What constitutes "hard" or "difficult" on a golf course to you?

[Tom_Doak]

Another feature is really large greens which you can't get close to the pin for some reason. Last year I played Old MacDonald and found getting close to the hole was very difficult.

?


That's the whole point of it.  You've got a ton of room to find your ball all the way around, but if you don't get to the right place for your approach it's hard to get the ball close.

[George Pazin]

Ubiquitous water doesn't make things more difficult, it just increases your score.

This answer is so good it makes me wish I had thought of it. It’s John Kav-like in brevity and Tom D like in thoughtfulness.


————


To allow me further questions, what result makes you feel the difficulty? The higher score or the feeling before playing particular shots?

[Peter Pallotta]

Ubiquitous water doesn't make things more difficult, it just increases your score.

This answer is so good it makes me wish I had thought of it. It’s John Kav-like in brevity and Tom D like in thoughtfulnes.

Well, it's pithy for sure, and clever.
Like Captain Kirk with the Kaboyashi Maru, Kyle rigged the game.
It's like saying: 'A 100 mile hike is no harder than a 50 mile hike, it just takes longer'.
Tell the golfer who walked off the 17th at Sawgrass with a 7 that ubiquitous water doesn't make things more difficult, and see if the logic holds up...

[Sean_A]

Ubiquitous water doesn't make things more difficult, it just increases your score.

This answer is so good it makes me wish I had thought of it. It’s John Kav-like in brevity and Tom D like in thoughtfulnes.

Well, it's pithy for sure, and clever.
Like Captain Kirk with the Kaboyashi Maru, Kyle rigged the game.
It's like saying: 'A 100 mile hike is no harder than a 50 mile hike, it just takes longer'.
Tell the golfer who walked off the 17th at Sawgrass with a 7 that ubiquitous water doesn't make things more difficult, and see if the logic holds up...

I am sure there is Double Dutch to support Kyle's logic... I would like to hear it.

Ciao

[George Pazin]

What I’m inferring from Kyle is that the short iron shot into Sawgrass 17, for instance, isn’t particularly tough, it’s just that the consequences for missing are magnified in your score, whereas on a difficult hole, it might be tough to even know which shot is the correct shot to hit.


Put a different way, the wedge into 15 ANGC, if you lay up, strikes me as a much more difficult wedge.

[Sean_A]

What I’m inferring from Kyle is that the short iron shot into Sawgrass 17, for instance, isn’t particularly tough, it’s just that the consequences for missing are magnified in your score, whereas on a difficult hole, it might be tough to even know which shot is the correct shot to hit.

Put a different way, the wedge into 15 ANGC, if you lay up, strikes me as a much more difficult wedge.

Difficult for whom?  I would take the broad view that forced carries of even 125 yards (without even considering weather and ground conditions) is considered difficult for a large percentage of golfers.  That isn't to say forced carries shouldn't exist, just a nudge to give the lesser golfer a thought and make (what should be relatively few imo) forced carries offer pleasurable excitement.  Yes, my post is a dig against mega tee golf courses...which hits at the thread wonderfully.  If there is a forced carry, that is the time to offer a shorter/different angle tee to aid the less skilled player.  If they then find water, they can look in the mirror and say el stupido.

Ciao 

[Bill Raffo]

I was thinking about this very thing after a beatdown I took both at the Nicklaus Private Course, at PGA West. 


Jack decided to bisect most of the fairways so if you hit it to the appropriate side you had a normal shot, while the other side of the fairway he created deep cavern/pits that required a blind shot, often out of rough or sand.  For a high single digit handicap used to living nicely by merely hitting tee shots somewhat straight, somewhat flush, that wasn't going to work.  Decent tee shots were often big trouble.


Then, the raised greens with the cavernous bunkering around the sides... on the back nine, my approaches hit three of the banks near the surface of the green, only to be rejected like blocked slam dunk, down into the bunker.  Those shots on a links course or a normal flattish course, that would be on the green or just off with a relatively easy, flattish chip. The odds of me getting up and down from 10-20 foot craters is not very high. 


Additionally, on that same back nine, my ball hit two greens on approach, only to bound off the back into all kinds of trouble.  I don't spin it like a pro obviously but I also don't have any trouble holding greens in the northeast, come summer time.  Those greens aren't new. Perhaps it was the frost delay and they were still hard...anyway, I didn't get up and down once and walked off that course hoping to never see it again.


But then I got thinking about it and started coming around a bit.  That course has quirk and the layout is interesting, a lot of interesting ideas out there.


What it does, is really even the playing field between a decent to good ball striker/[pretty lousy short game (me) and someone who isn't a very good player but has a short game. I was in all the same places as the guys I was playing with, despite hitting much straighter shots all day. The course didn't separate me from them, the way it normally does with a bit more width, larger green surfaces, etc.


