Course tilt explanation

[Mark Davies]

Hi there. First time poster.

Just a quick question I hope someone can help me with?

I am a deputy at Newport Golf Club in South Wales. Members tell me that the greens always break mountain to sea.

I know there is a phenomenon called golf course tilt. The question is why? is it something to do with Drainage? Gravity flow? Wind? Or just the subconcious nature of mountain being higher?

Maybe there is no answer. Just a design tic lol. Be nice if anyone has an answer.

Thanks

[Kalen Braley]

Mark,

In general, even flat looking greens on mountain benches will naturally have tilt towards the lower parts of an overall area.

But there is a phenomena known as this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_hill

While I've never encountered this on a golf course, I have seen it a few times while driving around.

[Thomas Dai]

Welcome Mark.
Can’t help with your tilt query but for the benefit of others posting herein Newport GC, aka Rogerstone, is a course well worth playing. Plenty of tilt on a few greens and the approach to the 3rd green is full of optical illusion. South Wales isn’t just about links courses.
Atb

[Steve Lang]

Talk to a building architect or good graphic artist about perspective views and vanishing points... and for fun it wouldn't hurt to look at MC Escher's works , don't get vertigo as you fight the apparent gravity fields!

[Ken Moum]

It's really just an illusion that affects golfer's perception.


In Mesa AZ everything breaks toward Phoenix. There's a east-to-west slope that is hard to see but it affects what the ball does


Where I play the course slopes 150 feet over 1 mile so a green that looks flat compared to the surrounding terrain isn't actually flat.


Mountain courses are really affected.


A level green benched into a hillside always looks like it slopes into the hill.


K

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,


From a practical standpoint:


Retaining walls are often built with a slight slope in, or they look like they are tipping out.


Greens and tees built with drainage running uphill often look more than 2% or whatever sloping uphill, the same sense of optical illusion makes them really look like they tilt into the hill, and often "katy wompus".


It uses less dirt/fill/excavation to follow the contours, and make the low points of the green and green complex on the natural low side.  Doing otherwise might require a large fill that will look unnatural. I'll never forget one of the first greens I staked out in the field.  On a cross slope green site, for whatever reason, I drew three green backing mounds at the same height.  The one on the high side took a normal 3-4 foot of fill, the middle about 5-6, and the low side backing mound took a fill of over 10 feet, and would require removing more trees to get the slope to fit.  Naturally, I just adjusted the backing mounds to flow downhill with the grade and it all looked fine.


Overall, it just makes sense to build features with the natural grade to reduce cuts and fills.

[Mark Davies]

Thanks Everybody. Very helpful replies. Yes Dai, Newport is an excellent course. Great routing and green complexes. Anyone in Wales would like to play one day drop me a message.  Jeff a few reads to get my head around your explanations but I get where you are coming from. Especially retaining walls. Bunker lips in my area of maintanence are similar. Thank you

Mark,


From a practical standpoint:


Retaining walls are often built with a slight slope in, or they look like they are tipping out.


Greens and tees built with drainage running uphill often look more than 2% or whatever sloping uphill, the same sense of optical illusion makes them really look like they tilt into the hill, and often "katy wompus".


It uses less dirt/fill/excavation to follow the contours, and make the low points of the green and green complex on the natural low side.  Doing otherwise might require a large fill that will look unnatural. I'll never forget one of the first greens I staked out in the field.  On a cross slope green site, for whatever reason, I drew three green backing mounds at the same height.  The one on the high side took a normal 3-4 foot of fill, the middle about 5-6, and the low side backing mound took a fill of over 10 feet, and would require removing more trees to get the slope to fit.  Naturally, I just adjusted the backing mounds to flow downhill with the grade and it all looked fine.


Overall, it just makes sense to build features with the natural grade to reduce cuts and fills.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

All of that said, there’s a course in western New York on a ski resort where are the greens slope against the slope of the mountain in many cases. It was explained to me that this allowed them to save on drainage as they could put drains between the greens and the mountain slope rather than having them on both sides.


I’m still not sure why you need a drain beside a green if the water is just going to run a bit down the hill in the rough, but that’s the reason they gave.


So apparently sometimes greens are built against the prevailing slope. Whether that makes sense or not I don’t really know.

[Ken Moum]

So apparently sometimes greens are built against the prevailing slope.

Oh, it's not all that uncommon, especially when the prevailing slope isn't particularly severe.


But the prevailing slope still confuses a lot of golfers. When a green actually is sloped into the hill, it looks like it breaks way more than it actually does.


On this subject, a friend of mine from Kansas took a golf trip to Michigan that involved the Mickelson par three event there, and he played that course.  He came home insisting that several greens broke uphill.


Which is impossible.