"I'll be surprised to see if this tee isn't moved up....This is playing 650 yards today, Jimmy.  Kind of an experiment.  You know, it's really a 90-yard par 3."

He's got a good point; if everybody is laying up, then almost all of these guys are going to hit their 2nd shots to about the same area, 90 to 100 yards away.

So is the length they added to tis succeeding in at least one way?  Daly and Woods can't hit it in 2, so their huge distance advantage is neutralized?

And is the rest of the hole make for a challenging layup?

I guess we'll know more if they move the tee up 35 yards tomorrow.

 

But the long hitters can hit a shorter club off the tee and still end up in the same spot after two hits.  Fred Funk hits it 270 (on average).  So I would bet that he hits his 3 wood about 230.  So after driver, 3 wood then Fred would have 150 to the green.  Tiger hits his driver 310.  If he wants to leave himself 90 yds then he has to hit his second shot 250 - which is probably a 3 iron for him.

So let's recap:

Fred Funk - Driver, 3W, 9I
Tiger - Driver, 3 iron, SW/LW or 3W, 2I, SW

I still see that as an advantage for Tiger.  It's even worse for Corey Pavin as he would be 15 yards behind the Funkmeister off the tee.

Fred Funk - Driver, 3W, 9I
Tiger - Driver, 3 iron, SW/LW or 3W, 2I, SW

After 4 rounds (assuming Tiger makes the cut), he will miss the fairway twice and risk bogey where Funk will hit the fairway four times and have 4 shots at birdies ...

Interesting thought.

The 7th hole at Pumpkin Ridge is a 623 yard par 5.  As originally built, the hole had a bunker in the middle of the fairway about 90 yards from the green.  Combining that with trees that overhung from the right which was the preferred angle of approach for a 3-wood type shot and nobody considered going for it in two.  The USGA came in before the US Am in 1996 and had the club remove the bunker because (as it was told to me), they felt it would just become a "100 yard par 3" as everyone would layup to the same point.

The removal of the bunker (I would have preferred the removal of the trees, but that is another story) made the hole much more interesting for all levels of players from all tees.  We usually played it at 564 yards and faced the similar layup.  After the bunker was gone, I switched from 2-iron off the tee to a driver and occasionally hit one good enough to give it a go and get up around the green.

I didn't get to watch much of the play yesterday, but the whole idea behind the HHA hazard is to make the second shot an iffy proposition if the drive hasn't been struck well into the fairway.  

Were players who drove into the rough still able to make the crossing with ease?

There were a number of pros yesterday who did not hit good tees shots and consequently needed to settle for reaching the 17th green in four shots. This was the risk of the "true three shotter" as Tillinghast described it in detail.

Right,

It seems that once again the oft-humorous but rarely insightful David Feherty is talking out his butt.

There were a number of pros yesterday who did not hit good tees shots and consequently needed to settle for reaching the 17th green in four shots. This was the risk of the "true three shotter" as Tillinghast described it in detail.

What is the strategy or "risk"?
It sounds like a pretty simple hit the fairway or else situation to me. . .
Hit the fairway or else your looking at a pitch out followed by what will be become a tough up and down for par?

Long rough, tightish fairway, no room for options, lines of play strictly dictated to the players . . .sounds like a GCA.comer's worst nightmare . . .unless the rules change for certain courses/architects.

-Ted

For the hole to be a legitimate "go to" on the second shot the tees would need to be in the 560-575 range. Even at 630 yards -- the previous distance where Daley made it in two at the '93 Open -- the lush conditions and the amount of Bluegrass that has grown in at and near the green wold make going for the target all but impossible.

Tiger just went for it and had enough length to make it - he got a really bad bounce to leave himself "Rosburged" in the bunker.

The hole was designed as a three shot hole and is playing that way.  For these guys, Feherty is spot on, as almost everyone of them thinks of it (and plays it) as pitch shot par three.  An trust me, Fred Funk hits hit 3W farther than 230    I watched him hit 4I on #16 today.  

Matt -- did conditions change that radically between 11 am this morning (time of your last post) and this evening?

"What is the strategy or "risk"?
It sounds like a pretty simple hit the fairway or else situation to me. . .
Hit the fairway or else your looking at a pitch out followed by what will be become a tough up and down for par?"

TedK:

That's precisely right. Have you ever played PVGC's #7? This is precisely what you must do or should do if you miss your drive. You pitch out short of the "sahara" bunker that one hopes to carry with a good drive followed by a good long second shot. If you hit a good drive but miss your second shot and fail to carry what Tillinghast called the "sahara" bunker you could then not reach the green in three anyway. (BTW, the 7th at PVGC is credited to Tillinghast as his virtual concept invention!).

