But not 'for me'

[Peter Pallotta]

While we don't often do it, most of us for almost every single post we write should probably add the proviso, 'for me'. Eg

'For me, the true spirit of the game is found at inner city municipal courses'.
Or
'While it's not the best course there, for me Bandon Dunes is the most fun'.
Or
'Of all the highly regarded golden age architects, the one who for me designed the least interesting courses is Stanley Thompson'.
Etc etc etc.

My question is: do you think there are any statements about golf courses/golf course architecture that *don't* need to be modified (and limited) by 'for me'?

[Andrew Harvie]

Watch your mouth with the Thompson bashing 

[Peter Pallotta]

Luckily, Drew, whoever might think that about Thompson would explicitly characterize it as a personal opinion -- as opposed to a fact -- by using the phrase 'for me'!

[Tom_Doak]

Always thinking of yourself, Peter!


It is very useful to think about other groups of players and how different courses might appeal (or not) to them.  A course can be excellent "for me" and just suck for women or seniors, or vice versa, and it's important to recognize those differences.  Not many great courses, or great holes, really work well for *everybody*, and just because they work well for you doesn't mean they're great.

[Sean_A]

Always thinking of yourself, Peter!

It is very useful to think about other groups of players and how different courses might appeal (or not) to them.  A course can be excellent "for me" and just suck for women or seniors, or vice versa, and it's important to recognize those differences.  Not many great courses, or great holes, really work well for *everybody*, and just because they work well for you doesn't mean they're great.

I don't play golf with women very often. At Sunny New I had an eye opener. The woman was making good contact and on a ton of holes struggled to reach fairways. It felt wrong watching her hack out of heather. This experience coloured my view of the course and has made me pay attention to this sort of thing ever since.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

It is very useful to think about other groups of players and how different courses might appeal (or not) to them.  A course can be excellent "for me" and just suck for women or seniors, or vice versa, and it's important to recognize those differences.  Not many great courses, or great holes, really work well for *everybody*, and just because they work well for you doesn't mean they're great.

I don't play golf with women very often. At Sunny New I had an eye opener. The woman was making good contact and on a ton of holes struggled to reach fairways. It felt wrong watch her hack out of heather. This experience coloured my view of the course and has made me pay attention to this sort of thing ever since.
Ciao

+1 to Tom and Sean’s comments.
I originally started playing as a small child and subsequently having later spent time as an parent organising junior golf have seen many other youngsters take up and develop at the game. The same with their mums and grandparents coz they play with their offspring more than some adult men may perhaps appreciate. These groups almost all play a game that the majority of fit adult men are totally unfamiliar and unappreciative of. Forced carries. Ugh! Rough, even short rough. Ugh. Bunkers. Ugh.
I’ve also talked to a few Greens Chairman even Head Greenkeepers who only see the game through their own eyes and the eyes of the same likely small group of other men they mostly play with. They have been reminded that in their positions they need to be thinking of all the players who play their course not just themselves. Hopefully however, those in the business see things in an all encompassing way.
There is the other side of the coin though, especially on distance and this mustn’t be forgotten either as challenges are needed for longer hitting better playing adults, both men and women, too. Neither side of the coin should really dominate however, which is why courses that permit options in playing lines are so pleasant to play and to see others playing.
Atb

[Ally Mcintosh]

Always thinking of yourself, Peter!

It is very useful to think about other groups of players and how different courses might appeal (or not) to them.  A course can be excellent "for me" and just suck for women or seniors, or vice versa, and it's important to recognize those differences.  Not many great courses, or great holes, really work well for *everybody*, and just because they work well for you doesn't mean they're great.

I don't play golf with women very often. At Sunny New I had an eye opener. The woman was making good contact and on a ton of holes struggled to reach fairways. It felt wrong watch her hack out of heather. This experience coloured my view of the course and has made me pay attention to this sort of thing ever since.

Ciao

All ladies ask is for architects to not place forward tees as an afterthought. There are plenty of examples where due thought is not given to ladies tees.


