Is it good if a course is hard to master?

[Jerry Kluger]

In watching the US Open it seemed to me that the players had pretty well figured the course out and knew where to hit the ball, the best way to play recovery shots and the green contours.  I know that top players didn't make the cut, etc. but I don't believe it was because of their lack of understanding of how to play the course.  But as I recall  at the US Amateur at Chambers Bay as well as at the US Open, the players did a better job managing the course and playing recovery shots, etc. as the week wore on. 


Recently I spent a couple of weeks in Scotland and many of the courses I played, and especially The Old Course and North Berwick, the more you played it the better you understood it but you were far from mastering it.  Carnoustie was clearly a course that you had to know where to hit the ball as recovery shots could be extremely difficult and our playing partners had played the course their entire lives and it really made a difference. (Yes, I played awful but I still tried to understand how the course should be played.)


I don't know if I am explaining my question correctly but generally if you need to play a course over and over and over to really understand it, is that a sign that it is well designed?

[Mark_Fine]

"Master" is the wrong word but I think I know what you are saying.  The greatest golf courses do need to be studied over and over to be truly appreciated.  Sometimes something that looks simple can be quite complicated and it is those little nuances that make all the difference.  Hard to identify/experience them all on one trip around let alone a dozen.  It is part of what separates good from great.  At the same time this doesn't guarantee the course will be great.  Hard and complicated doesn't imply excellent by any means.   

[Michael Whitaker]

Hard and complicated doesn't imply excellent by any means.

Well said, Mark! Some of the worst courses I've played were hard and complicated.

[Tom_Doak]

Jerry:


I think Tour players and their caddies don't get nearly enough credit for figuring out the best way for themselves to play a golf course, in just a couple of days of practice.  The advantage of being so good is that you know your abilities AND your weaknesses, and they get paid a lot to be honest about both in sorting out which challenges to take on.  On top of that, they tend to be very conservative when it comes to decision-making in stroke play ... they are never going to take on a really dangerous carry.


Some courses are far more difficult to figure out than others, but I would bet you that they'd figure out North Berwick pretty quickly, too.  Only St. Andrews is really complicated enough to keep them studying.


[Anecdote:  when I played in the Dunhill Links ten years ago, my partner blocked his tee shot terribly right on #7, into a strong quartering wind from the left.  He was about to re-tee when his caddie realized [as I wondered quietly] that the ball had probably carried over the gorse, and sure enough, it was over there between #11 tee and #10 green.  It's a shot no one has ever played deliberately, as far as I know, but I'm sure there are hole locations on #7 where that would be a good play.]


When you've got a course with backstops behind some of the greens, like Chambers Bay, it sometimes takes them a while to look for those and get comfortable with playing the safe shot past the hole and letting it come back, but some get it right away.


I hope Zac Blair chimes in on this one.

[Carl Rogers]

Hard and complicated doesn't imply excellent by any means.

Well said, Mark! Some of the worst courses I've played were hard and complicated.

Would Tobacco Road would an example of a hard and complicated course?
Noticing the Dixie Cup thread, would not those courses be a bit confusing the first time around?  I would anticipate that they are.

[Jerry Kluger]

I am not saying hard to play or difficult to play but difficult to understand- difficult to realize where you need to hit the ball, especially with recovery shots.

[Tom_Doak]

Would Tobacco Road would an example of a hard and complicated course?

Tobacco Road is very complicated -- it's almost impossible to figure out what to do with some of the tee shots without a yardage book in hand.  But I don't think it's nearly as hard for a good player as some make it out to be, because it is reasonably short.

[Sean_A]

For the best players there aren't any difficult courses to figure out.  They simply decide to hit over the complications or lay up short.  So much of what I have to go through never enters their mind.  Even TOC, once these figure out the greens, and they do...I know it because they shoot low scores...these guys go on auto pilot for most of the round.  When they do run into a dicey situation, as Tom says, they are plenty smart enough to figure it out. Being able to carry a ball 300+ yards, hit a wedge and putt goes a long way on golf and that is what these guys do....like robots.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

The more you continuously play, the savvier you get (or ought to get!) The folks who play the game for a living have been around the game since they were kids, done not much else for decades, in many cases their caddies as well. Savviness, streetwiseness, gets into you subconscious, the more so when advisors and tutors are around - these days top amateurs are taught and tested on how the prepare exceptionally detailed course/hole booklets - plus they hit the ball hellishly well (not many mishits). When the weather turns a bit nasty though, or when the pressure is on, that can affect things.
Don't play for a while though and the savviness drops away. I recall JM Olazabal saying after his long first injury break how the hardest part of returning to the competitive game wasn't hitting the ball it was getting his thought processes back and getting used again to the pace of tournament play.
atb

[Mark Pavy]

For the best players there aren't any difficult courses to figure out.  They simply decide to hit over the complications or lay up short.  So much of what I have to go through never enters their mind.  Even TOC, once these figure out the greens, and they do...I know it because they shoot low scores...these guys go on auto pilot for most of the round.  When they do run into a dicey situation, as Tom says, they are plenty smart enough to figure it out. Being able to carry a ball 300+ yards, hit a wedge and putt goes a long way on golf and that is what these guys do....like robots.

