The Best Courses to Break the Rules

[Niall C]

On the routing thread there was a discussion on the golden age design principles and how some top courses are great despite not wholely complying with those principles. What courses are great despite seemingly ignoring some/all of those principles ?

To give an example, TOC doesn’t have returning nines, neither does it have the regulation number of par 3’s, par 4’s etc, and it’s fair to say that like a lot of out and back links courses the routing doesn’t have a lot of variation in hole direction.

What other great courses have these deficiencies and more importantly, why are they still great ?

Niall   

[Jim_Kennedy]

I'm guessing there are reasons like history, location, etc., but it's gotta be the great architecture that carries the day. 

[Thomas Dai]

A couple of examples to start with, although some might possibly nitpick that the two courses referenced aren’t actually ‘great’ courses?......well, if they’re not great they’re certainly pretty high echelon.
Back-to-back par-3’s at Cruden Bay
6-6-6 routing at The Berkshire (Red)
GB&I links courses that aren’t an out-n-back layout.
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

To give an example, TOC doesn’t have returning nines, neither does it have the regulation number of par 3’s, par 4’s etc, and it’s fair to say that like a lot of out and back links courses the routing doesn’t have a lot of variation in hole direction.

You could say the same thing about North Berwick, Prestwick, and Elie, just for starters.  Of course, all of those examples were built before anyone wrote down any principles about what a great golf course "should" include.


The focus of any design should be on building a diverse set of great holes.  If you really achieve that, not many golfers are going to call you on the other stuff [except for the tedious guys trying to show that they read a book on Golf Architecture 101]. 


If you've got a bunch of holes playing in the same wind direction, sure that's not ideal, but it just means you have to be extra diligent in making those holes different from one another.  If you're going to build six par-3's, or fourteen par-4's, it just means you have to be extra diligent in making those holes different from one another. 


The 4-10-4 arrangement of par 3's, par 4's and par 5's was only a way to simplify things ... because it's harder to keep adding variety if you go above those numbers.  But that doesn't mean you should always stick to the template.  Have I mentioned I hate templates?

[Sean_A]

Niall

Off hand, I can't think of any course which comes close to breaking the rules (other than the obvious suspects) like TOC and is great despite this.  Its not great, but Cavendish strikes me as a course which breaks rules of five 3s, one 5, sub 6000/par 68...yet is still very good.  I think there are a few reasons why its so good:

- great use of natural and man-made pre-existing features
- dynamic terrain
- good walk
- true stand out holes, including one which is superb (I mean a great All-England candidate!)
- good greens

Ciao

[James Reader]

I’m interested as to when and why par 72/4 par 3s/4 par 5s became seen as the “standard”. It seems to me that there are at least as many of the great GB&I courses that don’t fit that mould as do.

[Niall C]

Tom

It's true that a lot of the UK links courses were originally laid out before the principles became well established but more than a few of them have been substantially redesigned and yet retain idiosyncracies. Carnoustie is the one to come to mind with it's 3 par 3's.

Maybe I should refine the question to great inland courses, most of which don't predate golden age.

Niall

[Ira Fishman]

More Links—Ballybunion and The Island Club. For Ballybunion, the five Par 3s are so good that they compensate for the so-so back to back Par 5s. For The Island Club, eight consecutive Par 4s to open offer pronounced variety because of use of dunes and rumpled land.


Inland—Swinley Forest. It sure doesn’t feel as if it is only Par 69.


Since “Rules” Established—Cypress Point and Pacific Dunes.


I wonder how many of Ran’s 147 Custodians “break the rules”. Probably a high percentage.


Ira

[Simon Holt]

Cape Breton, Highland Links.


Albeit in terrible shape at the moment, which is a crying shame.

[Ira Fishman]

Another Inland—Pasatiempo. Five Par 3s including one as the 18th. Fantastic routing, variety of holes, green contours, and use of bumps and swales.


Ira

[Tom_Doak]

Five par-3 holes was not uncommon in the Golden Age.  Most of Flynn's courses around Philadelphia have five, and five really good ones.  Thomas's Bel Air has five.  I'm sure I could name lots of others if I wasn't preoccupied this morning.


The part of this that's hard for most to understand is that there has been a paradigm shift.  Swinley Forest wasn't built as a par-68 course; even in 1982, the card showed the Bogey score, and that was 74.  There are lots of holes on older courses that were built as short par-5 holes - in the 1920's the cutoff was 445 yards - and if the tee was backed up to a fence, par dropped a shot after WW2.  Not many players in a tournament field would break 300 over four days.


I think Augusta was the course that cemented par-72 as the standard in people's minds, when The Masters became a TV icon in the 1960's.

[Sean_A]

The part of this that's hard for most to understand is that there has been a paradigm shift.  Swinley Forest wasn't built as a par-68 course; even in 1982, the card showed the Bogey score, and that was 74.  There are lots of holes on older courses that were built as short par-5 holes - in the 1920's the cutoff was 445 yards - and if the tee was backed up to a fence, par dropped a shot after WW2. Not many players in a tournament field would break 300 over four days.

