Noel's topic about "unfairness" in Golden Age designs and a realization that dawned upon me this evening at Machrihanish have made me curious about this subject. First, this evening's realization: I was playing the 14th hole at Machrihanish and hit a hard draw off the tee that skipped to the left of the two deep swales in the middle of the fairway and found the narrow sliver of relatively flat ground to the left of them, about 135 from the front edge of the green. It occurred to me that the sliver is so narrow as to be no kind of target at all - if you're really keen to find a flattish lie in the fairway, you have to be either really lucky (to dodge the swales on either side) or lay back at least 190-195 yards from the front of the green (and even then likely find some sort of dodgy stance - it's not really an intelligent strategic option). So, almost 100% of the time, if you hit the fairway, your stance is likely in the lap of the gods.
Now, take another hypothetical hole with the same green complex and fairway outline as the 14th at Machrihanish, but give it a dead-level fairway with no internal movement (until the swale just before the green, anyway). Most of us at GolfClubAtlas would probably deem the hypothetical hole to be much less interesting than the real hole, but then Noel's scratch buddies at Alpine - and many more good and bad players besides - would probably prefer the flat fairway, primarily for reasons of fairness. The low handicappers would probably also enjoy a fairway with one flat side and one undulated side, insofar as there's actually a strategic concept at work (find the flat part to get the easier approach shot).
Now, while I can find no reason to agree with Noel's foes at Alpine about the greens there, I might be persuaded to agree with them on the fairways issue (certainly from a devil's advocate position, which I'm taking at the moment). There are good places and bad places to miss the green at almost all roly-poly green complexes, and I really enjoy quirk around the greens. However, while I still enjoy quirk in the fairways, you are much less likely to find good and bad places to miss your average fairway - which makes fairways like the one on the 14th at Machrihanish much more contentious. Would anyone care to try and set me "straight" on this issue?
Cheers,
Darren