Strategy concentrated at green-ends?!

[TEPaul]

As an off-shoot of the thread "Greens--the face of architecture?!" is it logical and possibly a good thing that golf's future scoring strategies need to concentrate more at greens and green-ends?

One of the reasons for this thought is obviously the fact that the excessive distance the ball continues to travel is rendering for some "tee to green-end" strategies less meaningful, certainly more obsolete or at least altered than originally intended.

To accomplish much greater scoring strategies at greens and green-ends architecture would logicially need to offer more complex greens and green-ends and probably far more of what some of us call "greens within a green".

The basic theme of "greens within a green", by the way, is the theory that if a golfer finds himself in the wrong section of a "green within a green" (or green-end) his changes of two putting or getting up and down are logically not good at all, and he knows that. Without question this clearly adds far more strategic meaning to approaching and placing your ball in the correct section of a green whether that be hitting it with a regulation approach shot or "sneaking up on it" somehow.

I hope what I'm trying to say here is somewhat clear. The added idea of this thought would be that greens and green-ends are also a place where golf and golf's strategies becomes far more democratic than a golf hole's "tee to green" section. These types of far more complex and strategic greens and green-ends ("greens within a green") would not require strength but they would require thought and imagination. Far more golfers have that available to themselves than they do strength.

What do you think?

(Sorry Forrest--this one takes a longer 'preamble' to explain properly).

[ForkaB]

Tom

I see no evidence that "strategy" was ever "concentrated" anywhere else but at the "green-ends."  What makes you think it might have ever been otherwise?

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Do I really need to get into explaining that at this point? Why don't you simply try to concentrate on the idea of MORE strategy in a meaningful scoring sense at the green and green-end? Do you fully understand what the true meaning of something like a real "greens within a green" is? The idea is that if in the wrong place something like a 3 putt (or worse) becomes almost the expectation at best? How much of that have you seen in golf Rich? How much of that is acceptable to golfers and architecture at this point? Generally something like this becomes criticized today for being UNFAIR! What I'm trying to develop here is a method whereby it would no longer be considered unfair but more a matter of incorrect strategy! A lot of what we discuss on here are ways of making golf and its architecture more strategic and multi-optional, more thoughtful, more interesting as an excercise in proper planning as a greater requirment of lower scoring.

I'm aware that the green and green-end is where strategy logically concentrates in sort of a telescoped sense simply because the green is where the hole is (the ultimate destination) but I'm just talking here about creating far MORE of it at that end!

[ForkaB]

Tom

My "Home" course has as good "greens within greens" (as well as overall "green-end" complexes) as any course I have ever played, including NGLA.

I like your concept of creating more at the green end, but I really wonder how practical it is, except at very high end courses, or places run by Mucciesque dictators.  Also, as we have discussed many times more on this forum, if you start stimping great old greens at 12+ you soon get into goofy golf--fun for once or twice a year but annoying if made into a year long habit.

[James Edwards]

Tom Paul,

I believe, this strategy of green within a green would be a good idea on short par holes.

The length of courses would not have to continually go up and up.  We could reintroduce golf courses below 7000 yards to the market place which still defend par honestly.

Also there would be the chance to see par 3's between 140 - 175 yards again with this concept.. instead of super long par 3's!

Short Par 4's where if you hit the 300+ drive just short, the pitch is suitably challenging, not just a mere formality!

but the best introduction of this idea IMO, is the par 5's. Today the professionals are ripping these apart.  I'd love to see the green complexes here made a lot tougher, like the 13 at ANGC, where the putt is just as hard as the 2 previous shots.  

Look hard at the 4th at RStG this week and see this green complex defend it's par.  It's usually a par 4, but they've made it into a par 5.  This has your concept of GWG.. easily reachable but hard to putt on from the wrong side.

James

[TEPaul]

"I like your concept of creating more at the green end, but I really wonder how practical it is, except at very high end courses, or places run by Mucciesque dictators.  Also, as we have discussed many times more on this forum, if you start stimping great old greens at 12+ you soon get into goofy golf--fun for once or twice a year but annoying if made into a year long habit."

Rich:

Basically I don't accept those premises of yours--I never really have. I'm not talking here about what you refer to as "goofy golf". What is that? What do you think that is?

To me something like that is a definition or at least a synonym for completely "over the top" golf. That's not what I'm talking about here. Completely "over the top" golf basically boils down to when even the best laid and well executed plans are bound to get penalized or not rewarded or likely to be! That's not what I'm talking about. What I mean is the best laid and executed plans are rewarded. Just that it very well may take far more observation, thought and concentration to notice what those best plans and executions actually are or should be. That's the best of all thoughtful and highly strategic golf to me.

