Varying Fairway Widths

[Matt_Cohn]

On tour we very rarely see courses with fairways of varying width.

At majors especially, fairway widths are particularly constant - often as narrow a range as 25-28 yards for all 14 fairways. Medinah is a good example this week.

What are the best of examples of top courses with a lot of variation in fairway widths? Any tournament courses?

Why don't we see it more often? Or...do we?

[TEPaul]

Matt:

This is a great question and subject although it has been discussed quite a bit on here before.

Standardization of fairway widths is very common in today's golf and architecture (although a few of today's architects are really varying some of their fairway widths) and ironically it was very common in golf architecture of yesteryear even though back then the standard fairways widths were generally 50-60 yards instead of today's 30-35.

I'm a huge proponent of varying fairway width for the simple reason that it's just not hard to tell which holes strategically call for width and which don't.

But the long and short of it to me is that varying fairway widths and varying them sometimes substantially does just that, it varies things----eg it creates variety, and in my mind variety of all kinds is pretty much always a good thing in golf architecture, and standardization in a formulaic sense is not.

What great golf course really varies its fairway widths? That first great course in America does---NGLA. It always has and it still does. One or two of them maybe around 30-35 and some of the others are effectively 80-100+  

[MargaretC]

Matt:

From my perspective, many, if not most, of the the courses the Tour plays on look like grass "runways" with landscaping around them.  Not a "runway" in terms of width, but in terms of a manufactured look.  I'm not sure if the obsession with course length is the cause of the standard appearance, but I don't like it.

[TEPaul]

MargaretC:

The reason so many modern fairways look like that is because so many of them basically are the result of tremendous amounts of earthwork shaping. Have you ever seen a D-8?

Well, I can guarantee you that Donald Ross et al never saw one.

That's why most all the mid-bodies of the old classic holes were not touched by the hand of man, other than things like bunkering, unlike so many of the modern holes.