[Don_Mahaffey]

A quotient is defined as:

1.Mathematics - a result obtained by dividing one quantity by another.
 
2. A degree or amount of a specified quality or characteristic.

Now, I understand that the last thing golf architecture needs is more formulas, but I've been thinking about this term quotient in this regard; what if you found something I call the playability quotient of golf holes by dividing difficulty by recoverability?

For instance, if we were to grade the difficulty of a hole on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most difficult, and then divide that number by the recoverability on a scale of 10-1, with 1 being no recovery possible, we end up with the playability quotient.

For the sake of this discussion, let's use par as the barometer for difficulty and recoverability.

Take a very difficult hole that we grade at 8 on the difficulty scale. This would be a hole that is very difficult to par. let's assume that this hole is also very penal with water on one side and OB on the other, so the recoverability would be very low, say a 2.

We end up with a very high playability quotient of 4.

Before I go much farther, I have to admit my bias in that I like difficult holes that also allow a player to recover from a miss. I think these are the best holes in golf, and I believe their playability quotient would be in the .5-1.5 range. But I also want to note that I think it is OK for a course that has outliers on both sides of the scale as long as the overall course scores close to 1.

A very easy hole with a difficulty of 2 with no hazards or difficult topography might score 9 on the recoverability scale. 2/9=.22

Take that same hole and add in very tough recoverability and the equation might look like this 2/3=.66

Isn't the balance of a great course not really about length, or boxing the compass or all the golf definitions that arise when we talk balance? Isn't great balance on a course actually walking the tightrope between difficulty and recoverability? No one wants an easy course, but no one wants to lose a ton of balls, or write down an X.

I think the playability quotient might be worthy of discussion (from one golf course nerd to 1499 others)

[Paul Gray]

An interesting concept.

I'm left wondering how you would grade a hole where recovery is potentially all or nothing, for example, the mindless use of long grasses to defend a short course. Let's say we have a 310 yard par 4 and the rough is well above the ankles. A mishit drive my well still result in the green being reached in regulation, but only if the ball is actually found.

[David Harshbarger]

Don,

As with any equation, figure out the units if you want it to make sense.  In the formulation you have it's something like:

Likelihood to bogey when played well / likelihood to not be able to recover from a poor shot

Instead what about:

Benefit to par of a good shot * recoverability of a poor shot

It's a product (which I think is what you are after: holes you like are the product of difficulty and recoverability) and unlike the quotient, doesn't mask the difference between 1/1 and 10/10.



Dave

[Garland Bayley]

It seems to me that the 17th at Sawgrass has a very high "playability" quotient. So perhaps playability is not the right term for this. I do like you comment that .5 to 1.5 being indicative of the best/funnest holes.

Have you worked out the calculations for a collection of holes that you would care to share?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Don,

Doesn't the golfer's visual perception lead to a visceral evalution that equates to your formula ?

And doesn't the post play recollection of the experience either confirm or reject the pre-play visceral evaluation ?

[Peter Pallotta]

"Isn't great balance on a course actually walking the tightrope between difficulty and recoverability?"

Don - I think you're spot on with this; but what strikes me is the challenge for the architect to do it -- i.e. to achieve a .5-1.5 quotient -- time after time, on site after site, on course after course.

Are there really enough different ways to achieve the ideal quotient without the architect becoming too repetitive, too tied to one style and approach even to the extent of forcing that style/approach on a site/course where it's not best suited?

Please note: I'm not suggesting it's impossible to do, just saying that i personally can't think of many different ways of achieving an ideal quotient.

Peter
PS - this short thread from a few years back might be of interest.


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,34393.0.html

[Thomas Dai]

Thanks Peter for highlighted the 2008 thread. Instead of posting against that one I'd like to highlight here what an architect interestingly said on that non-dissimilar thread, namely:

"..I spend most of my time on-site, thinking about the various shots around the greens.  When that aspect is well thought out, it doesn't matter how the players got to where they are; it only matters whether they've given themselves a chance to hole a putt or get up and down, or put themselves in jail... I personally don't think there should be an "easy" place on every hole from which to get up and down -- if there was, the good players would always take the easy way out.  It's better to have a variety there, too, so that players will have something to figure out.

