[Jeff_Brauer]

Theory:
Long before the average golfer was armed with the Doak Scale, and decades before its namesake was even born, it was only the top-most amateurs and very best professionals (and a tiny number of international/elite critics) who identified and then signalled for the rest of us which courses were great: Bobby Jones came to praise The Old Course, Travis thought the National best of all, Hogan chose to practice at Seminole, Darwin spoke most highly of Lido and Pine Valley etc etc. And those early assessments by the most knowledgeable 'first generation critics' have coloured and influenced absolutely every other critic & scale & rating & analysis & panel that has followed in their wake. So that now, as Sean suggests, greatness is over-rated and all such assessments rather dubious; and, as Tom D often says, rankings are personal and subjective, and are influenced and guided by many not-strictly-architectural factors.
Which is to conclude that, while Mark's question is indeed an excellent one, it is also, nowadays, quite a meaningless one.
End of Theory.

Hadn't ever thought of it, but in the Golden Age examples you mention, top golfers talked about favorite courses.  By the time at least Arnie got around, magazines were asking them about America's best 18 holes more often than courses, no?  I guess maybe it wasn't good enough to talk about a collection of holes with perhaps a few weak ones.  Apparently, by that time readers weren't interested in anything other than superlatives, even if the field had to narrow to holes from courses?  What's next?  The best 18 greens by hole in America?  The best water carries? In a way, that has already been done as mags look for content.

[Jeff_Brauer]

David,


No one is suggesting you become an architect.  The field is too crowded anyway, even if I retired and gave you my "spot."


Outside this group, I don't think I have ever heard someone say they like shots that don't "fit the eye."  I can't recall a good player ever say they love hitting fades off hook lies.  Some will say "sure, it happens" and be more accepting than others.  In any case, don't ask them to hit a long iron off a downhill lie, to an uphill green!


BTW, as near as I can tell, "fitting the eye" is a phrase describing a situation where physics and shot options align, i.e., a dog leg right (or green angled right) where there is a left to right wind.  If not on the tee, but in the fw, then a left to right lie is also appreciated.  As in, "I can hit the shot if you lay it out for me like a road map."  Again, I understand its not a notion popular here.....


My earlier comment probably adopted the long held mindset of designing for better players, and let them tell everyone else that its a good course.  That said, more and more, I can tell you that they female golfer with 160 drive distance, or the 180 male player, can all tell me in detail which shots don't work very well for them - forcing a layup, forced carry, or dogleg point that puts their tee shots through the fw or not up to the dogleg.


I had a funny situation yesterday, playing with my wife on a recent remodel.  I do put forward tees based on 150-160 yard tee shots, and probably much further forward than most gca's.  On one hole where that tee left 158 to the creek bisecting the fw beyond the landing area, she elected to hit driver, egged on partially by my statistics that recreational women golfers CAN hit it 160, but manage to do so about 20% of the time.  She clobbered it and managed to plunk her tee ball into said creek.  Lucky she is a fairly good sport!   


Moral - every level of golfer looks at a course for how it plays for them, and is likely to judge on that, rather than the ratings, phots and glossy adds.

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff -
and in turn I had never thought about *that*. Yes, a Bernard Darwin seemed to look at golf courses as if through the large open window of a 3 story hotel room, from his heart and with no 'agenda'; but as the years went by we started looking at courses as if through a microscope, with a textbook/guidebook at our elbows and a point to prove.

[Rick Shefchik]

Golfers who hit it straight invariably praise narrow courses and have little use or appreciation for width. The rest of us appreciate a course that does not continually punish stray shots.

[Tim_Weiman]

Mark,


I tend to think being well traveled, fairly well read and having a genuine desire to study golf holes are more important than a specific level of playing ability.

[Garland Bayley]

   Is there a top 100 course with a course rating more than .5 below its par or a slope less than 120 from tees set at 6400 yards?  I suspect there are few, if any.  My point - great courses are almost always "difficult."  And mediocre golfers pine to play them.

I think you fail to distinguish great courses from highly rated courses. Because some course raters, often chosen for their high level of golfing competence, say a course is great doesn't necessarily mean it is great. It often means it presents a level of difficulty that is unnecessary to make it great. Therefore, it gets a course rating not more than .5 below its par, etc.

Great architects have written that few bunkers are needed to make a great course, but yet we see highly rated courses have loads of bunkers, most of which are simply penal, and not lending to any meaningful strategic purpose. So there you get your meaningless high course and slope ratings.

[Tom_Doak]

The only people who ever ask this question are those trying to establish their own expertise, and eliminate someone else's.


It's all a matter of opinion, and everyone is entitled to theirs - including the people that wonder why Pine Valley has to be so penal.  (Maybe they have a point, but they have to learn to express it better to avoid being summarily dismissed as unable to understand true greatness.)


