Firmest fairways

[Jay Mickle]

Over the past few years I have been fortunate to play a fair number of links courses in Ireland and Scotland. This month I included a number of courses south and west of London. While awed by the quality of courses in such a small area, the greatest surprise was the firmness of the fairways at Walton Heath. While surely not possessed of perfect memory I felt that these may have been the firmest fairways I have ever played. I am interested in the experiences of others on this board.

[Matt Frey, PGA]

I have not played outside of the United States, but stateside, the firmest fairways I have played personally have been at either Huntingdon Valley or Fishers Island.

[Jason Thurman]

The firmest I've played were either:


Weatherwax in Middletown, OH - It'll be closed for good in three weeks, and I learned from another GCAer last week that they haven't aerated anything in five years. I've played it twice. The first time I played it, my pitching wedge shaft snapped in half on a simple strike from a fairway. The second time I played it, I hit my 195 club on a 230 yard par 3 that bounced short and ran through to 10 yards past the green.


Bogie (sic) Busters at Coal Ridge in Georgetown, KY - A deeply bizarre golf course just down the road from my aunt's house, I took a couple college buddies there once. On the 13th hole, my buddy Kris decided to try putting from 150 yards out. He rolled it to 6 feet. Imagination like that is what made him a PGA professional, and the desire to never again have to play a course like Bogie Busters at Coal Ridge is what gave him the motivation.

[Chris_Hufnagel]

I've been lucky to play some firm fairways here in the U.S. Scotland and Ireland, but i can say unequivocally that the firmest fairways I've ever played were at The Island outside of Dublin last August...

[Tim Passalacqua]

Bandon in summer.  Specifically, the Trails.  I have had chip shots where I had no idea where they would stop. 

[Garland Bayley]

Have to wonder whether something that happens a few days a year is worth discussing. In wet western Oregon the obvious answer is Bandon for year around conditions.

[Dave McCollum]

Desert Forest the opening winter after the restoration.  Tees and greens overseeded.  Fairways not overseeded to reduce competition with the new Bermuda.  Everything tee to green allowed to go dormant.  Fastest non-frozen course I have played.  Don't know how they have managed it since.   

[George Freeman]

Not sure if they were the firmest I have ever seen, but when I was at Rock Creek the fairways were very firm.  It wasn't uncommon to watch my drives bounce 5-8 feet in the air on the first hop.  It was awesome and it really made the architecture shine.

[Thomas Dai]

Played a few UK inland clay based courses which in the summer have got so firm and dry that cracks opened wide enough for balls to disappear. Don't recall playing a links or a heathland course that had 'cracked open' though.


Links courses can sometimes become surprisingly firm in the winter too, if we get a dry period weather system lingering around. Can be pretty damn cold though.......brrrrrrr!

Atb

[Mike Schott]

Currently the fairways at The Loop are extremely firm. You still get a good lie but my drives a few weeks ago were running about 40 yards.

[Ed Brzezowski]

I will second Matts vote for Huntington Valley as the firmest around Philly.

Nothing prepared me for the firmness of Royal Dornoch. If there is a firmness scale these were on par with concrete. One of our guys chunked a hybrid from 200 out, it ran 150 yards onto and over the green. At our course it was a 70 yard shot at its max.

[Mike_Clayton]

Another vote for Walton Heath. At the 1989 European Open they were rock hard with 2 irons running out to 280-300 yards. No way to hit the driver with all that heather.

[David Davis]

Jay, in my experience Walton Heath is the most consistent of all the London courses in terms of firmness. To be fair I'm not playing there 100x a year though. Every time I've been it's been perfect. This comes down to fantastic maintenance practices. Their super is one of the best out there as proven by the conditioning of the course all the time.


Another interesting point is that they don't even benefit from sand based turf as many think. Pure and simple it's wonderful maintenance IMO.


On another note I've played many links courses that were equally as firm/hard. The firmest would probably have to be back when I played the Melbourne sandbelt courses as they were in the middle of a big drought, even though I imagine them to always be firm. They even asked you to roll push carts across and take your bags onto the greens with you. Everything was just rock hard and fast. Those are the firmest I've ever seen.

