Right-sized Golf: Want vs Need

[Ben Sims]

I’ve been following the Sand Valley #3 threads closely. Every time I catch up with the new posts, there’s an idea that I’m batting around. Oddly, it took a session with a mountain bike coach to nail down the crux of idea.


Do golfers really know how big a golf course should be?


The best analogy has to do with my favorite mountain bike company, Yeti Cycles. They’ve recently released two new bikes that modernized geometry to better compete with other companies. Problem is, to properly ride these monsters, a relatively aggressive style must be undetaken. It’s more difficult to properly weight the bike for mere mortals. But as my coach said, “head angles sell bikes these days.”


This more than touches on Tom’s new course at Sand Valley. Riders know Yeti makes an incredibly efficient machine. Golfers know that Renaissance makes incredibly compelling golf. But will they look at the numbers associated and think they know better than the experts?


I have felt for some time now that golfers tend to—more than many consumers—think they know better. Tom seems to be in a place where he can challenge modern conventional wisdom regarding width and length. Will golfers get it?

[Tom_Doak]

And will clients let me challenge conventional wisdom?


As I've said from the beginning of the other thread, I've always built courses wide enough for people to get around.  But it seems one result of wider courses is that players don't even think about gearing down and trying to hit it in the fairway likecwe all used to do; Mammoth Dunes is built so everybody can swing from their heels because it doesn't really matter, and lots of golfers seem to demand just that.


I am hopeful that a shorter course can also ask players to be more accurate because they don't have to be as long.

[Ben Sims]

Well hopefully the client means what they say a few of the press releases. It’s interesting that the wisdom that wasn’t so conventional twenty years ago is en vogue and now it’s taking a washed son to walk it back. I digress.

The issue for me is threefold. 1) turf 2) framing 3) interest


Monster swaths of turf with a lack of framing elements tend to push the golfer into a less apprehensive state. That is, they swing away with no fear. For me personally, that’s less interesting. And I wonder if those 100yd fairways are necessary for golfers to enjoy their round more. What is the right size? Certainly it’s dependent on site and the client. I abhor generalized rules about golf courses. But I wonder, have we made golf courses too big?


(big is distinct from long to be clear)

[Thomas Dai]

And will clients let me challenge conventional wisdom?
As I've said from the beginning of the other thread, I've always built courses wide enough for people to get around.  But it seems one result of wider courses is that players don't even think about gearing down and trying to hit it in the fairway likecwe all used to do; Mammoth Dunes is built so everybody can swing from their heels because it doesn't really matter, and lots of golfers seem to demand just that.
I am hopeful that a shorter course can also ask players to be more accurate because they don't have to be as long.

For a long time accuracy from the tee was very important and the Driver was the hardest club in the bag to hit well, which was why many folks used a 2-wood, 3-wood form the tee. They also didn’t hit the ball as far including so far off-line.
Now it seems the need for accuracy has lessoned. Not only with the width issue under discussion in various threads herein at the moment, and which if angles into greens are dealt with appropriately the effect can be minimised, but with the modern generation of clubs and ‘go straighter’ balls.
Is this an issue though?
Okay a greater area has to be maintained (or grazed) but width with short grass, even first cut rough, is easier to find the ball in than long grass and jungle and should alleviate or at least minimise speed of play issues.
As the saying goes “Six to one and half a dozen to the other?”
Atb

[Peter Pallotta]

I don't think most golfers believe they 'know better' than the architect, but I think most *clients* believe that.
The battle against conventional wisdom isn't waged at the consumer level: most of us would be just as happy (and feel very fortunate) to play either a Swinley Forest or a Pacific Dunes, a West Sussex or a Ballyneal.
In other words: most of us couldn't care less whether a top-flight architect is adhering to or breaking a given convention/trend; it's just a terrific golf course that we want.
But I think clients like to think & make themselves believe that golfers are concerned about such things (and they try to get others to believe it too) -- all so as to justify their own participation in the creative process and to support the specfic 'instructions' they lay on their architects.
With books and films and golf courses and music, I don't think the battle is waged on the battlefields, or for the hearts and minds of the audience/average golfer; it's waged instead in the boardroom, against the financial power and ego of 'the suits'.
Peter         

[Tom_Doak]

With books and films and golf courses and music, I don't think the battle is waged on the battlefields, or for the hearts and minds of the audience/average golfer; it's waged instead in the boardroom, against the financial power and ego of 'the suits'.

