I had a question for those of you who've played several different courses that have sloped fairways. Specifically, I’m wondering about how much strategy/options you find such fairways actually add to a hole. This might be dumb, but just working it out in my head (not having played many such holes, and not remembering them so well), I’m not so sure of the strategic ‘benefits’ of such sloped fairways; or maybe, more accurately, I’m not so sure that they offer anyone but the good player any real options, and even those are limited.
For example: it seems to me that a fairway that slopes quite severely down from left to right almost always calls for a draw off the tee, with the left (i.e. higher) side of the fairway providing the best angle for the approach shot, and with the lower, right side of the fairway usually forcing a player to fly a hazard, since the green doesn’t open up from that side. (The alternative would be to have the best angle for the approach come from the right, lower side of the fairway, but that would mean then that all tee shots -- good, bad or indifferent -- would be similarly rewarded, since in all cases the ball would either be hit or roll down to the right side.) But if this is an accurate picture, that means that the green would almost ‘automatically’ have to open up from the left side, and also have to be so designed as to most easily receive a fade, the optimal shot for the approach. Otherwise, a player who thought he’d been rewarded for drawing the ball off the tee and holding the left side would be asked to hit something other than a fade from a lie that has the ball below his feet – and that’s not much of a reward. In short, it seems to me that the sloped fairway provides for less options/strategy than the flat fairway.
I hope that’s at least somewhat clear. How much am I missing here? How/where am I wrong in this thinking? Am I making the mistake of assuming in the first place that sloped fairways are meant to offer more options, or are anything but harder than flat fairways for the average golfer?
Thanks
Peter