Width is over rated

[George Pazin]

George

Interesting. I've always been puzzled by the argument to not lengthen courses to save on the amount of mown fairway, yet the same advocates of this usually champion wider fairways also. It strikes me that sticking half a dozen trees way back in the brush with only a path to get to them that are there fore the occasional pro or top amateur tournament is a lot cheaper in maintenance terms than sticking an extra 15 to 20 yards width on all the par 4 and par 5's.

Niall

The comment Garland quoted was not in reference to maintenance, but rather the additional land required.

-----

Fwiw, I define width as areas one can play from, not short grass fairways. I just want to be able to find my ball and play it. That's the essence of the game to me. Point A to point B, doesn't matter how, just how many. I understand there has to be a boundary somewhere, I just think far too often it's not in a good area.

Wildness generally penalizes itself. It isn't necessary to have trees, OB, water or desert to penalize wayward tee shots.

I think the desire to overly punish wayward shots is the same thing as the desire to punish short hitters with long forced carries - misguided at best, downright damaging at worst.

[George Pazin]

Why should they dictate conditions for everyone?  I'm sorry.  Take a lesson and hit the practice tee. 

The best golfers in the world miss plenty of fairways and even more greens. You are simply exchanging one person's preferences for another's.

Point A to point B, find the ball and play it. That's my dream...

[jeffwarne]

Tommy,

Based on your opening post, I get the impression that you are not familiar with the game of golf.  I have been watching golfers for more than 50 years and it is very clear people can't hit the ball straight and probably never will.

To suggest we overemphasize width is silly.

Tim, I have been watching golfers for more than 60 years and agree that many hit it crooked, but that doesn't mean there shots should not be penalized. On the site we extol the virtues of great golf courses, yet we want fairways so wide you can't miss them. Hit it crooked at Pine Valley, Royal County Down, Merion or most the the top rated course and you have a severe penalty.  It is interesting that Tom mentions Sebonack.  I thought it was a wonderfully fun course when I played it, but that there was too much room off the tee while the shots into the greens were more demanding.  I realize that a lot of folks don't practice and play for social reasons.  Why should they dictate conditions for everyone?  I'm sorry.  Take a lesson and hit the practice tee.  

Tommy,
You cite two of the most difficult courses in the world as examples -RCD and PV.
Can you imagine playing at 12 noon at a busy public course or resort prepared like PV or RCD?

If golf courses were playable for those who play for "social reasons or don't practice" (the majority I would say by a mile) wouldn't the best players still be the best players?-and couldn't they separate themselves by driving it longer and to preferred positions?
Why torture the vast majority of players so a very elite few can measure their johnson's?(or more importantly measure poorer player's johnsons by building a course that only they can navigate)

Tommy you mention Sebonack and difficulty on approaches.
Once I played Sebonack a few times and figured out where best to drive it for certain holes and certain pins (and actually executed) I found those same approaches infinitely easier with the repelling sideboards becoming accepting sideboards and backboards and the proper angles achieved by experience and execution allowing me to create much easier approaches than the guy hitting it down the exact middle.

I think Tom is wrong about Sebonack-evaluating a course/driving area /setup by where the straightest(and not very long) hitters in the world hit it is a recipe for ruining a great  fun course with different challenges, and replacing it with a more homogonized "hit it here" strategy, while torturing the members it was built for.
and for the record, the biggest complaint that I got from the members about the Ladies Open setup at Sebonack was that during the runup to the Open the fescue was too tall and the rough unplayable for the membership-from pretty good male players.

[Tom_Doak]

It is interesting that Tom mentions Sebonack.  I thought it was a wonderfully fun course when I played it, but that there was too much room off the tee while the shots into the greens were more demanding.  I realize that a lot of folks don't practice and play for social reasons.  Why should they dictate conditions for everyone?  I'm sorry.  Take a lesson and hit the practice tee. 

Tommy:

Perhaps you should take a lesson and hit the chipping green!  

