GCA is not about good shots. It's about bad shots.

[Jeff_Brauer]

The title of this thread is a paraphrase of the quotation on Geoff S.'s blog today by Ben Hogan in which Hogan says:

"Golf is not a game of good shots. It's a game of bad shots. BEN HOGAN"

Isn't that equally true of golf architecture? Day in, day out, the best part of a good course is how it treats missed shots, not good shots. No?

Bob

Bob, have to say I disagree.    Mac said the purpose of hazards isn't to punish bad shots, its to suggest what the good ones might be (my books are packed up, so not an exact quote, sorry)

The first thing I do in design is try to set up different shots to play, not penalize a miss. Angle the fw left with staggered bunkers so the play (with wind blowing left, too) is to fit a draw around the hazards, etc.  After that is set up to have a nice variety of ideal shots in a round, then I start thinking about the detail of the hazards, how much they ought to punish different missed shots, etc.  (Is an overdrawn shot in that situation worthy of as much punishment as leaving it our right?)

I agree with the notion of recovery shots having variety, rather than the RTJ/Wilson ideal of sand bunkers and rough being the only tools in the bag.  I figure, over the course of a golf season, a variety of different hazards in a variety of locations (where people tend to miss) eventually will give most golfers the most fun and challenge of hitting different shots, even recovery shots.  So, even there, the focus is more on creating different challenges rather than extracting a penalty stroke for poor play.

I don't think falling back on the gca.com standard of "wide fw, protect at green" really fits this discussion.  After all, hitting a narrow fw with a driver (almost required due to hole length, perhaps) is a unique challenge, too.  (Not so much to repeat it 18 times in a row, a la old US Open set ups.

It is really hard for many folks to consider architecture as setting up shots, not punishing bad ones, although, you have to punish the bad ones to some degree on any course purporting to be good or great.  Leaving no hazards, perhaps on a muni reduces the strong suggestion of hitting shot X to a "it doesn't make any difference."

[BCrosby]

Jeff -

I don't recognize what I was trying to say in your post. My point is that the major (though not the only) challenge of gca is dealing with missed shots.M.My point is not HOW to do that, but rather to make the claim that missed shots present a designer's main design challenge, something that tends to be done well on well designed courses. I don't hear that talked about very much.

Put differently, the main architectural challenge is not designing courses for Perfect Ben. Players with high order golfing skills don't worry over much about the design features of a golf course. They don't need to.

Bob does worry about the course design. He has no choice. It would follow then that Bogey Bob's game ought to be the real audience for a golf architect.

Ideally that should be reflected in how golf architects ply their trade. It often isn't. For example, the urge to build longer and longer courses has one purpose - to challenge the Perfect Bens. Which means that the energy, time and resources that might have been used to make a better course for Bogey Bob - the set of golfers for whom the design of the course is most relevant - are spent instead design changes directed at the set of golfers for whom the design of the course is least relevant.

Bob

[jeffwarne]

The thread title would imply that a course with consistent flanking hazards was good.
I'm sure given the author of the thread, that's not exactly what he means.



I'd say on a truly interesting course it's not about the bad shots or the good shots, but rather the "preferred" shots well executed leading to more opportunities.
Perfect Ben WILL consider and often  attempt the preferred shots on a great course and flirt with the hazards when appropriate.

[Ken Moum]

Interestingly enough, Lehman's designs (usually but not always with John Fought) are not bad.  He also did a creative renovation of Edina Country Club.

Ah hell, anyone with a chainsaw could have improved Edina CC.

K

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jeff -

I don't recognize what I was trying to say in your post. My point is that the major (though not the only) challenge of gca is dealing with missed shots.M.My point is not HOW to do that, but rather to make the claim that missed shots present a designer's main design challenge, something that tends to be done well on well designed courses. I don't hear that talked about very much.

Put differently, the main architectural challenge is not designing courses for Perfect Ben. Players with high order golfing skills don't worry over much about the design features of a golf course. They don't need to.

Bob does worry about the course design. He has no choice. It would follow then that Bogey Bob's game ought to be the real audience for a golf architect.

Ideally that should be reflected in how golf architects ply their trade. It often isn't. For example, the urge to build longer and longer courses has one purpose - to challenge the Perfect Bens. Which means that the energy, time and resources that might have been used to make a better course for Bogey Bob - the set of golfers for whom the design of the course is most relevant - are spent instead design changes directed at the set of golfers for whom the design of the course is least relevant.

Bob

And I don't see anything about what I said in your post above, so it appears we are talking past each other!

But, I stand by my post, and it has nothing to do with really top players.  But maybe top club players are the target of design.  The difference is they can execute maybe 70% of the time, vs. a tour pro or national am who can execute 90+% of the time.