It's interesting Feherty has called Baltusrol's #17 a par 3 at the end where the pro this week basically only needs to select his tee marker on the third shot (like a short par 3 hole). It's interesting because Tillinghast described this style of long par 5 hole (which he referred to as "the three shotter" (meaning it should be virtually unreachable by anyone in two shots)) that he apparently invented the concept of thusly; 'the ideal three-shot hole is a combination of a long two shotter and a short one (short par 3)---two long shots so played as to permit the next, an accurate iron to find and hold the green'.

Feherty described this hole--#17 Baltusrol (Tillinghast's "three shotter") just about exactly as Albert Warren Tillie his very own self described it!

Was that clever David Feherty doing some good old fashioned GCA research?? Did DavidF actually read Tillie's chapter entitled "The Three Shotter" in Rick Wolffe's book "The Course Beautiful" about A.W. Tillinghast? Seeing as Rick is from Baltusrol, perhaps DavidF did read the book and that chapter in which Tillie precisely described the entire concept of Baltusrol's #17. Is Rick's Tillie book where DavidF found that "par 3" remark he made on TV?

If so, good on you David Feherty. Maybe Rick could even get DavidF on GOLFCLUBATLAS.com----God knows we sure do need his humor on here!  

I've read the book (my favorite) and I'm pretty sure that I understand the chapter/concept regarding "The Three Shotter". . .

I'm just not impressed with the strategic merits of a hole like that. It doesn't mean that I don't like the design or think that it doesn't belong on a golf course, I just don't see much strategy in that type of hole.

I don't see much strategy in 17th and Sawgrass either, but I am a big supporter/fan of that hole!

And Tom, I've never played Pine Valley . . .

-Ted

"I'm just not impressed with the strategic merits of a hole like that. It doesn't mean that I don't like the design or think that it doesn't belong on a golf course, I just don't see much strategy in that type of hole."

TedK:

I know exactly what you mean. I think I know precisely why you say that. There've been a number of others on here who've said the very same thing over the years of holes such as PVGC's #7, or #15 or even the other hole you mentioned, TPC #17.

In my opinion, too many on here have become a bit too enamored by what we call "strategic" or "strategy". There've even been numerous threads on here discussing what is really meant by strategic or strategy.

I never much got into those threads simply because I feel many of the old designers such as Tillinghast probably had a somewhat different view of golf architecture in that way than those on here who think "strategic" is almost synonymous with great architecture.

The only reason I mention any of this is there's no doubt in my mind that what they thought of as a requirement for great architecture (in many cases, such as their "championship" designs) and what many on here think of as the requirement (strategic) is not always one and the same thing.

There's no doubt in my mind that architects such as Tillinghast, Crump, Wilson, Flynn et al (all part of the so-called "Philadelphia School of architecture", by the way) also designed holes that Wayne and I call "shot testers". We call this type of architectural concept "shot testing". Obviously not all of their holes on a course like Merion or PVGC or Baltusrol were that way but some were, and on purpose---and that's the point I'm trying to make here.

In other words the concept of the hole was simply that even a very good player to play the hole successfully basically had to produce his best shots, and in combination, even if that meant his best driver and best brassie to simply succeed in clearing a hazard like Tillinghast's "sahara" bunker at Baltusrol's #17 or the Crump/Tillinghast "Hell's Half Acre" bunker on PVGC's #7. Even on Crump's #15 PVGC the idea was basically that the good player needed to hit his best and longest three shots just to get home in regulation. The concept was if he failted to do that with any one of them he could not expect to get home in regulation three. That's what we've come to call "shot testing" or the "shot testing" architectural concept. Tillinghast's "The Three Shotter" is that concept on the first two shots!

Were holes like that and that "shot-testing" concept synonymous with "strategic"? No, they really weren't----holes and concepts on parts of them were pretty much their out and out idea of "shot testing" which could be something akin to ringing the bell at the state fair.

We may not look at holes and concepts like that as strategic (what is our idea of strategic but one where the golfer has various options of basically reaching the same end in the same amount of shots but with one option basically being a higher risk for a shorter next shot and one a conservative first shot with a longer second shot) but we also fixate on our definition of "strategic" or "strategy" a whole lot more than those designers back then did.

To them, particularlly on holes like these ones "strategy" meant if you didn't accept or didn't accomplish a sort of one dimensional extremely high demand (like a driver followed by a brassie (2 wood) "shot test" you expected to drop a shot because you simply did not expect to reach the green in regulation. (They also did not have the same perception of "regulation" as we do today---such as GIR).