What Makes A Great Green? by Tom Doak

[Michael Whitaker]

A friend sent me this wonderful article by Tom Doak from The Met Golfer a while back. I can't find any mention of it on this site so I thought I would post it for your enjoyment.

Tom  had me completely hooked from the opening paragraph:

Ever since I started my career as a golf course architect, my style has been most associated with difficult and even severe greens. I hear the complaints often: some low-handicap golfers hate Sebonack, or Streamsong (Blue), because those greens give them fits. But our goal was as follows:

A most enjoyable and informative article. Well done, Tom!

What Makes A Great Green?

[Michael Blake]

There was a thread w link started by Matt Frey back in February.

I'm too lazy to search for it right now.

[Phil Lipper]

Actually the whole issue was devoted to golf architecture, I though it was a great issue

[Howard Riefs]

Actually the whole issue was devoted to golf architecture, I though it was a great issue

Starting on pg. 41:

http://www.metgolferdigital.com/i/638421-feb-mar-2016

[JC Jones]

A friend sent me this wonderful article by Tom Doak from The Met Golfer a while back. I can't find any mention of it on this site so I thought I would post it for your enjoyment.

Tom  had me completely hooked from the opening paragraph:

Ever since I started my career as a golf course architect, my style has been most associated with difficult and even severe greens. I hear the complaints often: some low-handicap golfers hate Sebonack, or Streamsong (Blue), because those greens give them fits. But our goal was as follows:

A most enjoyable and informative article. Well done, Tom!

What Makes A Great Green?

my wife doesnt play golf but loves to play putt-putt. 

wall-to-wall fairways with over-the-top greens give the high handicapper the same feeling.

[Joe Hancock]

A friend sent me this wonderful article by Tom Doak from The Met Golfer a while back. I can't find any mention of it on this site so I thought I would post it for your enjoyment.

Tom  had me completely hooked from the opening paragraph:

Ever since I started my career as a golf course architect, my style has been most associated with difficult and even severe greens. I hear the complaints often: some low-handicap golfers hate Sebonack, or Streamsong (Blue), because those greens give them fits. But our goal was as follows:

A most enjoyable and informative article. Well done, Tom!

What Makes A Great Green?

my wife doesnt play golf but loves to play putt-putt. 

wall-to-wall fairways with over-the-top greens give the high handicapper the same feeling.

How fortunate; TOC should suit both of you!

Sorry, smiley's not working today.

[Jim Franklin]

The first defense of a golf course is the greens. With technology allowing the young bucks to bomb it so far, greens need to be challenging. I couldn't agree more with what Tom said.

[Tom_Doak]

The first defense of a golf course is the greens. With technology allowing the young bucks to bomb it so far, greens need to be challenging. I couldn't agree more with what Tom said.

Jim:


For me it is not about the young bucks anymore.  I don't care if they can shoot a low number sometimes.  I'm just trying to make my courses interesting for everyone, and to convince older courses they don't need to blow up the coolest greens that were ever built.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,

If form follows function, you have to ignore the young bucks and design for who is going to play.  There can be some legitimate disagreement about what the average golfer wants to play.

There is Tom's view that all greens should be "interesting".  In other words, greens don't always need to be about defense.  In fact, even on good courses, what Tom points out in this article is they ought to be designed to reward something more than something else, not defend anything.  That is a subtle difference architects from Mac on have understood, but many here don't.

Others believe golf is tough enough for the average golfer, he/she won't really recognize the subtleties you may put in, but score will suffer, etc., to the idea that the green ought to do everything it can to help the golfer hold the green and not three putt to speed up play.
 
It is really that course dependent, especially in a renovation when you might not have designed a green the way it was originally designed, but its not so tough that you would want to tear it up.