Still, for that level, my focus is to design and locate hazards to encourage draws, fades, high, low, runners, etc.  And I look to reward (in order) accuracy, finesse, shot pattern, and distance (since that is its own reward)

Of course, if they miss, there should be some level of hazard, with great variety there for added challenge.  And maybe, the guy hitting the "suggested" shot should have less penalty than the one trying to play his standard shot. (such as Geo Thomas writing that the fairway ought to extend beyond greens, because a long aggressive miss is actually a better shot than one that comes up short, and yet, that is the one that usually finds a nice fairway lie for being timid and or bad approach.)

Or, put another way, setting up a 6 iron fade to a back right pin is the same challenge whether the guarding hazard is a pond, deep bunker or shallow bunker.  It's just that the penalty is different.  Does the severity of penalty affect the aggressiveness of the player?  Sure, which is why I usually don't try to create hard hazards, because hitting safe shots isn't as much fun as hitting aggressive ones.  And that happens to work out for the average player as well.

Go back and read Mac.  Thinking in terms of creating shots to hit is hard to imagine for most.  Thinking in terms of a hazard to punish a miss is easy.  As alluded somewhere, if it was all about punishing misses, every green would have flanking bunkers, every FW too.  So, yes, there are a large number of courses where punishing the miss is the focus of architecture.  I don't think those courses are interesting for the player of any ability at all.

[Ed Brzezowski]

After watching the Ladies NCAA last night I may have to agree. The matches were a lesson on how to recover and remain competitive. Plus it was better than the hockey game.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Perhaps not 100% relevant to this discussion, but I pulled this from one of my GCI columns last year, sort of showing some more of my current thinking. 

Peter Lynch is well known as the wildly successful manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund from 1977-90. In that time, Magellan’s holdings typically doubled average market indexes. In his writings and books, he noted that good investments were usually found right in front of his own eyes, rather than in investment research, charts and formulas. Specifically, he found many great investments when he was out with his family or at the mall. For instance, if his kids ate at a certain fast food place, or purchased clothes at a particular store, he bought that stock.

I was reminded of the Lynch story recently, while playing golf with some fellow architects. One of the architects managed to reach a par 5 green in two shots, and made birdie. High fives all around. In the 19th Hole, he revealed that when he got to the green, he was thrilled that the putt was reasonably flat, giving him a small chance for eagle, and a near certain birdie.

We all realized that if we saw that reachable par-5 hole as designers working with a greens committee, we would instinctively recommend something to “toughen it up” and “defend par.” After a moment of silence, what occurred next could only be described as a “lightbulb moment.”

Why do architects focus on preventing birdies, when they are exactly what golfers want? Overhearing other bar conversations, golfers around us were clearly reliving their successes, and certainly not their bogeys and bigger disasters, unless they were truly monumental.

As for what constitutes a "good shot" or a bad one:

Or the routine sights of:
•Golfers take 3–5 attempts to get out of bunkers.
•Approach shots: ◦Falling short into frontal bunkers, or
◦Missing the green short and right,
◦Hitting, but not holding the green,
 

•Approximately one of any average foursome on each hole:

◦Topping tee shots less than 100 yards
◦Losing tee balls in the woods or native areas, despite 70-plus yards of open turf.
◦Missing greens and finding hazards on approach shots.
 
On many of those shots, the golfer lamented, “But, I hit a great shot!” For most golfers, a “great shot” is one that gets airborne and flies nearly full distance, generally in the right direction.

[Garland Bayley]

Kalen,


So an old adage started with Tom Doak. I presume that makes him old. I'm not sure he would appreciate that. I also am not sure old adages start with people still living.


Everyone needs the ball rolled back. If you can hit it so far that it produces problems finding it, it would help if the ball were rolled back.


Furthermore, rolling the ball back decreases the differential between distances that players hit it making it easier to produced quality courses for a larger segment of the golfing population.

[Jason Topp]

Interestingly enough, Lehman's designs (usually but not always with John Fought) are not bad.  He also did a creative renovation of Edina Country Club.

Ah hell, anyone with a chainsaw could have improved Edina CC.

K

You would think so but there were multiple attempts over 15 years before Lehman.

[Thomas Dai]

Where does temptation come in GCA?
Atb

[Kalen Braley]

Jeff, you said:

I was reminded of the Lynch story recently, while playing golf with some fellow architects. One of the architects managed to reach a par 5 green in two shots, and made birdie. High fives all around. In the 19th Hole, he revealed that when he got to the green, he was thrilled that the putt was reasonably flat, giving him a small chance for eagle, and a near certain birdie.

We all realized that if we saw that reachable par-5 hole as designers working with a greens committee, we would instinctively recommend something to “toughen it up” and “defend par.” After a moment of silence, what occurred next could only be described as a “lightbulb moment.”

