Alternate routes, options, interest and solutions

[jeffwarne]

I recently was out west visiting various National Parks(yes John K pictures ) and spent 3 days skiing at Brian Head, Utah.


Over the last 20 years they have suffered a Pine Beetle infestation and lost nearly 90% of their trees, which has caused some issues with blowing snow cover, loss of snow from excessive sunlight, more frequent lift closures due to more wind exposure,erosion and avalanche risk, and a perceived loss of natural beauty.
Many new smaller trees have been planted but are a long way from maturity.

Those are the (supposed) negatives.

What I found was a fascinating landscape which at least tripled the skiable area, and allowed traffic to spread out, pick their own line and explore the varied terrain, while skiing with partners of varying ability.
I am a big fan of glade skiing, but found even with many trees now gone, there was almost no part of the mountain that couldn't be skiied, taking a different line nearly every time, while skiing around the rocks, steep drops , existing mature trees, and immature saplings.
I find many resorts frustrating that have inpenetrable trees that are either out of bounds or so little space between trees/undergrowth that tree trails are very limited, forcing one onto a predetermined, often groomed ,boring and often crowded  path.

In other words, ironically, their loss of trees made skiing the remaining trees MORE attractive and possible, and opened up play on the entire mountain, not rigidly defined corridors.

I'm curious if there are course that allow many different lines/approaches enabling alternate play around hazards without losing a ball.
What courses share this design philosophy?
TOC, Gweedore, and parts of Sebonack come to mind all for different reasons.
Assuming cost is a limiting factor of maintaining all areas at fairway height, what ground covers or maintenance practices can produce this effect?

Gweedore and Mulranny have this due to grazing-are their others this way by either circumstance or design?

What are a few ways to add alternate interesting routes safely, cost efficiently, and effectively?
I suspect many Golden Age courses enjoyed this luxury, depending on height of cut (if any) between fairways, and a lack of irrigation
Of course many boring parallel fairway courses accidentally share this by accident
Is there a difference?

i.e. how do we open up the field of play for more options,playability, forgiveness,strategy, and interest, at a reasonable cost, without issuing helmets?

Comments?

[Matt MacIver]

There us a reason Vail's back bowls are the best in North America, Whistler notwithstanding. Width matters.

[jeffwarne]

There us a reason Vail's back bowls are the best in North America, Whistler notwithstanding. Width matters.

Matt, while width does matter, and I do love Vail's back bowls. they have the luxury of thousands upon thousands of acres, and can be a pain to access(and return back from) , particularly for skiiers of lesser abilities you may want to ski with (though that is doable as well).
Not a knock on Vail as it is awesome, and is a very big, remote feeling, though with 50,000 other skiiers

Brian Head has a Blue Sky basin feel to it right out the back door, and it's only a few hundred acres,
Put the original trees back and it's probably less than 100 skiable acres, like many eastern resorts
.

Not trying to promote a ski resort here, just looking for golf comparison's to Brian head (TOC), or Vail's back bowls (Sebonack?) for that matter

The problem I see with width at most newer courses is that it's bordered by lost ball jail

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:

This is a good comparison, there are just so few golf courses that are really natural enough to give you all the different options.  As you say, grazed courses are generally the best for suggesting / allowing mutliple routes.

The irony is that many sites are used to graze animals before we build courses on them, but it is the process of fencing off the animals to keep people's golf shoes clean that introduces the long, lost-ball rough.  Three prominent examples of this that I'm familiar with are Cape Kidnappers, St. Andrews Beach, and The National in Australia.  

At Cape Kidnappers, the most fun I ever had was playing 15 holes on the grazed land before we built the course ... and I've shown pictures of that layout I did down in the valley on the grazing land that would have been so cool to play.

