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Peter Pallotta

If we could analyse a golf course like a Hogan, Nicklaus, or Woods, consistently seeing and then choosing the best angles of play (for our individual games/distance) and the correct shots (given conditions and pin positions and hazard-placements), and then with machine-like regularity were able to hit the required shot from the required angle time and time again, would excellent design be more or less important to the challenge and fun of the game? Would a great set of greens gain or lose in relative importance? Would the world's best examples of top-flight architecture stand out/be recognized and valued even more, or less?

Peter 
« Last Edit: September 07, 2016, 02:08:03 PM by Peter Pallotta »

Tom_Doak

  • Karma: +2/-1
There is no one alive who never misses a shot.  But if there was, then the only chance you'd have to make the course interesting would be to build features so that it was hard to understand the best route to the hole -- which would make architecture MORE important.

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Peter,


Great premise/question.  I think the USGA has tried to answer this in the form of the US open for the guys who miss the least amount of shots.  The reviews seem to be mixed so far.  Penal or Strategic?


I think a great golf course should be more like Taco Bell and less like In-Out-Burger.  When you have 40-50 items to choose from... it creates more indecision than when you only have 10 or so...


And just like Taco Bell, afterwards you are more likely to regret your choice!!   ;)

Peter Pallotta

Kalen - the US Open is a good example/metaphor.

On the one hand: those who never miss a shot will almost never have to "recover", and with that perhaps goes some of the charms of some great wide old courses and several modern courses where the architects have garnered much praise for the variety of recovery options and thus the playability of the course for a wide range of golfers.

On the other: take said golfers, those who never miss a shot, and put them a course like (the often cited) Firestone or the traditionally narrowed and high-roughed US Open set-up, and the only thing you'll be testing is their ability to stay awake and not drop dead from boredom. Such a golf course to the machine like player would ask of them nothing.
But on The Old Course and the moderns like Sand Hills and Pacific, those machine like players would be engaged in finding the right lines for them, i.e. from the flat-bellied titanium basher who hits it 340 yards to the broken down iconoclast who hits his persimmon 240 to the once very active and athletic old woman who drives it 160 yards.

But, on yet another hand: would the game continue to hold any fascination and challenge for such golfers, even on great courses...such that even the best architecture becomes irrelevant?

And on the last hand I have: ah, but what about the greens?     
« Last Edit: September 07, 2016, 06:46:59 PM by Peter Pallotta »

JESII

  • Karma: +0/-0
Well yes...it all goes to the players judgement. Potential flaws in judgement and his/her inevitable unreachable expectations will drive this person from the game in no time flat...

Peter Pallotta

Well thank you, Jim -- a fascinating insight, one that would've never occurred to me. So seemingly counter-intuitive (for the golfer in me) but with the sharp ring of deep truth (for the husband, father, and friend).

Perhaps this is why playing the game has been so intriguing and addictive for so many people in so many places over so many years:  it holds up a mirror to our flaws in judgement, and to all manner of expectations.   

Peter

Jon Wiggett

  • Karma: +0/-0
If golfers never missed a shot then GCA would be totally irrelevant for a short time before the people stopped playing it due to it being boring. Fortunately that is not going to happen.


Jon

Peter Pallotta

Jon - you and Tom agree, so maybe I should defer. But since we're only on a discussion board and not in real life, I'll suggest instead that there is wind and rain (on certain days and not others) and fast turf and slower turf (at different times of year) and different pin positions (for different rounds), and that these variables would be magnified and enhanced on a smartly designed/strategic design so as to give the great player choices to make at every turn, and different choices everyday. I bet, for example, that the difference/interest level between a Whistling Straights/Pacific and a Firestone/Oakland Hills would be even greater for a group of Hogan-like experts than it is today.

I don't know how you architect types can miss this... :) 

It now seems obvious to me; and I'm just wondering what it might mean
« Last Edit: September 09, 2016, 09:07:14 AM by Peter Pallotta »

Thomas Dai

  • Karma: +0/-0
I suspect it would irrelevant and the game would become so boring as to cease to exist pretty quickly. "Variety is the spice of life" and all that.

Atb

MCirba

  • Karma: +0/-0
Peter,


Great premise/question.  I think the USGA has tried to answer this in the form of the US open for the guys who miss the least amount of shots.  The reviews seem to be mixed so far.  Penal or Strategic?


I think a great golf course should be more like Taco Bell and less like In-Out-Burger.  When you have 40-50 items to choose from... it creates more indecision than when you only have 10 or so...


And just like Taco Bell, afterwards you are more likely to regret your choice!!   ;)

Terrific analogy, Kalen, although I've never eaten an In-Out Burger (none on the east coast)

"Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent" - Calvin Coolidge

https://cobbscreek.org/

Sven Nilsen

  • Karma: +0/-0
Peter,


Great premise/question.  I think the USGA has tried to answer this in the form of the US open for the guys who miss the least amount of shots.  The reviews seem to be mixed so far.  Penal or Strategic?


I think a great golf course should be more like Taco Bell and less like In-Out-Burger.  When you have 40-50 items to choose from... it creates more indecision than when you only have 10 or so...


And just like Taco Bell, afterwards you are more likely to regret your choice!!   ;)

Terrific analogy, Kalen, although I've never eaten an In-Out Burger (none on the east coast)


I found the analogy to be terribly confusing.  Which restaurant are you saying has more options?  Is indecision good or bad?


If you're saying TB has more options, I'm guessing you've never heard of the In-N-Out secret menu.
"As much as we have learned about the history of golf architecture in the last ten plus years, I'm convinced we have only scratched the surface."  A GCA Poster

"There's the golf hole; play it any way you please." Donald Ross

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