Older, short hitters really can only carry the ball 50-60 yards (particularly in headwinds), relying on run for the rest.


At Strandhill, I’ve reduced tee carries on a couple of holes by extending the fairway forward. On one hole now, we are going to accentuate a forced carry hazard. But in the process, I’ll be moving the red tee forward and aligning it to the left, the latter because it lines up with the exit path over the hazard. The amount of examples where I’m told “the older ladies can’t often make the fairway so they aim for the path” is scary.


Anyway, totally off topic with Peter’s thread. Peter, “for me” is just another way of saying “in my opinion” if you’re using it in the way I think?... I was always against adding “in my opinion” because I trusted people to take it as a given. Not much is fact. And if it is, there really isn’t much to discuss.

[SL_Solow]

I think that the point of Peter's post, other than to be able to start a thread with the title of a jazz standard, was that many times our posts reflect how our games interact with architecture rather than how it impacts on the playing population as a whole.  I think that is less true on this site than in general conversations at courses because this group is somewhat more sophisticated regarding this topic than the average player.  But it is certainly worth keeping in mind.

[mike_malone]

When I started in the investment business in 1976 I thought like Bob Farrell from Merrill Lynch and Benjamin Graham who taught Warren Buffett at Columbia. Today I continue to think like an amalgamation of accomplished investors. I guess it ends up being me but that’s not how I think.


 Once I joined a Flynn course ,saw and studied the aerials of 1926 , read the Hanse master plan in the late 90’s , read Flynn’s USGA stuff , and played the course with this knowledge I thought like him. What do I know?


I’m much more comfortable adopting the thinking of the accomplished.

[Brock Lynch]

It is very useful to think about other groups of players and how different courses might appeal (or not) to them.  A course can be excellent "for me" and just suck for women or seniors, or vice versa, and it's important to recognize those differences.  Not many great courses, or great holes, really work well for *everybody*, and just because they work well for you doesn't mean they're great.

So, when you are designing courses, do you have a target group of players or do you try to appeal to everyone?

[Peter Pallotta]

Shel, Ally:
yes, that's the question: given our many different and individual 'games' (and tastes and priorities etc) are there any statements about courses-gca we can make that *don*t* require us to add 'in my opinion'?

Is it only when (as Mike suggests) we're speaking in the 'voices of the  accomplished' that we can speak of facts?
Peter

ps - ah, good question, Brock!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Ed Seay, the lead designer for Palmer, used to say he wouldn't ask anyone what they thought of the course, he would only ask them what they shot, relative to their normal score, and he felt he had the answer.

[JMEvensky]

My question is: do you think there are any statements about golf courses/golf course architecture that *don't* need to be modified (and limited) by 'for me'?

Color me cynical but no, none. I don't think you could get 100% agreement on anything--everyone sees a golf course differently.


You could probably get close to unanimous agreement on ANGC's greens, RM-W's bunkering, etc. But there's always going to be a percentage who disagree (frequently just to disagree).

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff B - I'd never heard that before, that's really interesting thanks!

JM - thanks for the incisive answer to the specific question. But are you right? Is that true (or should you have added 'for me, IMO')?

[Edward Glidewell]

I don't play golf with women very often. At Sunny New I had an eye opener. The woman was making good contact and on a ton of holes struggled to reach fairways. It felt wrong watching her hack out of heather. This experience coloured my view of the course and has made me pay attention to this sort of thing ever since.

Ciao

I have a friend who had a similar experience playing as a fill-in at a charity scramble at Settindown Creek in Atlanta. It's one of the more highly regarded courses in Georgia -- often listed as top 10 in the state and top 2 or 3 in Atlanta.


He was playing with 3 seniors, and while I've never been to Settindown Creek, apparently many holes have relatively long forced carries between the tees and the fairway. He said there were multiple holes where none of his partners even bothered teeing off because they knew they couldn't hit the ball fair enough to get to the fairway.


