Can a golf hole be too complicated?

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

We all like holes that require us to think about each shot. I personally prefer holes where a driver isn't the defacto club off the tee. When does a thought provoking hole go too far and become a head wrecker? How much is too much when it comes to water, bunkers, split fairways, lay-ups, etc.? How many decisions are too many?

Here's a schematic of a golf hole from a course in Sweden. I haven't played the course, but when I first saw this hole, I just thought that there's just too much going on here.



Is it fair of me to highlight this hole as bad design, or is it simply a hole that requires good decision making from tee all the way through to the green?

It's a short par five of 452 meters from the back (white) tees, but the majority of golfers will play it from the medal (yellow) tees, where it measures 422 m. The carry off the tee to the right fairway is not excessive (167 m), and even if you take the left fairway, you can still knock a 160 m shot within 100 m of the green.

I think this hole has too much going on. What do you think?

Please feel free to post your head wrecker candidates!

[A.G._Crockett]

Interesting!

You'd have to play it, of course, to know.  But my guess would be that width would determine whether this hole was great or terrible.  Without width, I think there too many poor options and no real good ones.

[Jud_T]

Well one thing you can say is that high handicappers aren't going to relish the prospect of 2 or 3 water carries in 1 hole.

[Jeff_Brauer]

IMHO, that hole doesn't look terrible, depending on the visibility of the water and other design details.  At least, for one unique hole on the golf course.  But, the tee shot carry is too short, and there seems little advantage to going left on the second shot.

I have a similar hole at Champions Run in Omaha, and since the tee shot carry was a similar 167, the safe fw left came right out of mowing for a while, due to low use.  They did add a back tee and follow my advice to leave the safe shot left.

In general, I have found that golfers pretty well determine which is the best way to play early, and then the options narrow themselves, leaving the golf course to care for many little or unused acres.  Which is why most of the double fw holes have been mowed out of existence over time.

As to the other general question of making one's head hurt, I posted on another thread about a comment about my 14th at Wild Wing.  Another architect said the 4 tee shot options made his head hurt and was confusing. I have come to the conclusion that the average golfer expects one option, maybe a subtle left or right side of the fw 2 options, or even a clear double fw 2 option tee shot.  In reality, the third option, if any, gets used so little that it is rare.

We have to recall that MacKenzie never built his ideal hole for Country Life, did he?  Somehow, that tells me that even he didn't really think that multiple options was really practical, despite being great in theory. 

[Bill Brightly]

Here is an example of a hole that I think is to complicated. It is a par 5, 534 from Black tees, 515 from regular tees. The tee shot is downhill and above the first yellow thumbtack is a water hazard that juts into the fairway. I can carry this hazard, or at least shape a shot around it. This is a fair enough request if my intention is to go for the green in two. Perhaps I can reach the second thumbtack.

But now I have a shot of about 220-250 to an elevated green guarded by a front left bunker, and a huge right side bunker that eliminates and hopes of running in a shot to the right side of the green. (The green is very cool, with a high right side and a neat drop down to the left side. But to hit the proper section requires accuraccy, probably a wedge or short iron.)

If I have pulled off the risky drive play, I really have no safe lay up because the fairway narrows for the last 50 yards and the marsh is short of the thrid yellow thumbtack.



So "playing the hole backward," the only sensible plan I see is to lay up short ofthe first hazard with a 190-200 yard shot, then lay up short of the two fairway bunkers, then hit a 7 iron to the green.

I think the hole would be SOOOO much better without the right greenside bunker. That would allow for a realistic second shot to the green, and give me a reason to be aggressive on my first two shots.

[Mike Nuzzo]

That hole looks terrible to me.
The average player looks like they would loose 5 balls here.
To good players it is a cakewalk, except Jean van De velde, who wouldn't like this hole either.