The hole that immediately comes to mind when reading Don's initial post and the older thread highlighted by Peter is the par-3 14th at Royal Portrush, Calamity, and the famous Bobby Locke hollow to the left of the green plus I'm reminded of Jack Nicklaus's alleged comment that if I he believes he call pull off a shot 8 times out of 10attempts , then he'll go for it, otherwise he'll find a safer alternative option. As an aside, as has been mentioned on the recent Tiggles photo tour thread, there are different places that are 'best mis' areas not only depending on ability and skill etc but also depending on whether the individual is playing right or left handed.

All the best.

[Don_Mahaffey]

"Isn't great balance on a course actually walking the tightrope between difficulty and recoverability?"

Don - I think you're spot on with this; but what strikes me is the challenge for the architect to do it -- i.e. to achieve a .5-1.5 quotient -- time after time, on site after site, on course after course.

Are there really enough different ways to achieve the ideal quotient without the architect becoming too repetitive, too tied to one style and approach even to the extent of forcing that style/approach on a site/course where it's not best suited?

Please note: I'm not suggesting it's impossible to do, just saying that i personally can't think of many different ways of achieving an ideal quotient.

Peter
PS - this short thread from a few years back might be of interest.


http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,34393.0.html

Peter,
Thanks for that and I need to think about the variations of difficulty. I believe that theme ties in nicely with what I'm trying to say here.

Most courses are made difficult by removing recoverability. Think about the evolution of Augusta National. Holes are narrowed and lengthened, but the basic playing corridor remains intact. In fact, I'd wager that some of that playing corridor is actually eased (green contours) as the recovery options are made more difficult.

I wonder why we never strengthen courses by making the actual corridor, the area we are trying to connect the dots, more difficult. Why is removing recoverability the only fashionable way of strengthening a course? I think part of that is the historical nature of most of our tournament courses. We view the green contours and fwy surfaces as historic and untouchable, but we have no problem with moving hazards around or narrowing and lengthening to make it more difficult. Anyone ever leave the recoverable areas along and just strengthen the difficulty by requiring the player to deal with challenges between the tee and green?

I know at Wolf Point we worked very hard to do this since our client asked for a hard course, but didn't want a lot of long grass hiding balls. (he'd played a lot of golf and hated looking for balls).

I wonder if making our courses more difficult down the middle and less difficult on the outskirts doesn't have merit. I know the only way this would ever work is if we could get away from the ide that all cross hazards between the tee and green are there to punish the weaker player. If that player has some relief along the edges, is it still unfair?

[Ulrich Mayring]

If you relate everything to par (or scoring in general), then how can a course be difficult, if it has high recoverability? Doesn't that mean that par is easy to save, when you hit a bad drive? So how is this hole difficult? It doesn't matter if you hit the fairway, because you can easily hit the green from basically anywhere.

Ulrich

[Don_Mahaffey]

Ulrich,
That is a good point and it was all I could come up with last night. Probably better to think of it in terms of a match where player A is in good shape and player B has sprayed a shot. I don't think B should have any advantage, but he is still in the game. And A isn't finished just because he split the fwy with his tee shot.

[Tom_Doak]

Ulrich,
That is a good point and it was all I could come up with last night. Probably better to think of it in terms of a match where player A is in good shape and player B has sprayed a shot. I don't think B should have any advantage, but he is still in the game. And A isn't finished just because he split the fwy with his tee shot.

I try to do that all the time.  Player A pretty much hates it.

Luckily for me, there are more golfers whose first names begin with B, than with A.

[Ulrich Mayring]

It makes sense, too. If player A hits a good drive and a poor second, then why should he not be in the same shape as player B, who hit a poor drive and a good second?

