twin holes

[Mark Molyneux]

It was Tom's discussion of short par threes that got me to thinking about par 3s in general and something I encountered a while ago on Long Island at the Eisenhower Park complex that I've never seen anywhere else. Here, from the Nassau County Parks description, "The White Course at Eisenhower measures 6932 yards from the Championship tees, 6399 yards from the middle tees, and 5357 yards from the forward tees. The course has elevated greens WITH 22 HOLES (emphasis mine), as the par threes have double identical holes..."   


If you're unfamiliar with Eisenhower Park is a 1950ish creation of Robert Trent Jones. It's a solid test of golf on a rather large though plain piece of land. There are the Red, White and Blue courses and the Red is probably the best of the three. It has hosted pro tournaments and it seemed to be the favored track of the threesome I got paired with.



When I played Eisenhower Park - White, the locals talked a lot about heroic shots they'd hit in the past. It was evident that they'd played here more than a handful of times. They talked about ducking into a bunker one time, when they heard gunshots from a nearby highrise but at the fifth tee, with two strikingly similar par 3s sitting before me, I had to ask, "Okay... which one do we play?" and the answer came back, "The one with nobody on the green." Further they said, this was RTJ's way to improve traffic flow around the course.


I'll put aside the issue of how possible it might be to create side-by-side EXACTLY IDENTICAL holes. I'll even accept that 70 years of play might not have suggested even subtle adjustments to slope or rating. But, I left with some questions. For instance, nothing on the card or from the shop said that I had to play the right-side tees or the left-side tees consistently through the round. If one simply fit my eye better, and the course weren't crowded, could I play 5A instead of 5B? Suppose my playing partners played 5A but I wanted to play 5B... nothing seemed to make them correct and me wrong. Let's just say I hit OB on 5A, could I go back and retee on 5B? After all, it's just the 5th hole. Heaven forbid I snap hook my tee shot on the 220 yard 17th from the right-side tee onto the left-side green, am I allowed to claim "confusion"?


It has to be expensive to maintain 4 extra tees and 4 extra greens. Do we honestly believe that RTJ was just trying to speed things up and if so, considering the extra expense, could that possibly be worth it? Does this work better than a prominent greenside sign that says, "Please mark your ball on the green and wave up the group behind you." Maybe all CAPS... maybe orange lettering on a black background?


For a minute, I thought maybe Trent Jones was getting paid by the hole so extra golf holes brought in a larger paycheck. I've seen plenty of places maintain a 19th hole for "beer games" or in case one of the regular 18 goes offline for whatever reason but I have never seen 4 spare holes. That'd be like carrying 4 spares in my trunk in case all four tires go flat simultaneously... remotely possible by highly unlikely!


Anyone ever encounter something like this elsewhere? Any thoughts on why it exists at Eisenhower Park?

[Tom_Doak]

Mark:


I believe Mr. Jones did the same thing on the public course he owned in Fort Lauderdale, which is / was known as the American Golfers Club.  I got a tour of it from him many years ago, followed by dinner with him and Mrs. Jones!


I am sure he did it for pace of play, although I'm sure he also liked making a little extra from the construction budget.


Weirdly, I have never seen a study of whether it actually speeds up play, and by how much.  It would be easy as hell to find out; all they'd have to do is close the alternate holes one weekend, and then use them the next!


The rest of your questions are silly -- just do what you want, unless you are part of a serious match.

[Michael Moore]

https://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,31979

[Phil Carlucci]

Anyone ever encounter something like this elsewhere? Any thoughts on why it exists at Eisenhower Park?

You might be happy to learn that Eisenhower White is down to 21 holes, from the listed 22 -- the left hole on #17 was a casualty during the county's (very nice) revamp of the White's bunkers in 2017.  Left #17 green is now site of a new back tee on #18.

I and others have always assumed that the twin par-3s were put in to remedy slow play.  And I have articles from 1948 and 1950 that confirm this to be true.  The 1948 article previews the two new RTJ courses (Jones gave the writer a walking tour of the courses, it says) and calls the twin par-3s "the most modern thing in golf," and says "there will be no holdup in play."

The 1950 article is more an opinion piece that basically praises RTJ for his ingenuity.

Personally, I don't go anywhere near Eisenhower Park at times where the Blue/White courses are busy enough to require play on the twin hole.  So I can't really comment on their effectiveness or how often they are even used.  What I can say is that it's not often, at least in my experience, that the holes are actually "identical," whether that's because of general maintenance, bunker renovations, etc. 

[Bill Seitz]

Mark:


I believe Mr. Jones did the same thing on the public course he owned in Fort Lauderdale, which is / was known as the American Golfers Club.  I got a tour of it from him many years ago, followed by dinner with him and Mrs. Jones!


I am sure he did it for pace of play, although I'm sure he also liked making a little extra from the construction budget.