The true test is not whether you agree with all of the accepted wisdom, but where you can disagree with it and make others think twice.  Great players usually assert themselves by dropping the U-word, but they often catch themselves out in doing so.

[Sean_A]

I never heard of the U word 😳.

I say greatness is over rated because 1, everybody has their own ideas of what that means and 2, it doesn't matter. A course can be completely engaging and enjoyable and yet not be great.

The people who should care most about rankings are course owners/operators and those who design/build courses. For a guy like me it's passing entertainment.

Ciao

[Adrian_Stiff]

I don't think it is about personal abilities of playing golf.


I think it is about understanding three real factors of how others play golf. How and where good players hit it, how and where bad players hit it and how and where the ones in the middle hit it and creating the enjoyment factors for them whilst trying the good and the bads happy.

[Kyle Harris]

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

[Adam Lawrence]

I don't really understand the arguments about why architects need to be good golfers. All you have to do to understand how good players play is to watch them. The physical ability to execute a shot has nothing at all to do with the ability to envisage it.

[Jim Sherma]

+1 Sadly true.

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

[Mark_Fine]

Interesting to see this question has sparked a lot of comments and debate.


There are some really good posts and I agree with many of them.  There is no substitute for the golfer who is well traveled, well studied, and well read.  But as we all know that is a very small subset of the golfing population. 


Maybe a related question to “what level of playing competency is necessary” to identify great courses would be:


“What level of challenge is necessary” to be considered great?


We all know that just because a course is difficult, doesn’t mean it is good.  It is easy to make a course hard but a whole different matter to also make it great. 
At the same time I don’t know too many “bunny slopes” that would be considered great ski resorts.  Maybe the same goes for golf courses but then again challenge is all relative to the ability and perception of the person evaluating it. 


Have a think 😊

[Bernie Bell]

"Seats at the table" are paid for, not given.  In this month's Pete Dye interview, he says (I'm paraphrasing) he designs a course for the people who are going to play it.  That, to me, seems as it should.  "Great" in the abstract means nothing.

[Garland Bayley]

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Exactly what kind of bs are you peddling?

[Jeff_Brauer]

+1 Sadly true.

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Yes, damn those male mid to high handicap golfers who figure that they pay the same amount to play as low handicappers and think they should enjoy the course just as much.  How dare they!


Seriously, there are many architects who take great pride in providing courses you can play enjoy every day.  Why can't that be a laudable goal, as laudable as building another tough course?  Greatness is attained many ways.


Back to the original question of "While their will always be some exceptions (some great architects were not great golfers) is their a certain level of playing competence necessary to recognize the best golf courses from the merely good ones?"

I guess Mark's intent here is not entirely clear.  Are we talking architects knowing what a great course is for good players?   IMHO, just a continuation of the fascination with the Uber top courses in prestige, difficulty, etc., which have no bearing on real life for 99% of golfers.


Not to mention, even for architects, creating a great course is a whole next level skill over recognizing them.  I have played golf on great courses with other architects.  After that, I tend to think about how I design things. Many other turn out exactly what they turned out last time, and I wonder how they could NOT be influenced more by what they saw on course XX. 

And, sometimes they just feel that their next muni project will be greater by not attempting to be "great" by any common definition.  Also, is a good course all that can be attained on a blah site? Or for a municipal client?

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I had this discussion with Jay Flemma years and years and years ago. I said something like "I see golf courses differently than you do."

I still think that's true (well, I still think that at the time I said it, it was true - I have no idea how he sees courses these days), BUT a lower skilled player can overcome this type of thing through experience and observation. That's why GCAs themselves don't have to be good players, or have once been a good player. They can observe what they don't get through their own experiences.

I could think of examples from my play, but since few would know the holes I'm talking about, I don't see much point in that. But, generally speaking, I can attempt to give two examples:

• The slopes on a green often offer up a slight dividing line in the level of player and how they approach a hole. While a higher handicapper may say things like "don't get above the hole," the better player will be able to use side boards and back boards more effectively. They'll be better able to use slopes around the greens and on the greens to control and funnel not only their approach shots, but their short game shots as well. While the bogey golfer might be content to "just hit the green," the better player is often looking at using this side slope to kick and feed the ball down to the front-right hole location.
• Off the tee, the better player is often choosing a side rather than just aiming toward the middle. I've said that angles only matter when you're talking about a ball that's rolling, and that's still true, but due to the wider variety of shots a better player has at their disposal, sometimes it's preferable to be in light rough on the left side of the hole than the right side of the fairway, because they may be blocked out by trees or not be able to see the bottom of the flagstick over a bunker from that right side, so a shot from the left is more comfortable. And, since they have the ability to control (a bit) whether they're left or right, they make these decisions.

