In Mike Young's "Strategy" thread, some of the discussion concerns what you do with the vast differences people hit the ball, even from different tee areas meant to minimize those differences.

Using his example, let's assume a scratch player drives it 300 yards on a 450 yard (from the tips) par four, so his landing area is 150 yards from the green.

And then let's assume a woman or senior or junior who drives the ball about 125 yards plays the hole from the front 375 yard tee.   She hits her normal drive and now has 150 to the hole.

Do they have the same approach shot?

Someone asked, where should the "carry bunkers" be located?   At 250?   275?  300??  

Why should they be any rote distance from the tee??

Isn't the whole concept of the "landing area" shorthand for a very limiting idea of architecturally imposed strategy?   Isn't it sort of a lazy man's way to say that he's creating strategy when it probably doesn't affect a large majority of the people playing the hole?   Aren't multiple tees symptomatic of the same basic faulty premise?

 

Isn't the whole concept of the "landing area" shorthand for a very limiting idea of architecturally imposed strategy?   Isn't it sort of a lazy man's way to say that he's creating strategy when it probably doesn't affect a large majority of the people playing the hole?   Aren't multiple tees symptomatic of the same basic faulty premise?

 

I believe multiple tees are an issue.  As discussed in that thread, although the woman who hits it 125 will get to the same landing area, she will unlikely be able to handle the 150 yard shot into the green.

I say one set of tees, if you cant handle the course either dont play it or tee off from the 150 yard marker.

What are you suggesting? asked another way...Where are you going with this?

I'm not sure yet, but I think some of the whole thinking around multiple sets of tees and "landing areas" are artificially limiting factors that constrain architecture in a negative way.

I'll try to expand and refine my thoughts as we go, but I wanted to see what others think, as well.

Mike Dugger,

You see how faulty the whole idea of "landing zones" are?   Why, I can't even do that math!!  

Now you guys are starting to hit on my "Curves of Charm" theory.....which essentially negates a fixed turn point [dogleg], in favor of a curving centerline that doesn't favor any particular tee or player length.....but that's just the beginning.

I don't really have the time now to expound further, but maybe around 11pm this evening I might be in the proper frame of mind for discussion .

I played thirteen holes yesterday with a couple of ladies and we were waiting on the group ahead on nearly every shot. So I had time to discuss a few things about their game versus mine on my home course with which I'm quite familiar.

Each of them drove the ball approximately 150 yards although the stronger of the two did it with maybe 130 yards of carry and the other with more like 120. But on second shots the longer player could get about that same distance whereas her shorter-hitting companion declined any carry (over water or bunker) longer than 100 yards but had the superior short game so they each could play bogey golf from the 4,900 yard tees.

Not surprisingly it was all about the roll of the ball. As long as the fairways were firm and they were hitting it straight they just kept advancing the ball and ended up with makable par putts at best and longish two-putts for bogey at worst. But any shot hit offline enough to even touch the 1-1/2" Bermuda rough was almost as much damage their their scores as a shot hit into the trees was for mine (and I say that having hit way more shots into the trees than they did into the rough).

Under firm and dry conditions, moving their tees up 60-75 yards was completely sufficient to produce parity between the game of these two middle-aged female bogey golfers and this one middle-aged male bogey golfer. However that is in large part because our course lacks long forced carries with the exception of two Par 5's with ponds in front of the greens. But one of those is just an 80-yard carry and the other has a little spit of land on one edge of the fairway that lets you chip it down there within 75 yards of the green.

As for fairway bunkers, the point was virtually moot. Both of these ladies hit the ball so straight that the flanking bunkers on most fairways (our course is typical in that they are almost all well to the side of the middle of the fairway) are not in play. So the "landing area" is simply a matter of making sure there is short grass far enough back to be reached with a poorly-struck 90-yard shot from the very front tees.

I was honestly amazed at how similar a game we played. The shorter hitter played those holes a lot like I do in the winter when many Par 4's are unreachable. And the longer player was approaching the course about like I did on the front nine when I was playing one set of tees farther back than I usually do. Now a course with more plentiful bunkers, raised green sites and water hazards would be an entirely different kettle of fish.