Most who analyze this stuff all the time are aware that most golfers think solely in single shot increments--they hardly ever think in a progressive, unified and whole hole strategic sense. This is to encourage more golfers to have to look at entire holes in a more unified way to plan their first shot to set up their third or fourth shot not just to survive their present shot with little thought as to what comes next or after the next.

And what do you mean by 'practical'. Is that supposed to mean that if any golfer 3-4 putts a few more times if this idea is applied to golf architecture and if they fail to think well and strategically it will take another ten minutes to finish a round? If that's what you mean by "practical" I don't buy it.

The first order of business to me in golf and architecture is to enjoy some hours on the golf course to the maximum. Thought provokes interest and interest provides enjoyment. If some golf course can't accept that additional time for maximized enjoyment because it feels it's necessary and prudent to whip me and my group around the course like a race then I'm not interested in going there and certainly not in returning and I'd never recommend that to anyone else either.

Or if by not being "practical" you mean something very untoward might happen to some golfer's precious score that day because of the perception of "unfairness" I don't buy that either.

This is intended to be a precsription for increased thought being able to overcome the perception of "unfairness".

All this talk about "practicalility" I think can tend to get to be a mindset that can lead to standardization and stultification in golf and architecture. The first order of business is interest and enjoyment not conforming to the hands on some goddamned clock! Whatever a particular course provides any golfer that golfer should strive only to play efficiently regarding time--that's all that's needed. If one course takes 3hrs and 40mins to play efficiently and another takes 4hrs and 15mins to play efficiently who cares?

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I see more "defense" at the greens in new architecture, in the form of reverse slope, less upslope, or perhaps cross slope greens, making the fronting hazards more difficult to negotiate, at least from some angles.

The best players probably ignore hazards now, although the traditional open front does allow them to club down when between clubs for an uphill putt.  If the basic green up slope faces, lets say, the left of the fairway, but is about level  or reverse when coming from the right (granted, you would need some wide fairways) the green would be easier to hold, and hold close to the pin from the left.

This would defend the green and set the strategy almost without bunkers, no?

[A_Clay_Man]

Do smaller greens limit the amount of strategy and place premium on hitting the shot the archie wants you to?

I wonder why people feel that greens need to be smaller to be more difficult?

Is this false?

Isn't 'difficulty' between your ears?

( OMG, I sound like a certain question asking never answering poster god   )

[TEPaul]

"This would defend the green and set the strategy almost without bunkers, no?"

JeffB:

Yes it would. Good example and frankly if architecture manages to do something really good and strategically meaningful without the aid of bunkering (around the green), so much the better, in my book! But let's look closer at your example (if I'm visualizing it the same as you).

You're using a green that basically slopes right to left and quite a lot. I'd think the green or at least the slope would need to be oriented at something like 45 degrees to the centerline of the fairway or you really would be talking the need for some super fairway width to make the strategy just what you described. That kind of thing would work straight on with a hole that has the width of fairway all around it of something like NGLA's #17!!

But say that works as you described it. What would the green demand and require strategically to approach in a risk/reward sense? If you left the ball above the pin you'd have a dicey downhill putt? If you played to the right of the fairway you'd just be risking a glancing approach shot across the slope? Obviously if your approach went right of the green you'd have an almost impossible recovery riding straight down the right/left slope of the green. What would you put on the left side of the green if the player missed there and only needed to recover back up against the green's slope. How about the fairway, what would you put out there to connect and unify strategy? A bunker on the left side of the fairway to risk coming as close to as possible to to get up into the ideal cant of the green to hold the approach?

Interestingly, I can't think of all that many greens that tilt bigtime just using straight slope this way except for Gulph Mills's #5. This is a great golf hole, very much underappreciated and remarkably simply done in a natural sense by Ross. The entire hole slopes from right to left including the green--and it plays much like your example. However the fairway sloping the same way makes for a thoughtful tee shot--particularly when the course is firm and fast throughout.

I wouldn't necessarily say that a hole or green like this (GMGC's #5 or your example) could necessarily be called "greens within a green" though. What a green like this tends to do is set strategic ramifications of the preceding shot in rather subtle ways. Unthinking golfers can very much fail to appreciate its nuances and the effects of them because basically the green orients right at the center of the fairway although the green's dramatic slope sure doesn't.

But when I speak of "greens within a green" I'm primarily talking about a green surface that uses more than just slope as described here. I'm talking about all kinds of internal counters within the green surface itself something like holes #1 and #6 NGLA. What defines the strategy of something like those is almost all about where the pin happens to be on that green surface complexity.

