[Ran Morrissett]

If one was to apply the Doak scale to the 18 green complexes at Pinehurst No. 2, the total score over the 18 holes would be unbelievably high. Personally, my score would run something like a 9 for the 1st green complex, a 10 for the 2nd, a 9 for the 3rd, a 7 for the 4th, a 8 for the 5th, and so on. A "7' would be the lowest and there would be a bunch of 8s and a few more 9s. The sum total would be staggeringly high.

However, when taken altogether, should the green complexes be downgraded due to lack of variety? Simply put, the greens of today are all crowned with fall-offs to varying degrees.

Fifteen plus sets of greens (St. Andrews, Oakmont, NGLA, Pine Valley, Crystal Downs, Prairie Dunes, Friar's Head, Royal Melbourne, Somerset Hills, Yale, Oakland Hills, Machrihanish, Hollywood, Garden City, Yeamans Hall, and maybe Royal Worlington & Newmarket) come to mind as having more variety, be it because some of the greens fall away, some have punchbowl features, a greater mix of wilder interior contours, etc.

I have no idea what the greens at No. 2 looked like in the late 1940s when Ross died. However, after nearly 50 years of being in Pinehurst, it doesn't appear to me that he ever built at No. 2 a punchbowl green (the sandy soil would have allowed such) or a green that sloped from front to back (e.g. 10 at Oakmont), or even a green that was just glued to ground but had ferocious tilt (e.g. the 15th at Garden City).

Why not mix it up more? Pinehurst No. 2 greens taken as a set are certainly unique and that is a hallmark of greatness, at least to me. However, do you think a few change of pace greens that parted from the crowned/turtle back greens might make for a more interesting overall test?

Take the seemingly easy stretch of 9-12 at the Old Course. The 9th green is big and flat, the 10th ripples mysteriously away to the back left, the 11th has one of the most severe back to front pitches in the game, the 12th with its tiny and hard to find top shelve - the problems thrown at the player are never the same, putting pressure on the player to recognize what the right play is for that day's hole location.

Pinehurst's greens as a set present their own incredible challenge but not in the same way. Several players have commented their strategy is the same on every hole - aim at the center of the green and don't look at the day's hole location.

Are Pinehurst No 2's green complexes near perfection when taken as set? Or do you wish Ross had mixed it up more? For instance, the 5th green complex would have supported a perfect Redan type green complex but the notion of banking a ball onto the green is a no-no at present day No. 2, it seems. But I ask - why have the 5th green crowned like all the other greens? Why not let a player hook a ball in using the general right to left slope of the surrounding ground? The 13th at Pine Valley is one of my favourite green complexes in the world, in large part because of all the options available to the player in  how he wishes to approach it. Working balls in from the sides of greens at Pinehurst No. 2 is not an option - how is repeating this for 18 holes a good design feature?? The 16th is set in a natural amphitheatre - couldn't a more gathering green complex - for the sake of variety - have been employeed, even if it wasn't an all-out punchbowl?

What do you think - are the Pinehurst greens amongst your dozen favourites in the world as a set? Or do you think they would be more interesting if they were more varied?

Cheers,

[Brent Hutto]

I've not played #2, only seen it on television but I'd tend to agree with your point that there's a sameness to the requirements presented. For my part, there would be a sufficient variety of shots required in any one round to provide an all-around experience of recovery shots but there really does seem to be only one strategy that makes sense for approach shots there. Then again, with the rough cut back and the course restored to its original width we'd see more variety in choice of approach angles than we do in a USGA setup.

In my limited experience, Cuscowilla has much more interestingly varied greens. The pitch of Cuscowilla's greens relative to the contours of the surrouding terrain seem chosen on a much more hole-by-hole basis that those at Pinehurst #2. For comparison with #2 I think more about other courses of its vintage I've played (Athens CC, Granville GC, to a lesser extent Pine Needles) where the norm is for greens to be steeply pitched from back to front and the challenge of any individual green being details overlaid on that basic pitch. A very different course of similar age to #2 is Cypress Point where there are a lot of greens with the old back-to-front tilt combined with some of totally different layouts. Then again MacKenzie had a lot more ground movement to work with than Ross did at Pinehurst (for that matter so did C&C at Cuscowilla).

