Cost of golf course, width v. length

[Niall C]

Its often said that increased length of courses has pushed up the cost of golf both in terms of producing the original course and in terms of maintenance.

While I understand that building a bigger course will mean a larger land take would be required meaning more cost, that more earth might need to be moved again increasing the cost and that there would likely be higher maintenace costs with more grass to be cut, how much of that is down to increased length rather than increased width ?

For example, where existing courses have been lengthened to cater for the big boys, that often entails the back tee being pushed back within the existing course boundary. As this tee caters for the big boys there's usually no need to bring the fairway forward to allow for the landing zone so the cost of this extra length is the added maintenance of this single tee and the cost of construction. Compare this to cost of providing wider fairways and playing corridors. Surely the additional land take for wider playing corridors would be more than the extra land required for a longer hole, both in terms of land costs, construction and maitenance, no ?

Thoughts

Niall

[Tim Nugent]

Yes.  You can stretch a course by 540 yds by adding one tee back an ave of 30 yds. (1,500 sy * 18 =27,000 sy) is about 5.5 acres. 27000 sy/14 (no par 3s) allows you 1,928 per fairway-call it 2,000sy. Say par 4 fwy's ave 250 yd and par 5's 375 yd that gives you 4,000 yds of fairway or the ability to widen each about 2 yds.

Now I consider wide being the difference of 30 yard fairway to that of about 45-50 yards, not 32.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Niall,

I gather both would depend on how its done.  I agree that adding a back tee, and making them play over unirrigatied natives really means a few small sprinkler heads.  Not even much turf around the tee is necessary.  And I doubt those back tees need to be any bigger than 20 x 20 feet, maybe even 15 x 15 feet.  That is what I did at Firekeeper and I don't think the 7400 yard tees added much cost at all.  I didn't even take the cart paths back there, since I figured about a dozen rounds a year would be played there.

Width is governed by sprinklers, so if you can upsize existing nozzles and avoid adding another row of sprinklers that might not cost much either.  If you are doing a new irrigation system at the same time, you would more likely consider going from 2 to 3 or 4 rows, maybe 5 or 6 in the desert.  If you widen the fw, it might cost some money, depending on re-grass, add sand cap, etc.  Rough is pretty cheap, usually.

But, overall, if you add length, you make it harder for 0.1% of golfers, if you make it wider, you make it easier/more fun/strategic for 99.9% of players.  Even if its slightly more cost, it looks like pretty good math to me!

[Adrian_Stiff]

Width is much more expensive. As Jeff and Tim explained its easy to nix some back tees in, regular tees are rarely lengthened. The cost of irrigation is obviously quite high whilst the cost of the land itself is a big factor, a lot of architects feel 200 acres is what is needed for an 18 hole course, whilst many old uns are on sub 120, so a big cost there. Land in Europe has dramatically rose in the past decade sometimes four-fold, if courses could not make it paying £2,500 per acre, then with some land at £10,000 per acre a £2,000,000 cost to buy the land ditches any chance of financial success.

Length can usually be added to older courses whilst width is rarely as easy. In the UK where we rarely employ irrigation width costs very little, another pass each side with a gang mower can add 8-10 metres.

[Garland Bayley]

Isn't this an exercise in futility? In my view, width is somewhat a constant. You are either going to build a certain width course, or you aren't. Adding length to accommodate technology, means you should also add width to accommodate technology. Unless of course we can get the USGA to make those self correcting balls legal.

[BCrosby]

Maintaining fw's that are wider by, say just 5 yards on each side along the length of the hole, must be, just as a matter of math, much more expensive to maintain. That's orders of magnitude more area to mow, water, fertilize, drain, aerate and repair to fw standards.

Bob  

[Tony_Muldoon]

Brave man Niall to raise this here.

When I played Waterville, which has comparatively wide fairways for a links, I found  boring to look at acres of short grass.  Maybe it made it harder to pick a line off a tee, but it didn't appeal at all.

I have come to the conclusion that any feature can be overdone.

The exceptions to this are the 1st and 18th at TOC where it adds interest.

[Niall C]

Tony

Not brave at all. You'll notice I raised the question and then kept my head down until it was safe  . Its interesting though that you were looking at the aesthetics and I agree with your comments however I expect the maintenance issues are completely different on the type of courses Tim and Jeff are referring to.

Tim/Jeff/Adrian,

Thanks for your comments. Inevitably you have identified factors that I hadn't thought of. Clearly there is a bit more to sticking a "championship tee" back in the bundi as I had originally thought. As an aside I appreciate your comments on technical matters on this and other threads and if you don't get much reaction to those threads please don't assume that no one is interested because I suspect there are many like me who are but haven't got anything to add.

Garland

Its only a futile exercise if you've already decided that you want fairways of a certain width. However if you are more open minded.......

Niall