At The National, Mike Clayton and I worked on routings for the two courses, although we lost out on the commission   The property had some of the most beautiful undulations I've ever seen -- it was Darwin's "links of eiderdown" with a view of the ocean to boot.  But once they routed the 36 holes and took the cows off the ground, long rough sprouted up between all the holes; and as Mike pointed out, now you can't see the continuous undulation that made the property so beautiful to start with.  They would have been better off letting loose 1000 sheep, but of course their membership is a bit too important to handle all the jokes about Aussies and sheep.

[jeffwarne]

Thanks Tom,
 Nice to see someone want to discuss something besides the price of golf or pace of play

You hit the nail on the head about members being too important to deal with cows and/or sheep, or virtually anything that's not defined and pretty.
Perception is such a nasty thing that ruins much of our golf here in the US, and most modern courses abroad.
It doesn't help that for so many years all the pictures of newer courses featured glossy shots of waving long "native grass", and while the GCA outcry and demand is that it should be wispy, it rarely is as that's not so easy to control.
A few sheep would do the trick nicely.

I liken the(now) skiable areas between runs at Brian Head (where you really have to pay attention as you could ski off some pretty steep stuff that blends right into mellow blue runs) to the areas between fairways at Mulranny and Gweedore (the gold standard of width)

[Thomas Dai]

Jeff,

The example that immediately comes to mind is one of my favourite courses, Minchinhampton Old, the cattle and horses course that's been profiled on here - http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,48765.0.html - a course where you really do get alternate routes, options, interest and solutions.

See - http://old.minchinhamptongolfclub.co.uk/ - for the Clubs website - and fabulous photos.

Minch' Old is somewhere you really ought to play on one of your UK trips. A free draining, easy walking 6,200 yds, a maintenance crew of only two (full-time) and no sprinkler system. Better than Kington? A close call. Minch' Old is also within only a few minutes drive of both Painswick and Cleeve Cloud and not that far from the not to dissimilar Stinchcombe Hill, which would all make a nice Cotswold combination over a day or two.

ATB


(photo per the Clubs website)

[jeffwarne]

Fantastic stuff Thomas
Now if we could get a few of a special breed that would eat in the fairway, and shite in the rough

Give that picture a 10-30% slope and it would resemble the open and varied runs of Brian head

[Bill_McBride]

Pennard has free range cattle, it's the reason the entire wild layout is "mowed" at about the same length.   

You do have to be careful where you walk!

[Mark Pearce]

I recall Frank Pont explaining that at de Pan they use goats (I think, maybe sheep) to control the rough, using moveable pens to move the animals from one area to another when the rough needs "cutting".

[Rich Goodale]

Fascinating thoughts, Jeff!

The only things that inhibit all golf courses of great width and few trees becoming off piste afternoon delights are the hardness of the golf ball, the fragility of certain parts of the human body and the gormlessness of most golfers.

Most courses in the UK, in the height of summer, when the sun less sets than skims across, down and then back up along the horizon, can be played as a virgin piste if you know when and where and how to play.  It can be as good as golf ever gets, particularly when you know there is a hof and a hof waiting for you when you finally finish at the bar.

And, in the good old days when I used to play Spyglass several times a year, for a $10 replay, when held up on the second, my pals and I tried to hit all the cut balatas we had in our bags (and there were many) onto the 1st green, in the gloaming.

I think this is what golf was meant to be.  An adventure, and not an objective.

Rich

PS--if we rolled back the ball to the Cayman, could we not play off piste golf without having to worry about amblance/golf cart chasers ruining our fun?

[Lou_Duran]

They would have been better off letting loose 1000 sheep, but of course their membership is a bit too important to handle all the jokes about Aussies and sheep.

For good cheer, let's hear a few.

Thanks Tom,
 Nice to see someone want to discuss something besides the price of golf or pace of play

You hit the nail on the head about members being too important to deal with cows and/or sheep, or virtually anything that's not defined and pretty.

You mean the same folks who have no concerns about the price of golf or the pace of play at courses doing a handful of rounds daily?  Me, if I was one of those VIPs, I'd gladly live with the jokes while paying a large staff to clean after the sheep, particularly if they were from the same gene pool as those I saw at Southerndown in Wales (attractive enough to have starred opposite Gene Wilder, while being so well-behaved that the electricity for the fences had been turned off).