I'll pose a related question. Is there a separate category worth consideration of interestingly contoured greens and surrounds on flattish land versus wild greens on wild terrain? If so, it would make sense to ask Ran's question of #2 relative to St. Andrews and other places where the interesting features of the greens have to be rather subtle by nature of the land than a course where the greens are cut into hills and so forth. Maybe Cypress Point to Pinehurst #2 is an unfair comparison in that sense.

Bonus Question: Where do inverted-saucer greens fall in the green contour family tree relative to plateau greens such as the Ocean Course or Royal Dornoch?

[noonan]

If there were 3 or 4 greens in the set that did not have the same runoffs, purists would say that the 3 or 4 are odd balls and do not go with the flow of the course.

A local track rebuilt and 6 greens and rerouted for safety reasons. They are a newer mounded type and they do not match the flatter heavily pitched greens of the rest of the course and do not look like they belong.

JMO  

[Jeff_Brauer]

Ran,

A great topic! I have always thought that a gca can vary the greens more than most of us typically do, and that being done by one hand will still lend enough continuity to make them unified. Continuity is not necessarily conformity.

It strikes me that a "hip pocket" list of green concepts for both approach shots and putting difficulty would be the best way to design in variety, of course, fitting the green concept to the ground on certan sites. I don't think it needs to be as rigid as a Seth Raynor list, nor as engineered, but consciously looking to put in a fall away green, a Maxwell green, etc. seems better than the set of 18 at Pinehurst.

I wonder about your inclusion of Prairie Dunes in the most varied category.  I was there recently, and while the greens are great, I have never considered them particularly varied, so what do you base that on?

The greens at Oakland Hills strike me as trememdously varied, which I attribute to RTJ adding on to the Ross greens where it was convenient, which adds to the randomness and variety.

[Tom_Doak]

Pinehurst No. 2 IS the sum of its green complexes ... they have made it what it is.  If the greens had a mixture of themes as some suggest, it wouldn't be nearly as original of a golf course as a whole, even though it would have more "variety" according to the checklist in Jeff's hip pocket.

It's okay for a great course to have a theme of its own and to stick to the theme, instead of trying to throw in a little bit of everything.  That "little bit of everything" is the reason a lot of modern courses have fallen short of the elite; they don't have a character of their own.

PS  High Pointe has way more variety of greens than No. 2 also, but it's not as good a golf course.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

In the big world of golf course design, there is no reason some courses can't be the ultimate in the playing of "X" kind of golf and Pinehurst is certainly an example of that. On the whole, we don't play themes, we play shots.  In general, most courses would be better off with a variety of shots, rather than a steady stream of the same shot, no?  Why does this site pan Medinah, for example, as repetitive in tee shot because of claustrophobic trees, and let Pinehurst have a free pass with repetitive challenges (of similar or greater need for accuracy) of domed greens?

I think that is what Ran is driving at.  I think the chipping areas alone would constitute a course theme, even if the internal contours varied a bit more, but I could be wrong.

Slightly off topic, does No. 2 look a bit cleaner in presentation than in past years?  The bunkers for one look a lot more refined than I recall them.

[Ian Andrew]

Ran,

However, when taken altogether, should the green complexes be downgraded due to lack of variety?

No, the greens alone are what make Pinehurst facinating and challenging. They add to the pressure of making good approaches. The exact a stiff penalty particularly for the aggressive approach and they completely test your short game. The greatness of the design is that the passive player has options to keep the score down. Play short of greens, putt out of hollows, lag a lot of putts and a bogie player can still play bogie golf.

Why not mix it up more? Pinehurst No. 2 greens taken as a set are certainly unique and that is a hallmark of greatness, at least to me. However, do you think a few change of pace greens that parted from the crowned/turtle back greens might make for a more interesting overall test?

Should Raynor have avoided using template holes and come up with all original holes. No way, it is the variation on the themes that makes for so many great versions of the redan and other classic holes. I feel the same way with the greens, they are a variation on an outstanding theme, and are just great they way they are.

Are Pinehurst No 2's green complexes near perfection when taken as set? Or do you wish Ross had mixed it up more?

