[Patrick_Mucci]

Why do members want to make their golf courses longer and harder ?

Is it the Red Badge of Courage ?

Or, keeping up with the Jones's ?

I recently played a golf course that had two magnificent uphill par 3's, 158 and 176 yards from the white tees, probably another 20 yards longer from the back tees, yet there was talk of adding length to both holes.

My question was, FOR WHOM ?

Both holes already provide a more than adequate test for the membership.

The other par 3's are 190-205 from the white and back tees and 150-160 from the white and back tees.

Why is there what seems to be a universal movement to lengthen and toughen member golf courses ?  

[Mike Benham]

Why do members want to make their golf courses longer and harder ?

Patrick -

Is it the members as a whole or just the greens committee?  

You have spoken many times, and I think correctly, that it is the few and the proud members of the greens committee, who believe that they are acting on behalf of the membership but in truth they are not.

Mike

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mike Benham,

Sometimes it's a committee that makes and implements the decisions, other times it requires the approval of the membership, depending on the nature and cost of the alteration.

I've seen clubs concerned with their slope or course rating and more often the perception of how better players would score on their golf course.   And it's this perception that seems to fuel the need for change, despite the fact that the members are the ones who play the golf course day in and day out.

Almost every course that is doing substantive work to their golf course is lengthening it as well.

The more superintendents I talk to the more I'm convinced the impetus for narrow fairways and length comes from within the membership and not from external sources.

[Mark_F]

Patrick,

I can think of two reasons, both related.

One would be because that's exactly what the USGA, AGU and R&A do when setting up/altering championship courses, thus cementing the view that this must be the correct thing to do.  

The other is because the more subtle features that may make a course more difficult - front-to-back or side sloping greens, for example, are seen as annoying tricks more than clever architecture by many people.

I played with a 10 handicapper at my course a few months back who HATED the place, because its 6060 wide open cunning metres made him shoot 16 over, and he couldn't figure out why.

Yet, he loved Moonah links - the unimaginative 6800 metre monstrosity purpose built for the Australian Open.

Only length equals difficulty - anything else is gimmickry.

[Doug Braunsdorf]

Why do members want to make their golf courses longer and harder ?

Is it the Red Badge of Courage ?

Or, keeping up with the Jones's ?

Patrick-

  Could this relate to a certain club, in our home state, a handful of miles up the GSP from me and down the GSP from you?  Maybe they feel they have something to prove?  
You don't have to answer this.  

  Seriously, in some cases, I think it's just human nature, or at least American culture-'bigger' equates to 'better'.  "Bigger' in this case can be interchanged with 'harder', 'narrower fairways', 'greens that stimp at 14', etc., you get the idea.  Despite the architecture and the original intent of the designer.  
Even if it doesn't necessarily fit the members game--it sounds great when discussing/bragging about it to friends--'our course is 10,000 yards long'- 'our fairways are 10 yards wide'-'our rough is 9 inches deep'., 'My car is the fastest', 'my unit is 9 inches long', 'my paycheck is bigger than yours', so on.  

Looking at it another way, let's say we're playing.  You hit a drive 240, placed in the optimal area of the fairway.  I hit a drive of 310, leaving myself an odd approach.  You then hit a great fairway wood, leaving you just short of the green.  You then proceed to get up and down for par.  I pull a 7 iron left and long, pitch past the hole, and three putt for double.  I'll bet the conversation piece will be hitting the 300+ drive, not your playing the hole skillfully.  I've been there.  

[Mike_Clayton]

Mark,
If he hated St Andrews beach then he is clueless- never mind what he thought of Moonah Links.

I don't think I have seen a good course where it is easier for a 18 marker to shoot 90 or a 10 marker to shoot 80 - no rough,wider than wide fairways,no bunkers a 18 marker cannot get out of in one shot,perfect greens,not long,par 70 - yet it's great fun for a scratch player.

A 18 marker shooting 90 at St Andrews is having over 100 at Moonah - butfor some maybe that's more enjoyable.

[Chris Kane]

Mike, St Andrews Beach is "easy" in the sense that a 10 marker will likely be a maximum of 30-40m of the hole in regulation, on almost every hole.  Its so wide, and the fairway hazards are not particularly penal.  So they lose their shots to par around the green.

Contrast this to the sandbelt, or Moonah Links where the bunkers require a lob wedge escape.  If I hit a really bad tee shot at Metro or Victoria, I'll be in the trees and chipping out.  At St Andrews Beach, I'll be on the fairway, or the rough which is barely a penalty when so short.

In my two rounds there, I've made too many "soft" bogies to count.

[Pat K]

        At some private clubs the talk is about longer and harder. It's the viagra mentality. They just don't know any better. Every club is a culture unto itself but at the risk of being too generalized I think the talk is generated by a small minority who are afraid their club is outdated. This talk persists even though the majority of the members are happy with what they have.
         The club I care for just hosted the state amateur championship. The cut for match play was 4 shots higher than twelve years ago. Yet our average member has more fun than before. There has been no lenth added, many trees removed. the short grass pushed out in all directions. Why was the cut higher? Because the new game is 320 yd. drive, wedge, putt. The imagination needed to lay the older style greens and greens surrounds has diminished.
         It's not about the lenth.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Doug,

No, it's not about a golf course close to the GSP, but, I do know the one you're referencing.