Ciao

You are right Sean, too much golf by numbers.

[Clyde Johnson]

[Anecdote:  when I played in the Dunhill Links ten years ago, my partner blocked his tee shot terribly right on #7, into a strong quartering wind from the left.  He was about to re-tee when his caddie realized [as I wondered quietly] that the ball had probably carried over the gorse, and sure enough, it was over there between #11 tee and #10 green.  It's a shot no one has ever played deliberately, as far as I know, but I'm sure there are hole locations on #7 where that would be a good play.]

I'll occasionally aim that way if the wind is howling from the North-West, which it can in the winter, and I'm worried about the gorse/making the carry to the open.


It's a pretty good line to the far right-front pin, where you have the little roll/ridge as a backstop, rather than the green sliding away - rare, but they did put it there for one of The Open rounds.


Of course your chances of killing some one go up with that play, which probably should be a consideration!!!

[Jerry Kluger]

I know we have already debated whether The Old Course should be part of the Open rota but the reason that it can even be considered is because it is difficult to figure out - both where to hit and what to do when you don't hit it where you need to.  To me, that is a sign of great architecture.  Being hard isn't necessarily good architecture such as forced carries and water hazards.


Good architecture to me is also when you don't hit it where you need to in order to play the hole well but you do have a chance for a recovery shot with good results if you can figure out how you have to hit it to accomplish that.  It is also where you have to think about where you need to hit it to begin with in order to accomplish a good result - in other words, you cannot necessarily aim at the flagstick in order to get a good result.  So often this must go hand in hand with good or proper conditioning - this is almost always firm and fast conditioning.

[Thomas Dai]

Options seems to be a nice word to use to describe good architecture. And nous and savvy and streetwiseness and course management and experience would seem to be even more important when options abound, more so when the weather is iffy.
The old adage about walking the course backwards or even viewing the course backwards in the head also comes to mind.

Atb

[MClutterbuck]

Well, the answer is not the same for a private course, a semi-public course, a resort course or a tournament course, right?


NBWL works great for a private club course with the occasional visitor that knows what to expect, plays with a caddy or with a member, or has sufficient time for several rounds. I would not want to pack NBWL with 150 resort golfers, some playing medal tournaments.

[Tom_Doak]

Well, the answer is not the same for a private course, a semi-public course, a resort course or a tournament course, right?


NBWL works great for a private club course with the occasional visitor that knows what to expect, plays with a caddy or with a member, or has sufficient time for several rounds. I would not want to pack NBWL with 150 resort golfers, some playing medal tournaments.

I've never bought into the idea that these different types of courses really need to have different designs.  Indeed, places like Bandon have kind of put the lie to that idea ... if places like St. Andrews and St. Enodoc hadn't already disproved it.

[Jerry Kluger]

I would suggest that some golfers couldn't wait to go back to a course to try and figure it out while others want a course that it is obvious and right in front of you.  Again, I am not pointing to courses that are difficult to play rather difficult to master. 

[Tom_Doak]

I would suggest that some golfers couldn't wait to go back to a course to try and figure it out while others want a course that it is obvious and right in front of you.

No doubt about that.  Indeed, many golfers seem to prefer a course where it doesn't even matter where you hit your tee shot.

[MClutterbuck]

Well, the answer is not the same for a private course, a semi-public course, a resort course or a tournament course, right?


NBWL works great for a private club course with the occasional visitor that knows what to expect, plays with a caddy or with a member, or has sufficient time for several rounds. I would not want to pack NBWL with 150 resort golfers, some playing medal tournaments.

I've never bought into the idea that these different types of courses really need to have different designs.  Indeed, places like Bandon have kind of put the lie to that idea ... if places like St. Andrews and St. Enodoc hadn't already disproved it.

You honestly donīt think that on the margin a private course can be more difficult to master, more quirky, or just plain tough than a course receiving over 100 first time players per day?


Would you really applaud a new Carnoustie difficulty course for a resort as much as for a private course?


As a developer I certainly would request 2 different style courses for one case or the other.


As an aside, in my limited 1 round experience I would not place the Old Course on the list of tough to master courses, I think it is a fine public course, at least the day I played it. NBWL and Dornoch were certainly tougher to master, in my experience.

[Tom_Doak]

You honestly donīt think that on the margin a private course can be more difficult to master, more quirky, or just plain tough than a course receiving over 100 first time players per day?


