Spacing/variety of hole yardages

[Matt_Cohn]

Most courses' holes are clumped around certain yardages—a bunch around 175-200, a bunch around 375-450, and a bunch around 500-550.


I've often wondered about a course with equally spaced yardages. For example, you could go from 100 to 610 yards, with every hole spaced 30 yards apart.


Par 3's: 100, 130, 160, 190, 220, 250
Par 4's: 280, 310, 340, 370, 400, 430, 460, 490
Par 5's: 520, 550, 580, 610.


Total: 6,390, par 70


So two questions are: 1. Thoughts? 2. What existing courses are closest to this type of configuration?

[David Ober]

Most courses' holes are clumped around certain yardages—a bunch around 175-200, a bunch around 375-450, and a bunch around 500-550.


I've often wondered about a course with equally spaced yardages. For example, you could go from 100 to 610 yards, with every hole spaced 30 yards apart.


Par 3's: 100, 130, 160, 190, 220, 250
Par 4's: 280, 310, 340, 370, 400, 430, 460, 490
Par 5's: 520, 550, 580, 610.


Total: 6,390, par 70


So two questions are: 1. Thoughts? 2. What existing courses are closest to this type of configuration?

I love it except for the par 4's. They seem too clumped on the low end. Maybe 290, 320, 350, 380, 410, 440, 470, 500

[Carl Rogers]

Does the hole yardages represent the middle Tees?  Forget the par, torture for the 20 handicapper to play the long holes.


I would have only 2 par 5's and 15 yard difference on the par 4's and not worry about consistent even yardage spacing.

[Matt_Cohn]

Does the hole yardages represent the middle Tees?  Forget the par, torture for the 20 handicapper to play the long holes.


I would have only 2 par 5's and 15 yard difference on the par 4's and not worry about consistent even yardage spacing.

If we eliminate the longest holes, we might have:


Par 3's: 140, 160, 180, 200, 220
Par 4's: 240, 260, 280, 300, 320, 340, 360, 380, 400, 420
Par 5's: 440, 460, 480


But that's only 5,580 yards, par 70. Does the preponderance of short holes make my idea problematic? Or does it make it brilliant?

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:


This is a good topic but maybe not a great title for it, given the lack of response so far.


I had this idea for our Olympic design entry, since it was a flat site and you could make the holes any length.  Mine was 30-meter increments starting at 140, to get some length on the card.


Really, though, you could start at any length you want, and the 5500-yard course makes just as much sense.  The point of the exercise is, this is what would be most fair to every player.  The clumping you speak of is done as an inherent bias that good players are more tested at certain yardages - even though they all hit it different distances.  (Look at all the 460 to 510 yard par-4's at Winged Foot last week.)


Of course that's what elite set-up guys think is right - a setup that favors Rory and Tiger and Bryson, instead of pretending (or actually trying) to be neutral.  Those are the guys the fans want to see, after all.


(The Olympic committee went for Gil's design which clustered holes around certain yardages and had a couple of risk/reward holes at the finish.)

[Mike Nuzzo]

Wolf Point

[Matt_Cohn]

Mike, that's pretty cool! That would be tough to beat that but I'm curious to see if any other courses compare. Did you space it like that on purpose?


Tom, did you mean yards? Doing 140+30x would give you 650 as your longest hole, which is fine in yards but maybe a bit much otherwise!

[Tom_Doak]

Mike, that's pretty cool! That would be tough to beat that but I'm curious to see if any other courses compare. Did you space it like that on purpose?


Tom, did you mean yards? Doing 140+30x would give you 650 as your longest hole, which is fine in yards but maybe a bit much otherwise!

I would have to look up what we did.  Maybe we started shorter.  It worked out to about 7500 yards from all the way back, but part of my sales pitch was to move the tee markers so holes would play at full length one day, 10m shorter, and 20m shorter [so the carry distances for hazards would change].  I also suggested having the men play the course from the women's tees one day, and vice versa!


Note that I am only suggesting this for a flat course that would host an event, for the sake of "fairness" and because I agree with Sean Arble that certain disfavored hole lengths are in fact among the most interesting.  If I am designing a course for normal play, a la Sand Valley or northern Cal or NZ, I am putting the tees wherever they fit into the topography, and not caring much if three par-4's wind up at almost the same length.  But when you've got nothing to start with, you might as well start with this!


