Micro-undulations as a source of interest and challenge

[Mark Bourgeois]

What are good examples of modern courses with fairway micro-undulations, particularly courses not built on sand?

I feel this is a tremendously undervalued feature and look upon it almost as a lost art. One foot on a hump, the other in a hollow and the ball beneath your feet: now here's an interesting and potentially fun shot, in part made that much harder by the modern golfer's lack of experience with such rank unfairness.

It seems even a lot of courses built on sand and in the last 50 years lack them.

George Waters in his GCA.com interview notes the importance of sand base -- see below -- but mainly in the context of modern equipment. Lots of old courses in the Northeast aren't built on sand yet have these marvelous micro-undulations. And it seems even a fair number of courses built on sand and in the last 50 years lack them.

Is the problem as much one of demand (golfers' changing preferences) as of construction? How hard is it, really to create micro-undulations, particularly on non-sandy sites?




9. Please expand on your term ‘washboard effect.’

The washboard effect refers to the endless small-scale undulations found in many of the best sandy fairways. When fairway undulations become too large, every shot ends up in the valleys between the humps. The tiny wrinkles in a washboard fairway allow the ball to come to rest on any angle, each presenting its own challenge. Stance and lie influence your strategy on every shot, and sandy courses make the most of this subtle challenge. Your entire plan for a hole can be altered by finding your ball on the downslope of a tiny washboard wrinkle. Muirfield, North Berwick, and the Old Course each boast a wealth of this topography, and indeed each of these courses depends on the washboard effect to provide strategy and interest on their otherwise gentle sites.

Sadly, washboard contours are very difficult to replicate away from sandy terrain. Part of the problem is that small wrinkles don’t stand up well to the construction processes that are often necessary when dealing with heavier soils, such as topsoil stripping and large scale fairway grading. Sandy sites generally require less work with smaller equipment, so it is much easier to preserve small wrinkles and incorporate them into the design. Another problem is that most soils lack the drainage characteristics required to accommodate an endless sea of wrinkles. If you tried to build a washboard fairway in heavy clay the many dips and hollows would often be sopping wet. That is why the subtle wrinkles that do exist on sites with heavier soils are typically graded away, allowing water to gather in a few large basins or sheet entirely off the hole, effectively ending any hope for a washboard effect.


The perfect washboard effect of Muirfield’s 8th fairway.

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark - hope you don't mind me adding another question to yours, one that I think may be related, i.e.

Has the increasing dominance of the big, bold and dramatic feature -- on courses by both maximalists and minimalists alike --  literally wiped the micro-undulations off the landscape as being both unnecessary (playability wise) and incongruent (aesthetically speaking)?

Is this an example of the far-reaching consequences of the "signature hole", and of the "signature architect" too for that matter (again, whether the earth-mover or the naturalist) -- where the glossy photographs of an immediately-recognizable design aesthetic so important to modern-day marketing has driven gca towards the ever more-frequent use of ever-bigger and bolder features?

Peter

[Bill_McBride]

The rig and furrows over part of the fairways at Alwoodley, medieval micro undulations. 

[BCowan]

Sweetens Cove in Chatt, TN

[Thomas Dai]

"Washboard" is a great term and micro-undulations splendid. Apologies Mark but links courses do come to mind first.

The Glashedy course at Ballyliffin is, IMO, an example of a lack of micro's on a links. A legacy of 'big machine' construction? Now the other course at Ballyliffin, the lovely Old course, well micro's abound on it.

A fine example of micro's is on a lesser known and visited links, the delightful, understated Dunfanaghy, which from a distance looks to be a mainly very flat course. But, initial appearances are deceptive, nothing is really flat at all. Gentle folds, subtle rises and falls, dips and humps and hollows abound and a level stance or flat lie is the exception rather than the norm.

Here's a typical lie and stance, target in the distance, feet on one side of a hump giving an uphill stance, ball on the other side of the hump giving a downhill lie.


And here, in front of the 5th green, is the kind of mild yet still bumpy terrain in front of the greens. You kinda want to play a bump-n-run but can you achieve success over these undulations? If not, can you fly it all the way and stop it quickly enough on the very firm and smooth rolling greens? Your choice!


UK Inland courses? Good example of rig and furrow terrain from Bill. Downland (upland?) and moorland courses come to my mind, especially lower budget ones where accumulations of molehills and ant-mounds and the sides of no longer used yee olde footpaths and tracks, even building footing, tend to become little grassy humps and ridges over time, although I'm not sure this was quite what you had in mind.

atb

[Sean_A]

Mark

I imagine it might be quite difficult to offer m-u on non-sandy sites because of drainage and divots.  To me, m-u with 10-15 feet of elevation change is just about the perfect golf site...and extremely rare.  The golfer gets all the wonky lies without needing four legs.  I played the OTM Links at Rosapenna (ostensibly a new design) a few months ago and the front 9 has some lovely m-u.  I thought this side was better than the more open and flat back nine, but it seems I am in the minority.  Golfers will plop for views nearly everytime over better golfing terrain.  I can only assume this means m-u isn't that important to most golfers.

