[Paul Gray]

Brian,

I absolutely agree and have made that point myself.

From my our personal perspective, I have no desire to try to make architectural comparisons which lead to a 'this one good, this one bad' conclusion. I just think that some are getting lost in comparing looks, whereas looks are of no relevance to me. All I wish to do is emphasise that the very comparisons being made are, by and large, being made on a purely superficial level. When the debate simply becomes about how a course looks, it becomes, as Brent suggested earlier, no more intelligent than the argument made by the 'green is good' gang.

Gees, we're not children choosing our favourite colour. Personally I'm not colour blind but I struggle to believe that, if I were, it would influence how I assessed a golf course. Maybe someone out there could comment.

[DMoriarty]

Both have:

* Wide playing corridors where simply hitting the fairway isn't adequate as a strategy for the good player, but that allow the weaker player to keep the ball in play.
* Little/no traditional rough. Augusta has a small area of tame first-cut, while Pinehurst has a fairway cut and a greens cut.
* Large proliferation of "native areas" - Augusta's are more "landscaped areas" than "native," but they're similar in that lies are unconventional while still being playable and keeping balls easy to find.
* Reasonably fast and firm conditions - Pinehurst's conditions at the US Open are not reflective of its conditions for daily play. It's a moderately firm and fast course but not exceptionally so. Augusta plays as firm and fast as nature allows every spring for the Masters.
* Strategy dictated by greens and their contours.

Our lambasting of Augusta for being green is as silly as people who lambast Pinehurst for its color without considering its playing qualities. If Augusta painted their turf a mottled yellow-green-brown and hosted a GCA event with conditions otherwise identical in playing quality to those at The Masters in an ideal weather year, we'd all rave about how great the presentation is.

I agree that at their core there are similarities, but Pinehurst seems to be moving toward the ideal (potentially) shared by both courses, whereas Augusta seems to have moved steadily away from it.

[Brent Hutto]

never mind

[Patrick_Mucci]

Augusta plays as firm as the design allows. I don't see a problem.

And wrong again. Augusta plays nothing like MacKenzie deigned it to play.

How did MacKenzie design it to play ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Augusta is a great golf course for a professional tournament, I played it twice  and it was an honor to play but Pine Valley is way better

I'd strenuously disagree.

As great as both courses are, at PV you're just one swing away from an X.

For daily play, ANGC is far more user friendly.

[Paul Gray]

Pat,

Are you seriously suggesting that Mackenzie ever envisage zero roll, the addition of the trees etc?

[Mac Plumart]

Paul...you keep mentioning zero roll at Augusta.  Is that how it was/is when you've played there?  My experience is the exact opposite.

[Paul Gray]

Hold on, we are talking about that little golf course in Georgia, aren't we? The same one there was debate about last April as to whether allowing the ball to roll might make the course more difficult? I seem to recall Mucci struggling with the concept but no doubt someone can tell me I imagined it.

[Mac Plumart]

Paul...

I'm not sure I participated in that discussion and I don't care what others comments were on a website.  I'm interested in how the course actually plays.

Have you played Pinehurst #2?

[Paul Gray]

No different?

http://www.historyshots.com/images/augusta930v3.jpg

[Mac Plumart]

I gotta run, but, Paul, your original comment was that Augusta plays "nothing" like Mackenzie designed.  Now you are pointing out that the changes made to the course.  We all know there have been changes...but you originally said it plays NOTHING like intended.  Big difference there.  All courses change over time.  Most need to if they want to remain relevant in terms of professional competitive play given technology changes.

[Paul Gray]

Then I apologise for the exaggeration.

For my next trick I may just bump the Bobby Jones thread.   

[Jason Thurman]

Is Pinehurst No. 2 the most overrated course on GCA.com from a conditioning standpoint? They pushed the fairways into dormancy over the last few weeks on TV, but I can assure you it doesn't look like that on a normal day of resort play, nor does it play especially firm and fast. I played it during a stretch of wonderful weather at the end of summer a few years ago. It didn't play slow, but it certainly didn't play especially fast. I've visited the course on other occasions and never seen balls rolling out to any noteworthy extent. My experience is consistent with that of several friends I trust, including a former superintendent who also played during a stretch of dry weather and had complaints about how slow and sticky the Bermuda played.

Paul, I'd also like to know if you've played No. 2. Basing your judgment of the course's playing qualities on what you saw at the US Open may be your only frame of reference, and that's fine, but I think you might be surprised if you visited it yourself.

As for Augusta, I've only seen it during The Masters but in years when weather cooperates I think we all know that it plays with plenty of bounce and roll. In fact, almost all of the most famous shots hit during the tournament in my lifetime are famous because of rollout, either on the highlight shot or on its predecessor.

