Diagonally Sloping Greens

[Mark_F]

Re-reading a few of Ran's course profiles, it struck me how many times he writes about greens that slope markedly from either a high diagonal down to the back, or vice versa.  

Do modern courses often possess this feature?

I struggle to think of one at my home course, Barnbougle or National Moonah, so it it something that has fallen out of fashion, or peculiar only to certain types of topography?

And lastly, are they as fun and interesting to play as they sound?

[Brent Hutto]

Examples from Ran's write-ups please? I'm not quite visualizing what "high diagonal down to the back" means.

[Mark_F]

Brent,

There are a couple at engineers, to name but one course.

High diagonal down to the back means front to back diagonal, or back to front diagonal.

[Brent Hutto]

I think the amount of contour in greens like those of Engineers is extinct because of modern green speeds. That's a perennial topic I have no urge to see this thread be taken over by. At a less bold degree of slope there are traces of that shape in a couple greens at my home course (Ellis Maples, 1961) and I can think of one green that is definitely high back left and low front right at Cuscowilla, the Par 3 third hole. To answer your latter question, yes in my opinion that type of green is great fun to play.

One of my favorite greens on our club's course is the short Par 4 fourth which has the high point back right, behind a large but fairly gentle right-front bunker. The major downslope of the green is to the left, in keeping with the lay of the land but the front left quadrant of the green falls off almost like a false front back to the fairway. So from the front the green it plays diagonally up toward the back right high spot but then the back left actually rolls away slightly toward the back of the green.

If it were a longer hole it would be quite wicked for the right-handed player in that a fade toward a back-right hole would not want to climb the hill and a draw toward the left side of the green would tend to run over. As it is, the hole plays just 330 yards from the regular men's tees and maybe 375 from all the way back so most people are just hitting a 100-130 yard approach if their drive is decent. The hole is also a slight dogleg right, enforced by a grove of tall pines.

I very much love greens which are perched above the fairway and set on an angle. Off the top of my head I can recall playing greens like that at Athens CC (eleventh or twelfth hole) and Palmetto (somewhere early in the front nine) but relatively few of them have a pronounced diagonal slope to accentuate the oblique shot requirement. Like greens that slope away from the fairway, I think diagonally sloping greens are much underused nowadays. Probably out of concern for "fairness", bah!

[Jeff_Brauer]

And now, thankfully, back to golf architecture discussion......

I think Mark is talking about a green that is basically a tilted plane - flat but on an angle,  perhaps with the back left at elevation 105 and front right at 100, with a constant slope in between, rather like a book tilted up.  

The norm is a green with two or three little swales, because the classic texts say we must have multiple drain outlets.  That is probably true with larger modern greens with any type of landform running drainage on them.  With smaller greens and no backing mounds, a sheet flow is possible.

I have been trying to work at least one planed green like that into each design.  Most greens tilt basically back to front, so its nice to have one to each side and even one to the back.  The back slope greens work best, IHMO, on downhill approach shots, where you can still see them.  Planed greens to the front corners as described work very well on gently up hill holes, to the limit of where the golfer can see the green.  If a shot is gently uphill, even a slight rise to break drainage can hide mucho putting surface.

[Bill_McBride]

The Crenshaw Cliffside course at Barton Creek, Austin TX, has some really nice greens with diagonal slopes that resulted from their decision there to in general just use the natural terrain for green sites.  The greens are huge, maybe 8000 SF average, and don't have many built up backs.  So there are greens that slope front to back, others from left to right, and at least three I can think of that had a diagonal slope.  

#3, right front steeply to back left  .  This was on a short dogleg left par 4 with a downsloping fairway into an open green.  Fun to see your well-planned pitch run all the way from right front to back left no matter what you did!  This green reminded me a lot of #10 Oakmont.

#4, front left to back right, pretty gentle compared to #2 but still demanded a careful approach from much farther out on a 410 yard par 4.

#6, 400 yard par 4, very steep slope   left to right.  Unpinnable on the left side.  Diagonal back left high to right front low, but only about 10 o'clock left rear to 4 o'clock right front.

There were a couple more but you get the picture.  The key element was the use of the natural slopes, of which a few were diagonal.  This was the most fun set of greens I've seen in quite a while, on an early C&C effort.

Ironically, the Crenshaw Cliffside course is reputed to be the least favored of the four Barton Creek courses.  The Fazio I played had generally flattish greens but good looking holes with a couple of exceptions.