Do Folks Think This Is Poor Design?

[Mark Pearce]

You lot want the ground option one day, next day its ok to fly it into a green all carry at 200 yards!!!! This needs smoothing out infront, you cant have balls zigging 45 degrees in any direction.

Adrian,

That doesn't happen, at least not as dramatically as you might think.  Have you played it?

[Melvyn Morrow]

Sean

Do Folks Think This Is Poor Design - NO

Melvyn

[Jeff_Brauer]

Sean,

I think the sheep get a better cut on that type of topo!

Still, the day when this site celebrates a rabbit warren type fw as great design is the day I leave. I love the other three photos you show, but this one has been put up a half a dozen times here and every time I look at it I cringe.  That is just too pock marked for my tastes and no matter what you say, most golfers would have no idea how to figure out how thse shot would work.

On the other holes you showed it would be possible to play some kind of bump and run, but even then, as I noted, the areas just in front of the green are much smoother than the rumples in the fw.  That might be because the greens were leveled out and the dirt pushed there, or it may be a conscious effort in original design or some later remodel to make those slopes a bit more predictable and useable by golfers.  Maybe the greens chair went out in the middle of the night!

[archie_struthers]

 

I like it but it looks quite difficult , without seeing the rest of the course can you really opine

[John Moore II]

Is it poor design, not really. However, I do think that for those who may try to run the ball onto the green, the bumps can take a really good shot and cause it to go some place pretty bad. And that I don't really care for. However, I'm only an American, what do I know.

[Melvyn Morrow]

John

No doubt a lot more than you are telling us

Melvyn

PS Talking about bumps check out the following photo

[John Moore II]

Melvyn,
I have no doubt that the bumps in each picture are natural (or I suppose semi-natural at least). My point in saying 'I'm only an American" is that Americans and people from the UK tend to disagree on what makes for good golf. You undoubtedly think those bumps in the fairway are quite peachy. I, on the other hand, pretty much don't. They're not terrible but they're not great. The main reason I didn't say they were poor design is that I don't think they were actaully 'designed' in place. They were likely naturally on the site and just worked around as best and cheaply as possible. If those mounds and craters were actually purposely designed in place like that, then yes, I say its poor design.

[Sean_A]

Sean,

I think the sheep get a better cut on that type of topo!

Still, the day when this site celebrates a rabbit warren type fw as great design is the day I leave. I love the other three photos you show, but this one has been put up a half a dozen times here and every time I look at it I cringe.  That is just too pock marked for my tastes and no matter what you say, most golfers would have no idea how to figure out how thse shot would work.

On the other holes you showed it would be possible to play some kind of bump and run, but even then, as I noted, the areas just in front of the green are much smoother than the rumples in the fw.  That might be because the greens were leveled out and the dirt pushed there, or it may be a conscious effort in original design or some later remodel to make those slopes a bit more predictable and useable by golfers.  Maybe the greens chair went out in the middle of the night!

Jeff

Yes, the ramblings of Pennard are generally smoother than Kington.  Though, if you don't like mini-undulations because of difficulty to predict, then you shouldn't be cheering the pix I showed of Pennard's 7th.  The movement short of the green could well have been softened at one time (I know it was in front of the 1st green), but getting close to a forward hole location has eluded me for nearly 10 years.  I am sure the way to access this hole location is by banking off the 8th tee if one drives down the left, but I have never seen it done.  Part of the reason is that area is blind to the fairway.  

Well I hope you don't leave.  Lord knows I have had to put up with endless alterations and talk of alteration which is essentially all about making courses longer rather than more interesting.  My biggest problem with folks wanting to clear the decks of this hole is that landscape is pretty rare - one worth keeping imo.  I am sure if it were cleared what we would be left is a hole which can't match the present one in terms of interesting terrain.  Okay, I get the aesthetic dislike for it, but if I can get over that, anybody can.  For cryin out loud, I played a Raynor and the blatantly obvious hand of man didn't put me off.  Kington is one of those courses that ALL archies should play.  It may really open the door to possibilities in design, but that would require guys getting their noses out of notebooks and yardage guides.  I am ever hopeful...

Ciao    

[Tom_Doak]

Still, the day when this site celebrates a rabbit warren type fw as great design is the day I leave.

Aw, come on guys, just a little more enthusiasm for this hole and Jeff will leave! 