Pat K,

If it was just a small minority of members, they couldn't get the vote of the majority of the membership to embark upon these missions.

And, I hear the cry for more length and narrower fairways from higher, not lower handicaps.

Mark,

I think you're right, length has been thought to be a primary link to difficulty.   But, who are they making the course more difficult for, a Professional or Amateur qualifying event that occurs once in a blue moon.  

I've seen course after course prep themselves for an "event" and then leave the preped course as the standard for subsequent member's play.

I firmly believe in the concept of the game challenging the golfer, but, not to the point of torturing the golfer.

I recently played a golf course where I don't think the membership is capable of hitting four fairways per round, from any tee.  Why would a club want to do that to its members ?

[Mark_F]

Mike,

If he hated St Andrews beach then he is clueless- never mind what he thought of Moonah Links.

That's EXACTLY what Dale Lynch said...

Patrick,

Maybe it just comes down to the age-old dichotomy between what the average member likes, and what the so-called good golf-should-get-its-just-reward brigade want - i.e. perfect lies, perfect sightlines into greens etc - and if you have a course with funky qualities that causes difficulty, the good golf brigade wonder where their reward is.  

Hence, because they are usually much better, and longer, drivers than the average player, they like courses with intimidating fairways.  

Maybe the rest of us go along with it because all these new high-tech drivers should enable us to hit it better, and therefore it's our fault when we suffer.

Still, I'd be pretty miffed if they left it like that all the time, though...

[TEPaul]

"Why is there what seems to be a universal movement to lengthen and toughen member golf courses?"

Pat:

I don't know the answer to that but maybe you do. Why did you recommend adding yardage to NGLA's #7? Why did you recommend moving Macdonald's gate and adding 50 or so yards to NGLA's #18? Instead of asking us, why don't you give us your own answer for recommending that? You said to maintain original shot values. For whom? Well, you must have had somebody in mind!    
 
 

[Doug Siebert]

Well, there may be a method to the seeming madness of lengthening par 3s.  On first glance it seems stupid, since the recent rash of distance increase doesn't really benefit short irons even for the longest hitters, so a 165 yard hole is approached with pretty much the same iron as it was 25 years ago (though the number on a club of the same length & loft may be one higher today)

However, today's drivers give one a much smaller spread of distance between good hits and poor hits, so you don't get tested on as wide of a range of shots.  If you took a par 4 of a length where a player would normally expect to hit a 9i into the green if he hit a nice square drive with a persimmon driver, a nice 1" mishit off the heel might leave him a fairway wood approach -- and that's true whether his "nice square drive" in the persimmon days was 180 or 280!  Today with the same circumstances a 1" mishit probably leaves him a 6i.

When talking about how equipment has changed the game there's always plenty of talk about how only the pros benefit, or only long hitters.  Well, they might benefit because a driver/9i is now driver/SW due to an extra 30 yards off a squarely hit drive, but even the short knocker who probably got maybe 5 extra yards for a squarely hit drive still benefits from this reduced distance dispersion.  And, more to the point, since in general, players of lesser ability tend to be shorter hitters, this effect of big headed drivers tends to benefit them more than really good players (who seldom miss a drive by anything like 1" from the sweet spot)

On a shorter course, a significant portion of people playing it might be hitting short irons or less (after a good drive) into almost all the holes, save the par 3s.  But nowadays they aren't taking all that much more club when they hit a poor drive, whereas before even a short hole could quickly become a slog after a mishit!  Thus the par 3s tend to become the only place where you can test a player's ability to hit longer approaches into the green, whether it be a middle iron instead of a SW for a good player, or a fairway/utility/hybrid for the lesser player.

[Marc Haring]

I just played a classic links that had knee deep rough just off every thin strip of fairway and green. The place was empty when we played it on a perfect summers afternoon. We looked on the notice board and saw that they had 10 people go into their July medal. I just wonder if the club have entirely lost the plot or is it just a phase they’re going through.  


Mark, Mike and Chris.

You’ve identified 2 courses with totally different set-ups. One wide and easy that still requires thought, the other long, tight, tough and penal.
The question I want to ask is, which one is the most popular and why?

[Chris Kane]

Marc, Moonah Links is long and tough and penal, but its definitely not tight.  The fairways are as wide, if not wider than St Andrews Beach.  The main difference is that ML is 800m longer, hence lacking any genuine short holes.

Which is more popular?  Hard to say - St Andrews Beach is a private club, played only by its members and a few guests.  I'm not sure if its even officially open yet.  The people I know who've played both prefer St Andrews Beach, but they aren't exactly representative of the average punter.