Peter:


I would respectfully disagree with you on part of this.  Films and golf courses, yes ... they cost a lot of money to create, so the financiers inevitably want their say.  It has always been that way; not many auteurs have the guts to finance their work themselves.


Books and music, though?  I did okay as an author without answering to a publisher who wanted to censor half of what I said ... I could do that because it doesn't cost much at all to print your own book.  Getting word out to the masses to sell your book (or song) isn't as easy, but it's not impossible if you really have something of interest to others.

[Ira Fishman]

Peter,


I actually would go further and disagree to some extent about golf courses in the US and probably everywhere but GB&I.  Yes, the developer/client is critical, but like any investor they are basing their decisions on what the consumer/market wants.  And if you survey the vast majority of at least American golfers, it is not the courses you note.  I remember on my first Irish trip six out of the eight people on the trip ranked Old Head above Waterville and Lahinch (and Ballybunion did better primarily because it is famous).  And it was not just the views; in fact, it was primarily because it seemed more like what they thought golf courses should be.


As in any other market, a business person with vision (and lots of risk capital) can "create" a market the way Mr. Keiser did with Bandon, but Bandon, Streamstrong, Cabot, and Sand Valley still represent a niche if critically important market. 


Ira

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom, Ira - thanks, and hoping I'm not taking Ben's thread too far afield, but I think Ira's last point is key:


Yes, a client can 'create' a market -- but the fact that such a market (or call it a manufactured want) *can* be created strongly suggests that it is not, like the law of gravity, an immutable rule or even a fixed-and-long-standing convention; instead, and as many athletes say these days, 'It just is what is it'. And so it can be 'something else' just as easily.   


My only real point (such as it is): I don't think golfers are standing/will stand in the way of anything that's really good; and I think most golfers have quite a generous and wide-ranging notion of what 'really good' means. 


(I'm the grumpy exception to this -- I've long railed against massive turf-and-sand-based scale and meaningless width, because to put it in Orwellian terms, I think it 'double-not-good'....)     

[Kalen Braley]

Ira,


I would like to make a point of clarification on the Mike K business model for lack of a better term.  I do think there is a niche, but not one based on preferences, but on size of their wallet.  I've spoken to several muni joes who splurged to go to Bandon once and they all loved it without exception.


It was the just the $$$ and travel costs getting in the way for return visits, not for wanting over-watered, lush, straight forward cart ball courses over what Bandon resort offers.

[Sean_A]

Bn

I have been saying for a good few years now that there isn't a right sized golf course...hence the reason courses need to be tailored to specific markets...if we hope to provide the best possible experience.  Generally, I think for very modern designs the short to moderate hitter is a market (a rather large market!) that has been massively under-served.  It just so happens that in these times of the marketability of more sustainable, less footprint and more healthy (meaning using golf as a health benefit if walking is encouraged) design that the shorter hitting market is easier to serve in terms of making sense to financially back these projects compared to 10 years and more ago. The market doesn't need to be created...it exists in huge numbers...the market simply needs to be properly recognized rather than pandered to with forward tees which are placed in a way which severely disrupts the game. 

On the width deal, I don't believe for a minute golfers demand 100 yard fairways.  In fact, I think there are so few courses which have 100 yard fairways that they don't even register in the percentage pie chart.  The idea of these courses proliferating is so over-blown that I just laugh when I hear that people don't like the concept.  That said, on normal ground without serious wind its hard to imagine many reasons why a fairway needs to wider than 50-60 yards.  On the flip side of the coin...width is the only way to provide much lasting interest in design.  The trick is to get that right width where placement matters, big hitters can't bomb away too easily yet the shorter hitter still feels challenged. IMO, its easiest to achieve these goals on shorter, not longer courses. 