Then you see the tour pros go out there and rip the place to shreds. I know they no longer play on the Nick Private but stadium and the Nick Tournament course are more of the same.  So, the course provides an extremely difficult experience for everyone up to a point where a talented ball striker just mows it down like everything else he/she looks at.


How about a course for them?  One with margins/widths so precise, recoveries so severe that they could tee it up from 6800 yards and struggle to make par.  I know its never going to happen, who would support it?  But it sure would be fun to see them in an absolute torture chamber. Plenty of courses to do that to us mere mortals.

[Ian Andrew]

Nothing is too hard or too difficult until penalty strokes enter into the challenge.
Once I start losing balls I become discouraged.
Those are the courses I choose not to play.

[Joe Hancock]

#17 at Swagrass is great example of how much more difficult a shot is psychologically vs. physically. Surround that green with turf and everyone would wonder why Pete built such an easy hole. But, as we witness every year with PGA pros, that water causes the hole to be more difficult.....psychologically.

[Steve Lang]

   George,


Was Black Mesa the hardest course we played during the Land of Enchantment Tour? 

[Kalen Braley]

I'm inclined to agree with Peter P.

If high scores are the essence of difficulty in the context of this question, then i would certainly think ever-present water would be right up there!

Unless George, you're asking what features does one find the most difficult to successfully navigate?

[Peter Pallotta]

Joe - psychologically more difficult to be sure; but if we use a synonym, what some good & long time golfers forget is the simple fact that, for the average golfer, it is also physically more 'tiring' to swing a club 100 times than it is to swing it 70 times, just like it's harder (not just more time consuming or psychologically difficult) to hike 100 miles than it is 50 miles. As I said, I don't mind hard golf courses, I just mind cut-rate (unimaginatively & monotonously) hard golf courses; and the ubiquitous use of water is about as cut-rate as you can get.
If we went with Kyle's gambit, we'd soon by saying that 'difficult' is nothing more than a state of mind, and that our decades-worth of criticisms about the dark age of gca and of narrow tree lined fairways was based on nothing more than a bad attitude.
(Which, in fairness, is probably true!)
P

[Mark Pearce]

Hard is a course that requires hots I don't have.  Playing Real Club Golf de Las Palmas with my 11 handicap son last week, there were several steeply uphill approaches which required a high 140/150 yard carry up the hill.  He has that shot.  I don't.


George makes the point earlier that difficult for one 15 handicapper isn't the same for another.  Long forced carries will trouble many mid-handicappers.  Lots of water is always going to be an issue.  Very fast greens can be an issue.

[Sean_A]

#17 at Swagrass is great example of how much more difficult a shot is psychologically vs. physically. Surround that green with turf and everyone would wonder why Pete built such an easy hole. But, as we witness every year with PGA pros, that water causes the hole to be more difficult.....psychologically.

Joe

Forget about the pros.  Adding lost ball to a missed shot situation must make a hole harder, no?  Is it not the case that a hole is easier if there is space to miss around the green rather than water?

Ciao

[JMEvensky]

Put a different way, the wedge into 15 ANGC, if you lay up, strikes me as a much more difficult wedge.

I disagree. A poorly played 140 yard shot at #15 should still get you no worse than bogey--the same poorly played shot at Sawgrass #17 is most likely at least double. I concede we can argue degrees of "poorly played".

[Mark_Fine]

Golf is a challenging game period and on a bad day almost any shot can be difficult.  However, a steady diet of the same kind of difficulty over and over again is what I don’t like. Frankly too much of any design feature whether it be forced carries over water, OB, inescapable bunkers, wild and crazy greens, deep rough, ...., gets tiring fast. A good balance of any of these is fine but when a course has too much of a any one feature then    Imagine for example three island greens in 18 holes?  In that case one is plenty. 

[Tom_Doak]

Put a different way, the wedge into 15 ANGC, if you lay up, strikes me as a much more difficult wedge.

I disagree. A poorly played 140 yard shot at #15 should still get you no worse than bogey--the same poorly played shot at Sawgrass #17 is most likely at least double. I concede we can argue degrees of "poorly played".

Golfers who go over the green on 15 at Augusta can easily make worse than bogey.  Even the pros are afraid of chipping it into the water from there.

[V. Kmetz]

Golfers who go over the green on 15 at Augusta can easily make worse than bogey.  Even the pros are afraid of chipping it into the water from there.

TD, this isn't the first time that you expressed less than praise for this hole... I ask, wouldn't the large part of this and similar critiques be largely addressed by:

• Maintaining the front bank as 1.5 - 2" rough?
• Allowing a belt of similar rough to break up the closely mown area behind the green?
• Keep the green speeds nearer 10 than 12?

Aren't these maintenance deficiencies and not design deficiencies...?

[Kyle Harris]

There's a difference between difficulty and performance. What constitutes a poor performance on a golf course with little difficulty might appear better than an excellent performance on a golf course with great difficulty if the measure is by score alone.

