Montgomery offers advice to Castle Stuart

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Eight-times European Tour order of merit winner and Europe's victorious 2010 Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie was delighted to hear the event would again be played on the Inverness course.

"Castle Stuart is a stunning new course and while we were very unlucky with the weather this year, it will be good to go back there next year as it is an ideal warm-up for The Open.
"My only advice to the organisers is that the course needs to be toughened and that means tightening the fairways."

I don’t think much of that advice – talk about “tunnel” vision.

Castle Stuart has wide fairways, however from my memory if you are not on the right part of the fairway your angles into the green entrance are severely compromised.

Some of the fairways are designed so that if the ball is off line from the ideal line it is propelled to a less advantageous part of the fairway.If the pins are tucked away in the corners, then getting the right angle for the approach from the fairway will make the difference.

Any links golf course or any course for that matter will be open for low scores in wet/soft conditions and no wind. So the low scores of 2011 should not require a “knee-jerk” reaction. Take the course as it is presented.

The course in the end identified the best golfer, world number one Luke Donald.

Will Colin give similar advice to the organisers of the 2015 Open at “you know where”?

Lets hope July 2012 in Castle Stuart is windy and dry.

[Adrian_Stiff]

John - If you want tournament golf then CMs advice is right. Courses need to be very tight at that level. For normal play (95%) its great as it is. The angles matter so much less to these players as they can hit their shots to within 3 yards, but those angles are great defence to us choppers.

[Adam Lawrence]

Castle Stuart is not an especially difficult golf course and unless it blows a gale of wind the pros will go low there soft or firm. I'm pretty sure Mark and his team have far too much sense to grow a pile of rough there and ruin the design intent for one week.

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Adrian,

I would disagree that tightening the fairways is an essential part of tournament links golf.

The whole point about links golf is that because of HARD greens, even world class pros can’t guarantee once hitting their intended target-spot, that the ball will stay within 3 yards. In other words the ball will roll out.

The reward to the pro for hitting an accurate drive to find the right part of the fairway is to have an angle which allows more space for the roll out.

Conversely if the pro is in the wrong part of the fairway he’ll find the restricted angle will give him less room depending on the pin position.

I find it infinitely more interesting to observe:-

Inaccurate drive – difficult recovery

compared to

Inaccurate drive – hack out the rough.

[Mark Pearce]

Let's remeber that Monty, bless his little cotton socks, is basing this advice on his experience playing there this year, when the course was so wet that there were landslides.  Probably a good idea to see how it plays when reasonably dry before doing anything drastic.

[Adrian_Stiff]

The problem with conditions being the courses defence is getting a golf course firm and fast or very firm and very fast is that it goes beyond the control of the organisers and the excellent team at Castle Stuart. God will decide when it rains and God decides it rains quite a lot in that part of the world, the realistic chances of it getting very firm for that week might be say 1 in 10.
This year they only played 3 rounds and I think 40 players were 10 under, it was the depth of the field being under that was more the indicator of easy, however does it really matter if -30 won or if someone carded a 59, in fact I think it would be good, sadly tournament committees seem to see a number that they want to see winning and they almost set up to hit try and hit that number almost like their own game. The people (members) that I spoke to about CS said they loved it and wanted to go and play there,  and the pros I spoke to said it was nice but was it easy.
Historically golf course do tighten the fairway widths, only TOC seems exempt, I remember the 79 Open fairways at Lytham as being almost impossible and they have continued with that policy ever since, only dry periods stop this.

[jeffwarne]

John - If you want tournament golf then CMs advice is right. Courses need to be very tight at that level. For normal play (95%) its great as it is. The angles matter so much less to these players as they can hit their shots to within 3 yards, but those angles are great defence to us choppers.

Why?

If they can hit their shots to within 3 yards, why do the fairways need to be narrowed?
To what ? 2 yards?

Didn't they crown a champion?
Who happened to be world #1

If they want to determine the straightest diver, why not stay on the range?

Didn't Augusta crown plenty of great champions (and it's still very wide)


Wouldn't it be cool for tournament organizers to embrace something different?

[Mark Pearce]

Adrian,

Isn't the logical extension of the need to narrow fairways to toughen courses up in benign, wet and soft conditions a course much like Carnoustie in 1999?  Doesn't that have inevitable consequences if things dry out and become firm?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Jeff - The rationale behind it is that straight hitting from the tee is part of the game and a ball in the rough makes it more difficult to control. They are so good with irons that from a perfect fairway lie most can hit 10 shots on the trot to within a 3 yard zone, they know the distance so with no wind it is virtually target practice. Its probably getting to the stage that 8000 yards, tight fairways cant stop the low scoring anyway.
Mark - Yes it could do but I suppose you could mow the grass to a suitable height if that happened, so the control would be more with the event handlers.

Overall Monty is looking at his once a week period and forgetting the other 51 weeks, in order to supply his plan you could not just do this for a one off, it would take a few months to grow properly then probably a year to reinstate. Its a non starter unless CS see it as the new way forward.