I hope I get to build this concept somewhere, someday.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Matt
Wolf Point has some natural features, creek, live oaks, and new big pond, but was flat. So much easier to locate holes. And yes the yardages were mostly intentional.
I have some other idealized yardage charts - the first I found tonight was from George Thomas' book.

[Sean_A]

Matt

I understand your concern about too many 3s...still, I would start around 100 yards.

Any prescribed formula is going to be problematic at some point. I would happily make the range between 100 and 500 with more attention than normal to the 200 to 325 and 440 to 500 ranges. Courses are packed out with 340 to 410ish and 140 to 180 holes.

Sure, my idea leads to a fairly short overall yardage, but all the opportunities to long balls still remain and a course like this could prove to be more difficult than originally imagined.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

Some hole yardages unfortunately seem to contribute to slow play and long par-3's and allegedly 'driveable' par-4's appear to be particular culprits.
atb

[Sean_A]

Some hole yardages unfortunately seem to contribute to slow play and long par-3's and allegedly 'driveable' par-4's appear to be particular culprits.
atb

That's the rap. But somehow, shorter courses take less time to play . Try out Sunny Heath. It's packed with long 3s/short 4s...very quick game. That might be because many golfers think the course is too short and stay away!

Ciao

[Ally Mcintosh]

Some hole yardages unfortunately seem to contribute to slow play and long par-3's and allegedly 'driveable' par-4's appear to be particular culprits.
atb

That's the rap. But somehow, shorter courses take less time to play . Try out Sunny Heath. It's packed with long 3s/short 4s...very quick game. That might be because many golfers think the course is too short and stay away!

Ciao

Well it’s going to be quicker all round on an empty course.


But on a busy course, it could be slower (by the Bill Yates definition) than your standard 7,200 yard course. In other words, whilst the round will take less overall time, the flow will be such that much of that time is waiting.

[Sean_A]

Well yes, I can understand an uneven pace and that it is frustrating at times. But that is really a mental issue because the actual time on the course is less when comparing a Sunny Heath to a 6500 yard course. It is also worth noting that length alone is not the sole determining factor for pace of play. I have waited on plenty of 6500 yard course tees. People often say they would rather take longer driving somewhere if it means avoiding traffic. That doesn't make much sense to me, but to each is own.


Ciao

[Michael Wolf]

We've begun improvising something similar at my home club. Some of us are playing a mix of 1 to 5 star tee boxes that creates the same effect of 18 more evenly spaced holes.

We weren't going as much for even distribution of yardages as equal distribution of pars -2.9, 3, 3.2, 3.5,3.5,3.7,4,4,4,4.2,4.3 etc.


Two drawbacks we found while tinkering with which tee to use on which holes:

- The p4 that we use as the shortest is now drivable, which would create an issue if playing on a rare busy day. I'd imagine some unhappy looks from back at the 4 star tees if we were waiting to attempt to drive a P4 from the 1 star tee box that's 150 yards forward.

- On the longest p4's that we create using the championship tees, the hole locations will sometimes make them more of a par 4.95 than the 4.5's that we intend.

The plusses are strong:

- No interference with the pencil and scorecard crowd that wants to post scores for their handicap

- Our good P5's are even better when played from 20-40 yards up.

- Our worst hole, a 190yd p3 with an ill suited green, becomes a marvelous 110yd that tempts you into more mistakes.

- Members love making the occasional par from the 3 or 4 championship tee boxes that are now utilized. Many had never stepped foot on them before.

- Zero increased cost or use of superintendents time

So far for the 5-15 handicaps there's anecdotal evidence that our scoring distribution has become much much wider. Scorecards that used to show 9 pars 9 bogies are now sprinkled with more eagles, birdies and triple bogies. Which was our goal. Our next step is trying to gain wide enough acceptance among the membership to allow club matches to use the setup. Long term goal would be to formalize this more adventurous setup by having it sloped and indexed, and noted on the scorecards.

Would love to hear feedback on any similar attempts.

Michael

[BCrosby]

Very interesting Michael. Especially the scoring spreads, which I've long thought is a marker of good architecture.


I was recently asked to join a committee at my club on long range planning for our courses. Trying to think through what is good and not so good about them, the six of us on the committee decided we would play once from the back tees, once from the forward tees and then meet up to discuss.


What you guys did might be a better idea. I am curious about whether our course will yield similar scoring spreads if we varied tees as you did.


Bob