[Ben Hollerbach]

What is the shortest and hardest composite course the PGA Tour "could" play from, using every course in their rotation of courses?

Looking at the scoring averages from the 2020 season, this is the course I put together:

1: Pebble Beach no. 1 - 381 yard par 4 - (4.14 stroke average)
2: Monterey Peninsula Shore no. 6 - 570 yard par 5 - (5.02 stroke average)
3: Bay Hill no. 11 - 438 yard par 4 - (4.31 stroke average)
4: TPC Southwind no. 11 - 162 yard par 3 (3.10 stroke average)
5: Spyglass Hill no. 2 - 349 yard par 4 (4.01 stroke average)
6: PGA National no. 4 - 395 yard par 4 (4.22 stroke average)
7: Kapalua Plantation no. 11 - 161 yard par 3 (3.24 stroke average)
8: Olympia Fields North no. 12 - 389 yard par 4 (4.16 stroke average)
9: Monterey Peninsula Shore no. 18 - 381 yard par 4 (4.12 stroke average)

Out: 3,226 yard par 35 (36.32 stroke average

10: Waialae no. 10 - 351 yard par 4 (4.08 stroke average)
11: Pebble Beach no. 5 - 188 yard par 3 (3.25 stroke average)
12: Waialae no. 15 - 398 yard par 4 (4.25 stroke average)
13: PGA National no. 1 - 365 yard par 4 (4.01 stroke average)
14: Pebble Beach no. 11 - 380 yard par 4 (4.10 stroke average)
15: PGA National no. 15 - 179 yard par 3 (3.29 stroke average)
16: Bay Hill no. 13 - 370 yard par 4 - (4.01 stroke average)
17: Pebble Beach no. 8 - 418 yard par 4 - (4.27 stroke average)
18: Pebble Beach no. 18 - 543 yard par 5 - (5.15 stroke average)

In: 3,192 yard par 35 (36.41 stroke average)

Tot.: 6,418 yard par 70 (72.73 stroke average)

I'm not sure what, if anything can be taken from this, but it is interesting to look at and think that a course just a bit longer than 6,400 yards could actually play nearly 3 strokes over par by PGA Tour standards.


Before I started looking into this I had the following expectations

• Both Riviera no. 10 and Pebble Beach no. 7 to make the list, neither did
• Water would be a very prevalent defense mechanism, it is only in play on 8 or 9 of the holes
• The longest par 3 would be less than 170 yards, there are only 18 par threes shorter than 170 yards on the PGA Tour, all but two have a negative stroke average
• The majority of holes would be on courses build before 1950, less than half actually were.
• Very few course would have more than on holes on the routing, 5 different courses had more than one hole listed

It very interesting that 16 of the 18 holes were from Hawaii, California, and Florida. Which makes me think that pretty much the only common trend among the courses may be the use of wind as a defense mechanism.


What are your thought, Could a short course in real life actually hold its own against the best of the best? Is there anything to be taken from the hardest short holes on the PGA Tour that could be applied to design in general?

[Matt_Cohn]

Is there anything to be taken from the hardest short holes on the PGA Tour that could be applied to design in general?

Forced layups, wind, and water?

[Duncan Cheslett]

The more par 3s and the fewer par 5s you have the shorter and tougher the course will be in relation to par for top players.

Even a 6000 yard course with maybe one par 5 and five or six par 3s can be a handful for these guys if the wind is up and the greens are wild and lively enough!

100 years ago no-one thought that a course had to be par 72. Plenty of courses were built at par 67 or 68 and gave enjoyable golf for members while at the same time testing the elite. A well designed 6400 yard par 67 course could easily host majors today and not get ripped apart.

Instead of lengthening courses to toughen them up how about shortening them? 😉

[mike_beene]

What is the altitude adjusted length of te course In Mexico City?

[Thomas Dai]

Having more par-3's drops the overall yardage and I believe it's par-3's where pro's score worst in relation to par.
And then there's set-up ......
atb


PS - note no mention of ball/equipment, caddies, green-reading books etc etc!