If you want to experience the extreme in m-u, play Kington.  There are places where the undulations are ultra m-u (um-u  ). 

Ciao   

[cary lichtenstein]

I love em but the average member hates em.

[Eric Smith]

Sweetens Cove in Chatt, TN

Yep.

Wolf Point in Texas as well.

[BCrosby]

Has the increasing dominance of the big, bold and dramatic feature -- on courses by both maximalists and minimalists alike --  literally wiped the micro-undulations off the landscape as being both unnecessary (playability wise) and incongruent (aesthetically speaking)?

Is this an example of the far-reaching consequences of the "signature hole", and of the "signature architect" too for that matter (again, whether the earth-mover or the naturalist) -- where the glossy photographs of an immediately-recognizable design aesthetic so important to modern-day marketing has driven gca towards the ever more-frequent use of ever-bigger and bolder features?

Peter

Good points. How holes show up in photographs has been a hidden driver of a lot of golf architecture over the last several decades. People have gone on to fame and fortune based on their ability to build holes that photograph well.

Contouring (micro or macro) does not photograph well. TV usually distorts it.  So there are disincentives to use contouring as a main design feature.

By contrast, contouring (vs. bunkers) was very important to Mack. It's one of the main themes in his S of SA.

Bob  

[Tom_Doak]

High Pointe had a lot of micro-undulation in the fairways ... the combination of not having a big finish budget, and my being used to them from Crystal Downs and other courses.

You should have heard the complaints!  Half of them were about how bumpy it was to ride a cart down the fairway ... most of the rest were implications that we weren't as good at construction as the big construction companies that made everything flat and perfect.  The golf course contractors in America are largely responsible for the idea that all undulations must be beautifully smooth.

My biggest surprise at Sebonack was when Jack Nicklaus jumped off the golf cart at the ninth green as our crew was doing the finish work, and gathered all his associates around to show them the micro-undulations.  He told his associates that they had been building things "too perfect" and it would be better to have more of that sort of undulation!  The funniest part of that was that Jim Lipe had been preparing to show Jack examples of our "poor finish work" ... but he did not go there after Jack's speech.

[RJ_Daley]

Thomas and Sean, thanks for those excellent photos of MU.  Particularly with the ultra micro that Sean displays, it leaves me wondering if a gang mower is used pulled behind a tractor, or if only sheep can get in those nooks and crannies.      I don't think I've ever seen a section of FW with that much micro...  It must be a hoot to see your ball bounding along that!

[Colin Macqueen]

Sean,

Your photographs show micro-undulations in extremis! My question is what has produced this amount of micro-undulation. Is it some sort of "micro" geology, "heaving" from thaw and freeze, past animal behaviour, a micro-midget's graveyard or simply just the way it is. Hard to imagine 'twas designed this way or am I lacking in chutzpah?

Cheers Colin

[Carl Johnson]

My input, from limited personal experience, is that in the old days there was no practial way, no reason, to change the little bumps.  Now, with "restoration" in fashion, given the tools, which must be used, those bumps must be destroyed.  Otherwise, the "restorer" would not have anything to use his bulldozers for.  Kind of like in the mountains of western North Carolina, USA.  Lots of holes in the ground and lots of backhoes.  Well, if you have a backhoe, you've got to dig a hole, so I've been told.  And I am not talking golf courses here.

[Mark Bourgeois]

So micro-undulations can be built on non-sandy courses in modern times? What about Sean's thought?

"I imagine it might be quite difficult to offer m-u on non-sandy sites because of drainage and divots."

Yale fairways have lots of MU but good luck getting it to show up in pics (nice posts Bob and Peter). The MU on the greens seem to be a key to enabling many more hole locations than one would assume given steepness of slope. 7 green for example has a number of small bowls tucked into sharp slopes.

So that's another way MU can add interest - actually, when it comes to greens it can increase or reduce the challenge.

[Pete Lavallee]

I think the mantra here is: you can't make them, you have to fully embrace the ones that are there to start with. Probably not too difficult to maintain with a few teams of horses or mules roaming the premicise, but very difficult with heavy equipment parading about.

[Mark Pearce]

The Northumberland has similar rig and furrow patterns to those at Alwoodley.  It is heathland.  In very wet weather water collects in the furrows.  In prolonged wet weather that water can persist for several days.  On non-sandy soil micro-undulations can be a bit of a problem.  That said, the course tends to be open for play when other local courses are too wet to play, so not an insurmountable problem, not least as wet furrows means drier rigs.

