In praise of hard-pan

[Tommy Williamsen]

      It seems most of us on this site grow weary of perfectly manicured, lush, green courses, where every lie is perfect. This is especially true of northeast parkland courses. I grew up on military courses where hard pan was a constant threat. I practiced picking them of the ground flopping them by hitting them a little fat, bumping them with a five iron or three wood etc.  Now whenever I play hard pan is almost always eliminated.  Sometimes, if it is in the fairway, it is even marked as GUR.  I would like to see the return of hard pan in the rough.  I'm not ready to picket for it but sometimes it is rub of the green and sometimes we just hit a bad shot that deserves a little punishment. It sure requires different skills, especially around the greens. We almost always associate rough with high grass be it cut or uncut. I always thought of rough as “rough to hit out of” and penalized a poorly struck shot. It could be hard pan, softish dirt, or a ball sitting in front of a clump of grass. I just grow weary of having only one or two options in the tall grass be it for a full shot to the green or a recovery shot around the green. How to get the membership to accept this is another question.
We certainly see it on some links courses. Any other hard pan lovers out there?
 

[Thomas Dai]

Hardpan is fine by me. Creativity in shotmaking, shot and club selection.
Maybe in time water limitations will bring some more hardpan areas back.
Atb

[Lou_Duran]

You guys must be some crackin' golfers!  Flop shots off hard pan?  Wow!  I'd pay money to see that.  I can't think of a club in the D/FW area where you're not going to be confronted with some tight lies and hard pan for much of the year.  From Dec. to mid-April, the 58° stays in the bag most of the time in favor of my 3H.

[Sean_A]

If the good trend of keeping fairways dry as possible continues, when combined with the bad trend of ultra short fairway height, fairways will be called hard pan.  This past summer it very much felt this way to me! 

Ciao

[Jim Sherma]

I'd much rather have it be hard pan than tight and wet.

[Peter Flory]

I just played a few rounds in FL and 2 of the rounds were at the Tiburon courses.  They have those hard pan/ cath path waste area bunkers that were really wrecking me.  They look easy, but played very difficult, especially near the green.  The lips were just enough that you couldn't consistently putt out of them and you could hit an explosion.  Chipping off them was unforgiving. 


Over time, I had to actively avoid them even though I had no fear of them at first. 

[Jeff Schley]

Hardpan is code for muni golf in drought conditions.  Played off it often and don't have confidence off it as a result of numerous skull shots over the green.

[Peter Pallotta]

I read 'hard pan' and I think 'Lee Trevino'.
If I could be gifted one pro's 'game' -- the ball striking, the touch, the moxie -- it would be Lee's.
He sure did learn something special out there on those hard, baked-out Texas fairways, with the wind always blowing -- ie something that seems to me the very essence of the game & how to play it.
And it was enough to make him the only contemporary who ever worried/frightened Nicklaus, who knew that Lee wouldn't fold or crumble under any conditions.
He didn't play well at Augusta, sure, where one of the (monied  but ignorant) high hats used to call him 'Pinto Bean' -- but that was an artificial fairy-land of a course far removed from the hard scrabbled 'links' of his earlier days.
Yup -- I miss the 'idea' of hard pan and what it represents more than the hard pan itself.

[Tommy Williamsen]

Don't get me wrong, I don't love hard-pan. I just think that courses should present a variety of problems for the golfer to negotiate. Hard pan is just one of them. I know there are a few places I do not want to miss the ball at Musgrove Mill because the lie will be pretty iffy. Having a course with the same grass all over the place is quite boring.

[George Pazin]

Hardpan is code for muni golf in drought conditions.  Played off it often and don't have confidence off it as a result of numerous skull shots over the green.

 


There is a certain irony that the better golfers who populate private clubs and better public courses, all the while looking down on us lowly muni golfers,  are the ones who bemoan the conditions of the typical muni. In a weird way, I think hardpan is almost an ideal challenge - not nearly as penal for the lesser golfer as most other hazards, yet more challenging for the better golfer than most other hazards.


(Note: this isn't directed at Jeff, I don't know him well or where he plays.)

[Steve Lang]

   I used to praise Hermann Park in Houston... only coarse where I  ever had expectation of 300 yard drives in summer...

[mike_beene]

I remember one day at Royal Oaks when Justin Leonard cleared a spot just off the range in old Dallas dirt hard pan and did all his pre British Open practice from there.Full shots, wedges, etc. Later that month he happened to win at Troon. Probably not a coincidence

[Thomas Dai]

Practicing hitting short game and iron shots with the ball placed on a smooth, thinish plank of wood is a pretty good way to encourage folks to hit the little ball before the big ball.
Atb