[Duncan Cheslett]

Having more par-3's drops the overall yardage and I believe it's par-3's where pro's score worst in relation to par.
And then there's set-up ......

Exactly.


A case in point is a hole like the celebrated 3rd at Cavendish.


3 by Duncan Cheslett, on Flickr


It plays downhill with a severely canted fairway and a treacherous fall-away green.

As a driveable par 4 at 280 yards half the field would score a birdie or better.

As a par 3 at 260 yards played from the Ladies' tee half the field would score a bogey - or worse!

[Michael Felton]

I'm curious how plausible a course like this would be - like do they all (or most) play into the prevailing wind or are they mostly uphill holes?


I'm surprised none of the holes at TPC Sawgrass qualified.

[Ben Hollerbach]

One 3 of the holes have forced layups, Wind is most likely prevalent on the majority of these holes, but water really only impacts 8 of the holes. With most of the holes in Florida or the Monterey Peninsula, they don't have a significant amount of elevation change.

Having more par 3's could be used to keep the distance in check, and balancing the routing with fewer par 5's would take away scoring chances. But par 3's are not really that much more difficult for pro's than par 4's. The average for all par 3's is 3.083 and the average for all par 4's is 4.032. Counter that with the par 5 average of 4.65 its clear that fewer par 5's is the way to go.

If anyone would like to take a look at the hole-by-hole scoring breakdown, and try to put together your best short monster, my spreadsheet can be found here: 2020 PGA Tour All Holes Scoring Average

[John Emerson]

No it would be annihilated anyway you try to spin it.  It’s too short

[Ben Hollerbach]

No it would be annihilated anyway you try to spin it.  It’s too short

John,


How can you be so confidant when the PGA Tour data show that short holes can be challenging to the players?

[Mark_Fine]

On an earlier thread I proposed an 18 hole championship design with 10 par threes, 4 par fours and 4 par fives that was 6400 yards in length.  From the tips the par threes could average out to 200 yards per hole, the par fours average out to 500 yards per hole, and the par fives average out to 600 yards per hole and you would still only have 6400 yards of total length.  It could be very challenging and sit on much less average. 

[Duncan Cheslett]

No it would be annihilated anyway you try to spin it.  It’s too short

It is perfectly feasible to have a 6400 yard course with no par 5s but with seven or eight par 4s of between 440 and 480 yards.


Couple this with five or six tricky par 3s and there is no reason why it would be annihilated. Or play too short.

[JESII]

I suspect this type of course would have a very wide scoring spectrum...winning scores would be better than 20 under par because the guys that are on would have tons of birdie opportunities. But, the cut and lower finishers would hold up well to par.


What's wrong with 20 under par winning?

[Mark_Fine]

Jim,
Nothing wrong with 20 under winning.  In the design I proposed, you could make the course as challenging and interesting as you like and distance would not be the deciding factor (which is one of the problems with many of the PGA tour courses these days).  Long accurate hitters will always have an advantage as they should but at least you don't need 8000 yards of golf course to test them. 

[JESII]

Am I remembering that your course is a par 66 or 67? While I have no problem with that, and would lean that way to defend par versus lengthening, it seems the powers that be may have a problem with it.

[David Ober]

No it would be annihilated anyway you try to spin it.  It’s too short

How can you be so confidant when the PGA Tour data show that short holes can be challenging to the players?

Ben, with all due(?) respect (I don't know you, after all  ), the data show no such thing ... yet. You would need multi-year averages to in any way prove your point. I bet at least half of the holes played the way they did due to extreme weather conditions that year at that particular course, and that the overall stroke averages for ALL holes was significantly higher if the short holes were particularly high that year, but who knows.

That said, how long was Merion for the U.S. Am and the U.S. Open? But I don't think we're necessarily talking about having U.S. Open conditions in order for the 6400 yard course to "hold up," right?

At 6400, pros just tear up golf courses. Hell, they tear them up at 6,800. 7,000. Sure, on a 6400 yard course you could set it up such that the cut was only 6 or 8 under, but the winner on any course that short would shoot 25 to 40 under depending on weather. If a short-knocking 53 year old amateur with a horrible back can shoot 8-under 64 on a 6,570 yard 71.5/129 course, that's all you need to know about what pros do to courses like that.