[Paul Gray]

Jason,

Nope, I confess to being limited to my TV experiences (please let's not have that old argument  ). But if you're correct and it does indeed play better than TV would lead one to think, great. I wasn't berating Augusta in any case. The whole thing simply came about because Jaka was busy on just about ever thread trying to promote his utopian American Dream which he fits so neatly into a status quo of what he perceives American golf to be. It's a tale of man taming the land for which I have little time. But I digress......

[Mac Plumart]

I got a few minutes before my sons baseball practice begins...so bear with me on any typos.

Jason...have you played #2 after the renovation?  I was lucky enough to play it right before and right after. Huge difference in playing characteristics. But I haven't played it in a few years and it looked even more firm on TV these last few weeks. I need to get back
Up there and see it again. And, to your point, I'd like to see if they keep it in the same playing condition as they did for The Opens.

I really like this thread as we are discussions playing characteristics of two courses which I think are flat out great. But one is one clay with rye grass and the other sand based. So, they'll never be the same...but can they both produce great playing surfaces?  I thnk yes.

Also, the recent changes to Pinehurt 2 has made a dramatic impact on the course. IMO. And this, again, gives the thread some relevant topics for discussion.

[Jason Thurman]

No argument here Paul. You can learn a lot from TV. You just can't draw meaningful conclusions about how a course is presented on any kind of consistent basis.

As for John, I don't know whether I believe his claim about Augusta playing as firm as the design allows or not. I do think it's worth fully considering though. As for your claim that it plays nothing like Mackenzie intended, I suspect you're incorrect. But there's really nothing to consider, since we'll never know how Mackenzie would react to the current course. I think you could build a more compelling case by using your own observations as opposed to hypothesizing what a dead architect might think.



Mac, I've only seen the course since the renovation. My experience with the renovated No. 2 is that it plays satisfactorily and consistently firm and fast, but a fair notch below places like Kingsley, Wild Horse, and even Dormie Club. My former superintendent friend cited Muirfield Village of all places as a course that played substantially faster and that he enjoyed more as a result. I certainly wouldn't call it slow, but I also don't think that the average retail golfer who plays the course will walk away thinking "Wow, I've never played a course so firm and fast!" the way they would at some of those other courses I mention.

Frankly, I didn't care for the presentation during the Opens. I thought the greens were too soft for the men, and the fairway turf was utterly awful outside the center 10 yards by the time the women's final round was played. To me, that center stripe of green in the fairways didn't look any less ridiculous than the tiny ribbons of fairway at Merion last year. It's like the USGA refused to embrace the 40 yard wide fairways that they chose to play their national championship on and tried to do what they could to artificially narrow them in the absence of conventional rough. Coupled with the ridiculous tee placements that bastardized some of the best holes on the course, and I'm pretty firmly in the camp that thinks Mike Davis has jumped the shark.

[Ryan Coles]

Jason

Re the utterly awful fairway turf.

Can you expand on this?

Do you mean it looked awful? Or the actual health of the turf was compromised in that it impacted the playing conditions?

[Tim Martin]

Jason

Re the utterly awful fairway turf.

Can you expand on this?

Do you mean it looked awful? Or the actual health of the turf was compromised in that it impacted the playing conditions?

Ryan-I am a bit perplexed re the comment about "utterly awful fairway turf" also. With the exception of Bubba Watson just about everyone from the contestants, commentators, media and architecture types raved about the conditions. What did I miss?

[Jason Thurman]

Ryan, neither of those exactly.

By the time the final round of the women's event rolled around, the course showed more of Mike Davis' fingerprints than it did Donald Ross'. It looked more like he wanted to get people talking than present excellent turf for our national championship. The green stripe down the middle became more and more pronounced over the course of two weeks, and the turf quality outside the middle 20 yards of the fairway grew unfit for a national championship. I love firm, mottled turf. I hoped to see a setup that embraced the width and strategic angles of Pinehurst. Instead, the Open was played on 20 yard wide fairways surrounded by graduated dirt instead of the "graduated rough" model the USGA started selling years ago.

For a decade now, the US Open formula on either side of the center line of the hole corridor has been 10 yards of fairway turf, surrounded by 15 yards of playable rough, surrounded by 15 yards of wilder rough. Replace the word "rough" in that sentence with "dirt," and you have the exact same formula just adapted to Pinehurst's unique turf growth. We were promised a showcase of strategic golf with multiple angles of attack and players taking risks to gain better positioning. Instead, we got the same lowest common denominator "hit the middle of the fairway or get a shitty lie" golf that we've gotten for years, just with less green color. It was an opportunity to show the public how interesting golf on wide and firm fairways can be, and instead it turned into a public service message about water usage and how golfers should tighten their belts.

