[Mike Hendren]

Heaven help me, but I find this very appealing:



I'd like to see more.  Where is it?

Bogey

[Pete_Pittock]

Hilton Head

[Pete_Pittock]

How about a walking course where you have to take a cart to the first tee and where the 18th tee is nowhere near either the first tee or the clubhouse?

Doak's Black Forest at Wilderness Valley near Gaylord, MI?

Right architect, wrong course.

I have played both the course I mentioned, and the one I presume you mean, Stone Eagle. They both fit the description.

[John Avram]

Look up Medicine Creek Golf Course in Presho, SD on Google Earth or Maps satellite view.

The locals who built it did exactly that.  The paths are (or were last time I was there) gravel, so it's not a total turbo boost.  And most of the greens have so much crown--to provide good drainage--that on most of them the landing spot is about as big as a volleyball.  Miss it and the ball goes off sideways, bounces over, or comes back.

Course doesn't look to be in the best shape,  but the paths are right down the middle.

http://www.golffrontier.com/Courses/UnitedStates/SouthDakota/Presho/MedicineCreekGolfCourse.aspx?ShowTour=true

The course looks like it would be fun to play actually,  some interesting holes.

[Jason Thurman]

How about a walking course where you have to take a cart to the first tee and where the 18th tee is nowhere near either the first tee or the clubhouse?

Doak's Black Forest at Wilderness Valley near Gaylord, MI?

Right architect, wrong course.

I have played both the course I mentioned, and the one I presume you mean, Stone Eagle. They both fit the description.

I'm pretty sure he was talking about Dismal River Red.

[DMoriarty]

Heaven help me, but I find this very appealing:



I'd like to see more.  Where is it?

Bogey

Bogey,  I think it is the Cupp course at Palmetto Hall in Hilton Head.  I've never been there but it looked interesting to me, too.  I've tried to find photos but while there are some straight lines and odd shapes, none are quite like the photo above.

Like Ian, I'd be curious to see someone go totally geometric, and in the process reject the faux natural lines and features and instead solely focus on playing characteristics.  It wouldn't work on every site, but on a totally artificial site, why not?   It'd be a good counterpoint to courses where a superficial natural aesthetic masks an otherwise uninspired design.

[Jay Mickle]

A course played tee to green area but all putting done on a separate putting venue like Thistle Dhu or Punchbowl.

[Jason Topp]

While the rules do not currently allow for it, I have always liked the idea of one tee box serving as the tee for a par 3 and for an adjacent  long hole simultaneously.  You would hit your tee shot on the par 3 and then hit another for the long hole.  You play out the par 3 and then walk over to play the other hole from the green to the fairway.  I could see this as a solution on a site with limited space.

[Adam Lawrence]

Jason - not quite what you're talking about, but at Rye in England it's normal to hit your tee shot on the par three second, then walk the short distance to the par four third tee and hit your drive before going to the second green. It saves a fairly significant walk back, and the Rye members like to play fast!

[Will MacEwen]

While the rules do not currently allow for it, I have always liked the idea of one tee box serving as the tee for a par 3 and for an adjacent  long hole simultaneously.  You would hit your tee shot on the par 3 and then hit another for the long hole.  You play out the par 3 and then walk over to play the other hole from the green to the fairway.  I could see this as a solution on a site with limited space.

I've seen it done when a temporary hole was in place.

[Garland Bayley]

Jason,

You're a genius.

[Pete_Pittock]

The old iteration of Tualatin CC had the 8th and 9th tees adjacent to each other, the 8th a par three and the 9th a parallel par 4. I would play as you envisioned,  trying to keep a good pace of play, but it is against the rules of golf and will never be changed. The decision is easy to find and remember 1-1/1

[Jason Thurman]

Surely you could slap down a local rule to get around 1-1/1. I can't think of a better way to test mental focus in the face of adversity. Imagine the player who hits a terrible tee shot on the par 3, and now must instantly regroup and try to hit a good one for the longer hole that follows. Or the player who hits one off the planet on the longer hole, and now has to play out the par 3 while wondering how he can possibly recover on the hole that follows. What a great idea.

[Pete_Pittock]

Surely you could slap down a local rule to get around 1-1/1. I can't think of a better way to test mental focus in the face of adversity. Imagine the player who hits a terrible tee shot on the par 3, and now must instantly regroup and try to hit a good one for the longer hole that follows. Or the player who hits one off the planet on the longer hole, and now has to play out the par 3 while wondering how he can possibly recover on the hole that follows. What a great idea.

It is against the rules of golf to make a local rule that overrides a rule of golf

[Garland Bayley]

Pete,

I thought you said it was a decision.

[Wyatt Halliday]

I've always wondered why a course must to be limited to a set 18 holes in succession. I know there are architects (many of whom post here) with the creativity to build a course where the flow can be manipulated. Consider this, your club has x number of golf holes that can be played in a different order depending on what day of the week it is. Couldn't this be done with an arbitrary number (who cares if there are 13 or 24 holes?)? Wouldn't it be cool to have 4-5 different golf courses within the acreage required for a "normal" 18 hole course? There must be some benefits to breaking convention.