I'm not saying that to slight anyone, I only think it's natural. A better player has to "interact" with the puzzle more so than the poor player. This is true at every level of every game: a person playing rec softball isn't thinking about things at the same level that the Dodgers and Braves are in the playoffs right now. A rec league hockey player isn't thinking about things the same way Sidney Crosby has to think about the game. Etc.

And again, players can overcome that through study, observation, awareness. Just because you have never hit (you in general, nobody specific) a low cut 7I to use a side board and funnel a ball toward a hole doesn't mean you can't picture it or see it in your mind's eye or whatever.

So, better players IMO have a leg up on higher handicappers, in terms of seeing the architecture and design intent and options and strategy, but it doesn't mean it's always going to be that way. And it also doesn't mean that the better player has to think about it, too - it can work the other way as well. If the better player is like a lot of PGA Tour players, who brainlessly follow a very simple strategy… then they can be hampered by that boring way of thinking, too.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Erik,


Nice post.  As I hinted somewhere, maybe not this thread, when I ask good players about the vaunted "frontal opening" value, its meh.  They just club up and hit with more spin to bring it back of the back mound, etc.  Most actually seem to just favor hitting the fw if typically narrow tree lined, etc. as the best place to be and the highest percentage chance of getting there.  And some prefer the side, as I mentioned, where they have to come over the bunker, because it sets up to curve around it better.  Yes, the top distance guys may not, but the shorter hitting and/or grinders still need strategy just to compete. And, that is 2/3 of the tour.


IMHO, average players do need some sort of fw runup to nearly every green.  And, their strategy is really two options - aim for the fat middle or shade it over to the pin for a closer putt.  And, if they used statistics, they would aim for the fat middle nearly every time (unless it was the last few holes of a match and they were behind.


As I have mentioned before, may PGA Tour pros act as editors more than designers.  And one of their most typical comments is "What if I hit it HERE?"  Short version, they are looking to avoid any difficult shot for nearly any miss, just like the rest of us, but at a much higher level, LOL.  I will say, they look at green contours closely. More than one has told me they don't even consider hazards (well, maybe water) when planning the approach shot as much as green contour.  I played a grand opening with one, and was quiet but interested because the green on one hole had a severe cross and slight reverse slope, to see what he would do.  He noticed it, and used it in his shot to get close to the pin, even though some of it was blind from the LZ.

[Adam Lawrence]

I had this discussion with Jay Flemma years and years and years ago. I said something like "I see golf courses differently than you do."

I still think that's true (well, I still think that at the time I said it, it was true - I have no idea how he sees courses these days), BUT a lower skilled player can overcome this type of thing through experience and observation. That's why GCAs themselves don't have to be good players, or have once been a good player. They can observe what they don't get through their own experiences.

I could think of examples from my play, but since few would know the holes I'm talking about, I don't see much point in that. But, generally speaking, I can attempt to give two examples:

• The slopes on a green often offer up a slight dividing line in the level of player and how they approach a hole. While a higher handicapper may say things like "don't get above the hole," the better player will be able to use side boards and back boards more effectively. They'll be better able to use slopes around the greens and on the greens to control and funnel not only their approach shots, but their short game shots as well. While the bogey golfer might be content to "just hit the green," the better player is often looking at using this side slope to kick and feed the ball down to the front-right hole location.
• Off the tee, the better player is often choosing a side rather than just aiming toward the middle. I've said that angles only matter when you're talking about a ball that's rolling, and that's still true, but due to the wider variety of shots a better player has at their disposal, sometimes it's preferable to be in light rough on the left side of the hole than the right side of the fairway, because they may be blocked out by trees or not be able to see the bottom of the flagstick over a bunker from that right side, so a shot from the left is more comfortable. And, since they have the ability to control (a bit) whether they're left or right, they make these decisions.

Of course this is true. But anyone with a golfing brain can see those shots. They don't need to be able to hit them.

[Jim Sherma]

My +1 was meant to reference how the combo-tees are chosen. Almost invariable the decision makers seem to take the longer tees of the short holes and the shorter tees of the longer holes when determining the combo-tees to use. This serves to compress the played hole lengths into a small spread of similar length holes. Thereby limiting the architectural spread of lengths that was originally built into the course. I must admit that I really do not see the point of this. You could get to an intermediate aggregate distance without doing this while maintaining the integrity of the designed ebb and flow of long and short holes.

+1 Sadly true.

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Yes, damn those male mid to high handicap golfers who figure that they pay the same amount to play as low handicappers and think they should enjoy the course just as much.  How dare they!


Seriously, there are many architects who take great pride in providing courses you can play enjoy every day.  Why can't that be a laudable goal, as laudable as building another tough course?  Greatness is attained many ways.


