The unfair cry often goes up in relation to many aspects of a golf course.

So what do you think is unfair?

I think everything is fair except severe fall offs within four feet of a hole location,

Why is this unfair ?  Especially if you've got 30 feet of green behind the cup.

a ball which nearly reaches the cup and then proceeds to roll back to the player's feet

Where and when is the last time you actually experienced that circumstance ?

and finally a forced carry on an approach shot to an unreceptive green.

Could you identify the golf course and hole where that configuration exists ?

Are these unfair? If not, why not?

Quote from: Padraig Dooley on April 01, 2007, 03:48:04 PM

The unfair cry often goes up in relation to many aspects of a golf course.

So what do you think is unfair?

I think everything is fair except severe fall offs within four feet of a hole location,

Why is this unfair ?  Especially if you've got 30 feet of green behind the cup.

I'm disinclined to use the term "unfair," I prefer unreasonable. Anyway, you're right, if there's room on the other side of the hole, this is not a big deal.

a ball which nearly reaches the cup and then proceeds to roll back to the player's feet

Where and when is the last time you actually experienced that circumstance ?

I've actually seen it in a three or four tournaments including two different State Championships. One was intentional, and stupid, the other was a cupsetting error and about a fourth of the field had played the hole before anyone realized it.


Are these unfair? If not, why not?

Fairness is irrelevant, reasonableness should be a consideration, but only the return-o-matic putt bothers me much.

Unfun!!!!!!!!!!!!

This type of design is not unfair because everyone is playing the same course, but it is "unfun" to coin a new GCA word, why would anyone want a daily dose of this???

Pat

I come across some extreme pin positions every now and again, I don't mind difficult ones but when a slight misjudgement of pace by a foot or so means a ball goes off the green, I think this is unfair. Well maybe not unfair but very boring if a putt has to left four feet short rather than hittwo feet past.

Patraig,

That would seem to be a shortcoming of the crew rather than the architect.

I was playing in the Amateur Championship at RCD in 1999, at the other qualifying course, Kilkeel when one of my playing partners hit a putt from short of the hole that horseshoed out and passed him out on the way down the green. It was quite funny at the time, and fortunately for him during a practise round. The pin position was towards the front, seven or eight yards on, of a green sloping from back to front.

I experienced a similar situation on the 18th green at the Portland CC during the Senior Am.   Many of the greens are sloped at Portland, and I think the crew had cut and rolled them to the point that balls putted to the hole, even beyond the hole, stopped, and then rolled back off the green.

The same type of thing has happened at Seminole, but, I don't find it to be an unfair element in the architecture, just a conflict between maintainance or course preparation and the architecture caused by flawed judgement.

TEPaul had an interesting theory.
Clubs should go to their most difficult green (contour and slope) and determine at what speed that greens works best, then, back the remaining 17 greens into that speed.

I think it's a good idea, therefore, you know that TEPaul didn't think of it.

We have a couple of greens at my home course where this has happened, eg front right of the 12th green. The slope has steepened over time, the ball does come back to your feet. This pin positioned hasn't been used in a while, but it does exist.

I played a course a few years ago where one of the holes was altered featuring a shallow slightly elevated green with a bunker guarding the front. The hole generally played down wind and in the normal firm conditions most shots from any distance failed to hold the green. The hole was changed less then six months after it opened.  

That seems like an ill conceived alteration, whose bright idea was it in the first place, and who agreed with it to the extent that this bad idea was actually implemented ?

Quote from: cary lichtenstein on April 01, 2007, 04:55:00 PM

Unfun!!!!!!!!!!!!

This type of design is not unfair because everyone is playing the same course, but it is "unfun" to coin a new GCA word, why would anyone want a daily dose of this???

Would that apply as your "interpretation" of Oakmont?