Warren Course at Notre Dame

[Dan_Callahan]

I was recently in South Bend and had an opportunity to walk the Warren Golf Course at Notre Dame, a Coore and Crenshaw design. It's a great looking layout, and I hope to get back there in the spring with my clubs.

As I wandered, I was struck by the unusual decision not to list par for any of the holes. I've heard that this is done at Muirfield, but have any courses in the United States gone this route? What is the rationale for not listing par? Is it simply a marketing gimmick to set the course apart and make it unique?

[THuckaby2]

Don - the Warren course has been discussed in here several times before, and the reasons for not listing par were debated at length.  I just can't remember what they were and I'm not very good at searching to find such!

Just fyi - par is most definitely listed at Muirfield - I am looking right at my scorecard from this summer and it sure is on there...

TH

[Brian_Gracely]

seems sort of silly to list the par on the card at Muirfield if playing like the members, ie. fourballs and foursomes with no strokes given or asked.  maybe you have a card from your round during the Open Championship?

[THuckaby2]

Brian:  ha!  oh yeah, I was right there with Tiger at the last Open...  

In any case you're right, par is rather irrelevant given the format of play.  Perhaps the card I got is just for visitors?  THAT is very possible - wouldn't surprise me at all if they have a separate members' card with just the yardages listed.

TH

[Dan_Callahan]

the Warren course has been discussed in here several times before, and the reasons for not listing par were debated at length.  I just can't remember what they were and I'm not very good at searching to find such!

Just fyi - par is most definitely listed at Muirfield - I am looking right at my scorecard from this summer and it sure is on there...

I figured the course must have been discussed here before, but I tried searching the archives and couldn't come up with anything. If anyone has any tips for digging up past threads, please advise...

As for the no-par scorecard, I had read a Golf Digest article by Ron Whitten in which he made the Muirfield reference. (I've never been to Muirfield, so I certainly can't verify. I assume Golf Digest has some pretty good fact checkers?!)

[THuckaby2]

Dan, I have no reason to doubt GD or Mr. Whitten.  I do have a scorecard from when I played in July right here at hand though, and par is listed on it.  Could well be that they have a different card for members with no pars listed.

It's an interesting concept anyway...

TH

[Chris_Blakely]

I played the Warren Course last June and the scorecard that I had for the course listed par.  When you walked the course, did you have a recent scorecard in hand or is your lack of par being called out a reference to the hole plates not having it on each hole?  

If I remember correctly, when the course was last discussed, it came out that par was recently added to the scorecards??

Here a link to the Warren Course's webpage and in the bottom left is a link to a scorecard that lists par.

http://www.warrengolfcourse.com/course.htm#

[THuckaby2]

Well now there goes another!

I guess the concept of not listing par is just not accepted anywhere.  Oh well.  To me it's kinda neat.

Love the colors of the tee markers at the Warren also.  Reminds me of Stanford... up tees are blue and yellow, back are red and white....

TH

[Dan_Callahan]

I didn't have a scorecard when I was there. I wonder if they plan on changing the hole plates to match the scorecard.  I agree, it was kind of a neat concept and it's too bad they've changed their minds. I'd still love to know why they went with no par initially (and now I'm equally intrigued about the decision to add it—did members complain?). Just curious if there's an interesting story behind the whole thing or if it was just an oversight.

[Tom_Doak]

Dan,

It definitely wasn't an oversight.  They built a couple of holes right around the 480 yard mark, and didn't want to assign a par to those because they didn't want them to be labeled "unfair" as a 4 or "too easy" as a 5.  You'd be surprised how quickly people slap such labels on holes.

People always bring up match play when defending this concept, but you can defend it from a stroke play standpoint, too.  It's not your score on each single hole that matters, but the overall total, right?  So if you've got two 480-yard holes, par for the moderately good player is 9.  If you make a five on the first one, you need a four on the second to maintain your place relative to others.  If you make two fours, you're probably one shot ahead of the field.

Twenty years ago some Tour professionals thought this way about short par-5 holes, until they decided they should always make fours on all of them.

[Dan_Callahan]

Dan,

It definitely wasn't an oversight.  They built a couple of holes right around the 480 yard mark, and didn't want to assign a par to those because they didn't want them to be labeled "unfair" as a 4 or "too easy" as a 5.

That being the case, any insights as to why they reversed course and added par? (Is par required to determine a course rating?)

The more I've thought about it, the more I like the idea of not dictating par. Reminds me of Caddyshack:

Judge Smails: Ty, what did you shoot today?
Ty Webb: Oh, Judge, I don't keep score.
Judge Smails: Then how do you measure yourself with other golfers?
Ty Webb: By height.

[Thomas_Brown]

My Muirfield scorecard from '92 also lists par on the holes.
Maybe Whitten's reference is historical?

[Chris_Blakely]

One thing I did remeber on playing the course is that while there were several in between holes 470 to 495, this distance was only from the 6744 Gold tees.  The link I gave to the website only lists these tees and the ones of lesser yardage as well.  However, the scorecard I have at home has a Men's Championship tee and the yardage is over 7,000 yards.  Additionally, the 17th hole that plays at 480 from the gold (and as a par 5) has the tee box for the championship track pulled back at least 40 to 50 yards and about 30 yards to the right and requiring a medium length carry over a waste area.  Also, the Biarritz like par 3 11th has its championship tee at 245 yards. I would say that at least 12 holes have a championship tee that was further back than the gold and not in play for everyday use.  I am not sure if these tees were created by C&C or not??
 

[Jay Carstens]

I got paired this past summer at the Warren Course with two professors from Notre Dame (it's like $900/yr for them).  On the first tee, after introducing myself and explaining I was visiting from Nebraska, they proceeded to inform me that all the Nebraska Cornhusker items from South Bend's College Football Hall of Fame had been removed....until NU goes Division 1 again.  
Of course after a 7-7 record the previous year I had to chuckle (a little).   But given the inferior quality of my rental set I then kindly asked to borrow a driver.  That drive and the remainder of the round, using their clubs, turned out to be quite memorable, if you know what I mean.      

[Tom_Doak]

Thomas B:  I can confirm that when I first played Muirfield 21 years ago, par was not on the scorecard given to me.  (All it had was a hole number, yardage, and a box for one player's score.)

The last three times I've played it was with Archie Baird, usually in a foursomes match, and we didn't bother with a scorecard at all.  But I'm sure I've seen cards with par on them somewhere.

[THuckaby2]

This is very interesting re Muirfield... I was curious myself, so I pulled out my scorecard from 1987, and sure enough, there was no par, just as Tom Doak says.  I wonder when they made the change - because the card from this summer sure as hell does have par listings - and why...

TH