[Peter Pallotta]

On the greens/courses I tend to play, I very rarely get to putt up and over a hill/swale.  I think it would be fun to watch a putt get to the top and then disappear for a few seconds down the other side and then wait to see whether, when it remerges, it is indeed tracking towards to cup. Also, it is a lot of fun to have such a big left-to-right break that you can choose to play an even bigger break and hit the putt with less pace so that it's just trickling along as it gets to the hole (and finishes either in the cup or on the high/pro side). With all the gripping and ripping (on drives) and muscling shots out of the rough (on approaches) while using the muscles of a construction worker, it sure is nice to get to a green and be required to have the soft hands and touch of an artist or a surgeon.  It's one of the many things that make golf so different from most other sports, and so great.   

[Sean_A]

For me, its impossible to nail down what a great green is. As an admirer of variety, all styles and forms can be great in context.  I wouldn't necessarily think 18 roly poly greens are great just as I wouldn't necessarily think 18 uncontoured greens aren't great.  If you get the mix right over 18 holes you have a shot at a great set of greens and that is the most important aspect me...the overall design of the course.  I refuse to get lulled into any theory which states the most important thing about golf is greens, bunkers, driving etc etc.  They are all important aspects of design.

I guess growing up on what I still consider to be one of the best sets of greens I know has made me a bit jaded about so called great greens and the fact that great greens alone cannot carry a course to greatness...not imo anyway. 

I suspect that for many what makes a green great is how it looks and the more roly poly the more visually aware golfers are of the green.   I wonder if an archie can randomly build 18 greens at the end of 18 fairways and not come out with a better product. Part of greatness is not meeting expectations, at least too often.  Its always a wonder to be surprised by a green time and again.

Ciao

[Peter Pallotta]

Sean - that's a very good post and well written. It reminded me of the description of a great jazz solo as ' the sound of surprise'. But that surprise , the 'unexpected', needs to be balanced/framed by the 'expected' in order to be satisying.
Peter

[Doug Siebert]

For me, what makes a green great is having more than one line that gets you to the hole. I'm not talking about hitting harder and using less break, I'm talking you can choose to play a significantly different line and use the features of the green to direct you to the hole. Often such lines are more for fun than of real use, but on really great greens the struggle is real trying to figure out which of two lines that are 30* apart is the best. Those are the greens you want to try a putt four or five times to figure out what the best way to play it would have been, and then your playing partners try it too.

I want to be befuddled and not know the best way to play a putt. Of course that extends to shots around the green, should I go at the hole, should I play it long and let it come back off a slope, should I play it off a swale and come at the hole sideways? That in turn gives you more options on your approach: where do you want to be on the green, where do you want to miss? Sometimes a short side miss that would normally be dead is actually a good place to miss, if the green gives you alternatives for how to get it close.

[James Brown]

For me, the more the greens make you think about the shots you hit into them and the best ways to get the ball close or avoid trouble the better.  One of my favorite examples of an ideal green is Streamson Red #4.  Similarly, #6 at Machrihanish and #3 at Augusta.  Pretty much every green at TOC. 



On the converse, the thing I dislike most in green design is when penal features in greens are overly concealed, like when a green pirched on a hill has a harsh fall off at the back you can't see from the fairway. 

[Tom_Doak]

On the converse, the thing I dislike most in green design is when penal features in greens are overly concealed, like when a green pirched on a hill has a harsh fall off at the back you can't see from the fairway.

What do you think is going to happen once you go over the top of the hill?

[Tom_Doak]

On the greens/courses I tend to play, I very rarely get to putt up and over a hill/swale.  I think it would be fun to watch a putt get to the top and then disappear for a few seconds down the other side and then wait to see whether, when it remerges, it is indeed tracking towards to cup. Also, it is a lot of fun to have such a big left-to-right break that you can choose to play an even bigger break and hit the putt with less pace so that it's just trickling along as it gets to the hole (and finishes either in the cup or on the high/pro side). With all the gripping and ripping (on drives) and muscling shots out of the rough (on approaches) while using the muscles of a construction worker, it sure is nice to get to a green and be required to have the soft hands and touch of an artist or a surgeon.  It's one of the many things that make golf so different from most other sports, and so great.