It bothers me when people [especially raters] tell me my courses are TOO CHALLENGING in one area and NOT CHALLENGING ENOUGH in another.  That means I have found a balance, and the only thing wrong is that the balance I've found is not the one that you would prefer, perhaps because of the relative strengths of your own golf game.

Do you really think every course should be designed to test the same skills in the same proportion?

[Tom_Doak]

Once I played Sebonack a few times and figured out where best to drive it for certain holes and certain pins (and actually executed) I found those same approaches infinitely easier with the repelling sideboards becoming accepting sideboards and backboards and the proper angles achieved by experience and execution allowing me to create much easier approaches than the guy hitting it down the exact middle.

I think Tom is wrong about Sebonack-evaluating a course/driving area /setup by where the straightest(and not very long) hitters in the world hit it is a recipe for ruining a great  fun course with different challenges, and replacing it with a more homogonized "hit it here" strategy, while torturing the members it was built for.

Jeff:

Thanks for your comments on Sebonack.

The main thing I was trying to say about it was the same thing I was chastising Tommy for ... the idea that every course should be built for a certain balance of golfing skills.  There is nothing wrong with the idea of a shorter course that offers players the option to gear down and try to hit it straight, or use their strength and face the consequences of a wayward drive.  The only thing I really don't want to see is a long AND narrow course.

I've been to Sebonack a couple of times where the set-up was so difficult that on a windy day, no one was having any fun.  However I am convinced that most of that is because they set it up too long for everyday play.  The two golfers who convinced me the course was fine were two women in their 60's [the wives of two of my clients] who just love to play there.  If the greens aren't too severe for them, then I struggle to understand how they could be too severe for low-handicap men!

[jeffwarne]

Tom,
People hate to three putt-that's why there's pushback from better players.
What they fail to realize is that their three putts at a place like Sebonack or SS Blue come from marginal approaches perhaps caused by marginal drives. Death by a thousand tiny paper cuts
I just experienced that at SS Blue.

[Dave McCollum]

I walked around Merion during the US Open with my almost non-golfing son.  He was curious why I thought it was so great.  I found it useful to tell him to ignore the narrow fairway cuts and imagine playing the much wider turf corridors as fairway without all of the rough.  He could easily see the ideal lines and angles were defined by the narrow pro fairways.  He could also see that had the fairways been much wider or all fairway that the course would be very playable to the lesser player, although hitting it to wrong side of many holes would make for more difficult lines of play, blindness, or take more strokes to play.  I actually thought it would be a much more interesting and challenging course without all the rough.  

I have no idea how the course plays for the members, but it seemed to have the width to be really fun to play and a boatload of strategic options for better player.  If there were no rough, I thought it would still be very challenging while being playable for all golfers.  To my eye, the Open setup made it a much more one-dimensional  and less interesting course.  The pros proved it was plenty difficult.

Those that have played it and know Merion well may not agree with my gallery-eye assessment. It seemed an ideal golf course if they got rid of the US Open rough.

[Tommy Williamsen]

It is interesting that Tom mentions Sebonack.  I thought it was a wonderfully fun course when I played it, but that there was too much room off the tee while the shots into the greens were more demanding.  I realize that a lot of folks don't practice and play for social reasons.  Why should they dictate conditions for everyone?  I'm sorry.  Take a lesson and hit the practice tee. 

Tommy:

Perhaps you should take a lesson and hit the chipping green!  

It bothers me when people [especially raters] tell me my courses are TOO CHALLENGING in one area and NOT CHALLENGING ENOUGH in another.  That means I have found a balance, and the only thing wrong is that the balance I've found is not the one that you would prefer, perhaps because of the relative strengths of your own golf game.

Do you really think every course should be designed to test the same skills in the same proportion?

I agree that not every course should be designed to test the same skills. I love the differences between courses.  I love links, heathland, and parland courses and the different demands they put on your game. 
 
By the way I don't think the shots into the greens at Sebonack are too demanding only more challenging than the tee shots. 

[Tommy Williamsen]

Why play the game if your not interested in getting better? I'll never understand that.

Tommy, Here inlies the likely reason you feel the way you do.

