Joe Sponcia’s freshly posted In My Opinion piece on fairway width is especially timely with Chambers Bay and The Old Course set to take center stage over the next two months. We should be thankful that width IS a topic, as it most assuredly wasn't during the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s. During that time the big events featured narrow and narrower. Not surprisingly, telecasts from Augusta shined because it was the rare venue to feature width (please note: the times they have changed
). The narrow brigade met its Waterloo at Carnoustie and the ‘99 Open. Didn't the 6th fairway pinch down to 17 yards at one point?! What a desecration of a great hole.
Thankfully, the two most prominent courses developed in the latter half of the 1990s (Sand Hills and Pacific Dunes) exhibited wide playing corridors and shattered the perception that narrow was good ..... and we haven't looked back. The best courses since - Renaissance and C&C's efforts, Rustic Canyon, Cabot, Kingsley, Castle Stuart, Kingsbarns, etc. - feature copious amounts of short grass, both in terms of fairway width and tight grass around the greens. As Joe notes, options ensue and courses become multi-dimensional to the point where golf becomes ... wait .... FUN!
Naturally, as soon as there is consensus on a topic, this Discussion Group goes into hyper-drive
and some people (not just Green Keepers
) begin to wonder if there is such a thing as too
much width. Having recently had the displeasure of playing a few rounds with people who carry it 300 yards off the tee, I have become wary of designs that are nothing more than a bomber's paradise. The answer, as always, is found at the green (how it’s angled and/or its contours link back to hazards in the fairway).
Great greens deserve fairway width and less than great greens don't need as much. Great green builders strive for wide fairways; that was true in the 1920s and it is true this decade as well. Joe drives that point home in a big way: fairway width can't be discussed in a vacuum because it is dependent on the merits of the green ahead. I imagine that Chambers and The Old Course will demonstrate such in high def!
Hope you enjoy this piece, Joe's second In My Opinion contribution this year. The next topic in his crossbow? Green committees.
Best,