You should really play some of my courses 

[Mike_Young]

I read the article.  And I understand the article.  Good article.  What bothers me is how many people on this site and off this site declare golf courses great because of the green contours when they are just a conglomeration of undulations with no correlation to approaches etc.  Some can undulate but they can't transition.  JMO

[Tom_Doak]

I read the article.  And I understand the article.  Good article.  What bothers me is how many people on this site and off this site declare golf courses great because of the green contours when they are just a conglomeration of undulations with no correlation to approaches etc.  Some can undulate but they can't transition.  JMO

You mean, not all undulating greens are great? 

[Thomas Dai]

What about holes where the green or general greensite is relatively architecturally pretty bland but what comes before it all the way from the tee to near the approach has a great deal of excitement/thrill/interest/uniqueness/whatever about it? Possible examples could include the 10th at St Enodoc or the 4th at Trevose.
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

What about holes where the green or general greensite is relatively architecturally pretty bland but what comes before it all the way from the tee to near the approach has a great deal of excitement/thrill/interest/uniqueness/whatever about it? Possible examples could include the 10th at St Enodoc or the 4th at Trevose.

Nothing wrong with those holes, but there are fewer of them than the ones we've been discussing.  It's harder to find 400+ yards of ideally contoured real estate than it is to build 400 square meters of a cool green.

[Kalen Braley]

While I wouldn't a steady dose of them, meaning all18 holes...

But every once in awhile, its a blast playing a green like Pasa 16, or perhaps twice per round a green like Stone Eagle 13.  I think what makes them stand out is just being on the green isn't good enough,  you also need to be in the right spot or two putting will be difficult to nigh impossible.

[Mike_Young]

I read the article.  And I understand the article.  Good article.  What bothers me is how many people on this site and off this site declare golf courses great because of the green contours when they are just a conglomeration of undulations with no correlation to approaches etc.  Some can undulate but they can't transition.  JMO

You mean, not all undulating greens are great?

  yep...

[Jeff_Brauer]

Brings to mind a possible example - Press Maxwell.  While I am not familiar with exactly how Perry worked, I have seen some documentation from old guys who were around Press that he sort of copied his Dad, and would tell his shapers to "give me the 4 mound green here, the 3 mounder there, the 5 mound and then the 2 mounder, then repeat."  Obviously second hand.

Usually considered great greens, mostly for their contour, but hard to figure he tied in the subtleties of relaying the contour to the shot as well as he might have with more thought, no?

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff - that's interesting. And, not to defend what appears to be a rather lackadaisical approach on Perry's part, it occurred to me that with the almost limitless number of places (both on the fairway and off) from which an almost limitless number of (mostly average) golfers are hitting their 2nd/3rd/4th shots, the conventional wisdom that green contours need to be aligned/integrated with the angles of approach is probably just that - a handy, easy and simplistic way for critics to offer their critiques.

Peter     

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff - that's interesting. And, not to defend what appears to be a rather lackadaisical approach on Perry's part, it occurred to me that with the almost limitless number of places (both on the fairway and off) from which an almost limitless number of (mostly average) golfers are hitting their 2nd/3rd/4th shots, the conventional wisdom that green contours need to be aligned/integrated with the angles of approach is probably just that - a handy, easy and simplistic way for critics to offer their critiques.   

Peter:


Before you are crucified by the low handicappers for suggesting that greens not be designed with the scratch player's approach shot in mind, I will offer half support for your critique.


I do think that all greens should be designed with recovery play in mind.  My associates will tell you that's where I spend the better part of my time on the construction site ... imagining the shots around the greens, and fine-tuning the greens accordingly as they are being shaped.


However, I still think about the approach shot first.  I don't know of an architect who doesn't.  It's just that some think about it being an 8-iron from 150 yards, and some know it could be a 4-wood, or a wedge for someone who hasn't gotten there in regulation.