[Peter Pallotta]

Donal - I think the best golf holes I've ever played, seen or read about are all pretty straightfoward. It is only in our desire to praise them around here that we try to make them seem complicated. (We call this supposed complication 'options' and 'strategies', and play up how difficult the many choices are that we have to make.) So, "yes", a golf hole can very easily be too complicated (and actually so, not just in our ramblings about it afterwards.) After all, how many 'complicated' golf holes can any of us name at, say, the top 10 golf courses in the world?  Seems to me that I can't think of many complicated holes at, say, Augusta, or Pebble Beach or Royal Melbourne or Garden City or Crystal Downs or Shinnecock.

Peter

[Paul OConnor]

Hole reminds me a little of the 11th at TPC Sawgrass, except for the wrap-around water at the green.  That water probably makes one think a little before going at this green in two, whereas at Sawgrass, everyone goes for it.  Maybe not that bad a hole.

[Bill_McBride]

As Clint Eastwood said, "A man has to know his limitations."   I think the hole would be demanding but playable with a five iron to the left fairway, a 3 hybrid down the right fairway, and a short iron into the green.   Anything else starts to test those limitations!

I don't mind a hole like that once in a while, but would rather see dry land one side or the other of the green.

[BCrosby]

It seems to me that there are at least two ways a hole can be complicated.

One way is displayed by the hole drawn above. A player is given several choices, each of which is defined by the design of the hole. Go here or go there to a spot. Carry the water or lay-up to a spot. And so forth. It's an easily understood decision tree running from tee to green.

Another way a hole can be complicated is where the choices themselves are unclear; where the benefits and risks of different playing choices are not obvious. No. 3 at ANGC is an example of a hole where the pay-back of different playing choices is hard to know. For all the years the hole has been played, there is still no settled roadmap for how best to attack it. Or, for that matter, how best to play it conservatively. At the Masters it is played in all sorts of ways.

The 12th at TOC is similar in that regard (at least until Dawson gets around to "improving" it). The Bottle Hole at NGLA also comes to mind. All are complicated holes, but complicated in a way different from the complications of the hole above. Which is a part of why they are also better holes.


Bob   

[Dónal Ó Ceallaigh]

Jeff:

I agree with you that hitting the second shot left is no advantage at all; the angle for the third shot is worse than from the right fairway. It appears that that was the conclusion of the golf club green's committee, as an aerial of the hole clearly shows that a portion of the left fairway short of the green has been let grow into rough. See the area in blue below.



Before I posted this question, I thought about Mackenzie's prize winning hole. I've always felt that it was over complicated and that many of the options weren't realistic or practical. I'm not sure that it was a great hole afterall.

I'm not saying my example from Sweden is a terrible hole, but it looks like the architect didn't think deeply about how it would play. The left option with the second shot is a non-starter. They might as well let all the rough grow on the left side approaching the green.

Bill:

Would it be fair to say that your example is more tough than complicated? My example seems a bit muddled, but your example has a better thought out strategy. I don't imagine that that hole leaves you scratching your head, wondering where the advantage is in choosing one line/option over another.

Peter:

Prior to posting, I had though about holes that we see the pros play, and couldn't come up with a hole that was complicated. Holes such as the 13th and 15th at Augusta are so straightforward, strategically speaking. I would say that I have some doubts about a couple of holes at Crystal Downs. I haven't seen them in person, but I'm not sure if the par four with the split fairway on the first nine possesses the strategic options it may have once held in the past. I recall Tom Doak saying that the carry to the upper-right fairway is only 165 yds. The awkward par four towards the end (the 17th?) doesn't work in my opinion. I wouldn't say both of these holes are complicated, they probably don't function as well as they did in the past.

Bill:

Yes, once in a while is ok. While I haven't come across that many holes like this in Sweden, I'm sorry to say that water rears it's ugly head much too often in Sweden. Someone (Matt Ward maybe?) on this DG once said (before Streamsong was created) that golf in Florida sucks because of all the water, but I'm sure it can't be worse than here.

