Linear Berms

[Mike Hendren]

Why aren’t these built more often?


Linear berms horizontal to the line of play can be easily constructed anywhere and can be utilized to obfuscate approach distance or as a carry hazard. Front can be rough and back fairway to propel the ball forward.


Seems like a no brainer feature.  Thoughts and examples?

[Keith Phillips]

The 7th on Wentworth East is a long par three with a carry over a diagonal berm running the length of the hole.

[Thomas Dai]

Sounds like ‘cops’ or former field boundaries from yee olde days. Decent feature especially if diagonal.
Atb

[Mike Worth]

Why aren’t these built more often?


Linear berms horizontal to the line of play can be easily constructed anywhere and can be utilized to obfuscate approach distance or as a carry hazard. Front can be rough and back fairway to propel the ball forward.


Seems like a no brainer feature.  Thoughts and examples?

I grew up in the Tannersville, NY — Catskills (population 600).  Two courses there, total of 4 holes with this feature:


Colonial CC, #9 (280 yd par 4) and #1 (350 yd par 4). And Onteora #2 (380 yd par 4) and #3 (391 par 4). 


Also in the Catskills I believe Rip Van Winkle, Palenville NY (Ross/Hatch) has one hole with berms.


EDIT: Another in the Catskills is Windham CC #1 (310 yd par 4) - the front 9 was designed by Len Rayner in the late 1920s


Growing up, I was told the construction technique was to drag the farmland of rocks and instead of disposing of the rocks offsite, they simply piled them and put dirt and grass on top — creating a berm.  It wasn’t so much an architectural feature as it was an acceptable means of disposing of crap dug up when the course was constructed. 


And on those courses, they don’t obfuscate as much as they prevent the ground game from coming in to play. Especially true because those courses don’t have central watering and late in the summer your ball could go anywhere if it rolled over one of those berms (or maybe stay on top). In some cases they shape where you can drive the ball.


Among courses where posters here might have played, there is a hole on the  Seaview Resort, Pines Course back 9 with a large berm on both sides of the fairway but with an alleyway up the middle , although that might not have been designed as a berm — but that’s what it feels like to me.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

Why aren’t these built more often?

Because golfers would not like them? If natural, that's one thing. If manufactured… meh. I'm not sure I'd like to see them. And most golfers just use a rangefinder, so the deception is limited more so than before the mid-90s.

[jeffwarne]

#1 Old Barnwell

[Sean_A]

Why aren’t these built more often?

Linear berms horizontal to the line of play can be easily constructed anywhere and can be utilized to obfuscate approach distance or as a carry hazard. Front can be rough and back fairway to propel the ball forward.

Seems like a no brainer feature.  Thoughts and examples?

Right now naturalism is all the rage. B Sneider has been doing above ground features on a few courses. I can't say how they play, but they look good...good enough that I want to play those courses.

Ciao

[Ally Mcintosh]

You’ll need to throw up some photos folks, and explain why you like individual examples.


There are good linear berms, bad linear berms and pointless linear berms.

[John Challenger]

We have some bad or pointless ones at my course that were built in the early 1990s. We needed some place to put the dirt from a pond that was enlarged so we lined the fairways with innocuous, small rolling berms that were mostly all of the same shape and size and not natural. This "containment mounding" ran along the fairway line on the fairway side of the rough and inside the tree line. They lined the narrow fairways with these bermlettes on a number of the holes.

[John Foley]

How about the rock walls at Marion GC? I'll argue that the par 3 9th w/ it's wall is one of the coolest holes around.