Would you really applaud a new Carnoustie difficulty course for a resort as much as for a private course?


As a developer I certainly would request 2 different style courses for one case or the other.

Carnoustie is a municipally-owned course that caters to lots of first-time visitors.  Some might even call it a "resort" although I don't know if the big hotel they built behind #18 has been successful.


Certainly there are situations where you would prefer to have an easier course than Carnoustie, and others where you'd want one that's really tough like Carnoustie is.  I just don't believe those distinctions are a perfect overlap for the "public", "resort", and "private" categories.  You could market a resort course that's really hard; you could market a private club that's short and doesn't take long to play.


I think that for years, many architects did public golfers a disservice by building boring public courses, because they assumed it was all the players could handle.

[MClutterbuck]

You honestly donīt think that on the margin a private course can be more difficult to master, more quirky, or just plain tough than a course receiving over 100 first time players per day?


Would you really applaud a new Carnoustie difficulty course for a resort as much as for a private course?


As a developer I certainly would request 2 different style courses for one case or the other.

Carnoustie is a municipally-owned course that caters to lots of first-time visitors.  Some might even call it a "resort" although I don't know if the big hotel they built behind #18 has been successful.


Certainly there are situations where you would prefer to have an easier course than Carnoustie, and others where you'd want one that's really tough like Carnoustie is.  I just don't believe those distinctions are a perfect overlap for the "public", "resort", and "private" categories.  You could market a resort course that's really hard; you could market a private club that's short and doesn't take long to play.


I think that for years, many architects did public golfers a disservice by building boring public courses, because they assumed it was all the players could handle.

I think we agree more than disagree. Certainly I am not advocating dull and boring for public. Love tough greens and surrounds for any type of course, but not rough that makes it completely impossible to find a ball if only slightly off target. I guess some very tough courses would be very interesting to me as private, but would produce 6 hour rounds if they were public and with tee times every 8 minutes. 

[Jerry Kluger]

Please don't equate quirky with tough - a course that is quirky is fun but a tough course rarely is.  I am not talking about having to carry some wetlands or avoid an out of bounds - what I'm talking about is knowing that from the wrong angle toward a green that you must aim to a particular side otherwise your ball will hit a mound that will push the ball away from the green.  You will often find this in one of Tom's courses or Coore and Crenshaw courses.  Look at some of the CBM courses or Raynor or Maxwell courses - sometimes they would use a template because of how it required knowledge to deal with the quirky bounces. 

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Tobacco Road is very complicated -- it's almost impossible to figure out what to do with some of the tee shots without a yardage book in hand.  But I don't think it's nearly as hard for a good player as some make it out to be, because it is reasonably short.

I agree. Tobacco Road can be "had" by a good player who simply avoids taking on the risky shots that the course tempts you with on nearly every hole. Played properly, it can almost be semi-boring aerial target golf. Hit it here, hit it there, two or one putts, and play the next hole. You can still get out of position occasionally, sometimes on the wrong tier of a wild green, but I tell people to play the course one time, get their photos, and then play some of the better courses in the area. (Quick addendum: you can shoot a good score this way, but you might not have any fun playing "risk-free" golf.)

To the general topic, sometimes a course is "tough to master" because it's tricked up. Sometimes, a course you have to play 10 times before you have a clue what clubs to hit and where on many holes is just a poorly designed course.

I believe - off the top of my head - that good courses have a blend of "show you the challenge and ask you to meet it" holes and "present the player with choices" holes. Too much of one kind or the other and the course gets boring, and I'll take a blend favoring the latter for sure.

[Peter Pallotta]

I'm thinking of the one great course I've played.
It appeared to be quite straightforward, and fairly easy to figure out.
I played the whole round under that impression, and with the thought that if I was a good golfer instead of an average one I could probably shoot a low number.
At the end, when I added up my score, and kept adding until I got to a very high number, I was still thinking: "Ah, if only I'd made a few more putts".
But now, with this question/thread, the thought just occurred to me:
"Maybe I was wrong...." 
 

[Steve Lang]

   Isn't it a fine line between playing well and posting a "good score?"  I would generally think "mastering" a course is not a good objective for any amateur golfer anywhere other than at one's home course.  There'll always be some unfinished business left out there.


... and these days, isn't most destination golfing likely to be aided by any number of pre-play inputs like aerial flyovers, course guides or reviews, Google Earth measuring, etc..  unless its a one and done experience you're seeking.

[Jerry Kluger]

Mastering a course is not knowing the perfect place to hit the ball on each hole in order to shoot a low score is not what I am talking about.  To me, if you have good architecture it takes a long time to understand where and how to hit a shot when your previous shot was not perfect. It isn't even a recovery shot - it's when you hit a ball to a location where you have an awkward angle to the flagstick and you know that there is a way to get it close but it isn't obvious.