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Sean_A

  • Karma: +0/-0
WIDTH and why
« on: June 02, 2009, 09:45:06 AM »
On a recent thread it was my impression that width was being treated rather one-dimensionally.  That is, width helps to create more strategic play in the right conditions.  I can buy this with one condition.  Width can make it harder for good players to score really well if the course is keen and well designed.  However, width also makes it harder to rack up a high score.  My question, do folks think width is important just for finding balls quickly?  In other words, regardless of the strategic implications, does width help to eliminate annoying aspects of the game like looking for balls?  This has always been an important criteria for me, but I get the impression that many don't really consider the relative difficulty of losing a balls as a positive design trait.  One of the few examples that gets mentioned on a championship level is Pinehurst and even that course has been narrowed in recent years.  Though to be fair the only complaints I have heard about this have been in the reduction of strategy rather than hunting of balls.  It seems the older I get, the less tolerant I am of ball searching.  Do folks think it is worth archies sacrificing some strategic merits to keep ball huntting down?     

Ciao
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

Keith Doleshel

Furnace Creek in Death Valley, Calif
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2011, 10:30:15 PM »
Came across this interesting article on espn.com.  Mentioned little about the architecture of the golf course, but was a fun read either way.  Have any of you played it during the summer?  I figure its a short list who has done it, but maybe someone on here has taken their chances playing in the oppressive heat.

http://espn.go.com/los-angeles/story/_/id/6831277/furnace-creek-golf-course-death-valley-california

David_Tepper

  • Karma: +0/-0
"The Pros and Cons of Distance Creep"
« Reply #2 on: August 27, 2011, 10:28:07 PM »
Article in the WSJ discussing distance in the the context of Erin Hills and Plainfield CC:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576532600643828770.html

Carl Nichols

  • Karma: +0/-0
Why doesn't Silicon Valley have better golf courses?
« Reply #3 on: September 06, 2011, 08:34:40 PM »
I'm in Palo Alto for work, and thought I'd tee up the question I've always wondered about -- why aren't there better courses here?  It's obviously not about money or weather, and it seems like there would be some terrific sites.  Is it a lack of available land?  Something else?

Carl Nichols

  • Karma: +0/-0
Why doesn't Silicon Valley have better golf courses?
« Reply #4 on: September 06, 2011, 08:37:04 PM »
I'm in Palo Alto for work, and thought I'd tee up the question I've always wondered about -- why aren't there better courses here?  It's obviously not about money or weather, and it seems like there would be some terrific sites.  Is it a lack of available land?  Something else?

Peter Pallotta

A modest theory - freedom golf and small sites
« Reply #5 on: September 06, 2011, 09:20:55 PM »
On large and expansive sites, freedom golf (undirected and multi-directional, with room for error and for chance, and option-filled) comes as a gift, as a grace unearned, i.e. the architect can enhance the freedom, but he doesn't need to create it, as it is inherent in and a product of the site itself, ready for unveiling by those with eyes to see and appreciate it and hands that are both willing and skilled. But on small sites, the opposite is true, i.e. this sense of freedom can be/must be manufactured, but it can only be done so with great human thought and effort, and even then the site itself can never truly feel as expansive.  And so it seems to me that when golf first move inland, in GB&I first of course, but then later in the U.S. with the early inland courses, it proved to be the death-knell (inadvertent/unconscious or not, I don't know) of freedom golf, i.e. the definition, the essence, the very value of freedom golf was lost/forgotten.  And every since then, gca, as practiced even some of the most interesting and informed and enlightened architects past and present, have been searching around in the dark, sort of dimly and vaguely, to try to re-create a semblance of a kind of golf, freedom golf, that they can imagine but can't quite describe/articulate, to themselves let alone anyone one else. (And if were not for The Old Course, even that search itself would have ceased long ago).  And so the best they can do, in place of freedom golf/golf courses, is to create strategic golf and strategic golf courses...the word chosen to mark a high point in gca (and opposed to penal), but one that also unwittingly marked the end of something grander and more expansive, i.e. freedom. What I think happened with the move to inland sites was that the field of play, to speak metaphorically, got narrower, i.e. the definitions and the defining characteristics of golf courses became the binary/two-sided "penal" and "strategic", when in fact both those terms/concepts/courses reside on the same end of the spectrum, with freedom golf residing way at the other end -- and expanse that was too broad to be easily encompassed/embraced, then or now.

That's my theory -- I hope folks can add to it or shoot it down or take it in a completely different direction. In other words, others will have to do the heavy lifting and answer questions, cause that paragraph is all I've got on the subject!   

Peter

V. Kmetz

  • Karma: +0/-0
Long ways off, but rumor has it...
« Reply #6 on: November 16, 2011, 09:30:14 PM »
The US Open will return to Winged Foot West in 2020 or 2021

I first heard this in September when the USGA allegedly visited the club.

Having a fair experience of the club in recent years, I personally thought it would be much longer out until WF would put its hat in the ring.  The loss of the East course for 15 months of prep and breakdown and the hyper conditions of an Open-doctored West were not popular in 2005-2010.

Tryign to think ahead  to what championship golf will look like in a decade and what distances the elites will hit it, I can't imagine how WF and  the USGA could squeeze more than 150-200 yards more out of the old girl.

Perhaps

#2 could find additional yardage beyond the 471 tips to play in the 480s (+15)
#3 will have to play at closer to 240 each day than the 220 it averaged in 06 (can play 278 tip to back-most pin) (+20)
#6 can remain a drivable 4, but with anew tee pushing it to 340ish as opposed to <315. (+25)
#9 could find additional room to possibly get it near 540 (will it be the longest Open 4 at that date?) (+30)
#10 - though it might be anathema to mess with a classic hole of 190, there is ideal teeing space available to make it play almost 220 (+25)
#13 - has a chance for perhaps 7 more yards (+5)
#14 - though this hole is already beastly from the 458 tips, it could be made moreso by some 20 yards in the back scrubland (+15)
#17 - has achance for perhaps 7-10 more yards. (+10)
#18 - probably lengthened for the 4th time another 5-10 (+5)

that's +150 aggregate and I'm straining to get there....will 7450 be enough in 10 years

A ways off but fun to think about anyway

PS: Tiger Woods, if he's playing Golf then, will be 44-45 years old.

cheers

vk
"The tee shot must first be hit straight and long between a vast bunker on the left which whispers 'slice' in the player's ear, and a wilderness on the right which induces a hurried hook." -