Why do architects focus on preventing birdies, when they are exactly what golfers want? Overhearing other bar conversations, golfers around us were clearly reliving their successes, and certainly not their bogeys and bigger disasters, unless they were truly monumental.

Sounds good on paper, but where does one draw the line?  If its birdies for everyone all the time, then why not make all par 3s be no longer than 150 yards.  Par 4s would top out at 300 yards, and par 5s would be no longer than 450....then it'd be a birdie chance on nearly every hole... even for marginal players. 

Trophies for everyone!!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Obviously different for every course, but the way I see management companies removing bunkers, I would say the line/bar is pretty low.  As on management honcho said, "no one has ever complained about us making a course easier."  While I have heard a few good players complain about wider fairways over the years, surprisingly, not many.

I know this group prefers to talk about the 1-20% of the courses where hazards are stout and challenges great, so I mostly offer this up as reality check/shock value/counterpoint.

But, I would still say that for most courses, accommodating the average player is a bigger thing than punishing bad shots, which is well down the list....even for good players.  Do I think any player needs to play out of a 20 foot deep bunker?  Well, maybe the chance of that once per round, but only so they have a story to tell in the bar, hopefully, one of a great recovery shot.  But then, getting a foot from the hole from a 3 foot deep bunker is also a story that will get retold more than playing partners and nearby bar patrons really want to hear......

[Carl Rogers]

Jason -

Similar to your point, John Low said the key was how an architect dealt with shots that "aren't quite good enough". Complete dubs, much as perfect shots, are not the focus of a well-designed course.

Let's try a thought experiment. There are three golfers, Perfect Ben, Bogey Bob and Dubber Don.

Perfect Ben, as his name suggests, hits his shots where he intends to hit them. Always.

Bogey Bob's shots are sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes mediocre.

Dubber Don has no idea where any shot will go. He has trouble simply making contact.

Which of those three golfers will care most about the architecture of a golf course? (If your answer is Perfect Ben or Dubber Dan, I can put you in touch with Dr. Katz.   )

Bob

I would like to add another golfer to this profile, Thoughtful Albert (after Einstein for lack of a better name).  This golfer(s) may be of varying abilities, but they are keenly aware of their own strengths and limitations ... and play accordingly.

[Sean_A]

Obviously different for every course, but the way I see management companies removing bunkers, I would say the line/bar is pretty low.  As on management honcho said, "no one has ever complained about us making a course easier."  While I have heard a few good players complain about wider fairways over the years, surprisingly, not many.

I know this group prefers to talk about the 1-20% of the courses where hazards are stout and challenges great, so I mostly offer this up as reality check/shock value/counterpoint.

But, I would still say that for most courses, accommodating the average player is a bigger thing than punishing bad shots, which is well down the list....even for good players.  Do I think any player needs to play out of a 20 foot deep bunker?  Well, maybe the chance of that once per round, but only so they have a story to tell in the bar, hopefully, one of a great recovery shot.  But then, getting a foot from the hole from a 3 foot deep bunker is also a story that will get retold more than playing partners and nearby bar patrons really want to hear......

Jeff


I really don't think the J Lows were talking about punishing bad shots.  They were speaking to the concept of the bad shot remaining in the game.  Punishment is more a term for penal architecture which was verboten.  The J Lows spoke more in terms of taxing the player, but often allowing for recovery. 


While I am all in favour of recovery shots, width and archtectural tom-foolery/deception, that doesn't mean the hazards can't be severe.  Most of the best courses in the world have some hazards which if taken on could result in a kiss on the card or a great outcome.  The very best of these archies seem to get the balance of hazards and ways around the hazards right much of the time. It is awfully difficult for a course filled with three foot bunkers to get the juices flowing.  However, it does sound like you are advocating different types of courses for different level players...imagined or real  While I do think architecture needs to be more mindful of the target market...most especially where women, beginners and seniors are concerned (especilly if all the talk of growing the game is to have any teeth), I find it hard to believe that these sub groups want all thrills eliminated from the game. 

Ciao

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sean,

I agree with all of what you said.  And, I have built some very deep bunkers, which I imagine all golfers find thrilling from time to time.  It's really a matter of degrees.  For instance, I built a facsimile of the Royal St. George deep carry bunker.  PUt it on a par 5 instead of par 4, and made that the aggressive line.  Nice shot but considering all things, is the deep bunker carry so great it deserves more than one example on most courses?

Its all degrees.  Some management companies would say no hazards, others a few, others would balk at all day sand bunkers (in quantity or depth of even one!)

[Norbert P]

"Golf is not a game of good shots. It's a game of bad shots." BEN HOGAN"  B Crosby via G Shack
Jeez!  Ben Hogan! said this.  Does this preload the question with what's relative?
I'd love to play a round of golf with nothing but his bad shots. It'd be my personal best, indubitably.

And I'd demand the biggest participation trophy.