TOC gets lots of love by almost all archies. Some of those archies insist on specific landing areas. I have to wonder, who designed the landing areas at TOC? And, how that inspired such rigor in landing areas?

Mike, I don't agree with your idea of minimizing the use of multiple tees either.  

First of all, for a 450 hole, there are all sorts of players that may be 5 and < that have all sorts of length abilities.  The LZ isn't a fixed point like the turning point.  It is a zone of depth and width, that with good design should take disparities of relatively equal handicaps into account regarding distance ability.  

Take a Corey Pavin or Fred Funk VS a Rory Sabbatini.  They are both roughly equivalent and competitive to play the 450 hole.  Even Funk and Pavin hit it at least 260 on the level (perhaps even up to 280).  They know their game, and can place and work the ball to utilize the LZ of depth and width to their advantage or atleast to give them a fair chance to compete with the Rory's of the world that may hit it 325.  So, from roughly 230-330, or 100 yards of depth is the challenge for the architect to find a good LZ relative to where the green will be, and if there are good natural contours, fit that into the equation of allowing the shorter players a chance to get a fair chance to score as the bomb and gougers.  Thus, the depth is a fluid dynamic up and across the FW for considerable yardage.  Perhaps the LZ narrows, perhaps it has carry challenges for the bomber, and position or line of charm challenges for the shorter guy.  But, isn't this what is the difference between the great archies and the mundane, 35-43 yard FWs, easily identifiable LZs, formulaic designers?  

I believe this tree house loves to talk about width in the FW as a good thing because of the variety and strategy, but depth of the LZ and how that is treated in slope, contour, and hazard placement within the LZ general area is equally important.  

Now, how do you get people of disparate abilities to a zone to enjoy and strategize LZs if not with multiple tees to depth of LZ?  If the tees aren't far enough apart, then you do get the guy that hits it 300 left with 150 opposed to the short knockers even on up tees still 200-225+ away.  If the tees on the 450 are right and the LZ is right, there should be a target zone that is relatively equal or fair in second shot challenge, I think.  

For me the negative impact of landing zone concepts relates to courses where the landing area is pinched at the end of a good drive if one plays from a shorter set of tees than he otherwise would.  I often will play 6000 yard tees, particularly in work situations.  On some courses, the fairway piches so you either have to lay up or be stupid.  

The wide gap in driving distances combined with the wide gap in multple tee boxes makes it so that I think the entire hole should be considered a potential landing zone.

I could not agree more.  I cant stand courses where every hole pinches at the 210 mark from the white tees.  

I think the entire hole should be an LZ and I dont like courses where it is painfully obvious LZ's controlled a lot of the design.  This is especially prevalent on courses with a lot of forced carries from the tee (a personal pet pieve).

When you're dealing with topography, there is indeed such a thing as a landing area.  It's the space where the drive can come to rest.  If there's too much tilt, the ball won't stop; and in most cases, we are looking for a reasonable area from which there will be visibility to the next target area, usually the green.

On flat ground, everything's a landing area, but when you start dealing with undulating sites, be it Pacific Dunes or Stone Eagle, some of the landing areas are restricted in length or width (or both) and the tees and the associated hazards need to be set up accordingly.

Tom,

If everything's a landing area on flatter ground where the ball will come to rest as momentum and inertia get stopped by gravity, then why do architects always talk about what they're going to do "in the landing area", in terms of bunkering, hazards, etc?

Isn't it more the mindset we need to get away from, whatever it's called?

Quote from: Tom_Doak on October 15, 2007, 05:22:25 PM

...there is indeed such a thing as a landing area.  It's the space where the drive can come to rest. ...

     

OK Garland
Then it's a 'Rest Area'

Quote from: Garland Bayley on October 15, 2007, 06:14:23 PM

Quote from: Tom_Doak on October 15, 2007, 05:22:25 PM

...there is indeed such a thing as a landing area.  It's the space where the drive can come to rest. ...

