Lou,
Care to present some evidence that consumers will not want to play a course with a crowned green?
I don’t think anyone wants to play a course with 18 very difficult greens, but I’d like some evidence from you and others that show how a convex shaped green, done well, will be rejected by golfers.
Remember all greens have to surface drain.
And that thread about wet approaches? Read Jeff’s post about how greens must be shaped back to front and then add 2 + 2.
Crowned greens done well work just fine. The high point doesn’t have to be snack dab in the middle. I’m not talking upside down cereal bowls here.
Don,
I work with several biz consultants and management companies over the years. Bluntly, no one ever complains about a course being too easy (except in very rare cases of being far too easy). One consultant says the most popular courses are those with an average slope rating of 116. Another says the barometer for a course you could play every day is a course you could normally shoot your average score most days, within a few strokes. Tying that to the slope rating, I would say the effective average slope rating in the US is 120, and in urban areas with a lot of newer courses (like Houston and DFW) the average slope is probably between 120 and 130, so the average player there would probably prefer courses about that tough.
I have seen it across the dozens of courses I have designed. The hardest ones slowly lose popularity, so again, I have to go on my experience. (and no one has ever called me to add bunkers or contours, LOL)
Granted, there may be a difference between a destination resort course and a local course you could play everyday. I get that it needs to be pretty and pretty interesting, it just doesn't need to be impossible to play with an every day shot. There is no design interest in a green or fw you can't hit with a reasonable good shot.
And, remember, to the C player, a good shot is defined as one that gets airborne, within a few degrees of being on the right line, and at least most of the way to the green. We sometimes forget just how bad the average golfer who populates our courses is, and designing for the top 1%, without any particular reason certainly isn't form follows function. Tying this to another thread where Tom Doak called me pedantic, I still have to ask if so called "great design" needs to be attained by ignoring long established principles.
I mean, a reverse slope green is an interesting challenge most of us here would relish, but like Lou says, enthusiasm runs far less everywhere that is NOT golfclubatlas.com. And, I have designed them, making sure there is a way to land the ball short to account for the run. But half a green sloping away? Where you have to land a shot in half of a 30 yard deep area to have a chance to hold? At any distance over 100 yards, most golfers don't statistically have that shot. Maybe, maybe, maybe if you somehow keep the back of the green a reasonable recovery shot, but in reality, an unittable target with an easy recovery isn't all that strong a design concept. An easily hittable green with a harder recovery is more typical.
As to the back to front, yes, a green draining 100% to the front can make the approach wet. As you probably also know and do, most of us drain our greens in two directions, maybe 3, taking the back half out to the low side somewhere, even as the overall green still tilts up. Where I can, I look to drain 60% of the green anywhere but off the front. If the cart path is on the low side, I might direct more drainage to the front to keep the walk up areas between the path and green drier (in clay soils). So yes, draining the green is a consideration.
That said, I wonder why so many amateur architects here think its a great idea to design a target that physics almost certainly say won't accept a normal shot?
Michael Dugger,
Again, there is room in golf for Pine Valley type courses. If a modern day Crump wanted to build one, no one should stop them. It's just that most things are on a bell curve, and maybe 10% should be both very hard and very easy, and the mid 80% should be a reasonable challenge.
As per my answer above, yes, you need to please the client, who is most likely trying to appeal to the broadest segment of golfers available, and "good practice" suggests attainable targets for the masses. Obviously, there needs to be some young architects out there who think outside the box and gingerly introduce some long lost design elements into new designs. Just remember, most new ideas actually fail, probably at about the same rates as new businesses.