Narrow Greens and Interesting Green Complexes.

[A_Clay_Man]

Tommy- Having seen Wilshire's before The Riv's, I was struck with how much those two greensites have in common. Did you see that?

Wilshire's is a par 3 and is an almost completly surrounded by bunkers hourglass(figure green that is at an angle from short left to back right. Whats worse than the bunkers are the grassed areas, ala the grass swales here at Pinon, makes for tough up and downs to raised narrow landing zones.

[Darren_Kilfara]

I hate to be a bore and keep chiming in on these sorts of threads with examples from my home course, but then again, you only know what you know, or something like that...

The 3rd at Machrihanish, a shortish par 4, has a marvelous long, slender green that kinda plays like a punchbowl green without the front and back walls. I think it's 47 yards long; when the pin is in the front half of the green, it plays relatively simply, although there is a distinct advantage given to the golfer who approaches the hole from the opposite side of the fairway, i.e. a left pin is best approached from the right side of the fairway (and vice versa). The middle of the green is dominated by a ridge line that pushes balls to the right, but the back of the green will funnel balls around to the left - so, ironically, to a back left pin it's probably marginally preferable to be in the left side of the fairway and play a low running shot that will use the two slopes. In some ways it's a very forgiving green, in that marginally errant approaches both left and right will kick down into the green, but you really don't want to be more than marginally errant, for the recovery from left or right of the green is not easy.

So there you go - a narrow green which uses fairway width to great advantage. Something for every interpretation in this thread, then.

Cheers,
Darren