What Doak is doing is an exellent step in the right direction.  How the better players will be challenged will be as much to do with the mental side of the game as the physical.  Its very easy to mess with the par and yardages.  I know Tom has said no par 5s, but I hope we will see a few...a few that from the daily tee are 5s and from the back tee are 4s.  Hell...the actual tee placement can be exactly the same...475 par 4 from back tee/475 par 5 from daily tee...whats the point in pretending this isn't happening already with tee markers set 10-15 yards apart.  This type of thinking could be applied to a par 3 as well.  I don't see why we are trying to reinvent the wheel with bunkers everywhere and courses littered with tees.  On shorter courses its much easier to create a playable game for more people while still playing around with hole width.  Walking is a far easier to encourage which should be a serious marketing ploy as a health benefit.  Sometimes, I really wonder what we have learned in the past 80 years of architecture.  Its very depressing to know the models of the future were built all that time ago and yet we still talk on and on about the way forward. 
Ciao

[Peter Pallotta]

Sorry, edit. Not relevant.
P

[Thomas Dai]

To what extent has the travelling golf market changed over say the last couple of decades?


Seems to me that golf trips used to be essentially male buddies trips.


From what I’ve observed these days however, male buddies trips still exist but now there are a considerable number of mixed trips and indeed all female trips.


Whilst I can’t comment on the rest of the world the trend towards more amateur club open competitions and multi-day/multi-course open competitions might be a contributing factor towards this trend in GB&I.


Does/should design, construction and maintenance regime cater for changes in the pattern of travelling golfers? As per the film - “Build it and they will come.”?


Atb

[Ben Sims]

Enjoying this so far.


Somewhere at the intersection of several key points (client demand, easier clubs to hit, specific market tailoring) I still don’t see a coherent idea emerging. But there’s some great posts so far and I’m learning.

I honestly don’t think the consumer—especially at a destination resort—will specifically care that par is 68. That said, among even the cognoscenti (a dreadfully overused term) there will be those that grumble about 6200 yds from the tips. How does one square the juxtaposition between those two concepts? I don’t know. I suppose by touting how good individual holes are, how fluid the walk is, and how much less water/inputs a smaller course uses; one could explain how this is all the golf course you NEED.


But in true conspicuous consumptive fashion, I think it’s harder to show people what they need without them getting obtuse over what they WANT.

[Peter Pallotta]

... I think it’s harder to show people what they NEED without them getting obtuse over what they WANT.

Yes, Ben, I think you're right. And it's probably one reason why I've sometimes gotten too invested here over the years, ie either because of naiveté or idealism or romanticism or a growing love of the game, I've always harboured a hope that golf & its fields of play could LEAD in this regard instead of follow -- that the spirit and ethos of the game itself (and the humility it can engender) and of its fields of play (with the quiet awe and nature-based peace they can create) might help those who play golf to more and more appreciate/value the fulfilment of needs over the satisfaction of wants.
As I say: I've likely been misguided all along, and my hope merely a fool's hope -- but I was nonetheless very pleased to read about the 'modesty of scale' of this new course at SV, and the 'sanity of its conception.'
P

[Tom_Doak]

A friend of mine was at Forest Dunes the other day and the two guys sitting next to him; they were discussing one of the two courses as "the REAL golf course" and he just had to ask which they meant.


They meant the one where you could hit over water hazards and ride in a cart. 😀


By the logic of some recent posts that implies I should dig ponds on each of my courses.


But of course, I am not going to.  It's fine that some golfers like the other course better, as long as mine can stay busy and profitable.  That's what seems to escape those who preach the conventional wisdom.  There is plenty of room for different kinds of golf courses.  They don't all have to appeal to everybody ... they just have to find their own audience, and if that audience is big enough, all is well.


Likewise, at Sand Valley it's okay if some people want to play Mammoth Dunes three times, as long as others are happy to play the new course more.


However, I'm already seeing that some people are eager to see this idea fail.  The idea of creating a smaller course that's really appealing goes against the American golf business imperative to keep making things bigger and more complicated and more expensive.  They are going to find it threatening - the same way they found fescue fairways threatening thirty years ago. 