The saddest thing is that all the ingredients were there. I heard 95% great things about the course through the first two rounds of the men's tournament. By the time the two weeks were over, the course's condition had deteriorated and what was once sexy and different now looked run down and unnatural. I love the course shown in Ran's writeup, and I loved the course I played two summers ago. Mike Davis' makeover took that beautiful and strategic golf course and made it play more like the course from 1999 and 2005 than the course that golfers from all over the world travel to enjoy.

[Joe_Tucholski]

Jason I think we are about the same age and I used to read a lot of what you wrote with interest.  The last few days it's been interesting but more because I've been wondering if you were serious.

I agree the fairways did not look visually appealing on TV.  I disagree with the statement that there was 20 yards of fairways and then dirt.  Not sure how you came to the conclusion that it was dirt or unfit for a national championship.  I assure you it was not dirt and the turf was very playable.

[Jason Thurman]

Joe, it wasn't literal dirt. But watching the women's final round in high definition, the turf that was left on the perimeter of the fairways sure appeared extremely thin and clumpy and prone to cuppy lies. It really stood out on 10 and 11 among the four or five holes that I watched. That's normal at Pinehurst for the last yard or two of fairway as it bleeds into the native area (and looks great), but it's not normal for a 10 yard wide swath on the outer edge of the fairway.

I really can't believe the tournament setup hasn't taken more flak on this site. I love the Coore and Crenshaw restoration, and I thought the native areas looked great. But I can't believe that they restored all that fairway, or that Donald Ross put it there in the first place, with the intention of having lies grow progressively worse as balls ventured from the center. The point of strategic width is to reward the player who challenges those very sides of the hole corridor to gain the ideal angle as opposed to the player who conservatively aims down the center. The "graduated fairways" at Pinehurst removed some of that strategy and I didn't see many players who appeared to purposely play away from the "green stripe."

You should know by now that I'm rarely serious, but I am on this topic. Pinehurst is a fantastic course and its day-to-day presentation is really wonderful. But the Opens with their silly bastardized drivable par 4s and artificially narrowed fairways did it no favors. I'd have preferred to see the course presented similarly to how it is set up for daily play with firmer greens, as that course is far more attractive with more nuanced playing qualities than the one we saw the last two weeks, and particularly during the women's Open.

[jeffwarne]

Jeff,

Are you suggesting that MacKenzie envisaged no roll, more trees, vamping up bunkers?

No roll?
Have you ever been there? I've seen balls roll 100 yards there
What magic pill did MacKenzie have in 1934 to make the ball roll in February on damp clay that they don't possess today?

and if you look at aeriels of the early course there were small pines all over the property, in addition to many mature ones that were kept.
I think even Mackenzie could figure out what small pines eventually turn into-why didn't he clear them when he had the chance?
The course is still massively wide, despite what the narrow focus of TV would show you, in fact the playable areas are 4-5 times wider than than 2 very highly regarded links courses I've played in the last 3 days (as exciting as the art of hack out sand wedges from 2 foot hay is-to say nothing of the joys of ball hunting)

I'd say the bunkers PLAY similarly to what Mackenzie intended, though their shape and color(admittedly not my favorite either) seem to bother you more than they way they play.
Again. if you have been there you know how deep and scary they are

[Paul Gray]

Jeff,

May I respectfully suggest that they read back through the thread.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jeff,

Are you suggesting that MacKenzie envisaged no roll, more trees, vamping up bunkers?

No roll?
Have you ever been there? I've seen balls roll 100 yards there
What magic pill did MacKenzie have in 1934 to make the ball roll in February on damp clay that they don't possess today?

and if you look at aeriels of the early course there were small pines all over the property, in addition to many mature ones that were kept.
I think even Mackenzie could figure out what small pines eventually turn into-why didn't he clear them when he had the chance?
The course is still massively wide, despite what the narrow focus of TV would show you, in fact the playable areas are 4-5 times wider than than 2 very highly regarded links courses I've played in the last 3 days (as exciting as the art of hack out sand wedges from 2 foot hay is-to say nothing of the joys of ball hunting)

I'd say the bunkers PLAY similarly to what Mackenzie intended, though their shape and color(admittedly not my favorite either) seem to bother you more than they way they play.
Again. if you have been there you know how deep and scary they are

Jeff,

You are 100 % correct

[Adam Clayman]

I think it is silly to compare the color or the presentation of two courses that have a completely different soil base.

Don, Shouldn't Presentation have some correlation to the core principles of playability, regardless of soil make up?

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