don't think that when people say a hole is "tricked up" they are only saying that it is "unreasonable". Buried in such criticisms is usually a hidden premise that goes something like, "This is a really hard feature that was artificially built to cause pain that is unnecessary in the circumstances." As much as anything, it's the hand of man aspect of the feature that cheezes them off.

Bob     

 

   

[Bill Gayne]

The definition of trick is "A cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone." What's wrong with that idea on a golf course?

[RSLivingston_III]

I am under the impression the OP meant 'fair' instead of tricked up. Am also thinking the statements were suggesting higher handicaps should have equal capability of getting a birdie, probably from the back tees.
Seems like comments are made toward the dumbing down of courses instead of investing in developing skills to be able to play the more challenging courses.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Ah yes, Tom Simpson's delicate line between suppressio veri and suggestio falsi.

Not a matter for Parliamentary committees only but for golfers, too: http://www.eigca.org/Article/EIGCA11130.ink

Fortunately, we don't have to take silk to debate the merits.

Nice post, Bob C.

[RSLivingston_III]

Thanks Mark for posting the link to that article.
Good stuff.
I definitely bookmarked that one in my golf architecture folder.
It also reminded me I have been sitting on that Simpson book for a couple of years and had not gotten around to reading it yet.

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