Has the art of positioning the pin (locating the flag) been lost?

[Sean_A]

Hole locations are often effected by

1. bunkers: how close to green edges; size of bunker, placement - often times bunkers are placed at front left and front right making for very predictable locations

2. greens wrapping around bunkers: too often greens have shrunk, taking away the interesting edges of greens and thus greatly effecting hole locations

3. too much concern over fairness: there is a modern idea of always giving the golfer what they want - I don't know when the idea of making golfers feel awkward started to drift away, but it has

Ciao

[Tony Ristola]

The same can be said about the placement of tee markers. Too often the tee markers are put down in the same spots day after day. Moving the tee markers around enhances variety and architecture, similar to finding the coolest hole locations and mixing those up.

It is an art to do both well.

Catch this... In Germany they actually have imbedded in a huge amount of the national golf population the belief that when the flag is at the back of the green, the tees should be forward, the flag at the front, the tees at the back!  Why do this? Because of the science of handicap/course rating.

When I heard the above 15-years ago sitting at a bar listening to a committee member of a club (and part of the state golf association if I remember right) I almost fell out of my chair. Needless to say he didn't appreciate my counterpoint. The practice continues for I know someone last summer who was scolded for breaking the pattern while setting a course up for a club tournament.

They fail to realize a shorter tee, to a hole cut near a hazard at the front and playing into a prevailing wind, or downwind, or crosswind has an effect on the thought process and shot selection... that change in ground and wind conditions lengthen or shorten a course. They simply fail to recognize the massive palette of variables that make courses easier or tougher... and the golf more interesting.

This anti-golf "system" takes out a lot of thinking... especially on par-3's.

[Shaun Feidt]

Coming from the maintenance side of things, I also love course set up (setting tee markers, setting pins).  But the problem is I will never hear any complaints about an easy pin location, but set one challenging pin, and I will recieve numerous comments on how that one cup location was too tough or unfair.  I realize it is probably the vocal minority that I am hearing, but the goal is to try and keep the membership as happy as possible.  Im sure this is a tough dilema for all superintendents.

[Shaun Feidt]

I actually just remembered a funny example that correlates to this post.  One day this past year, i sent out a new person new person to set pins at our course.  We have a rotation or pin sheet that splits the greens in thirds, alternating front, back, middle.  I didn't notice till the afternoon that even though the worker had followed the sheet correctly, as far as green depth, he had set every pin in the middle or each designated section.  The funny part is I was the only one to pick up on the pins, and I didn't receive one comment from a golfer about the pin locations for that day, and the tee sheet was by no means empty.

[Greg Tallman]

Well, at Old Macdonald our client banned the maintenance staff from using some of the most interesting hole locations!

Given who your client is, and given that the bandon greenspeeds tend toward the speed that would allow use of the most interesting pins, I'm a bit shocked by that statement

Jeff:

Mike likes the customers to be happy, and he doesn't think they like to be embarrassed by difficult putts.  I wondered throughout the project why he was suddenly letting us build big, wild greens, but I guess he had already determined that because they were so big, he could go in afterward and rule out the hole locations he thought were too severe.  And there are a lot of them!  The ones that bother me most are the two wings on the first green [they are not supposed to use either of them now] and the front 2/3 of the Biarritz, which is a real bummer because it's one of the only Biarritz holes [along with Yale's] where the front of the green is interesting.

Well, your client has certainly had his finger on the pulse of what customers want so far.
that said, his outside the box thinking would seem to be one of the main reasons for Bandon's success.
Nice they got the speeds right, and you got to build wild greens that shine at that speed, two out of three ain't bad, but I wonder how many customers might prefer 3/3(many probably don't even know what they're missing)?
Mike's right that customers complain when putting gets difficult, but perhaps a larger amount of rave reviews after some great pins would overwhelm the drone of the whiners

Jeff, I am not so certain I agree with this. When it is unfair, cut in the middle of a slope where it has no business, sure people will complain but if simply in difficult to access areas I believe people enjoy the challenge. The issue, as always, is balance.

[corey miller]

I would have assumed that at the Green speeds typically found at Old Macdonald all pinnable areas would be used.  I did not know most of the large greens were for show.  Does this have an influence for our GCA rater crew?

[Mark McKeever]

I read the title thought this was a thread about Kyle Harris.  

MM

[Matthew Essig]

I have recently been working at Tumble Creek. As with many places mentioned, the greens are divided into 3 sections where the hole is to be cut, with 16 greens (I think) divided into front, middle, and back. As the days went by, the holes were repeatedly cut in the same side of these thirds, or to mix it up, cut directly in the center. I could point out areas where the hole was never or rarely cut. And most of those areas would not be "unfair" or challenging; most of them, I believe, would have some really interesting hole locations. At the end of the summer, I started to become ticked off by this trend, but I wasn't going to tell my boss that A) this person is doing a bad job or B) let me do it.

From this experience and others listed, I believe that, yes, the art of positioning a hole has been lost.