You are exactly right.  I tend to be that way in everything I do. I remember when my son was about 13. We went skiing and on the lift I noticed that they had slalom gates up.  I told him, "Great, let's ski the gates." He replied, "No, let's just have fun."  I wanted to say, It's not about having fun, it's about getting better."  Fortunately, I caught myself before I spoke.

[Brent Hutto]

Maybe we've identified the most fundamental misconception of all. More fundamental than "green is good". More fundamental than "every hole playable with a putter" or "hard par, easy bogey".

The root of many, many issues affecting the way golf courses are designed, maintained, marketed and playing is the misconception that "golf is not about having fun, it's about getting better".

Let me just point out that for millions of golfers, including plenty of very avid ones, it is ENTIRELY about having fun and "getting better" (whatever that is supposed to mean) don't have shit to do with nothing.

[Thomas Dai]

I recall quite a bit of comment about width in relation to an event at the Renaissance Course late last year. Can't locate the thread through, maybe the R word wasn't in the thread title. Anyway, if someone could highlight the thread for me it would be appreciated. Thanks.
atb

[Tommy Williamsen]

Maybe we've identified the most fundamental misconception of all. More fundamental than "green is good". More fundamental than "every hole playable with a putter" or "hard par, easy bogey".

The root of many, many issues affecting the way golf courses are designed, maintained, marketed and playing is the misconception that "golf is not about having fun, it's about getting better".

Let me just point out that for millions of golfers, including plenty of very avid ones, it is ENTIRELY about having fun and "getting better" (whatever that is supposed to mean) don't have shit to do with nothing.

Brent, I have lottsa fun on the golf course and enjoy the company of buddies.  But do you really mean to say that improving your game doesn't "have shit to do with nothing?"  Then why care about the playing field at all?

[Brent Hutto]

I care about having a playing field that offers an interesting variety of shots for me to play.

I am perfectly fine with knowing that a hole which generally takes me 4 or 5 shots to complete today will probably take me 4 or 5 shots to complete 10 years from now. Every time I play it I'm going to try and finish it in 2 or 3 shots instead. But I am certainly not going to go off and work or practice on a bunch of stuff in search of that elusive 2 or 3. I'll keep at it with the same double-digit handicap game I have right now, no worries.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom D wrote: Most people need sixty yards of width if they want to be able to find their ball consistently.  But, they don't need sixty yards of fairway ... they just need sixty yards of playability.

That's the key, of course. But not to be a pest, it also strikes me as a real challenge. How is this accomplished? If you plan for 40 yards of fairway with 10 yards of playable rough on each side, you run the risk of watching helplessly as the rough over time 'encroaches' on the fairway, knowing all the time that you had made it easy for the owner or superintendent to 'toughen up' the course, which process in turn leads to the aesthetically unappealing and strategically unfortunate result of having (what were once) fairway bunkers floating in a sea of rough.

Peter

[Tommy Williamsen]

I care about having a playing field that offers an interesting variety of shots for me to play.

I am perfectly fine with knowing that a hole which generally takes me 4 or 5 shots to complete today will probably take me 4 or 5 shots to complete 10 years from now. Every time I play it I'm going to try and finish it in 2 or 3 shots instead. But I am certainly not going to go off and work or practice on a bunch of stuff in search of that elusive 2 or 3. I'll keep at it with the same double-digit handicap game I have right now, no worries.

Got it. Understand. One of my best friends is kind like that. I've probably played a 1000 rounds of golf with. One of the most enjoyable guys I know.  He would like to play better but just doesn't want to put the practice in.  It makes me nuts sometimes, although in our last member/guest I was in the tank and he kept us from being destroyed.

[Brent Hutto]

I spent a couple years "getting better" quite a while back. Woke up and realized that I absolutely dreaded going to the gym, was bored out of my mind doing swing drills in the backyard every day and while I liked hanging out with my teaching-pro buddy regularly it was pretty obvious that every hour of lesson time needed to be back up with 10's of hours (or more) of practice. So I started spending all my golf-related available time playing rather than practicing.