Quick story: There is a Pro that plays out of my club. He's been to Q-School finals three times in four years. Has won a bunch of solid mini-tour events (Cal Open, SoCal Open, Long Beach Open, et al.), a few months ago, he did the following at our golf course:

Hole 1) 362 yards - Drove just off the green. Chipped in for EAGLE.

Hole 2) 299 yards, with a large front bunker and guarded by trees - Flew a 3-wood to 6-inches. EAGLE.

Hole 3) 362 yards - Drove 50 yards short, pitched to a few feet, BIRDIE.

Hole 4) 556 yards - Driver, 4-iron to 6 feet. EAGLE.

Yes, you read that right. 7-under through 4 holes.

The modern pro is just ... really, really good. I think we all understand that. The thing is, though, that even when they are "off," there's always 40 other pros in the field who are "on," and they'd just destroy a 6400 yard course ... unless every par 4 had a green like the 10th at Riviera.

I think that's it, actually: You could make a course with tiny, tiny greens that you baked out and tucked every pin, and you could definitely challenge the pros. But would that be good design? I would love to play a course like that, but in order for it to challenge the pros, you would need to surround every green with deep, gnarly rough, and the greens would have to be very, very firm. And still, the winner would shoot 20 to 25 under even if you "challenged" the rest of the field....

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Quick story: There is a Pro that plays out of my club. He's been to Q-School finals three times in four years. Has won a bunch of solid mini-tour events (Cal Open, SoCal Open, Long Beach Open, et al.), a few months ago, he did the following at our golf course:

6400 yards is 356 yards per hole. So let's do a little thought experiment…

From 360 yards out, on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour players average 3.92. Multiply that by 18 and the players are going to average a whopping… 1.44 under par. (They're going to do a bit better than that if literally every hole was the same length, but the point is… players aren't all doing what the example anecdotal player did all that often, and I think you're over-estimating the skills. The hole is still only 4.25" in diameter, and PGA Tour players still average about three strokes on par threes. Adding a few thousand yards to 18 par-three holes is going to balloon the average score quite a bit - they're not going to shoot 62 all the time from 6400 yards.)

Your player, from 50 yards out? PGA Tour average from about 50 yards (in the fairway) is still 2.65. Over 18 holes, that's about 6 or 7 under par.

The player you spoke of got off to a hot start, no doubt. But it was an anomalous start and/or an anomalous round. Heck, I've been five under through three holes before.

[Jim Sherma]

I think that the lengthening of Merion (6,544 in 1981 to 6,996 in 2013 as per Wikipedia) shows that it is understood, by the USGA at least, that even that course at at under 6,600, with the likely conditioning and set-up, was not likely to challenge the field. Any short course (6,300-6,600) with less than US Open type of set-up would definitely be eaten alive by today's fields with today's equipment. I guess that there is a very extreme presentation (rock hard greens with no meaningful back to front tilt) that would be very difficult to score on, although with the whole field having wedges in their hands I am not sure of that.

[Ben Hollerbach]

Ben, with all due(?) respect (I don't know you, after all  ), the data show no such thing ... yet. You would need multi-year averages to in any way prove your point.

The modern pro is just ... really, really good. I think we all understand that. The thing is, though, that even when they are "off," there's always 40 other pros in the field who are "on," and they'd just destroy a 6400 yard course ... unless every par 4 had a green like the 10th at Riviera.

True, it's one year and possibly the conditions were extreme at the courses I pulled holes from that week. I'll look for the last few years of data to compare.


In 2020, there have been 630 holes played a grand total of 206,448 times. That is a fairly large sample size. Taking out the 18 holes I picked you could make multiple other composite courses and produce similarly difficult sub 6,500 yards courses. Each time its possible to create a new course of this criteria other environmental factors are mitigated and you're left with simply the play of the PGA Tour caliber player.