I think the "difficulty" of a golf course is usually assessed in terms of the average score one makes. But if you express this score relative to par, then changing the par value would make the course more or less difficult, which I find quite an insane concept, since the hole didn't change at all. On the other hand, if you completely discard the par value, then a par 5 would always be more difficult than a par 3, because on average you will make a higher score there.

So in my mind the property "difficulty" should not be seen in terms of scoring. It can be easy or difficult to score on the same course, depending on what the scoring goal was set to. If you play a match against someone with a bad hair day, then any course is easy for you on that day.

Difficulty should have something to do with the questions asked of the golfer. In other words: the length and trajectory of the required shots, the size of the landing zones and the psychological terror factor.

Ulrich

[Peter Pallotta]

"I wonder why we never strengthen courses by making the actual corridor, the area we are trying to connect the dots, more difficult....We view the green contours and fwy surfaces as historic and untouchable, but we have no problem with moving hazards around or narrowing and lengthening to make it more difficult. Anyone ever leave the recoverable areas alone and just strengthen the difficulty by requiring the player to deal with challenges between the tee and green?"

Don - thanks, I'd never thought of that or read it put that way, and it helps answer my question (which, unconsciously on my part, assumed that the 'recoverable areas' were the only ones that the architect could/would do anything about.

Peter

[John Kirk]

Hi Don,

I think "recoverability" needs to be defined more carefully.

Let's say you've got a 400 yard hole, flat with no bunkers, with 60-70 yards of fairway width, no rough, and a lateral water hazard all the way down both sides of the hole.  If you hit a drive into the water, it wouldn't be too difficult to drop at the point of entry, hit a decent approach shot and make a bogey.  You could potentially make par by making an excellent approach shot.  What is the recoverability of this hole?

Here's another similar example, the beautiful 4th hole at Streamsong Blue.  A unique hole, it is quite (420 or so) long, 50-60 yards wide, with native sand down each side.  In this case, the approach shot to the green must be played up onto a plateau, to a pretty tough green, with lots of area to miss if you hit it well enough to reach the plateau.  An insufficient approach rolls back down the slope, leaving a tough up and down.  Does this hole merit a higher or lower recoverability score than the first example?  In this case, a lost ball is rare, but a double bogey might be more common for the low handicap player than the first example.

For me, I like playing the same ball for the whole round, with lost balls and water balls a significant disappointment.  I think I like a course with an average difficulty of 6 or 7, but a recoverability score of 8 or higher.  One nice thing about big parkland courses is that the trees keep the ball in play.

[jeffwarne]

Don,
please let me know if I' understanding your quotient right.

On multiple holes at our club, we have removed obligatory large parallel, flanking, in the rough bunkers and replaced them with fairway-keeping the overall playing corridors defined by native vegetation.
Into these newly enlarged fairways, we have placed smaller bunkers often slightly inside the edges of the old bunkers, but they now are in or near the middle of the fairways, due to the additional fairway areas which were formerly large bunkers.

Each spring when the members return, invariably I get the comment that we put a bunker in the middle of the fairway.
My reply? "No, we put a fairway in the middle of the bunker"

However,
Wider fairways with centerline fairways can create problems of their own.
How so?
Take an 85 yard wide corridor of maintained area with a 45 yard fairway where the player is aiming down the middle-That gives him 42 1/2 yards on  each side.
take that same corridor and widen the fairway to 70 yards, but add a centerlineish hazard . Say there's 36 yards right of it and 25 yards left (assume the bunker occupies 9 yards of the fairway width)
If the player aims in the center of the larger right fairway, he only has 25 yards (18 yards fairway +7 of rough) to the right of his the center of the area he's chosen before he misses the cleared corridor.
That said, he of course has 60 yards left in his corridor to his left. Is that a reasonable tradeoff-I don't honestly know

That would argue not only for more fairway width, but also more maintained playable width when including centerline hazards.

I suspect that's the real reason they were eliminated/not used in many designs for many years.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()