[TEPaul]

Patrick said;

"Mark,
I think you're right, difficulty has been thought to be a primary link to difficulty. "

Pat:

Ah-HAH! That sounds like a brilliant deduction!  

[A_Clay_Man]

And, I hear the cry for more length and narrower fairways from higher, not lower handicaps.

This is unbelievable.

 Start a list.

[Patrick_Mucci]

"Why is there what seems to be a universal movement to lengthen and toughen member golf courses?"

Pat:

I don't know the answer to that but maybe you do. Why did you recommend adding yardage to NGLA's #7?
That's an easy question to answer.

To bring the "hotel" hazard, the bunkers back into play for the tee shot, thus bringing back the second and approach shots.
The current "hotel" bunkers are like the Maginot line, useless, as opposed to the tactical hazard that CBM intended.[/color]

Why did you recommend moving Macdonald's gate and adding 50 or so yards to NGLA's #18?

That's also easy to answer.

To bring the left side fairway bunkering back into play, which in turn brings the intended values back into play for the second and approach shot.[/color]

Instead of asking us, why don't you give us your own answer for recommending that?

As a Flynn expert, you of all people should be aware of elasticity and its useage.

Other holes at NGLA have benefited from it over the years.

# 2, # 4, # 8, # 14 and, I understand that # 12 has had some length added recently.

What you also miss is the application of elasticity to the width of a golf course, and its relationship to added length. NGLA maintains wide fairways, avoiding the common error of narrowing them.[/color]

You said to maintain original shot values.

For whom? Well, you must have had somebody in mind!    

NGLA remains a golfers golf club.
NGLA also maintains several sets of tees, thus, each golfer can select the tees that best suit their game and not be overwhelmed by unreasonable distances.

There's a big difference it selectively lengthening a golf course and systemically lengthening a golf course.

You just have to understand where to apply the principle of elasticity.[/color]

[TEPaul]

"There's a big difference it selectively lengthening a golf course and systemically lengthening a golf course."

OK. I didn't notice that you mentioned anything about selectively lengthening or systematically lengthening in your intial post. But thanks for your post #17---it would appear you answered most of your own questions in your initial post.

Yep, I sure do know what "elasticity" is and I know to work well it pretty much has to be designed into the holes on a golf course originally. Trying to force tee length addition into holes that never had any elasticity can sometimes lead to a disaster.

[Mark_F]

Marc,

They are two totally different golf courses, and clubs, as Chris said.

The Moonah Links development consists of the so-called Leviathan Open course, and another shorter - although still pretty long - course.  They are selling memberships, and one eventually will be members only, with one course remaining open to the public.  

To date, they have sold around twice as many memberships as St Andrews Beach, although this isn't necessarily a result of being better or more appealing, rather, some poor and perplexing marketing decisions on the part of St Andrews Beach.

The Moonah development charges $100 per round approx, although it is pretty heavily discounted at various times sof the year.

To my mind, both are a once only proposition - they just aren't very interesting, unless you are the type of player that likes to brag that you shot your handicap on a 6850 metre track, whereas the 10 handicapper I took down to St Andrews was furious by getting beaten up on such an apparently easy track, and thought it due more to trickery than testing architecture.

As home of the Australian Open for the foreseeable future, however, the development will continue to attract the punters purely for that reason.  To my mind, it is a terrible course - and I had a good round there.

[Wayne_Freedman]

Why?

Because they never learned to value 'interest', and
interpret 'good' as 'hard'.

We have a few such idiots at my course.
Their ring leader is short.

[Jim Thompson]

Because the sheep always follow the shepard.

It should be of little doubt that golf needs better leadership to keep the sheep from being a blight upon the earth.

Cheers!

JT

[Ian Andrew]

....because it matters to many perspective members. They may not play the tees, or ever use the tees, but the length of the club (and assumed difficulty it implies) is important to their perspective of the course (and in turn the assumed perspective of their guests too).

Pat,

This answer applies to most clubs but not the elite clubs, people join those without the same needs. The club already has the statuus or course they crave.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Ian,

The elite clubs are not immune from these processes.

[ed_getka]

The Moonah Links (straightforward tough test) versus St Andrews Beach (architectural subtlety) posts remind me of what happened in June when we were up at Bandon Dunes. I was flabbergasted to learn that most golfers prefer to play Bandon Dunes over Pacific Dunes. The architectural subtlety of Pac Dunes is NOT an attribute to most "golfers" apparently.
   On an absolutely gorgeous evening, at a resort where golf is half price for the second 18, and FREE!!!! after that, there was NO ONE on Pacific Dunes at 6pm, with 3+ hours of daylight left.
   We are definitely a small minority in the golf world.

[mike_beene]

It is in part a male biological clock issue.I may not win the Open,but I am still young enough and to prove it my course is as long as the one on TV.We are creatures of emotion,not logic.Sure I am not usually playing the same game,but let me at least think I am.The competition ball and or short courses takes this away.Take the dream,fantasy or whatever you call it away and a lot of us dreamers will stay in the office.

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