[Mark Pearce]

Ganton in 2003.  There had been a heatwave in the UK (believe it!) and no rain for weeks.  The fairways were baked rock hard and the grass brown and thin.  Shots on the fairway basically kept running until they reached rough.  Similarly at Hoylake in 2006 just after the open.  At the uphill par 5 8th I drove it into the rough (there was some, in places) and laid up with a 5 iron (it wasn't thick rough).  We searched for my ball at and around the area I was trying to lay up to and were unable to find it (190 yards from where I hit it, intending to be 100-120 yards from the green).  We gave it up as lost and walked on.  My ball was sitting in rough behind the green, some 130-140 yards beyond where we had expected it to be.

[Matt Dawson]

Agree Walton Heath gets pretty quick when dried out. And yes, 2003 was acutely dry over most of UK. I was at RSG when Ben Curtis won the Open, which was certainly bouncy

Permit me to recount my 2 favourite anecdotes about fast surfaces (greens)...

1)  Peter McEvoy (mentioned in another thread) famously was the first British amateur to make the cut at the Masters. He also won the Brabazon Amateur trophy at Hunstanton in 1980, and reportedly said that the greens were quicker there than at Augusta. I met him a few years ago at a dinner where he was the speaker, and chatting afterwards I asked him whether his comment was true or exaggeration. He nodded emphatically and said “Funny thing was, shortly after I got there (Hunstanton), I wandered on to the practice putting green and threw down a couple of balls to practice my putting, as you do. Somebody shouted over to say hello to me, I looked up to say hello back and when I looked down to start putting, my golf balls had rolled off the green about 30ft away”

2) Tiger Woods during an Open at TOC that he won (possibly 2000) – whilst crouching down to read the line on a putt, he looked across the green and realised he could see daylight under the metal spikes of his playing partner’s shoes as he stood on the edge of the green waiting to putt. I remember Peter Alliss saying as Woods prepared to tee off at the 1st in 2000 with a long iron: "It's like hitting off a plate of glass"

That’ll be quite quick then....

[Tom Bacsanyi]

What about which course has the firmest fairways on non-sandy soils?  Most mentioned are on some type of sand or sandy mix, save for Rock Creek and Huntingdon Valley perhaps.

[BHoover]

For non-sandy soil, the fairways at Scioto and Canterbury generally seem to play firm.

[Sean_A]

For day to day play, the firmest fairways I enountered are Pennard, St Enodoc, Rye & Deal.


Ciao

[Jay Mickle]

Had to pass on Rye and Deal to return home before hurricane Matthew. I hope to play them on my next trip.

[James Brown]

Nothing will touch West Texas.  I once hit a drive 400 yards at the Lovington Country Club just across the border in NM. 

[Garland Bayley]

Nothing will touch West Texas.  I once hit a drive 400 yards at the Lovington Country Club just across the border in NM.

When I was young the PGA record was over 500 yards by George Bayer in Oz.

[Craig Disher]

For day to day play, the firmest fairways I enountered are Pennard, St Enodoc, Rye & Deal.


Ciao

I think we can put to rest the angst created over Rye's decision to install fairway watering.

What I find so satisfying on these firm courses in the UK is that the firmness extends from tee to green and it's consistent. A bounce in the fairway will be usually the same as the bounce on or around the green. That characteristic is hard to find in the US.

[Thomas Dai]

For day to day play, the firmest fairways I enountered are Pennard, St Enodoc, Rye & Deal.
Ciao

I think we can put to rest the angst created over Rye's decision to install fairway watering.
What I find so satisfying on these firm courses in the UK is that the firmness extends from tee to green and it's consistent. A bounce in the fairway will be usually the same as the bounce on or around the green. That characteristic is hard to find in the US.

Played more than a few times on UK courses where the fairways were coloured brown/beige and played firmer and rolled quicker than the green coloured putting surfaces.


Atb

[Pete Lavallee]

On a two week trip in the summer of 2006 to the south of England the unquestionable leader was The Addignton; their fairways had transitioned through beige to white! Has the new owner installed fairway irrigation there?