Near perfection, with green speed being the only problem. Green speed reduces the greatness by taking great greens and making them vitually unplayable.

What do you think - are the Pinehurst greens amongst your dozen favourites in the world as a set? Or do you think they would be more interesting if they were more varied?

They are some of the best greens ever done (with a reasonable green speed). Without those greens what would Pinehurst have left to call it one of golf's greatest courses? The setting is average, the land is average, so it has to be the design that makes it great.

[Geoff_Shackelford]

I wonder if the greens have taken on a redundant feel because of the ultra narrow Open setup? Might they seem more varied and fascinating if players could take advantage of the width and approach them from different angles day to day depending on hole location?

I also wonder if the condition of the approaches has eliminated the run-up approach option to some or if the players simply don't use that shot?  

Personally I think they'd seem more varied and interesting if the players were afforded the opportunity to approach them in a variety of ways.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Geoff,

Could it be argued that approaching from angles, from the rough, acutally returns the green contours the way they played decades ago when golfers couldn't spin the ball as well as from the fw now?


Also, it seems the little rise in the front of the greens stops more shots from rolling on the putting surface than the actual bermuda fringe, at least from my limited watching of the tourney.

[T_MacWood]

Ran
No. 2's greens are as a set among my favorites, but I agree with your point about them lacking variety. Regarding the lack of a punch bowl, its ironic that Pinehurst was at one time 72 punch bowl greens or a combination of punch bowls and flat lay-of-the-land greens (prior to '35). Perfectly flat sand greens that were often guarded by convex hazards, in effect creating punch bowls. I wonder if thirty plus years of those type greens, led Ross to react emphaticaly in the opposite direction.

[Tim Bert]

As someone that has only played Pinehurst #2 twice, I can say that I prefer the "theme" and think it goes a long way to making the course what it is.

I can't even imagine how many rounds it would take me to get used to those greens if there were only 5 or 6 domes on the course.  It's hard enough to get comfortable with them when you are facing them on every single hole.

I find it incredible how many conflicting stories I've heard / read about these greens in the past few weeks.  I've heard some folks raving and praising Ross for the masterful design and others saying that Ross had nothing to do with the domes.  Golf Digest had an interesting article about how the domes came about due to sanding then consistently for decades.  Is this the true story?

[Ian Andrew]

It is a wonderful course to watch a smart player play.

I went there with my dad, who while limited in length through surgery, was still a great player. My father played intentionally short of a number of greens because he felt he had a better opportunity to make par by removing the risk. Despite his limit of 200 yards, and my insistance of playing back (one of the few periods I was a good player), he shot a nice quiet 81 despite having a suprisingly average day putting. He made no putts outside 8 feet and no doubles either.

The course is all about management, and that is dictated by the greens.

And Geoff, he bumped and ran every approach into the greens. The ground was always his perfered route of play, and the conditioning invited that approach.

[Coral_Ridge]

Never have played Pinehurst #2 although I have played in the sandhills.  A beautiful area for golf.  Are the greens at #2 fair for even the best golfer?  Was it meant to be played this way?  Of course golf has infinite possibilities, so the last question is asked to gauge the opinions of the GCA.  According to the experts, Ross only designed these crowned greens on one course.  It was his "crowning" achievement, but should it be.  Has any other architect designed green complexes like this?

[Rick Shefchik]

I hope to play #2 someday, and when I do, I imagine I will grow somewhat weary of seeing one approach shot after another rejected by the crowned geens. Yet after the round and a couple of beers, and for many years later, I'm sure I'll be glad I had the full Pinehurst #2 experience. There are many, many courses around the world where variety exists in the green complexes; that's a good thing, and probably the way I'd build a course if I were in the business. But there's room for courses with themed geens, too. If nothing else, a steady diet of the same type of greens at #2 might improve my ability to play them by the time I reached 18. More variety might make Pinehurst #2 a "better" course, but it might actually diminish my desire to play there.

[Joe Andriole]

While all the greens at Pinehurst are essentially crowned, there is variation at least in terms of where to miss the shot. For example, I find the greens at Winged Foot much less varied; they virtually all slope back to front, are severe and are only wisely missed short.  My personal choice for the most varied green complexes would be Wannamoisset

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