We often look at the winning score to dictate the state of the course. Why is that? As you mentioned a lot of people can be "on" any given week, and virtually no golf course is "safe" but I'm not looking at that standout performance. We're looking at the combination of the whole. If a player is off and makes a double, it takes two on players making birdies to counter them. A hole that gives up an equal amount of eagles and birdies as it does bogeys and doubles is a well balanced hole for the tour, and that's the baseline of what we're looking for.



With players that are excellent or just simply very good, there are short holes that see to be able to hold their own against the field.

[David Ober]

Quick story: There is a Pro that plays out of my club. He's been to Q-School finals three times in four years. Has won a bunch of solid mini-tour events (Cal Open, SoCal Open, Long Beach Open, et al.), a few months ago, he did the following at our golf course:

6400 yards is 356 yards per hole. So let's do a little thought experiment…

From 360 yards out, on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour players average 3.92. Multiply that by 18 and the players are going to average a whopping… 1.44 under par. (They're going to do a bit better than that if literally every hole was the same length, but the point is… players aren't all doing what the example anecdotal player did all that often, and I think you're over-estimating the skills. The hole is still only 4.25" in diameter, and PGA Tour players still average about three strokes on par threes. Adding a few thousand yards to 18 par-three holes is going to balloon the average score quite a bit - they're not going to shoot 62 all the time from 6400 yards.)

Your player, from 50 yards out? PGA Tour average from about 50 yards (in the fairway) is still 2.65. Over 18 holes, that's about 6 or 7 under par.

The player you spoke of got off to a hot start, no doubt. But it was an anomalous start and/or an anomalous round. Heck, I've been five under through three holes before.

Dude ....


Do you really think I don't know his start was anomalous?


And you are absolutely right, they are definitely not going to "shoot 62 all the time" at 6400 yards. 100% correct. The winner would probably shoot 58, 64d, 67, 63. That's definitely not "62 all the time." And the cut would be a pair of 69's or so. At my home course, probably a pair of 68's for a full-field PGA Tour event, and we're 6,570, 71.5/129. And, yes, plenty of guys who miss the cut would shoot 72, 71 and slam the trunk. That's golf.


But make no mistake, the top guys that would would Light. It. Up.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Do you really think I don't know his start was anomalous?

I figured you did, but why mention it? Jim Furyk shot 58 (and 59). Doesn't mean that's indicative of regular play.

And you are absolutely right, they are definitely not going to "shoot 62 all the time" at 6400 yards. 100% correct. The winner would probably shoot 58, 64d, 67, 63.

I'd probably take that bet (particularly with the sub-60 round in there). The hole is still only 4.25". That's 36 under on a par 72. Again, even if they were within 50 yards on EVERY hole, and IN the fairway, they'd shoot 6 or 7 under on average. Now, sure, the winners will go lower. That's the way averages work. But that's within 50 yards of every hole, and there are still going to be longer par fives, longer par fours, shorter par fours where they don't hit driver, par threes where they're approaching from 200 yards… etc.

The guys on Tour are very good. They're just not super-human.

And if they did… I'm still firmly in the camp of "who cares?" (Obviously some people care, I'm just saying I don't. The same people who think par is irrelevant often seem to be the same people who care about scoring on the Tour. I'm not including you in this; I don't know how you feel about it.)

[Rob Marshall]

Quick story: There is a Pro that plays out of my club. He's been to Q-School finals three times in four years. Has won a bunch of solid mini-tour events (Cal Open, SoCal Open, Long Beach Open, et al.), a few months ago, he did the following at our golf course:

6400 yards is 356 yards per hole. So let's do a little thought experiment…

From 360 yards out, on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour players average 3.92. Multiply that by 18 and the players are going to average a whopping… 1.44 under par. (They're going to do a bit better than that if literally every hole was the same length, but the point is… players aren't all doing what the example anecdotal player did all that often, and I think you're over-estimating the skills. The hole is still only 4.25" in diameter, and PGA Tour players still average about three strokes on par threes. Adding a few thousand yards to 18 par-three holes is going to balloon the average score quite a bit - they're not going to shoot 62 all the time from 6400 yards.)