There are probably some tees on the course that are on the other side of those carries that just were not used for the scramble (although I don't know that for sure), but I don't know how much playing from those tees would affect the overall design of the course. And I'm guessing most of the people who rank the course highly don't really consider that. As has been mentioned above, though, I'm not sure that they need to -- I think it's implied that they are ranking it for their own game/preferences.

[Peter Sayegh]

My question is: do you think there are any statements about golf courses/golf course architecture that *don't* need to be modified (and limited) by 'for me'?



no.

[Mark_Fine]

All golf architecture is judged through the eyes of somebody. It is hard not to gauge it against how we play the game ourselves and what we like and don't like.  However, if you really want to better understand how most people play the game and how architecture/design impacts them, find a public course and just watch groups tee off or play into a certain hole for a few hours.  It might be eye opening and give you a better appreciation of what architects need to deal with.  The game is meant to be challenging but it is also meant to be fun (at least for most). 


"For me" I love Oakmont.  For most, if they had to play it every day they would give up the game. 

[Tom_Doak]

So, when you are designing courses, do you DOES THE CLIENT have a target group of players or do you try to appeal to everyone?

Brock:


I modified that for you.  This is one of those questions where I let the client take the lead.  If I had a client who wanted Pine Valley, I'd be happy to build something like that, but most are interested in getting all sorts of golfers around in a way they can enjoy.


If left to my own devices, I will always err on the side of making the course playable for everybody.  A lot of people equate this to width, but I think width has gone over the top on some courses in recent years.  A fairway ninety yards wide makes no difference to the people who can only hit it 150 yards . . . they are actually pretty straight hitters due to their lack of power.  But even the shortest of forced carries after the tee shot will often require a lay-up first.


My emphasis on difficulty around the greens is based on that not being outside people's physical limitations, and all players having to deal with it.

[Ira Fishman]

Peter,


Posing a vexing philosophical and scientific question in the guise of golf architecture. The only accepted “absolute” for a very long time is the speed of light being a constant. But recently, even that has come into question among physicists. And many philosophers never accepted its implications for how we experience the world and evaluate those experiences.


So I stand with those who have stated that “for me” is unnecessary because it always is true. IMO.


Ira

[Lou_Duran]

I don't play golf with women very often. At Sunny New I had an eye opener. The woman was making good contact and on a ton of holes struggled to reach fairways. It felt wrong watching her hack out of heather. This experience coloured my view of the course and has made me pay attention to this sort of thing ever since.

Ciao

I was in a meeting some 16 years ago discussing a course we had just played during which the father of one of our principals stated that he was disappointed with the location of the women's tees, done, in his opinion, more as an afterthought with little regard to how the lady members played the game.  He noted further that this factor alone diminished his opinion of the course and how he would rate it.


My thought then was that evaluating a golf course should be done based on how it was designed, which at that time was typically from the championship (back) tees.  Years later as Jack Nicklaus acknowledged that designing courses for the 1% didn't make a lot of sense and that he was changing his approach, I began to consider how the course played from the next set of tees as well.  It follows that in this evolution, the women's and senior tees also merit consideration.

[archie_struthers]

 


Peter is really a good guy. I thank him for his courtesy   but wouldn't worry too much about being politically correct.

[Peter Pallotta]

Well bless you, Archie.
But to be honest, I was also looking for at least a few statements about golf-gca that I could treat as *facts*, and thus *not* have to put a 'for me' at the end of! But it seems that I'm surrounded here by a whole bunch of existential relativists who want/expect nothing more than to add their IMOs to Ran's Custodian list!!   

[Ronald Montesano]

Absolutely, yes.

There are absolutes about every golf course, indisputable in their veracity. They do not require For Me, as they are irrefutable. They fall at the farthest end of the continuum. As we move along it, there are fewer and fewer absolutes, as we enter into philosophy, nuance, subtlety, shade, tinge, hue, and gradation. When we reach soupçon, we are knocking on the door of Golf Club Atlas.

[Sam Andrews]

Ronald,


You’d better run your virus software, I think your PC has got a bug, or at the very least ants.