Weirdly, I have never seen a study of whether it actually speeds up play, and by how much.  It would be easy as hell to find out; all they'd have to do is close the alternate holes one weekend, and then use them the next!


The rest of your questions are silly -- just do what you want, unless you are part of a serious match.

It seems like it would have minimal impact on pace of play over 18 holes, unless you did it on the last four holes or so.  Many years ago on the north side of Chicago, they built an overpass on Western Ave to cross over Belmont.  I think it had something to do with amusement park at that location that is long since closed.  There are traffic light four blocks south and four blocks north.  They recently removed the overpass and it's now a regular intersection (well, a five-way, since it's Clybourn's northern terminus).  There was some outcry about how removing the overpass and regulating traffic on Western by a light would slow down traffic.   But all the overpass really did was get you to the next light faster, where you'd be forced to stop.  Kind of seems like the same situation to me. You just get to the next logjam a little quicker. 

[Michael Felton]

Mark:


I believe Mr. Jones did the same thing on the public course he owned in Fort Lauderdale, which is / was known as the American Golfers Club.  I got a tour of it from him many years ago, followed by dinner with him and Mrs. Jones!


I am sure he did it for pace of play, although I'm sure he also liked making a little extra from the construction budget.


Weirdly, I have never seen a study of whether it actually speeds up play, and by how much.  It would be easy as hell to find out; all they'd have to do is close the alternate holes one weekend, and then use them the next!


The rest of your questions are silly -- just do what you want, unless you are part of a serious match.

It seems like it would have minimal impact on pace of play over 18 holes, unless you did it on the last four holes or so.  Many years ago on the north side of Chicago, they built an overpass on Western Ave to cross over Belmont.  I think it had something to do with amusement park at that location that is long since closed.  There are traffic light four blocks south and four blocks north.  They recently removed the overpass and it's now a regular intersection (well, a five-way, since it's Clybourn's northern terminus).  There was some outcry about how removing the overpass and regulating traffic on Western by a light would slow down traffic.   But all the overpass really did was get you to the next light faster, where you'd be forced to stop.  Kind of seems like the same situation to me. You just get to the next logjam a little quicker.

The par threes are typically the logjam though. Here's the thing - let's say you have 8 minute tee time gaps and the par threes take an average group 10 minutes to play (optimistic), group two will have a 2 minute wait, group three will have a 4 minute wait and so on, until group 20 has about a 40 minute wait. That's why you wind up with three groups on the tee of the first par three on a busy weekend morning.


Conversely the 8 minute gaps allow you 16 minutes to play a par four, which is much more reasonable. Splitting those par threes into two gives everyone 16 minutes before the next group comes along and most groups ought to be able to get through the hole that quickly. It won't be perfect for sure, but over the day, the averages "should" work in your favour if you have the two par threes for people to play. I'd be curious to see how it pans out in reality.


I agree if the problem is that a group is playing slowly, but the course is otherwise not too busy, then it won't make any difference, but if there's too much traffic to fit through the bottleneck that is a par three, then adding an extra lane will help.

[Tom_Doak]

I agree if the problem is that a group is playing slowly, but the course is otherwise not too busy, then it won't make any difference, but if there's too much traffic to fit through the bottleneck that is a par three, then adding an extra lane will help.

Unless, of course, they declare the problem solved and start putting people out six or seven minutes apart to make even more money, and back up the whole course. 

[Ronald Montesano]

They aren't alternate holes, but the James Baird (NY) State Park course near Poughkeepsie (hard against the Taconic parkway) has adjacent par threes (8 and 15) that have caused confusion in NYSCHSAA tournaments.

[Mike_Trenham]

Hercules CC later known briefly as Delaware National had one set of par 3s like this.  I can’t recall what drove them to add the alternative hole.  Seemed like a waste to me.

[Chris_Blakely]

RTJ Sr did this at Raymond Memorial GC in Columbus, Ohio as was mentioned on the previous thread attached.  The double greens still existed on all four par three holes when I played several years ago. The course was built in 1954 and Eisenhower Park was redone by Jones in 1950 so it seems to align from a date when he was doing this.


Chris

[Kalen Braley]

Not sure who designed Spring Valley golf course in Milpitas, CA.

But 9 and 18 would certainly qualify as twin holes.  Only played it once before I joined GCA, but recall thinking to myself why build basically the same hole, and put them next to each other, and make them the finishing holes. They were uninteresting to boot but certainly complied with having a token pond in front of the tees to carry to the fairway.

[Michael Felton]

I agree if the problem is that a group is playing slowly, but the course is otherwise not too busy, then it won't make any difference, but if there's too much traffic to fit through the bottleneck that is a par three, then adding an extra lane will help.

Unless, of course, they declare the problem solved and start putting people out six or seven minutes apart to make even more money, and back up the whole course. 

It's...it's almost like you've worked with people like this before!