I want to say that when the centalized handicap system and scratch score were introduced in 1925ish that this would eventually be the end of bogey score.  I think dropping bogey score was a mistake as more attention was paid to par with courses being set up more and more for a standard par of level 4s. I bet if we look back at the original standard scratch score cards of the mid 1920s that these numbers will be very close to the bogey score of later years.  It would be interesting to know when standard scratch scores were expected to be around 71-73...this would be when bogey score really starts to drop off the map.

Ciao

[Phil McDade]

Five par-3 holes was not uncommon in the Golden Age.  Most of Flynn's courses around Philadelphia have five, and five really good ones.  Thomas's Bel Air has five.  I'm sure I could name lots of others if I wasn't preoccupied this morning.

Langford built many of his courses with five par 3s -- Lawsonia, notably, but Spring Valley and Ozaukee also here in Wisconsin, and the Culver Academy 9-holer features three par 3s. Langford courses -- not dissimilar to Rye, and I'm guessing what Doak may have planned at Sand Valley -- may feature short overall yardage but play long. Spring Valley, for instance, tips at @ 6,400 yards but is a tough test at a par of 70; you end up playing a lot of long irons/woods into the greens there.

[Tom_Doak]

My decades-old examples of courses that were 6400 yards par 70 - and very tough! - were Merion and Crystal Downs.  But there are plenty of others.  I think Pasatiempo was around that length when it opened. 


Cypress Point is not seen as tough, because they call the 5th and 10th par-5's, and overall par 72, even though it's the same 6400 yards as Crystal Downs.

[Thomas Dai]

Out of curiosity are there any courses with 18 par-4’s?
Atb

[David_Tepper]

Olympic Lake and Baltusrol Lower (which have hosted a dozen US Opens between them) both have back-to-back par-5's deep into their back-nine: #16 & #17 on the Lake and #17 & #18 on the Lower.

[Tom_Doak]

Out of curiosity are there any courses with 18 par-4’s?
Atb

I have never heard of one.


Would love to build one, since I'm best at par-4 holes, but I know a concept like that would meet with unrelenting hostility.

[Ally Mcintosh]

There are so many great courses which break these principles that it proves that the principles are only guidelines and anyone who lives and dies by them is a fool.


Every course routing is a series of decisions and compromises. All of the guidelines are worth considering but they are quite far down the list of considerations for me. How the course flows and hangs together as an 18 is always the overarching principle for me. Individual hole variety is always the second most important principle.

[Peter Pallotta]

Is there a course that breaks so many rules that it's currently considered one of the *worst*, but is actually one of the very best (and would, if only we were more enlightened and truly free from artificial constructs & constraints, already be universally recognized as such)? See what I'm saying? The anticipated howls of protest at 18 Par 4s -- undeniably the best holes in all of golf -- suggests how provincial and closed-minded we really are.
A theory.
Here's another, much more speculative in nature: perhaps "Doak 0s" are actually golf courses that Tom unconsciously *envies* as much as consciously dislikes. Hmmm? Perhaps?
Peter 

[Tom_Doak]

Is there a course that breaks so many rules that it's currently considered one of the *worst*, but is actually one of the very best (and would, if only we were more enlightened and truly free from artificial constructs & constraints, already be universally recognized as such)? See what I'm saying? The anticipated howls of protest at 18 Par 4s -- undeniably the best holes in all of golf -- suggests how provincial and closed-minded we really are.
A theory.
Here's another, much more speculative in nature: perhaps "Doak 0s" are actually golf courses that Tom unconsciously *envies* as much as consciously dislikes. Hmmm? Perhaps?
Peter

The answers to your questions are (1) Prestwick and (2) No and (3) Really, no.


I guess Prestwick is not considered one of the "worst", but it was utterly dismissed as a great course 40-50 years ago.  Supposedly, time had passed it by.  It had too many short par-4's . . . some of them were even drivable.  There were blind holes, and holes where you had to lay up [gasp] on your tee shot.


Its reputation has seen a remarkable resurgence now that some of those things have come back into vogue, but there are still pletny of people who dismiss it as too strange and quirky and outdated.  A well known golf person described it to me many years ago as "kinky" which was the only time I've ever heard that word applied to golf architecture.  But as far as I know, I haven't had any clients who are into that.   

[Sean_A]

Its remarkable that since Prestwick held its last Open in 1925 it still is only second to St Andrews in the number of Opens hosted.  Also, its remarkable how far its star fell, it has only held the Amateur five times (maybe six) since that last Open...five time in nearly 100 years..absolutely bonkers. Furthermore, the reason for its fall was the old (the really old part!) part of the course...which is the only reason tourists bother looking for the 1st tee these days.  The holes which give Prestwick that modern bit of grit is the reason for reservations on how folks think of Prestwick. Just goes to show that much of what is old will eventually become new.  Prestwick really is a great case study in the contrast of near original links style golf and modern style golf. 

Ciao