Just finished reading a 1940 New York newspaper article that distinguished the Penal School of Design from the Strategic School of Design.
Donald Ross represented the latter.
So for the fun of it…….Which school, if any, does Hole 4 at MP best represent in its 2016 state?
The Penal School penalizes a misplaced shot right away. “Retribution is immediate”. “Hit it here or else” is the mentality. To apply this methodology to Hole 4, a good shot must hold the left side of the fairway to have an unimpeded view and preferred angle into the green. A misplaced shot to the right is usually somewhere around or behind the tree in question.
To what degree does the tree prevent a reasonable opportunity at redemption or recovery? Please consider.
The Strategic School did not believe a misplaced shot should be so crippling. In contrast, “additional strokes” were merely a “deferred possibility” of a misplaced shot (in this case) to the right behind the tree, but not probable. Proponents of this School often believed that the difficulty of a shot should be in proportion to the error of the preceding one.
So ….. much of this exercise boils down to your interpretation of the tree’s impact on a misplaced shot to the entire right half of the fairway?
If this pine were a different species with a different shape and structure, its fate would perhaps be clearer to all of us.