[Pete_Pittock]

Don't build greens. Define a green as within 10 yards of the hole. Mow that defined green area daily, but on a day by day basis, move the 10 yard diameter green area around within a set of with haphazard hazards.

It would likely save more than #1 in construction costs.
Lower maintenance costs because you're mowing a much smaller acreage.
Takes away the premium on putting, also with lowering green speeds.
Speeds up play because the longest putt would be about 25 feet long.

any comments

[DMoriarty]

Pete. 

Would it really save money if the entire acreage had to be maintained so that it could be cut to green height on any given day?

[Pete_Pittock]

No.
The entire area would be constructed to fairway standards, maintenance would be to apron or light rough standards, except when the 10 yd diameter area is selected as the green of the day. The overall area would have a variety of heights of grass.  Instead of having hazards surrounding a green, they could be placed anywhere in the area.
Instead of having flanking bunkers 40-50 yards apart, you could have three bunkers 20 yards apart, sort of the 6th at Riviera on steroids.

[Ulrich Mayring]

I know of an actual example of a course, where they play to a par 3 and then drive off the next par 4 hole. It's not the same tee, but both tees are on top of a hill and it would be bothersome to play the par 3 and then have to climb back up the hill for the next tee shot. So you just go from the par 3 green to the par 4 fairway and continue on there. As far as I know they have a special exemption from the German Golf Association to make that work in tournaments etc.

The course is called Bad Münstereifel and here is a picture of the situation:



This is the view from the tee of the par 3. You basically play your shot to the green on the right, walk down the path on the left to the tee of the par 4, hit your drive over the trees to the fairway, walk down through the patch of brown rough to the green of the par 3, putt out, walk back to the fairway of the par 4 and play to the green in the center background.

Ulrich

[Tony_Muldoon]

I know of an actual example of a course, where they play to a par 3 and then drive off the next par 4 hole. It's not the same tee, but both tees are on top of a hill and it would be bothersome to play the par 3 and then have to climb back up the hill for the next tee shot. So you just go from the par 3 green to the par 4 fairway and continue on there. As far as I know they have a special exemption from the German Golf Association to make that work in tournaments etc.

The course is called Bad Münstereifel and here is a picture of the situation:



This is the view from the tee of the par 3. You basically play your shot to the green on the right, walk down the path on the left to the tee of the par 4, hit your drive over the trees to the fairway, walk down through the patch of brown rough to the green of the par 3, putt out, walk back to the fairway of the par 4 and play to the green in the center background.

Ulrich

Better use of lack of land that one hole I could name but...

doesn't it slow things down?   Either you have to wait for the group in front to play a par three and their second shot on the par 4, or  you have the time taken to hit two tee shots before you play the par 3 and then you step back and watch them play two lots of tee shots?  When you get to the fairway are their twice the no of balls there?

Where in the round does it lie. Late in a match you need to know the score before you decide how aggressive to be off the tee.

REJECTED!

[Ulrich Mayring]

According to the club they have this local rule, because it actually speeds things up. However, I can neither confirm nor deny that, because every time I played there I had no one in front of me. The place is remote.

These are holes 14 and 15. If you look at the fairway of hole 15, you'll see that it is wide, but there is OBB left and right. So you know right away whether your ball is in play or you have to reload immediately.

This configuration asks you to make your decision on tee #15 without perfect knowledge of the outcome of hole #14. It makes it more of a gambling situation, which I personally find interesting. Also, if your opponent hit a bad tee shot on #15, you might decide to play the rest of #14 differently! Believe me, you can three-putt these greens. Like it or not, it certainly adds a whole new dimension to the game. They also had to get a special exception for match play, because it means that whoever has the honor on #14 automatically has it on #15.

FWIW, this course is so wild that playing it with a set gameplan is futile anyway. You'll have to react creatively to what it throws at you. If you don't like Painswick et. al. you'll hate it of course

Ulrich

[Paul Gray]

Totally stupid, potentially ridiculous, outside the box:

I've long wondered whether an affordable way to shape an otherwise dull piece of land might not be to simply lend it to the military for a year or two. There are a few sites around Britain which now sit dormant which have already been blown up to a state of potential interest.

[Jason Thurman]

How about a par 3 where all the turf outside the tee boxes is cut to green height? Play it with a putter, or go for a running shot using the undulations of the surface, or pull the right club and try to stick it close. Ideally you'd have some really crazy contours, particularly in the sections near the tee box. If the contours were severe enough, you could even pin areas near the tee and have a 10 or 20 yard hole that requires such creativity and touch to get the ball close that it can still play close to its stroke average.

Sure it's expensive and impractical to maintain all that turf, but it would be one cool hole. The options for how to play it could be almost infinite.

[Jim Nugent]

Par 3 like #6 at Riviera -- only instead of sand in the hazard there's water.  Variation:  the water is only two inches or so deep, daring the golfer to hit out of it. 

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