TEPaul-
Once again I must thank you for your kind words. Among my own playing companions, my opinions are about as welcomed as rainstorm at an outdoor wedding reception. In their defense, I am quite sure I sound like a broken record to them. Ah, the closer one is to home, the less one is appreciated.
So, it is a great feeling to be sharing ideas with kindred spirits who listen, and sometimes even agree.
BTW, I very much like your term "maintenance meld." It is perfect. I hope you don’t mind if I not only start using it, but eventually claim that I myself invented it. Good poets borrow, but the great ones steal.
I have never had the opportunity to play NGLA or Merion, so I don’t have the first hand knowledge you do, but I loved your description of the Redan at NGLA, and particularly your spirited description of the slow rolling shot. Very cool, indeed!
By the way, I will transfer the last couple of posts to some kind of “Hand-Out” format and we can start flooding green committees with them. Like any good subversive organization, we’ll have to have a catchy name, to attract followers to our movement. Once we get a good name, we’ll need a secluded wooded retreat, somewhere in Northern California (preferably near the wine country), where we and like-minded souls can sit around a huge bonfire, exchange secret hand shakes, share noble GCA ideas with passion, compassion and vision, and plot our next move.
As to your comment regarding fairway width:
“As to width, I'm a believer that holes should be closely analyzed as to their fairway contour and slope and in relation to the orientation and meaning of the green from particular angles of approach.”
This is very interesting, and a different approach than I myself have taken in the past. I have always believed that strategy started at the green. While this might be the best way to analyze a hole for strategic playing purposes, I have always held that fairway design should start there also. You got me to thinking that perhaps I am mistaken.
If I understand you correctly, design would be more of an iterative process, where angles in the fairway would influence the design and contours of the green. Then the green itself, the shots it requires, would influence the width of the fairway. Could you expand upon this?
I realize that this is an over simplification, and that many other factors (e.g.,the original natural setting, elevation change, the desire for hole variety, etc.) influence overall design, but I have always thought that the green design influences approach angle, which in turn then influences fairway design. Width I always saw as being influenced by a combination of the demand of the tee shot, the defense of the green, and the desired psychological impact. In other words, if the green is well defended by bunkers, contours, slopes, etc. the choices of fairway width could be myriad, including the approach of “give ‘em enough rope off the tee to hang themselves,” and make the fairways as wide as the property allows. I have always favored that approach too.
I would be interested to hear more on your thinking here.