[Tommy Williamsen]

I understand the logic behind allowing fairways to be wide enough and greens to be proteced enough by bunkers, undulation and plateau, to encourage players to hit to the correct part of the fairway to have the easiest angle to the green.  With today's equipment is this still valid or is it becoming obsolete?

[johnk]

I don't think it's overrated at all, it's probably way underrated - even for the pros.  They are currently playing a course where angle into the greens means a lot.  

Angle matters if you are trying to score well.  If you are a pro, it's about putting approaches within 10 feet.  Firm greens make angle more important when trying to do that.

If you are a club player, under 10 hcp, you have reasonable skill with the irons, and can use the angles to give yourself larger margins for error when trying to hit the green.

If you are above a 10hcp and have a good understanding of angle, you can give yourself a large margin of error to miss the severe penalties.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tommy,

Great Topic!

At TPC, for my game, I think the angled fairways make it tough, because there are many holes where I need to combine correct distance with angle to avoid hazards either side.  And, I can't fade, and espcially draw, the ball at will, at least in a controlled manner.

Of course, you are talking about the angle to the green, and I presume, the frontal opening.  I think its less.  I asked one pro this, and he said job one is always to get the tee ball in the fairway.  If he gets a frontal opening, so much the better.  The advantage is, if he is between clubs, he can club down, leaving an uphill shot for birdie.  If he has to come over a bunker, he has to hit the longer club, and play it for more spin, and/or find a backstop slope of some kind to feed the ball back to the pin.

While walking another course with my co-designer pro, he commented that the right side of a particular fairway was really the best place to hit the tee shot, even though the left had the frontal opening.  To him, it was like teeing near the out of bounds to increase the margin of error.  He wanted to come at the green from the bunkered side, aim at the far left edge, and hit a fade, so as to start the ball as far from the bunkers as possible.

Green angle (i.e 10 degrees right) also had an effect on his thinking, as did wind and general green contour to the right - when an approach shot has all the signals pointing right, then he hits a fade, and it is a comfortable shot requiring only proper aim and execution.  Conversely, he hates any shot where there are mixed signals, and/or the signals force him to aim at a hazard and curve the ball away from it.  That tends to happen when you play for the side of the fairway where the green has the traditional frontal opening.

Of course, for a large portion of players, the frontal opening is essential as they still roll long irons and woods on to greens.  Also, a frontal opening gives them some kind of visual comfort versus coming over the bunker.

Not really what the golden age architects had in mind!  But in a way, they talked about creating run ins, pitch shots, etc. and that is still true, its just that the slopes designed to accomplish that are no longer outside the green, but rather inside the green as backstops.

[tonyt]

The modern pro is equipped to stop a ball on a green in a short space of time from a variety of places throughout the fairway. But technology cannot ever overcome the look of the shot, and how the pro guages the shot.

Access via the air with a quick-stopping shot may be fine, but from the correct angle, there is often more margin for a good result if the shot just misses it's intended landing spot. So the wrong-sided expert player does have access to the hole location they didn't once have in the past, but the requirements for exacting shot execution may be more stringent.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Angles are the only true defense against power.  As players become stronger, longer and more accurate, I believe the only way to maintain competitive balance is to create strategic problems that play to the strengths and weaknesses of all players.  Make the players hit it right to left , left to right, low, high and in between.  Without these variations the game becomes one of power instead of brains.  Eventually that becomes the ultimate in boredom.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tony,

I agree that the best pros will use every advantage at their disposal to increase the likelhood of success on a given shot, including, picking an angle that gives the most margin for error.

However, the advent of narrow fairways, together with the high spin balls and irons on the approach, does, in my mind at least, reduce strategy of the tee shot from best area to "get it in the narrow fairway so I do get that spin."  As a result of all of those, the margins necessary are smaller, and the stroke differential is probably less.

In Scotland, if you didn't have the frontal opening on a windy day, you were penalized at least a half stroke, because you couldn't hit the green, period, and had to rely on getting up and down, which imay be a 50-80% chance, averaging a lost 0.2-0.5 strokes per poor fairway side approach.  

On a modern tour course, competitors can access the green from anywhere (nearly) but the penalty is usually having a longer and/or downhill putt versus an uphill one.  If the pros average 1.8 putts per green hit in regulation, I suppose you could quantify the lost stroke as 0.2 per poor fairway side fapproach, which is equal to slightly less.  

Thus, the penalty for driving to the wrong side is probably statistically less now.  This supports the original theory that it is less important, or working towards obsolete, at least for me.

Granted, we aren't talking the pro tours necessarily, and depending on a players game strengths, this will vary, and have to be factored into play.  I doubt many players are that mechanical in their analysis, as to split hairs to .3 of a stroke, or so, but they may do it intuitively.

Also, it shows I could probably be doing something more productive right now, but its this, or do the annual spring lawn scalping.......

[chris_neblett]

I was at TPC today and I saw John Daly come in from the absolute worst possible angle, over a bunker with the pin 10 feet past the edge.  He hit the ball out of the a bunker from the fairway, got a kick off of a hill and ended up around 12 feet away.  It did not appear to make any difference between where he was and Paul Casey who was in a correct position and hit a perfect shot but it kicked farther away that Daly's shot.  

I think with how these guys hit the ball, they could care less if they are on the correct side or not. It is simply hit the ball as high as possible and hope to hit where you want it to go.  They are aiming at very small areas, so even with hard, sloping greens they go for areas on the greens more than anything els.

[johnk]

Angle is not over-rated within golf architecture, since it is one of the very few things that architects can control.  If you think about a course's lifetime, the following are the major and most permanent factors that set how it plays:

Routing
Green shape / size
Hazard placement

The notion of "angle" is important in all of these elements.  It's the essence of what strategic golf is.  Even power players who can flight slightly faded 5-irons from 215 higher than my wedge deal with it on every shot.

Very few golfers can play to their potential as bombers.  Bombers ignore angles and try to over-power the course.  On top courses, they get penalized for that.  The routing, the greens and the hazards conspire against the bomber.

I think the pros actually appreciate the angles far more than average players.  While they have the ability to ignore them every so often, they know intuitively what the angles are dictating to them, and score better with fewer struggles by using that knowledge to their advantage.

The best pros of all time were even that much better at playing strategic golf and determining where they should be in order to have the best chance of scoring well.

I believe that Nicklaus, Woods, Hogan, Player, and Jones would cite their discipline and strategy of "playing the angles" as a big differentiator in their success on top courses vs. the field.

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