That was another of my retro ideas that would never work.  But I think eight or nine of GOLFWEEK's top 10 modern courses have fescue fairways.

[JC Jones]

Parental architecture.


If only the 90% of golfers who pay the bills could have the 10% who “know better” tell them what they like isn’t what they like, they’d be much better off.

[Ira Fishman]

Ira,


I would like to make a point of clarification on the Mike K business model for lack of a better term.  I do think there is a niche, but not one based on preferences, but on size of their wallet.  I've spoken to several muni joes who splurged to go to Bandon once and they all loved it without exception.


It was the just the $$$ and travel costs getting in the way for return visits, not for wanting over-watered, lush, straight forward cart ball courses over what Bandon resort offers.

Kalen,


I agree with your clarification as it respects Bandon and probably Cabot (I have not been), but I am somewhat skeptical if it applies to Sand Valley and Streamsong (also speaking from the ignorance of not having played) where there is no Ocean, cliffs, mist, waves, etc.  Even if I am right, there are plenty of golfers to keep those courses thriving, but it would be a shame if those courses stayed a niche market. And that also does not mean that great versions of “conventional” courses should not also thrive. The very fact that we have seen several threads about the post- Sand Hills trend wearing a bit thin is evidence that there is no ideal model for a course.


Ira

[Ben Sims]

JC,

It’s a rough world buttercup. There are myriad taste-makers in this world. From Rolling Stone to Robert Parker to The Confidential Guide; a lot of people pay good money to learn that what they thought was good, ain’t.

Tom,

I sincerely hope you don’t think there’s active naywishers. Personally I couldn’t be more stoked for something new and cool. Horses for courses, I get it. I just tend to be of the mind that there’s a hundred reasons (sustainability, water/inputs, playability for all golfers) for golf course architects to be actively trying to do what you’re about to undertake at Sand Valley. But speaking architecturally, I would never have known something like Pacific Dunes was extraordinary if you and the fellas hadn’t tried to do something a bit different. Chasing that ideal isn’t bad, and I for one think a slightly smaller version of terrific golf gives me even more reason to visit central WI one day. Cause as it sits now, it’s “merely” another great resort built on sand.

[Tom_Doak]

Ben:  I'm not concerned about the handful of trolls on GCA; I know them all on a first-initial basis.  But I promise you there will be naywishers to the idea of a 6200-yard course from many different parts of the golf community [though maybe not as hostile as the turf pros at Michigan State were toward High Pointe:  that was really something].


The naywishers will include many players who want "more", and believe I should bow to their demands, before they have even seen what such a course looks like.  Most of them have never been to Swinley Forest or Rye, and dismiss them without a second thought.


Conventional wisdom rules the golf business.  Look how hard some people  push to get resort owners to hire a different architect for each course, instead of the guy who did a great job for that client already.  (Hint: you don't need a middle man to hire the same architect again.). You've gotta have consultants poll golfers to find out what the public wants; that's the reason for the golf magazines' good health.  😉 


It just amazes me that so many people who profess to be in the golf business because they love the game, can't trust their own gut to decide what to do next, insisting on doing things the same way even though they are all freaked out that the business is collapsing!  They are also not very good at looking around and seeing what has worked historically; that's where all my travels have come in handy.  I know what I've seen.

[jeffwarne]

  I know Tom has said no par 5s, but I hope we will see a few...a few that from the daily tee are 5s and from the back tee are 4s.  Hell...the actual tee placement can be exactly the same...475 par 4 from back tee/475 par 5 from daily tee...whats the point in pretending this isn't happening already with tee markers set 10-15 yards apart.  This type of thinking could be applied to a par 3 as well.  I don't see why we are trying to reinvent the wheel with bunkers everywhere and courses littered with tees.  On shorter courses its much easier to create a playable game for more people while still playing around with hole width.  Walking is a far easier to encourage which should be a serious marketing ploy as a health benefit.  .... Its very depressing to know the models of the future were built all that time ago and yet we still talk on and on about the way forward. 
Ciao

Lots of gems in the entire post but the above is superb.


