Purposeful vs Purposeless Golf

[Peter Pallotta]

Or maybe I should say goal/achievement oriented vs experience/process oriented.

I can't quite define the difference, but I think I know it when I see it, in myself and in a wide variety of average golfers I'm paired with at the local course.

I wonder if there are courses better designed for and best suited to purposeful golf, and courses better designed for/suited to purposeless golf.  

I don't think I've ever read of anyone -- architects or golfers or writers -- thinking in those terms, and maybe the terms and the contrast aren't of any value/meaning.

On the other hand, just because no one has talked about it doesn't mean that architects past and present might not have been shaped in their design philosophies and practice by some sense of the difference -- goals/achievement on the one hand, experience/process on the other.

I wonder too if golfers have changed over the decades, the majority of them moving perhaps from one "pole" to the other -- and if this has influenced gca.

Any thoughts?

Peter

[Ken Moum]

I think I know exactly what you mean.  The ultimate level of,goal-oriented is what David Over described here a few weeks ago.

While I've never gone as far as he described, I have played a TON of tournament golf in the 50 years since I started playing seriously. I figure its been at least 350 tournaments, from local one-day, 18-hole events on nine-hole courses to 10 or 15 state championships (including the state Husband and Wife that prompted my wife and to get married 20 years ago this summer)

Anyway, all of those rounds were played with intention, sometimes!mes more sometimes less. The same applied to a lesser degree when nearly ally golf included a bet of some kind.

But even then I played a lot of golf without intention.  Screwing around on the course, playing cross-country, playing in gangsomes, going out by myself when the course was empty just to BE there.

These days I play most of my golf without intention.  I often play with a group that doesn't gamble, so I find myself hitting a lot of shots with almost no goal.

But to answer your question about courses, I can't imagine trying it on a "modern" course with lots of forced carries.  But a traditional course, even a hard one like Prairie Dunes, where I spent four days during the NCAA Championship, is exactly the kind of place where playing without intention can be fun.

One like my home course, a simple Ross without many frills is perfect.  I have had some of my favorite times there, all alone, near sundown,  carrying a little Sunday bag with 8-10 clubs

Ken

[Michael Felton]

It's an interesting question. I think the golfer should be trying to get to what you're describing as purposeless golf. They should be focused on the process and not the results. I find that with a heroic shot it is much easier to focus on the target and the process because it's fun. With a penal shot, it's far easier to get steery and focus on the result. Strategic could go either way, because a good strategic situation offers up a heroic option IMO. Playing safe in that situation can also be easy to focus on process, possibly too much, to the extent that you don't focus at all. That can be just as bad as focusing on the result.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Peter,

I think I know what you mean, and in reality, it could be described with several opposite or near opposite phrases - Championship vs. Recreational, for one.

I would guess purpose means shooting a personal best on any given course, maybe establishing a new one from the next set of tees back.

I would guess purposeless would mean being out to enjoy the camaraderie of being with your best golfing buds, which actually is a purpose, perhaps even a more lofty purpose than shooting your best score, depending on your view of life......

I have made this point before, but yes, every course has a design aimed more one way or another.  I suspect TD aims more towards "purpose" and I generally aim more towards, if not purposelessness, then "camaraderie" in my designs.  While those kinds of courses won't get me as famous as JN, TF, or TD, I believe I have numbers on my side (i.e., more golfers play without purpose)

I "purposely" aim for courses that you can play everyday, and not beat you up (and frankly, looking back at the hey day, probably missed the mark a little on some of my designs, striving too hard for purpose)  Back in the old days, muni courses were designed with the purpose of getting players through the mill, factory style, which is a whole nother level down from designing for camaraderie.

The differences are in a lot of little details.  I was reminded on the cart path thread of a client who hated the idea of those individual carts.  While they might solve the problems of turf wear, and maybe slow play, they would reduce the camaraderie of sharing a cart, which he would never give up for his golfers, figuring that was really the highlight of their day, along with a few good shots to brag about......to the guy sharing the cart.