     

OK Garland
Then it's a 'Rest Area'

Bravo Lloyd  

I have always felt the term "landing area" was a bit off-base, especially if you play with less talented golfers.  Every ball lands somewhere...a few feet off the tee, in someone's backyard pool, or 300 yards down the center of the fairway.  Now, maybe landing area is just short for "preferred landing area" but I rarely use this part of the golf course.  Maybe "rest area" has more meaning but still, a player's ball may come to rest anywhere in a 300+ yard semicircle around the tee box....good luck on this one.

Bart

Mike Cirba said:

"I'm not sure yet, but I think some of the whole thinking around multiple sets of tees and "landing areas" are artificially limiting factors that constrain architecture in a negative way."

Mike:

I think I know where you're going or where you should go.

Ironically, I had the same feeling the other day and it was probably inspired by that thread you wrote about Slope getting higher on some course along with another thread or two almost simultaneously on other subjects.

They all made me think about the way golf used to be when everyone (men and women) played from the same tee (because there only was one tee ).

Just think about that for awhile!!

How do you think that would work for everyone?

Well, obviously there must have been some way around for everyone and their game and when you think about that it would pretty much have to be multi-optional (the very thing some of us refer to as strategic).

I think that original idea with golf and early architecture (perhaps what I once referred to as early "path of least resistance" architecture) has probably been massively altered and probably compromised by a number of things;

1. multiple tees that eventually lead all golfers (and perhaps architects) too into thinking they should all be entitled somehow to play holes in the same basic ways.

2. The modern handicap system that has forced golfers into thinking in a gross score context along with such things as the GIR mentality. What is GIR but "greens in REGULATION"? Regulation for whom?

I've known Alice Dye most of my life and I think the world of her but I do think her insistence that somehow women should be able to hit the same clubs as men via architecture is basically just muddle-headed thinking and basically a poor assumption.

Just think about this for a moment;

What if all players played from the same tees as they once did and no matter how long or short a golf course was?

If that was the case then the natural advantages and disadvantages of all players becomes immediately apparent with no artificial adjustment by varied tee lengths.

If all golfers had to do that then architects would have to find some way of arranging golf courses to allow for the wide spectrum of distance differentials around a course, wouldn't they?

And if golf was played that way then what Max Behr called the basic currency of golf--eg STROKES, would become the ONLY thing necessary to handicap golfers. If it took a good man two shots at best to get to a green and a women four shots at best, so what?

Of course this would be a tall order for architects to do, or at least it seems they've now come to think it would be a tall order, but that doesn't exactly mean it shouldn't be done or tried more to some degree and extent.

If that happened then such things as "landing areas" would and should become far less defined and specific and limited.  

I don't know if that's where you were going but I think it's where this kind of thread and point should go.

Again, it would be hard to do but just think about it---what could be more strategic than that if it was done and done well?

If original almost pre-architecture golf which essentially was nothing more than using natural landforms only as they were managed to do it somehow then there's no reason architects couldn't figure out how to do it too.

Or maybe they couldn't because in the final analysis maybe they never will understand how to truly mimic nature!  

The "scientific" and "game mind of Man" again, MikeC, you know?!  

It just seems like when some of these fundamenatal questions get asked on here some of the ideas and writing of Max Behr just keep coming up.

He said the spirit of golf was lost somehow when Man took the original game out of the totally natural linksland to sites abroad not naturally suited to the original game and then began to take the game apart into pieces to try to analyze all of what he thought were the component parts of it and what they all meant in either pieces or in the whole. He said they did this to try to make some scientific and logical sense out of the game because that's just what Man instinctively does. He just instinctively wants to scientifically analyze and define everything to give it more meaning to him.

I was once walking Hidden Creek with James (Duke) Duncan and I asked him on one hole what the strategy was supposed to be.

He said he thought Bill Coore may've gone beyond strategy.

Of course I asked him what the hell that was supposed to mean.

He said he thought he was beginning to try to do some things just randomly just to see what would happen.

Is Nature itself any different? Did Nature arrange landforms for golf and golfers? I don't think so---it's all just randomness. The type of thing where original golfers of all types played from the same tees and plied their way around natural landforms through "paths of least resistance".

And if that's not the ultimate "find your own way" kind of "strategic" golf, what is?