[Ronald Montesano]

I'm with our girls varsity at Pipers Heath (www.pipersheath.com) near Oakville, Ontario today. I did a search on this site and came up with "too much containment mounding" from a comment on Ian Andrew's Ten Things I Don't Like thread.

My getaway questions are, is containment mounding always bad? What makes it so? What makes for good containment mounding?

I hope that you have time for this thread. Have at it.

[Mike Nuzzo]

The average containment mound is ugly and unnatural looking
They help the better player more than the average player - bad shots are propelled further away
Bad agronomics - They drain more water than necessary onto the greens
Cheers

[David Cronheim]

I can't say I've ever been too much of fan because I think they're aesthetically unpleasing. They always look out of place to me.

[Jason Thurman]

It's not always bad. The mounds around 8 green at Augusta come to mind, though maybe those don't really count.

The real problem with containment mounding is that it doesn't tend to be used in any moderation. Courses too often have it lining every fairway and circling every green. It also looks "common" as so many courses use it in such abundance and in exactly the same way. It makes many courses look and feel the same.

I'd love to see mounding fronting more greens, for example, to make the ground game really interesting and create uncertainty in the shot. I also like original variations on containment mounding, like what Dye did at French Lick with the volcano bunkers.

*ducks behind a table and waits for everyone to throw bricks*

[Steve Burrows]

To be fair to containment mounds, they are inspired by the sand-based dune systems of the Scottish coastline, and are a well-intentioned homage to golf's linksland heritage.  For this, their incorporation on a modern golf course (even a parkland golf course), might be celebrated.  The problem, as others have mentioned, is that is difficult to replicate their form and spatial relationship(s) in a way that looks as natural and appropriate, and thus as necessary, as their provenance suggests.  

[Mike Tanner]

I can't say if containment mounding is always bad or identify the characteristics of good containment mounding. What I can say is that the examples I've seen look contrived and out of place.

For example, there's a 1960s-era municipal course designed by George Cobb in Virginia Beach that was overhauled about seven years ago. While the hole corridors remain intact, the course now features prominent containment mounding alongside the landing zones and around the green complexes, giving the latter the look of catcher's mitts.

In conversations with both the city official in charge of the project and the architect I was told the the mounds were intended to reduce the number of lost balls and speed up play. I don't think either goal has been met.

The mounding just isolates the fairway/rough areas from the surrounding pine trees. Any ball that hits the top or back side of the mounds just gets propelled into the woods. The mounds make it difficult to follow the ball or find it. They also complicate the task of hitting back out into the fairway if the errant ball is eventually located. 

So, I don't think much of containment mounding.   

[Sean_A]

I don't buy the "contrived" or "unnatural" argument.  Just look at a Raynor course and tell me natural springs to mind.  I will let you lot decide what the logical conclusions are.

Ciao

[Joe Stansell]

I confess that the Coeur d'Alene Resort Course is a guilty pleasure of mine. One of its defining characteristics is the containment mounding that separates the opening and closing holes, as well as a couple of others. I like the way that the mounding makes you feel isolated on your opening shot, with the mounding on each side of the fairway focusing your attention on the pleasure that awaits.

[Ronald Montesano]

Thanks, Arble.

I just got off Piper's Heath (Milton, Ontario). My take is, tight piece of property with wetlands issues. That said, Cooke did much more with it than Ted Robinson did back my way on Royal Niagara.

Cooke used the CM to create a heathlinks feel while protecting adjoining fairways as much as he could. He topped the mounds and their slopes with fescue, giving it exactly the look and play-feel that Burrows mentions above.

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