[jeffwarne]

Jeff - The rationale behind it is that straight hitting from the tee is part of the game and a ball in the rough makes it more difficult to control. They are so good with irons that from a perfect fairway lie most can hit 10 shots on the trot to within a 3 yard zone, they know the distance so with no wind it is virtually target practice. Its probably getting to the stage that 8000 yards, tight fairways cant stop the low scoring anyway.
Mark - Yes it could do but I suppose you could mow the grass to a suitable height if that happened, so the control would be more with the event handlers.

Overall Monty is looking at his once a week period and forgetting the other 51 weeks, in order to supply his plan you could not just do this for a one off, it would take a few months to grow properly then probably a year to reinstate. Its a non starter unless CS see it as the new way forward.

Adrian,
Was Luke Donald playing from wild places during his win?
20 under by the best players in soft,wet conditions is normal

those numbers can always be protected by lowering par or adding rough
The sooner the Monty's of the world are educated, the better off we'll all be.
Just tee it up on the course the members play every day
we'll worry when VandeVelde and Lawrie are battling it out for a championship again(oh that's right they had narrow fairways and rough there)

[Adrian_Stiff]

Jeff - It was only over 54 holes. I think 40 players were -10 or better.

If they (the ET) want to protect scores they are right doing what they do, its one of a few measures to keep the scores up.

Personally I like the idea of a 59.

[David_Tepper]

Castle Stuart is located in an area that is one of the driest, sunniest micro-climates in Scotland. The rainstorm they had there this summer was likely a once in 50- or 100-years event.

As Brian Sheehy notes, let's see how the course plays under other (and more standard) weather conditions before coming to any conclusions.

[Randy Thompson]

I don´t think Collin really beleives in one thing or another. People like him and Phil Mickelson are starting to taste easy money from associating their names to designs. So when the spotlight shines they try to take advantage of it and try to give the world or future clients, the perception that they actually know something about design.

[Niall C]

I've been living up this way for the last two years and I don't think the Nairn area is any wetter or drier than most coastal areas in Scotland other than perhaps the west coast. I also seriously doubt that this was a 50 to 100 year weather event. It wasn't just the rain on the course that stopped play, it was the flooded filelds used for car parks and the landslides.

The landslides likely happened because in shaping the holes on top they likely created, through there shaping of the holes, new channels for surface water to drain away when heavy rain comes along. Those channels drained into specific points on what is a very steep slope and since those points previously hadn't got that focus of water there was a fair bit of top soil on those parts of the slopes that eventually the top soil got so sodden that it slid down the hill. It was always going to happen at some point, it was just rotten luck it happened when it did.

As for the car parking, the eventually did a deal with the farmer opposite side of the road to park in his field which wasn't shaped like a bowl and was therefore dry. Arguably they might have forseen that one but it was there first time doing tournament.

If it wasn't for the parking and the landslides, it would have been a 72 hole tournament without any bother because the course stood up very well.

Niall 

[Niall C]

John

I think you're memory is partially correct. There are a few holes where you need to be on the right side of the fairway depending on pin position if you are an average player but otherwise a lot of the holes are wide open, for both the driving and the approaches, especially for these guys who can compensate anyway for being in less than the ideal spot.

Personally I think its this wide open approach that makes the course a bit insipid after (during !) a few plays. Having said that I don't agree with Monty about the rough but I would have like to see a good bit more movement in the fairways and more central hazards to make them have to plot there way round. Just my opinion.

Adrian

The whole place is sandcapped and consequently plays fairly fast and firm although obviously surface water is going to reduce roll. As for a 59, I'm sure nothing would delight Mark Parsinen more. I overheard him asking one of the marshalls at a near driveable par 4 how close the players were getting to the green with their drives, and on being told a few were nearly on, he was delighted.

Niall

[David Kelly]

I have no interest in watching the pros play Castle Stuart but I do have a great interest in going back and playing one of the great modern designs so I hope they don't do a thing.  Seldom if ever does the involvement of a professional golf tour make a course better.

[Ronald Montesano]

I think we should ask race car drivers for their opinions on how to build roads...

[Niall C]

I think we should ask race car drivers for their opinions on how to build roads...

And why not ? There's plenty of wannabe gca's on this site, I'm one of them, who don't mind passing comment on how it should be done. Monty at least has a bit more experience than a lot of the wannabe's round here.

Niall

[David_Tepper]

Brian S. -

The majority of the holes at CS are not on linksland.

DT 

[Niall C]

Brian

David is correct, I doubt that there are any natural links holes there but frankly it drains like a links and largely plays like a links other than the fact that the ground hasn't been consolidated (as they said in the old days) the same way that older links have.

Niall

[David_Tepper]

Brian S. & Niall C. -

The good news for the developers of CS was that they found a large deposit of sand on the property that they were able to mine and spread out on the course. The deposit was at the eastern end of the property, beyond where the 13th tee is now located. Little or no sand had to be trucked in to build to the course.

The area where the sand was mined was turned into the water retention pond to use for irrigating the course.   

DT