Sean,

I wouldn't know what to do with that sort of terrain.  At first blush, I agreed with the early poster that the green was too flat, but of course there's no way to make a green in the same character as the fairway.  But I certainly don't see anything wrong with the hole; as Tim Nugent alluded, there are plenty of guys who would say it's okay to have water in the same location, and how much more severe is a bad bounce than a splash?

What I really would like to know is whether some of the other fairways are like that, or why that stretch is so much bumpier than the rest.  The only thing I've seen which compares to your picture are the fairways at Ballyliffin (Old course) ... which Nick Faldo fell in love with, Jeff B.

[Melvyn Morrow]

John

These are man made dating from the Stone Age in Norfolk called Grimes Graves. They are not early efforts to design the modern bunker nor are they old grave mounds, however they are called Grime Graves but in fact flint mines. The sketch below shows the approx scale.

   

Melvyn

[Jeff_Brauer]

I was curious about how those formed as well.  I noted that even in front of the green, they appeared smoothed out probably by mowers, so its not an ongoing phenomena.  Hey, I never said to take it out, just that I wouldn't design it and I would actually leave it, especially if its a national treasure.

Maybe I will try to design it, so I'll fire up my CAD system, try to replicate those contours exactly so I can plop it right in my next production house design.  And, since I work mostly in clay soils, I will put a small catch basin in all of those little holes and make the Guiness Book of World Records for "Most Catch Basins in One Fairway."

I will be away from this site for a while trying to calculate the gradient of all those drain pipes.......

[Eric Smith]

Jud,

Not that game, but Chinese checkers, with its grid of indentations.  Tilted in this instance.

Btw I looked this up (in case you and I are ever on Jeopardy!); neither of these games originated in China, but in Japan (Pachinko), Germany and America (Cc).   


Jeff B,
I wonder if the land looks like that because it used to be a barn yard or livestock pen with a lot of hoofing around?

[JC Jones]

Why are the pigs bigger than the cows?

[Eric Smith]

Why are the pigs bigger than the cows?

I got lazy with the visuals

[Gary Slatter]

what part was designed?

[JC Jones]

Why are the pigs bigger than the cows?

I got lazy with the visuals

That is surprising, it looks like you spent a lot of time on it.

[John Moore II]

John

These are man made dating from the Stone Age in Norfolk called Grimes Graves. They are not early efforts to design the modern bunker nor are they old grave mounds, however they are called Grime Graves but in fact flint mines. The sketch below shows the approx scale.

   

Melvyn

Melvyn-You illustrate my point perfectly. Those mounds and craters are not prefectly natural, however, they were natural to the site when the course was built. Kind of like Victoria National or Tobacco Road here in the US; they're not exactly natural, but were built over extreme man-made creations present prior to the golf course being thought out. Thats exactly what I was trying to say when I said semi-natural; though honestly, I thought there was a chance they could be bomb craters from German bombing in World War II.

[Sean_A]

Melvyn

If that is a house in the photo than those Grimes Graves look to be much, much larger than the hollows at Kington.

Ciao

[Melvyn Morrow]

Sean

Yes that is a house and they are over a large area. Man made certainly but filled in by Nature over time.

Melvyn

[Troy Alderson]

Hi Sean,

My understanding of Kington is that only the greens were "designed", the rest of the course was grazed down by the sheep.  Corrrect me if I am wrong.  But you would think that the greenkeeper would labor at smoothing out the highs and lows over time.

Does the course have a low cost maintenance program, say greens only?

Not poor design, excellent use of the lay of the land.  But, difficult to maintain with mowers if the sheep are not there anymore.



Troy

[TEPaul]

Grimes Graves!?!

Thanks so much for that fascinating info.

"The landscape around Grimes Graves has a characteristic pockmarked appearance caused by the infilled shafts"


That pockmarked hole is the result of flint mining from 3,000 to 1,900 BC!!! That makes some of those little undulations up to 5,000 years old!!! To me that is just totally fascinating. If any golf architect touched a single one of those little ancient undulations I think he should be sentenced to life imprisonment as a murderer of remarkable antiquity!


By the way, unfortunately I'm a man of a certain degree of atheism or at least agnoticism. I just might give this GRIM god (Grimes Graves originally Grim Graves from the god Grim) a shot, since I've never heard of him before. If he works for me perhaps I can become even more "flinty" in my old age.

[Jim_Kennedy]

The terrain of the whole golf course looks similar to the hole shown here.

I would think that the grubbing out of roots when clearing all the low lying vegetation and the impact of rain on the disturbed ground (before rollers),plus the various farm animals that roam on the hills all contributed to what's there today.