Is This a Well-Designed Par 4?

[Brent Hutto]

Help me understand something about strategic design...

What if there's a hole where the fairway slopes left to right with a cart path along the right side and a lateral hazard (swamp) about 20 yards right of the path. Because the green is very deep and canted diagonally from front right to back left, the favorable approach angle is as far right as you can get. There's a big, flat fairway bunker on the right side about 120-140 yards from the green (maybe 275 from the back tees) but the big worry when you aim right is flying, bouncing or rolling into the hazard or onto the bare dirt under the trees along the hazard boundary.

At a women's college tournament this weekend, Sunday's hole location was on the back of the green. The only players who could get it close to the hole in a tricky, swirling 15mph breeze were the ones who hit the ball over into the trees and either in the hazard (penalty drop) or onto bare lies among the trees. So if you hit the ball over there and got lucky enough to be able to make a full swing and good contact, you had a chance at birdie. From even the right edge of the fairway it took a perfect shot to get up on the back part of the green and hold the ball there with a rock-hard green and downwind.

So does this hole have a good strategic design, a bad design or is it just rub of the green when the wind and setup conspire to put Position A over on the hardpan next to a red-staked swamp?

[JESII]

Good question, should have some varied opinions.

I believe it was Bobby Jones who said upon hearing a number of his fellow competitors bitching about any unaccessible hole location "boys, sometimes you're just going to have to hit a great shot to make a birdie".

I think that goes to the heart of this hole. Can you make a relatively easy par if you drive it into the fairway?

[jeffwarne]

Brent-you don't have to birdie every hole to shoot a great score.
Part of competitive golf is choosing your spots.Certainly one of the ingredients of a good course can be holes that don't provide a green light(and encourage you to play away from the pin),balanced by others more codusive to subpar scoring.

Augusta would be a good example of that -lots of birdies and bogies in The Masters-although it doesn't sound like this hole would be confused with Augusta.

Perhaps if I had followed that same strategy in our last round,I wouldn't have 4 putted #5.-LOL

[Brent Hutto]

JES,

I'd say these girls would have an "easy" par from the fairway by just getting it somewhere up in the middle of the green and two-putting. But there's a bit of a hump to go over from the middle of the green to get to the back hole location. The hard part was hitting and holding that little upslope in the back of the green to get within 10-12 feet of the hole. From the middle or left of the fairway the easy sort of bail out shot was the right side of the green or maybe pin high in the right fringe, that's just not a putt you're going to make because it's a double-breaker.

Jeff,

IIRC, your #5 experience that Saturday was a case of hitting a good tee shot making you so excited you flew it up there past the hole. I guess it's one kind of discipline to hit a safety shot into the middle of the green from the trees and a more demanding discipline to hit that same safety shot from Position A in the fairway.

At any rate, I'm not going to start hugging that right side to get a better angle. I've probably never made better than double-bogey out of those trees. It was just kind of cool to see how a heroic shot was possible from over there to turn an almost-penalty-stroke into an 8-footer for birdie.

[Mark Brown]

I think it's a bad design because it really dictates that you play safe to the left and takes away the risk/reward option. You should have a reasonable chance to hit a good tee-shot down the right that will stay in the fairway, enabling an attempt at a birdie. The way it is now takes all the drama, interest and strategic options away. The cart path should not be on the right side of the fairway eitheras it comes into play like a hazard.

[Matt_Cohn]

Which hole, what course? Maybe some of us have seen it?

[Brent Hutto]

My description was somewhat incomplete. The cart path is actually in the trees which extend a few yards toward the fairway from the edge of the hazard and there is pretty heavy rough between the right edge of the fairway and the trees. Now the dormant rough in the winter will not absolutely keep a ball from bouncing right and into trouble but during the summer that's 2+ inches of healthy Bermuda grass.

I think the hole is designed with a good concept but its failing is that you can't really go far enough right to get any angle angle advantage and stay in the fairway. There just wasn't enough room between the hillside on the left and that swampy area on the right to implement the width concept that the green is built to reward.

Now I will say that if you hit the ball long enough, you can get past the hazard and the cart path curve way off to the right. Basically, there's an opening about 125-130 yards from the center of the green where the fairway widens and if you can hit a spot about 15 yards in diameter on the very right edge of the fairway you'll have a perfect lie and a perfect angle to even the toughest hole locations. That's 280 yards, slightly uphill from the back tees and about 255 from the college women's tournament tees. With a 15mph win from the left and helping on Sunday that's probably where the girls were aiming but no many of them were long and accurate enough to get there instead of coming up short and right and in the hazard.

Matt,

This is my home course, the University Club in Blythewood, SC. The hole I'm describing is #3 on the Black course which plays as the twelfth hole in the usual tournament rotation. It's one of two genuinely difficult Par 4's out of our 27 holes, especially with the pin on the back and even moreso when it's back left. The big hitting men's college players just bomb it about 290 and hoist an 9-iron of something sky high and stop it right on even the toughest tucked pin, at least when the wind isn't blowing. The girls can't quite play that game on a 380-yard uphill hole.

[Brent Hutto]

Here's a yardage-book picture of the hole in question, although some of the bunkering has been slightly changed since this book was published.