Does a Long Broad Slope...

[Mike Hendren]

invite great architecture through obfuscation of gravity?

Augusta National Golf Club's greens appear very difficult to read.  Yet, in that regard they don't hold a candle to Lookout Mountain's as I was reminded last week.   About the only rule of thumb is that putts at Augusta break toward the 12th green and Lookout's break away from Covenant College. 

Are such sites desirable or merely accomodating?

Don't you have a simlar dynamic at Rustic Canyon where the elevation change is not readily apparent?

Other examples?

Bogey
   

[Sean_A]

Bogey

I'm not sure what you mean (being a simple Northerner who barely understands Southern), but I have long believed large stands of trees mask the severity of terrain and thus make it more difficult to approach, chip and putt.

Ciao

[David_Tepper]

Michael H. -

The Olympic Club Lake course is built across a long broad slope. The greens there are not easy to read. The locals know that "everything breaks toward Lake Merced."

DT 

[Bill_McBride]

Even though they may not appear to do so, all the greens at the Broadmoor break away from the carillon up on the mountain by the Air Force Academy.  A few appear to break uphill and some down hill looking putts are really uphill.  I think I figured it out around the 15th hole.

[Bill Seitz]

Michael H. -

The Olympic Club Lake course is built across a long broad slope. The greens there are not easy to read. The locals know that "everything breaks toward Lake Merced."

DT 

There are a lot of places in Southern California like that as well.  Most of the courses in the foothills have greens where everything breaks away from the mountain (Marshall Canyon in LaVerne is probably the most notorious for this among courses I've played), regardless of what your eyes tell you.  In the desert, don't they always say that everything breaks toward Indio?  I like sites like that.  It gives a bit of an advantage to the player with some experience and who can see more than just the ground in front of them.  The 12th at Kingsley has a big hill left of the front of the green, but it never has as big of an impact as one would suspect, because the general slope of the land on that portion of the course is right to left.  It can be confounding, but a nice advantage to the player who figures it out. 

[Jason Topp]

I am not sure whether or not a long broad slope improves or detracts from architecture but it sure tricks all of us.  Nearly every green in Palm Springs, Phoenix, Tucson and Cabo have this effect as does Pasatiempo.

It seems that the truly great courses do not have much of this effect.  Do any of the Doak 10's have it?

[Garland Bayley]

Everything breaks towards the Columbia River in my neck of the woods.
As far as I am concerned, it makes no matter concerning the architecture.
However, it perhaps gives a home course advantage.

[Rich Goodale]

At Painswick, everything breaks towards God.  At all other courses the breaks are imaginary.