Back to the original question of "While their will always be some exceptions (some great architects were not great golfers) is their a certain level of playing competence necessary to recognize the best golf courses from the merely good ones?"

I guess Mark's intent here is not entirely clear.  Are we talking architects knowing what a great course is for good players?   IMHO, just a continuation of the fascination with the Uber top courses in prestige, difficulty, etc., which have no bearing on real life for 99% of golfers.


Not to mention, even for architects, creating a great course is a whole next level skill over recognizing them.  I have played golf on great courses with other architects.  After that, I tend to think about how I design things. Many other turn out exactly what they turned out last time, and I wonder how they could NOT be influenced more by what they saw on course XX. 

And, sometimes they just feel that their next muni project will be greater by not attempting to be "great" by any common definition.  Also, is a good course all that can be attained on a blah site? Or for a municipal client?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Jim,


Understood, and mostly agree from what I have seen.  I once designed a hole with a long tee and long green that could be changed from 300 to over 400 yards on any given day. So, yes, I prefer variety, but most golfers didn't see the point.  And so many golfers want every hole to be the same yardage every day so they can pull out the typical club without much thought, which I have never understood.  But, such is life.


Many gca's even like the idea of the long hole into the wind and shorter ones downwind, so on any given day, maybe a long 4 is truly a 5, and maybe a 5 coming back might play like a par 4.  That idea is really beyond most golfer's limits.


Adam,


Do they really see things the same way?  An old saying is players see shots, others see either aesthetics and/or maybe hazards, etc.  And, I think what they see is largely related to both their playing ability and (if a gca) training, mentors, etc.  (i.e., being trained under a player architect vs under a landscape architect who focuses on golf)

[Kyle Harris]

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Exactly what kind of bs are you peddling?

The kind where I ask what a golfer has done to improve their game or overcome some individual playing deficiency in lieu of altering the golf course to suit their strengths or mitigate their weaknesses.


Often time their rhetorical positions are propped up by the mythical, non-existent, "average" golfer. "Average" in this case meaning "bad at the things I'm bad at."

[Kyle Harris]

That being said:


Zero playing competence is necessary.

And zero playing competence should be used for such matters.

[Kyle Harris]

My +1 was meant to reference how the combo-tees are chosen. Almost invariable the decision makers seem to take the longer tees of the short holes and the shorter tees of the longer holes when determining the combo-tees to use. This serves to compress the played hole lengths into a small spread of similar length holes. Thereby limiting the architectural spread of lengths that was originally built into the course. I must admit that I really do not see the point of this. You could get to an intermediate aggregate distance without doing this while maintaining the integrity of the designed ebb and flow of long and short holes.

+1 Sadly true.

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Yes, damn those male mid to high handicap golfers who figure that they pay the same amount to play as low handicappers and think they should enjoy the course just as much.  How dare they!


Seriously, there are many architects who take great pride in providing courses you can play enjoy every day.  Why can't that be a laudable goal, as laudable as building another tough course?  Greatness is attained many ways.


Back to the original question of "While their will always be some exceptions (some great architects were not great golfers) is their a certain level of playing competence necessary to recognize the best golf courses from the merely good ones?"

I guess Mark's intent here is not entirely clear.  Are we talking architects knowing what a great course is for good players?   IMHO, just a continuation of the fascination with the Uber top courses in prestige, difficulty, etc., which have no bearing on real life for 99% of golfers.


Not to mention, even for architects, creating a great course is a whole next level skill over recognizing them.  I have played golf on great courses with other architects.  After that, I tend to think about how I design things. Many other turn out exactly what they turned out last time, and I wonder how they could NOT be influenced more by what they saw on course XX. 

And, sometimes they just feel that their next muni project will be greater by not attempting to be "great" by any common definition.  Also, is a good course all that can be attained on a blah site? Or for a municipal client?

We have combo tees at Streamsong and thankfully we've preserved a long-hole just out of reach for two shots for most as as well as preserved one just within reach of a well-struck tee shot on each course.

[Garland Bayley]

The minute we gave male 20-handicaps a seat at the table we got things like combination tees where every two-shot hole is between 330-380 yards and all the one-shot holes are 140-170 yards.

Exactly what kind of bs are you peddling?

The kind where I ask what a golfer has done to improve their game or overcome some individual playing deficiency in lieu of altering the golf course to suit their strengths or mitigate their weaknesses.


Often time their rhetorical positions are propped up by the mythical, non-existent, "average" golfer. "Average" in this case meaning "bad at the things I'm bad at."

Well, it goes the other way too. My regular group has 3 20 handicappers, and a single digit. It is the single digit that wants to play the hole lengths you list to protect his scoring average.

Furthermore, it seems to me that many 2nd and 3rd tier courses are built with the hole lengths you list, and you need to make combo tees to get a variety of lengths.

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