Courses with No Pars assigned

[RDecker]

I've recently taken a superintendent's position at a 9 hole
Donald Ross course in Lee, MA and have made an interesting
discovery.  I inherited a copy of the original Ross design and
in addition to offering a different sequence of holes than is
actually in play now the Card lists hole numbers and yardages
but no pars.  It's as if Ross was suggesting that the game be
contested at match play, against the players previous scores or for the simple pleasure of striking the ball and not in relation to par as American golfers are so compelled to do.
The concept seems to be very Scottish and I was wondering
if anyone else is familiar with his or any other architects penchant for omission of par assignments on a design plan.

[Paul_Turner]

Swinley Forest (1911, near London) had no par up until about 10 years ago (maybe less).  And no handicaps for the members, I think.

I believe Muirfield used to do this too.

[Paul Richards]

I'm fairly certain that this year's Open venue, Muirfield in
Scotland, has no par's written on its card.

[RDecker]

The club had assigned par to each hole long ago, but the
concept of golf without pars is very fascinating.  I have the
original plan on a disc and if someone could let me know how to put on this site I'd like to post it.

[Dave_Miller]

RDecker:
The original course design of Charles River Country Club, Newton Centre, Ma. is hanging in the Men's Locker Room at the Club.  It list hole number and yardage for all 18 holes but no par.
In trying to learn about Donald Ross one of the items that constantly came up was that Donald Ross probably never assigned par to a hole or a course.  I think this is probably true of many of the great designers of his era.  Match play was very much in vogue.  Par appears to have been done by members at some point.

Fairways and Greens:
Dave Miller

[mike_malone]

Some aspects of this concept are discussed on the "Rolling Green-Thoughts" thread.Check the second page.When several reachable par 5's are on the course or even reachable par 4's then PAR per HOLE seems to lose value.Maybe "par for the course" should be used.

[Mike Erdmann]

Paul, Muirfield actually does list par for each hole on the scorecard.

[Jeff Mingay]

I've looked at numerous Ross plans and have NEVER seen par assigned to individual holes. Brad Klein would know for sure if Ross evern assigned a par value to his holes, but I don't believe he ever did.

The Outlook newspaper of Pinehurst once described Ross as "of the puritan school, a lover of the old Scotch foursome," and went on to say he abhorred the lavish use of a scorecard.

[Jeff Mingay]

On aside, I think it's wonderful that Notre Dame University agreed not to assign par to the holes on the school's new Bill Coore/Ben Crenshaw designed course. I'd like to see more courses do the same.

What is the usefulness of par anyway? Really. The lowest score always wins regardless of par.

[David Kelly]

Jeff,
On the Warren Course website the hole-by-hole tour at the top of the screen does not mention the par on any of the holes - it justs gives yardages.
http://www.warrengolfcourse.com/course.htm

However if you click on the scorecard on the left side of the page it does list the par on every hole.  

Anyway I'll be playing it in August and I am looking forward to seeing it.

[Bob_Huntley]

Mike Erdman:

I have a few cards from Muirfield used over a number of years and on some of them there is no par shown. In fact they are the smallest cards I've ever seen, no bigger than a roll of postage stamps.