Your player, from 50 yards out? PGA Tour average from about 50 yards (in the fairway) is still 2.65. Over 18 holes, that's about 6 or 7 under par.

The player you spoke of got off to a hot start, no doubt. But it was an anomalous start and/or an anomalous round. Heck, I've been five under through three holes before.

Dude ....


Do you really think I don't know his start was anomalous?


And you are absolutely right, they are definitely not going to "shoot 62 all the time" at 6400 yards. 100% correct. The winner would probably shoot 58, 64d, 67, 63. That's definitely not "62 all the time." And the cut would be a pair of 69's or so. At my home course, probably a pair of 68's for a full-field PGA Tour event, and we're 6,570, 71.5/129. And, yes, plenty of guys who miss the cut would shoot 72, 71 and slam the trunk. That's golf.


But make no mistake, the top guys that would would Light. It. Up.

You are arguing with the wrong guy. He’s smarter than you, a better player than you, and more educated than you. Just ask him.

[Tom_Doak]

I think that the lengthening of Merion (6,544 in 1981 to 6,996 in 2013 as per Wikipedia) shows that it is understood, by the USGA at least, that even that course at at under 6,600, with the likely conditioning and set-up, was not likely to challenge the field. Any short course (6,300-6,600) with less than US Open type of set-up would definitely be eaten alive by today's fields with today's equipment. I guess that there is a very extreme presentation (rock hard greens with no meaningful back to front tilt) that would be very difficult to score on, although with the whole field having wedges in their hands I am not sure of that.

Merion was set up just as your last sentence describes, even at 7000 yards.


"It is understood" that courses cannot be played at 6400 yards, to be absolutely sure that prople don't see the Emperor with his clothes off.  What you actually see on Tour every week is that extra length matters little to those guys. 


Erik's read on the stats here is correct - as long as the greens aren't easy to drive and you can't get up and down easily from both sides, short par-4's are not being ripped up nearly as much as everyone assumes.  But the powers that be don't want you to see that, they want you to hear about how much the course has been lengthened.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Rob, troll better. Jeez man.

Erik's read on the stats here is correct - as long as the greens aren't easy to drive and you can't get up and down easily from both sides, short par-4's are not being ripped up nearly as much as everyone assumes.  But the powers that be don't want you to see that, they want you to hear about how much the course has been lengthened.

Tom, what's your take on the idea that - and I won't be able to put this into words the best, but maybe you can get what I'm going for here - some of the more interesting holes to see played on the PGA Tour these days are the short par fours. Not all of them - the one at I think the Travelers is a bore, with the rough bordering the green to keep shots from going into the water - but Riviera's tenth, the one Morikawa eagled at the PGA at Harding Park, etc. They don't add massive length to the course's scorecard, but they're frustrating, they force decisions, pros are unsettled, etc.

Every course can't just re-create Riviera's tenth, of course, but I think there are enough sites for 290 to 310-yard holes that would result in all sorts of strategies, tactics, bit numbers, small numbers… and scoring variety and interest. No course should probably have more than one or two of them, but I'm in favor of the short but treacherous par three, and a short par five, too. So, between the three, you could have four holes perhaps on a course that all play a combined 300-400 yards shorter than typical holes with those pars (3, 4, 4, 5 perhaps)? Maybe a 120-yard hole (instead of 200), a 290- and 320-yard hole (instead of 440+), and a 510-yard hole that didn't just play like a par four somehow… Or just ditch the par five and you're still looking at a bit over 300 yards shaved.

[Peter Pallotta]

Ben - really neat first post and good thread. An aside, hopefully at least a bit relevant:
Last week on the Champions Tour I was happy to see short-hitting-shot-making Corey Pavin's name on the top of the leaderboard (before fading and Els' excellent final round.) What was most interesting to me is how he got there and how he shot his low number of the tournament  -- which was by doing exactly what he did 25-30 years ago, ie at least holding his own on all the Par 4s, losing a bit to the field on the Par 5s, but more than making up for that on the Par 3s, where his scoring average topped the field (just as it had, IIRC, for an entire season or two or three back during his PGA Tour days).

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