[Adam Clayman]

I'd like to hear from Tom, explaining why the micro contours he had removed from the run up to one of the greens at Ashkernish? As I recall the justification was they were too bumpy to play a reasonable approach. At what point does a micro feature become too bumpy? And who decides reasonable?

[Sean_A]

Col

The entire course is full of m-u, but this section is indeed extreme, maybe too extreme because at times the choice of club is limited as to what the golfer can fit into the "cup".  At least the extreme m-u is unique and its not like other extreme situations where a mishap can result in a lost ball.  One can look very foolish with a stalled kicker, but its very funny.  I don't know how this feature was formed.  Some say sheep, but I never noticed this anywhere else sheep graze.  In any case, I hope the undulations are never smoothed out because Kington really is unique with all its cups, yet no bunkers. 

I definitely think of the Wold Point example as macro-undulation.  I spose hills are mega undulation 

Ciao

[Adam Lawrence]

I suspect natural micro undulation is fairly commonplace on land that has never (or not for a long, long time) been ploughed. Port Meadow in Oxford has famously not been ploughed for over a thousand years, and it is pretty wavy.

[Thomas Dai]

I've noticed these micro-bumps on a few downland (upland?) and moorland courses over the years, especially lower budget ones, which is why I mentioned them above. At Kington they are particularly prevalent and obvious and the photos posted highlight them very well.

Here's a lesser example from Clyne -



I am led to believe that they are either old molehills and/or old ant-mounds that have accumulated over many, many years on land that has not been cultivated for growing crops, just used for animal grazing or left fallow.

They are a right bugger to use an electric power trolley over, twisting and turning and heaving in various directions all at once: feels like the top bracket on the trolley is going to break clean off and the bag fall on the ground at any moment.

atb

[JWL]

Ok, Tom....I have to set the record straight on this item, as I have read this 'reading of my mind' on more than one occasion.    In showing Jack the finish work, I wanted him to see it and weigh in on it, because I liked it, and wanted him to also.     I didn't want him to come back on a later trip and ask me 'what is that?'.     I wanted him to see it and hopefully like it, as I did, and thus give me and Chris the freedom to continue to work with the finish in that manner.   I was not completely shocked he liked it, but I was pleasantly surprised.    Random is certainly easier than clean.....well, maybe not always.     

[Matt_Cohn]

Why would the size of the undulations have anything to do with whether a ball ends up in the little valleys or not? Either the fairways are lush enough for the ball to stop on such a slope, or they're not.

[Sean_A]

Some of us from this board encountered strange bumps in a few areas of rough at Knole Park which were (and I expect still are) created by ants.  I am not sure this is the case at Kington. 

Another course with some fantastic microundulations...Welshpool


The king...Kington. Why? Because its undulations range from miniscule to large...sometimes on the same hole. 




Ciao

[George Pazin]

Ok, Tom....I have to set the record straight on this item, as I have read this 'reading of my mind' on more than one occasion.    In showing Jack the finish work, I wanted him to see it and weigh in on it, because I liked it, and wanted him to also.     I didn't want him to come back on a later trip and ask me 'what is that?'.     I wanted him to see it and hopefully like it, as I did, and thus give me and Chris the freedom to continue to work with the finish in that manner.   I was not completely shocked he liked it, but I was pleasantly surprised.    Random is certainly easier than clean.....well, maybe not always. 

I recall reading an interview with Mr. Nicklaus in one of the big mags, probably Golf, maybe GD. It was prior to an Open at TOC, and the interviewer asked if TOC was the most difficult course. My recollection is Mr. Nicklaus said something along the lines of, well, not the most difficult, but maybe the most awkward. And he seemed to embrace the challenge of the awkwardness, as one would expect of golf's greatest champion.


I could easily see someone who embraced that challenge thinking that many of today's courses are overly smoothed out, if that makes sense.


Micro undulations are one of those things that you love when they help you, but you hate when they hurt you. Not too many golfers are inclined to smile it off, like Tom Watson.....

[Tom_Doak]

Ok, Tom....I have to set the record straight on this item, as I have read this 'reading of my mind' on more than one occasion.    In showing Jack the finish work, I wanted him to see it and weigh in on it, because I liked it, and wanted him to also.     I didn't want him to come back on a later trip and ask me 'what is that?'.     I wanted him to see it and hopefully like it, as I did, and thus give me and Chris the freedom to continue to work with the finish in that manner.   I was not completely shocked he liked it, but I was pleasantly surprised.    Random is certainly easier than clean.....well, maybe not always. 

Jim:


Then why did you have “poor finish work” written on your note pad in the office just before we went out?