As to how to approach it from the rest of say a par 4 or 5 is another question for another time. But these can be greens, at least in my mind, that can set particular strategies all by themselves--and the more meaningful and particularly the more VARIED those strategies become which depend almost exclusively on the green's internal contours alone and particular pin positions is what can make them really great and really thoughtful!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I understood your "greens within a green" concept to be internal contours acting as dividers, meaning that the green may be 9000 S.F., but have 3 3000 S.F. target areas, each separated from the other by a large ridge, tier, shelf, or valley, etc.  Every course ought to have a few of these, IMHO.

They (again IMHO) work best on short approaches, where they require more accuracy, but still allow the super a large enough green to distribute both traffic and ball marks expected from short iron approaches.  But, they can work elsewhere, as well.

Incidentally, I was surprised to see this concept used frequently at Oakmont, in very rigid fashion on many greens, but especially 9 and 18, when I played there earlier this year.  The straightness of the dividing valleys struck me as perhaps being influenced by CB McDonald, but maybe thats as creative as they were in those days....in any event, I now know why Oakmonts greens have the reputation they do!

I didn't imagine your concept as "over the top" but will allow that many good players prefer a gently rolling green throughout, feeling that a dividing ridge may deflect a shot proportionally further from the hole if they "just miss" the target area.  On a gently rolling green, a miss by 20 feet ends up 20 feet away (plus or minus) a miss by 40 feet usually ends up 40 feet away, etc. on a "standard green."

It seems to me, that in many ways, the divided, compartment greens really increase accuracy demand, but not necessarily the strategy of interrelateds shots.  Basically, if one of the compartments is guarded better, the choice is to I dare to go for that, or do I accept a longer putt through a valley while playing my approach safely away from the bunker.  But, that strategy would probably be in play whether the green was gently rolling or tiered, etc.

I offered the sloping green as another way to create tee to green strategy, and I think you have a similar image to what I was trying to describe.  

I have done research at various courses during remodels where members say "this green just won't hold."  I measured slopes and found that an upslope of at least 1.4% is necessary for averge/good club players to stop and drop it.  Less than that, they roll off the back.  Oddly, I would have thought it might be 2.4% for long irons, proportionally rising, and it may be, but it doesn't seem to be true from my limited research.

My point is, I was envisioning a green canted about 20-30 degrees to the right, with a bunker front right (or not) and the basic slope going to the front left.  The  player approaching from the left would have more depth, because of the angle, an upslope of 2% or more, and a frontal opening.

Approaching from the right, the player would have less depth, perhaps a frontal hazard (sand, grass bank, whatever, requiring a carry) and a green level, or perhaps sloping away from him, which wouldn't hold a shot as well.  He would need to hit a high fade for sure.

That the player from the right would simply have more trouble holding the green, compared to one coming from the left, especially if there is a bunker front right.  So, the green design really dictates going left.  I don't know exactly what hazard would go left to punish.  It could be fairway.

Many designs would raise the left of the green, helping the shot from the right "to be fair" to anyone hitting over there, and more closely "equalizing" the value of the two options.  That would be okay, too.  The land would dictate how I treated the green design, together with a balance of the other holes on the course.

As a last option, I think the green contours can set up shots, if you have "spikes" or gently rolling rigdes on the side of the greens that allow a player to use them to feed the ball down to a particular pin location.  

What was your question again?

[TEPaul]

Jeff:

Good post--examples of many potential "arrangements" that go into making architecture interesting and varied and hopefully not particularly "formulaic" and obviously dictating.

To me some of the best holes strategically are those that are the least obvious strategically where there may APPEAR to be no real best way although in fact there probably is (with experience).

Intresting observations about Oakmont. I've thought for a long time that some of the architectural features of Oakmont, particularly some of the "lines" of those architectural features probably are quite defined and straight-lined as in a Macdonald/Raynor course. And yes I've always surmised that may have a lot to do with the fact that the course was very early (basically preceding the more "naturalized" lines of say MacKenzie's architectural features most of which came later and into the 1920s. This to me shows up far more in the architectural lines of Oakmont's bunkering than it does in the internal contours of its greens though.

And I know what you're saying about good players not liking that exaggerated caroom effect off some of the defined "lines" of architectural features (green contours) thinking it to be somewhat unfair. I don't really agree with their complaint on that though. I view such things as what I would call "slim margins for error" in some architectural features and something that can be and should be quite easily picked up through observation and dealt with and compensated for strategically. To think of it otherwise starts getting into the realm of "formulization" and "standardization" of design to me.