PS: I guess you all know the name of the course now.

[Ronald Montesano]

I don't...I don't read German...

My God YES, to answer your thread question. RTJ Senior thrived on making at least one par five ridiculously over-complex for a majority of his career. If you ever play "The Monster" in the Catskills, you'll discover that Joe Finger did the same for 18 holes.

[cary lichtenstein]

Holes that are tricked up like this one are awful

[Jason Thurman]

Well one thing you can say is that high handicappers aren't going to relish the prospect of 2 or 3 water carries in 1 hole.

Then won't they love the strategic challenge of reducing it to a single carry by hitting to the end of the first fairway and then to the beginning of the third one?

The hazards look pretty avoidable. Hell, you can probably putt over a stream that small. I don't see it as a very complicated hole. For me, there are only two options on any given shot. That seems simple enough. I play far worse holes than this on a regular basis. It looks like a pretty creative use of a difficult section of the property to me.

[Doug Siebert]

Donal - I think the best golf holes I've ever played, seen or read about are all pretty straightfoward. It is only in our desire to praise them around here that we try to make them seem complicated. (We call this supposed complication 'options' and 'strategies', and play up how difficult the many choices are that we have to make.)

In a good hole, the choices we have to make are more difficult than the shots we have to make.  The choices appear simple and subtle but upon further play/reflection we see how much impact a simple seeming choice off the tee has on the sequence of shots that follow.  In a bad hole the choices are easy but the shots are hard.  You know exactly where you need to go, it is just a target golf test of whether you can hit it where you aim, and is unimaginatively penal when you fail to do so.  Any idiot can design such a hole, it takes no talent to design a hard hole that makes its difficulty plainly obvious for all to see.  The talent is in designing hole that looks hard but is easy, or looks easy but is hard.  Holes that give the golfer room to screw himself by making bad choices that cause good shots to be unable to help him, rather than taking the simple minded route of making decisions unimportant and punishing bad shots.  A straightaway hole with trees lining both sides of the fairway is a test of hitting straight shots, but requires no decisions, no imagination, nothing beyond simple mechanical ability to reproduce a shot that goes straight the number of times required to get one to the green.

I think Donal's hole falls into the 'choices are easy but shots are hard' category, at least based on how narrow the fairways look in the picture.  It is obvious that you should take the right fairway (assuming you can carry it 167 yards) whether or not you plan to go for the green in two or three.  The 'strategy', as such, appears to be all about determining what type of misses you tend to make and minimizing the chance your misses put you in the water that is available to hit in both directions off the tee and for the approach.

Bill's hole has similar issues, the difficult thing about it isn't deciding whether to carry where the water hazard juts out or challenge the bunkers to go for the green in two.  It is in simply keeping the ball in play off the tee because it sure looks from the aerial as though any shot missing in either direction is plain lost, then you're faced with an all or nothing decision to go for it, lay up around 150 yards away, or the dubious challenge of braving an overly narrow fairway to lay up closer.  There's nothing golfers enjoy more than laying up with a wedge!  It certainly appears to me as though it rather unfairly penalizes that whole swath of golfers not long enough to play a club they trust at the green in two and not so short that they'd be left with 150 in even with two good licks at it.  The only thing worse is a par 5 that has a fairway that ends at the 250 mark to 'protect' itself from long hitters going for it in two, to force them to hit a longer shot for the second than they hit off the tee.

[Lyne Morrison]

What bothers me about this hole is that someone has forgotten who is playing the course. Golf is not only about single figure golfers (some here may be surprised to learn that    )  -  there are varied player profiles to be considered.

The majority of golfers have handicaps commencing from the high teens upwards - and I can see where many of these folk would be challenged by the required angles, forced carries and predicted way-ward shots.

Not user friendly for the golfing masses imo.

Lyne

[jeffwarne]

Donal,
I suggest saving your green fee money and time for return visits home to Donegal