[Garland Bayley]

Tom,

For Cape Kidnappers, why not just keep the sheep and goats off the fairways with Invisible Fence?

http://www.invisiblefence.com/

[Neil White]

I must admit I've never come across something like 'invisible fence' before - but am I right in thinking that each pet / animal needs individual training?

That's one hell of a job for a 1000 sheep 

[Garland Bayley]

I must admit I've never come across something like 'invisible fence' before - but am I right in thinking that each pet / animal needs individual training?

That's one hell of a job for a 1000 sheep 

That website is kind of informationless, unless perhaps you want to take the time to watch their videos (I don't). My understanding of such products was that each animal wore a collar that sensed a signal so that it could make it very uncomfortable for the animal to go outside the boundary. I don't know what training is involved.

[Tom_Doak]

I must admit I've never come across something like 'invisible fence' before - but am I right in thinking that each pet / animal needs individual training?

That's one hell of a job for a 1000 sheep 

That website is kind of informationless, unless perhaps you want to take the time to watch their videos (I don't). My understanding of such products was that each animal wore a collar that sensed a signal so that it could make it very uncomfortable for the animal to go outside the boundary. I don't know what training is involved.

With dogs, you have to train them by bringing them up close to the fence a bunch of times, until they understand where it is.  If they are just being shocked at what seems to them to be random, they won't know where to go.  [The shock works when you are close to the buried wire, on either side of it.]

Anyway, the goal is not to keep the sheep in the rough ... the ideal is to let them graze everywhere except the greens, so that there are no mowing lines at all.  But most golfers don't like dodging the droppings.

[Thomas Dai]

At Kington they have a tractor with a very large bladed propellor/fan mounted on the rear which blows the sheep droppings away. Might not be so effective with cattle and horse droppings though.

I believe that at Minch' Old one of the daily tasks during the May to Oct period is clearing away (with a shovel) any animal droppings that have accumulated on the fairways.

Anyone know how they deal with the animal dropping issue at places Westward Ho!/RND, Pennard, Southerndown etc?

ATB

[Mike_Young]

Not trying to advertise but if you go to the FaceBook page for "The Fields Golf Club" and scroll back thru the photos etc to 3/12 you can see a video of our sheep going out with the dogs and the truckster.  We use an electric fence that operates by solar and keeps them where they need to be.  The dogs protect them from coyotes and herd them.  

[Tom_Doak]

At Kington they have a tractor with a very large bladed propellor/fan mounted on the rear which blows the sheep droppings away. Might not be so effective with cattle and horse droppings though.

It must have been disabled for a few days before my visit last fall    Either that or it is not very effective.  I really didn't mind.

[Neil White]

At Kington they have a tractor with a very large bladed propellor/fan mounted on the rear which blows the sheep droppings away. Might not be so effective with cattle and horse droppings though.

It must have been disabled for a few days before my visit last fall    Either that or it is not very effective.  I really didn't mind.

I can't say I've ever really noticed the sheep droppings at Kington, that said it's probably one of those things you just get used to......

As for horse / cattle droppings - if it is effective I would be sure to stand upwind of the fan when it is in action 

[Thomas Dai]

As for horse / cattle droppings - if it (the tractor fan) is effective I would be sure to stand upwind of the fan when it is in action  

Neil, join the queue!

As to Kington, I heard that the quota of sheep allowed on the course was significantly increased last year, maybe that's why the removal remedies were not very effective during TD's visit, or as he says, maybe the machine wasn't operational. Best to wear traditional metal spikes too, smelly sheep debris doesn't cling to them as it does to modern softspikes designs. Perhaps they should spread mint sauce around the greens and tees!

As an aside, I think Ian Woosnam had them serve Welsh lamb at the Master Champions Dinner the year after he won. Yummy.

