Do All Great Courses Have You on Edge?

[Phil Benedict]

I played Pinehurst #2 twice over the weekend.  It's the greatest course I've ever played.  My brother is a low handicapper who birdied 2 of the first 3 holes.  Nonetheless the course caught up to him and he ended up shooting 77.  Double bogie is lurking everywhere, but not in the obvious places (OB, water).  It's in your mind that a minor mistake can blow up your score.

If you care about your score, do the best courses keep you on edge throughout most of the round?

[hhuffines]

A little OT, but how were the new green surfaces?  Did they add to your enjoyment of the course?

[Tom Bacsanyi]

No.  I feel very comfortable at places like No. 2.  I only feel on edge when there are too many "do or die" shots involving OB/hazards/unplayable native/etc. which is the antithesis of Pinehurst, and great courses in general.  It seems there are always options and ways to balance risk and reward at great courses.  Challenged and thoughtful, but not "on edge."

[Phil Benedict]

A little OT, but how were the new green surfaces?  Did they add to your enjoyment of the course?

The new greens are fine.  #4 still has bent which gets pretty beat up.  #2's greens are quite firm.

What's uncomfortable about #2 is that if you miss around the greens in the wrong place it can be hard to make bogie, never mind par.  And you don't have to miss by much.

[Matt Frey, PGA]

If you care about your score, do the best courses keep you on edge throughout most of the round?

I don't believe that the best courses keep you on edge throughout most of the round, even if you do actively care about your score.

I was fortunate enough to be invited to play Sunnehanna recently and I can't recall being "on edge" at any point during the round, yet I would still classify it has a great golf course...I think I had a smile on my face the entire round!

On the other hand, take Bethpage Black, which many (including myself) consider to be a great course. The two times I played the Black, I went in knowing that there were going to be double bogeys and that I needed to try to minimize the damage and play smart. That game plan kept me "off the edge" because I accepted the reality of the course and eventual score range.

I think players can be on edge even on less than ideal designs. I've played many courses that would invariably fall low on the Doak Scale, yet because I had a decent round going or was in the middle of a good match, I was on edge.

I believe it has less to do with the course than it does the golfer's mentality for the round. That's just my personal opinion, however.

[Brent Hutto]

Having experienced a few great courses and many not-so-great ones and carrying a handicap in the high teens, I've noticed that my production of double bogeys (and worse) has only the most tenuous connection to either the quality or the difficulty of the course, within a surprisingly broad range.

Short and/or easy courses offer me more opportunities for birdies. And yeah, it follows that my average double-or-worse production will be somewhat higher on a too-long course with many hazards and/or thick rough and/or tricky greens. But the course to birdie opportunity relationship is much more direct than the course to double-or-worse relationship.

It's my golf game that puts me on edge but only if I choose to let it. Being on edge is all a matter of acceptance.

All that is preamble to the point I want to make. A great golf course can cause a player to feel he is "on edge" for the entire round if and only if the course encourages him to have unreasonable expectation regarding the scorecard. Any player, good or bad, can choose to be immune to scorecard expectation pressure. But for the player who choose to let their scorecard expectation drive their experience then a well designed course can confound them at every turn and play that expectation against the player. That's the source of that "on edge" feeling.

I believe that's what Pete Dye meant in his famous quote about how getting Tour players "thinking" is the key to challenging them with a well designed course. That "thinking" takes the form of getting them out of their comfort zone and into a situation where they sense that their scorecard expectations are going to be frustrated, thereby inducing doubt and a sense of pressure. Doubt and pressure form the "on edge" experience.

If you have no scorecard expectation then it becomes very hard for any course no matter how great to upset your equanimity for 18 holes at a time. But if you spend the round "thinking" in the Pete Dye sense about a way to meet your expectations when faced with a hole or a shot that confounds them, then "on edge" is a great way to describe the feeling. And there will be plenty of double-bogeys lurking.

[BCrosby]

"A great golf course can cause a player to feel he is "on edge" for the entire round if and only if the course encourages him to have unreasonable expectation regarding the scorecard."

Well said, though expectations don't need to be "unreasonable". They just need to be expectations.

But hold the phone. I thought it was received wisdom at GCA that par didn't matter.

Bob

[Brent Hutto]

Good point, Bob. I did the strike-through thing on that word "unreasonable".

Regarding par, a few thoughts...

Once a dog is properly trained and assuming he's well adjusted behaviorally, he could be contained by a "leash" that is the merest piece of string. The leash doesn't have to physically restrain the dog from lunging or running away, it only serves as the cue that he's on-lead and expected to behaved in the way he was trained.

The Par designation for each hole is the string "leash" by which golfers who are already brainwashed can have their expectations manipulated by a golf course.

[Peter Pallotta]

Interesting thread (and good posts, Brent). I know this is not how Phil meant the term, but for me the last thing I want on a golf course is to be "on edge".  Indeed, in what for me is an almost intolerably fast paced world and work environment, a golf course is one of only two or three environments where I'm not on edge. And yet there's a fine line - I am a card and pencil type, and "par" does matter to me (to a certain extent) -- and it matters because I want it to matter and I choose for or it to matter; that is part of the "game". (As someone noted once, but not a perfect analogy: the very rules and restrictions of chess are what make the game fun and challenging.) But how a course achieves this, how a design creates a field of play for the game that at one and the same time helps engender a peaceful and calm spirit and a lovely and natural environment and a sane and human pace while at the same time presenting me with problems to be solved and challenges to be faced and recoveries to attempt -- well, that's the great magic trick of gca, isn't it? And off the top of my head, there are courses that manage that trick, the old perennials e.g. The Old Course and Ballyneal and NGLA and Sandhills and Dornoch and Wolf Point etc. There is an 'edge', from what I read about those courses, and especially under differing conditions, but it's of a merciful and gentle quality: the "golfer" is challenged, but the "soul" is at peace.

Peter 

[Dave McCollum]

A bit off topic, I’ve wondered about expectations about great courses.  I don’t keep score on most rounds.  However, usually when I play a bucket-list course I’ve read about it, heard others rave about it, and built up expectations about playing a great course.  I’m excited to play it and generally play well for my pathetic game.  I wonder how much these expectations influence my enjoyment of the experience and my ability to have any objectivity about the quality of course when comparing it to another.  I suspect that these expectations and my emotional reaction to the experience make me a poor critic of golf courses, so I don’t feel comfortable participating in rating discussions and am a bit skeptical of other folk’s opinions about the relative quality of any course.  I understand this is a learned skill like any other, but I don’t have the ambition or desire to develop it.  I prefer to play golf for the subjective enjoyment it gives me and deciding what courses to play is an important part of the process.  So, I also wonder how much this influences the comments here.

[BCrosby]

Interesting stuff.

I feel a self-imposed pressure to live up to a great course when playing it. There is that pressure to play reasonably well. That doesn't mean I keep score necessarily, but it does mean not foozling so badly that my own game distracts me from enjoying the course. So I have that sort of 'soft' expectation about my own play.

The first time I played Crystal Downs several years ago, I picked up after my 6th stroke on the par 3 11th. Somewhere around my 4th stroke (I was still off the green), I ceased to appreciate the architecture of the hole.

Bob

[Phil Benedict]

The premise of the thread is that you care about your score.  What's unique about #2 is that the fear factor is all around the greens.  No lost ball hazards, forced carries or OB.  It still really hard though.

[Phil Benedict]

Our group was astonished that Kaymer shot 10 under the first two rounds playing from tees 1000 yards back from where we played, and on a firmer course.  That's golfing your ball.