As far as width, it can be argued that modern agronomy (faster greens that have slope/tilt reduced and also are generally softer to keep them alive) has increased the need for bigger scale to make angles matter as much as they once did.
While the same can be said of modern equipment, one can opt to do a personal rollback, but the same can't be said for agronomy/green design(other than by the course you choose to play), and ironically it's the classic designs with the least money that have the best chance of being preserved.

[Matthew Rose]

There is plenty of room for different kinds of golf courses.  They don't all have to appeal to everybody ... they just have to find their own audience, and if that audience is big enough, all is well.

I can get behind this philosophy.

[JC Jones]

JC,

It’s a rough world buttercup. There are myriad taste-makers in this world. From Rolling Stone to Robert Parker to The Confidential Guide; a lot of people pay good money to learn that what they thought was good, ain’t.

The arrogance of the treehouse never ceases to amaze me.  The idea that some book 99% of golfers have never heard of or some website 99% golfers have never heard of being the "tastemaker" or the "influencer" of golf is laughable.  A friend of mine played Lawsonia Links yesterday.  He plays as much golf as anyone I know, watches just about every tour event, is up on all the new equipment and is EXACTLY the model of a non-GCA nerd, avid golfer.


Here is his review:


The layout was just very generic.  Nothing special at all.  Many of the holes were the same.  Most greens were elevated.  Just, meh.  Not bad, but not challenging at all and not unique.  Just a very average "wanna be" links course.  It was links only because they let the grass between the holes grow.




I've not played Lawsonia Links but I know several people who have and they love it.  The people like my buddy above, however, are the people these resorts need to attract to subsidize the 200 people on this website with more "refined" tastes.  Now the market will ultimately decide, or things will be subsidized if they fail in the market.  But the idea that you're smarter than the average golfer because you have "refined" tastes and therefore need to limit the choices of others is comical, and parental. 


It's a big world out there, some people seek intellectual stimulation from their hobbies and others drink two buck chuck and wouldn't know Robert Parker from Robert Mondavi (and maybe haven't heard of either). 

[JC Jones]

Tom,

I sincerely hope you don’t think there’s active naywishers. Personally I couldn’t be more stoked for something new and cool. Horses for courses, I get it. I just tend to be of the mind that there’s a hundred reasons (sustainability, water/inputs, playability for all golfers) for golf course architects to be actively trying to do what you’re about to undertake at Sand Valley. But speaking architecturally, I would never have known something like Pacific Dunes was extraordinary if you and the fellas hadn’t tried to do something a bit different. Chasing that ideal isn’t bad, and I for one think a slightly smaller version of terrific golf gives me even more reason to visit central WI one day. Cause as it sits now, it’s “merely” another great resort built on sand.

I haven't seen any naywishers on this website.  I've seen some honest questioning and criticism but the guy who made his name as a critic is usually incapable of handling criticism himself.


Nonetheless, the questions I have are about the premise, not the result.  Tom didn't try at Pacific Dunes to go out and create a course with back-to-back par 3s, etc.  He went out and found the best course on the property allocated.  Like I've said on other threads, I wish he would have started here from the premise of finding the best holes/course and if the result had been 6200 yards (notice how it started as 6100 yards and a par 67 and has already been moved to 6200 yards and a par 68) then so be it.  But the idea as it stands is contrived and not organic.  The irony being Tom's best courses have been born of the latter and not the former.

[Eric Smith]

Maybe I missed it in a previous post but perhaps the field of play that Tom is working with suggested the shorter overall length to an 18 hole layout? I’ll hang up and listen.

[Peter Pallotta]

Yeah, that's the trouble with ideas, isn't it JC - they're always so, I don't know, 'contrived'. They don't grow 'organically', like a tree or a mushroom does. With an idea, it's almost as if someone just 'thought it up', right on the spot: it doesn't exist, and then suddenly it does exist! I'm with you, I don't like ideas either -- especially when they're not organic. I mean, it's like that line: "we hold these truths to be self-evident - that all men are created equal". Look at that: they're actually shoving it right in our face, coming right out and telling us, 'this idea is not organic'. Ha, 'self-evident': just a fancy, pretentious way to say 'contrived' for people who were full of themselves....