To get this back onto a (marginally) GCA-related thought let me add this. I'd been a 90's shooter for years before my "getting better" kick. Sure enough after a couple of years I had shed about a third of the strokes off my handicap (from 20-ish to 14-ish, trending lower) and even gave myself a couple of chances to break 80.

Predictably when I went to all-play, no-practice the scores eventually started drifting up again. So I moved up a set of tees! I know flirt with breaking 80 once in a while and basically shoot the same kind of scores as when my handicap was at its very lowest. But I do it from 5,500 to 5,800 yards instead of 6,000-6,400. Naturally even a hack is in better shape trying to hit the green with a 7-iron than a hybrid.

So I've found two "perfect combinations" for enjoying the courses I frequent. I can practice, work out and take lessons and play from the regular men's' tees or I can just show up, take a few practice swings on the first tee and play from the so-called "senior" tees. Either way lets me interface with the architecture in a pretty engaging way. I know which one is more fun. For my game 400 yards of distance equates to about six hours/week of practice time. How's that?

[JimB]

 I thought it was a wonderfully fun course when I played it, but that there was too much room off the tee while the shots into the greens were more demanding.    

Tommy you mention Sebonack and difficulty on approaches.
Once I played Sebonack a few times and figured out where best to drive it for certain holes and certain pins (and actually executed) I found those same approaches infinitely easier with the repelling sideboards becoming accepting sideboards and backboards and the proper angles achieved by experience and execution allowing me to create much easier approaches than the guy hitting it down the exact middle.

Reading these statements together really helped the concepts gel for me. Width can feel like "too much room off the tee" if the tee shot is separated from the rest of the game and drivng success is judged by mearly hitting a fairway. However, if the judgement of the tee shot is delayed until the next shot is played as Jeff has described, and the overall is success is judged on the basis of play of the entire hole rather than compartmentalized into tee shots and approaches, then the completed experience may serve to prove the value of width. Of course for the width to prove valuable it will require that the rest of the hole, particularly the green and surrounds are well designed so that Jeff's experience of finding preferred angles is achievable.

[Garland Bayley]

... Building wider courses has just fed into the idea that everybody should buy the latest driver and try to hit it as far as they can, and that courses need to be long AND wide in order for golfers to have fun.  Perhaps what's wrong is that we haven't built courses that would reward golfers who would gear down their swings and keep the ball in play.
...

I have to disagree. Without a swing grooved from repetition, gearing down does not keep the ball in play. There are US Open champions (Jack Fleck and Billy Casper) that have/had trouble breaking 100 without continuing the repetition they needed to keep a tour game intact.

I also know long hitting women that are just as wild as hacks like me, so your stereotype fails there too.

[Garland Bayley]

... Why should they dictate conditions for everyone?  I'm sorry.  Take a lesson and hit the practice tee. 

You are beginning to irritate. Other people are not you. I play with some people that take lots of lessons and spend most of their time on the practice tee. They still don't hit it consistent or straight.

Your question about why should they dictate conditions for everyone is particularly arrogant. You are in a very restrictive minority of low single digit handicaps, and you are saying the vast majority of golfers who appreciate more width are dictating to you? Last I knew minorities or single people dictate. Majorities govern more democratically.

[John Connolly]

From Jim B.

Reading these statements together really helped the concepts gell for me. Width can feel like "too much room off the tee" if the tee shot is separated from the rest of the game and drivng success is judged by mearly hitting a fairway. However, if the judgement of the tee shot is delayed until the next shot is played as Jeff has described, and the overall is success is judged on the basis of play of the entire hole rather than compartmentalized into tee shots and approaches, then the completed experience may serve to prove the value of width. Of course for the width to prove valuable it will require that the rest of the hole, particularly the green and surrounds are well designed so that Jeff's experience of finding preffered angles is achievable.

+1. Really good analysis.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Thank you all for your comments.  They were extremely enlightening.  All were helpful and I have a better understanding of the varying and diverse opinions.  The topic initiated some good discussion and passion.  That's what I like about this group. In some ways there is "group think,"  yet it in so many ways each person is an individual with his own unique point of view.