TPC Sawgrass is a great example of this, in my opinion, but for the other seventeen holes other than the island-green 17th.

[Lyndell Young]

Any extreme conditions , excessive green speeds coupled with firm surfaces, or with contour.Also difficult hazards without fairway width to avoid them!  Back to greens You know the ones when you know a putt is fast and you just touch it and it rolls off the green  20 yds down the fairway. Not fun. Overly Penal design in general much prefer Heroic style.

[George Pazin]

  George,


Was Black Mesa the hardest course we played during the Land of Enchantment Tour?

Every course is difficult for a golfer like me, but I would say Black Mesa and Paa-Ko Ridge, the other NM course, are in the same category. BM was maybe a little tougher, but also a little more interesting.

[George Pazin]

In an overall sense with this thread, I think people are focusing a bit too much on the individual specifics, especially as it relates to them personally. But that's ok, my topic was a bit vague to begin with.


My overall point is, what does difficult MEAN to you? A higher score? Difficult shots? Repetitive shots that you struggle with? Etc.


When I played my favorite course, Oakmont, I shot about a million. Seriously, probably 15 or so shots higher than a normal course for me.


What I didn't do was lose many balls. Or have even one time where I struggled to figure out where I should drop. It was simply relentless in asking for an additional shot, here, there, everywhere.


I will use one hole, an often overlooked hole at Oakmont, to illustrate. On the 11th, I hit a 3 iron off the tee, one of my better tee shots on the day, up the left side, on the first cut of rough, not the deep stuff (about a yard or two from where the caddies were standing - and not a one jumped. I guess they didn't think I'd be that close to a fairway in regulation). I then hit a 7 iron, IIRC, into the left greenside bunker. I hit that shot pretty sadly close to the lip of the bunker and the hole location was middle left. My gracious host warned me that I should hit well above the hole. Instead, I opted to blast out to about 3-4 feet from the hole. I was proud of my effort. When I finished raking, I climbed up (yep, it's steep), and asked where the ball marker was, assuming someone marked my shot. My host pointed to my ball, which had drifted down to about 25 feet below the hole. From there, I two-putted for bogey, and I was given about a 3 footer for that bogey (I never want to slow down others, so I graciously accepted the concession).


I considered that a win. Many would call the shot result unfair. But that's what Oakmont demands: the proper choice AND the proper execution. And Oakmont is relentless in asking this repeatedly, on every shot, on every hole. What Oakmont doesn't do is repeatedly ask you where to figure out your drop should be.


Is Oakmont "too hard"? Not in my book. It is perfect, in my book. I don't expect a golf course to not differentiate between my poor thoughts/shots and a better golfer's thoughts/shots. On the contrary, I expect a great golf course to illustrate separation between the two. And I expect the golfer to understand the difference.


But few do.

[Christian Newton]

George,

Great thread!

My answer is: a course without options. This usually means target golf in the extreme. Princeville (Prince course) is the best example I can cite from direct experience. On more than half of the holes it felt like playing darts with a dartboard consisting only of the bullseye and the "20" wedge.

I will also lay some blame generally at counterproductive obsession with stroke scoring. For mid-handicappers like me,  Stableford scoring reduces the sting of lost balls and picking up.

Cheers,
Christian

[JC Urbina]

The hardest golf course I ever played was Deepdale, the greens were lighting quick, i could not figure out the putts to save my soul.  I can read greens pretty good but those were just plain hard.


If I played every weekend I could adjust but that doesnt mean it would get any easier, so for me the green speeds usually dictate if the course is going to be HARD or DIFFICULT.


For some people the test of golf and the score they shoot is the challenge.


 For me the amount of fun I had is a better measure.  I am still working on my fun scorecard, hope to have it ready soon.

[Greg Smith]

I guess for me it's the amount of "insurmountable" obstacles.

I really don't mind if I have to play a 440-yard par 4 (I can maybe drive it 225 at my age, so that's a 3-wood approach for me).   If that long 4 has a green that's open to a rolling shot, I can realistically think about getting it on there once in awhile.  Fine -- that represents a challenge, not a defeat.

But if that same hole has got a green surrounded by 20 yards of 4-inch broccoli where I can barely see my ball, that's a defeat and I call it too hard.  I basically have no chance at a 4 because there's just no way I'll be able to hack it out of the gunch to reliable one-putt territory. 

Same thing applies for a course where you roll 6 inches off the fairway and you're in wrist-breaking rough.

I don't mind difficult greens, no matter how fast or contoured they are.  At least my old man body has got a shot at stroking a good putt, no matter what the green is.  A putt is primarily a mental problem/exercise -- and even I have a chance to outfox the architect with a flat stick in my hand.

So I guess I'm saying "hard" is a golf course that's asking me to solve all my problems with POWER, as opposed to using my head, golf experience, and feel for the game.