[Mike Nuzzo]

Peter,
Wouldn't The Old Course fit both?
Cheers

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mike,

In general, I think most courses can fit both, not in black and white terms, but somewhere along the shades of gray, tending towards one or the other.  TOC is a special case.  For most, the purpose of playing TOC is getting the bag tag, shirt, and bragging rights to say we played there........sadly, even the greatest course on earth is somewhat of a caricature of itself even after 500 years of great service both as Open venue and course you could play every day - with friends or for score.

[Michael Felton]

Mike,

In general, I think most courses can fit both, not in black and white terms, but somewhere along the shades of gray, tending towards one or the other.  TOC is a special case.  For most, the purpose of playing TOC is getting the bag tag, shirt, and bragging rights to say we played there........sadly, even the greatest course on earth is somewhat of a caricature of itself even after 500 years of great service both as Open venue and course you could play every day - with friends or for score.

I know this has nothing to do with the thread, but I think it's wonderful that I could have played that course every day of those 500 years and I don't think I would have ever grown bored of it.

[ward peyronnin]

I see it as a different perspective/approach by the player/competitor.

Purposeful golf for me requires handicaps/negotiation regarding nassau/skins/point game or any form of betting/wagering prior to and during a round. Without cabbage/drinks/dinner or other forms of skin in the game I am forced to rely on the relative degree of clarity my artistic/aesthetic sensibilities deliver to me that day in spite of back pain/hangover/heartburn.

There is nothing like economic interest/well being to initiate a sense of purpose in the true athlete/devotee of any game.

Of course this philosophy is represented in course design by the "press" holes placement/degree of difficulty appearing in the appropriate
spots; a longstanding architectural tenet/guideline.

Cheers
Ward

[Paul Gray]

An excellent topic.

I've concluded that I can't actually play one way without influence from the other.

Focusing on a shot on a course which doesn't tickle my  fancy just doesn't happen. I try, but I fail to keep myself 'in the zone' so to speak. Scoring becomes largely irrelevant once my brain decided I'm not playing a 'proper golf course.'

Equally, all creative thinking has to have some sort of quantifiable outcome for me. I don't try to hit a low draw just because I love the shot, I do it because getting the ball running round the corner of a dogleg leaves me an easier second shot in. Again, I try to be free as the wind but I just don't possess the hippy genes so strongly as to be able to put purpose out of my mind.

[Colin Macqueen]

Peter,
I am too perfervid to play "purposeless" golf in the first instance but ofttimes once the game is up, so to speak, as soon as I move away from "purposeful" golf my golf improves dramatically. So if my nature would just allow me to have devil-may-care approach form the outset things would improve. Believe me  ....  I have been working on it for nigh on forty years!

Cheers Colin

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks, gents - all good and interesting posts.

Paul - I think I experience it much as you do, though with the limitations inherent in me being able to imagine many more types of shots that I'm actually able to hit.

Colin, Ward - And I have a bit of your experiences too. When I try not to try I'm lousy, but if I actually find myself just swinging the club at 80% and not thinking too much, I score better. Also, relying on my relative degree of clarity (given back pains and hangovers and nicotine withdrawals symptoms) usually ends not very well.

Jeff - thanks, really interesting, especially the note that in your early days (probably like every young architect's 'early days') you strove for "purposeful" golf design. Makes me think that this distinction actually has legs.

Mike - as I've probably noted before, yes indeed - but then again, The Old Course is the answer to just about every thread I start!

Ken - thanks for kicking this off; you captured what I was trying to express very well. And it was interesting to me because, despite all the posts of yours I've read over the years, I never realized before that you played so much competitive golf. You must have more than a touch of purposeless-ness in you too!

[Ken Moum]

Peter, re. My competitive golf, I am proof positive that you don't have to be very good to enjoy tournament golf. For most of the last fifty years my handicap has hovered in the 10-12 area, with a period in my late 40s and early 50s down to 5-8.

Growing up in Minnesota its what did all summer.  My wife is a pre-Title 9 athlete who loves to compete. In fact on our Scottish vacation last August we played in six mixed comps scattered from Brora to Cullen to Dunbar.  And, as we talk about going back next year she wants to find some individual comps for each of us, hopefully arranged so that the other one has a place to play that day.

I don't do as many as I used to, mostly because all anyone wants to play around here is the despicable scramble.

K