Seems an appropriate time to reference Seans splendid Kington photo tour - http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,30926.0.html

And here's Cooper Pedy GC, the opal mining town in Aussie - looks like there'd be some pretty interesting alternate routes, options, interest and solutions here -





Anyone played it?

ATB

[Sean_A]

Thomas

Kington doesn't cut their fairways but a few times a year.  There is tons of sheepshite about, but it actually dries out very quickly and is easy to deal with.  I have never had issues with the crap getting on my gear......unless it rains quite hard - heavy sigh.  I don't know why, but the sheep rarely crap on the greens.  When they do, I drop and play around if necessary rather then remove the obstacle  .  Again, its quite rare fo this to be a problem.  

An encouring development has been the clearing of ferns.  Apparently it makes for good animal bedding.  This also allows the sheep to easily grazed the cleared areas and stay off the fairways.  As Tom notes, it creates a nice haze between fairway and rough - though some would say Kington is rough and greens .  No matter, the "fairways" are beautiful turf.


Ciao  

[Tom_Doak]

An encouring development has been the clearing of ferns.  Apparently it makes for good animal bedding.  This also allows the sheep to easily grazed the cleared areas and stay off the fairways.  As Tom notes, it creates a nice haze between fairway and rough - though some would say Kington is rough and greens .  No matter, the "fairways" are beautiful turf.

I suddenly realized thirty years ago at Westward Ho! why the Rules of Golf don't make any distinction between rough and fairway, and everything is "through the green".  It's because when the Rules were first written, there was no difference, except to the extent the sheep preferred some areas to others.

Does anybody know when they started mowing fairways?

[Adam Lawrence]

An encouring development has been the clearing of ferns.  Apparently it makes for good animal bedding.  This also allows the sheep to easily grazed the cleared areas and stay off the fairways.  As Tom notes, it creates a nice haze between fairway and rough - though some would say Kington is rough and greens .  No matter, the "fairways" are beautiful turf.

I suddenly realized thirty years ago at Westward Ho! why the Rules of Golf don't make any distinction between rough and fairway, and everything is "through the green".  It's because when the Rules were first written, there was no difference, except to the extent the sheep preferred some areas to others.

Does anybody know when they started mowing fairways?

A change of subject, but it's odd how you sometimes get these moments of clarity. I was at Burnham and Berrow, staring at the sand hill that used to be crossed by the Majuba hole, when I realised why all the pre-1890 links had a blind par three that went straight over the top of the highest dune on the property - because golf is played mostly by guys, and guys are just the same now as they've always been. And if you're a bunch of guys with golf equipment that makes it really hard to get the ball in the air, traversing your way across a patch of duneland, of course one of you is going to say "I bet I can hit my ball over the dune, and you lot can't."

[Sean_A]

Adam

I am still amazed those guys had a hole like Majuba.  It must have been brutal and a real badge of merit for the successful player!  But as you hint, I think left to their own devices, a lot of guys are happy to whack it around cross country golf at least once in a while. As an aside, it would seem there was strong resistance to dropping Majuba for Colt's 17th - even Darwin thought it a shame.

As an aside, I have played some shots behind Majuba to the 17th and didn't come close to making the green.  I realize that the green was further down in the low ground shy of the current green, but I figured the difference in technology and that Majuba has been leveled was a fair trade off.    

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

I suddenly realized thirty years ago at Westward Ho! why the Rules of Golf don't make any distinction between rough and fairway, and everything is "through the green".  It's because when the Rules were first written, there was no difference, except to the extent the sheep preferred some areas to others.
Does anybody know when they started mowing fairways?

A spin-off, you know how 'winter rules' or 'preferred lies' only allow you to clean and place the ball in the fairway/fringe Well once upon a time there was only fairway and geniune rough/gunge, none of this modern era semi-rough/first-cut/manicured graded cut etc, areas where you still get winter mud balls and the like. Wouldn't it make sense for winter rules/preferred lies to apply everywhere the grass is regularly cut (ie except in the gunge), just like it did once upon a time.

Rant over.

ATB