[Ken Moum]

I thought Geoff Shackelford's latest quote was interesting.

It relates to some of the recent threads here, and my experience on a greens committee with several single-digit handicappers tells me it's true.

What do you all think?

One can readily imagine what would be the ultimate result of a course laid out by an average committee composed of scratch, three, four and eight handicap men.  They are most of them, probably subconsciously, prejudiced against a hazard being constructed into which they are likely to get themselves. But they are all unanimous in thinking that the poor devil with a twenty-four handicap should be left out of consideration altogether. The end result is neither fish, flesh, fowl nor even good red herring.  --  Alister Mackenzie

[Walt_Cutshall]

I think GS' comment has some validity, but IME it isn't limited to low 'cappers. I have seen middle and high handicap golfers be guilty of this as well.

[James Edwards]

Good golfers can make phenomenal architects!    I think history proves that on many occasions...  

In fact, Im struggling to think of many architects out there today who are not good golfers?

Im a single figure handicap, in fact 3 letters, and im an architect and this week ive just finished a bunker renovation on a hole in Cumbria, north west england, on a braid course and have substantially brought the flanking greenside bunkering in to protect the green on this driveable par 4.  

In this particular case, the greens chairmen and president who are not single figure handicappers (i might add)  completely understand the reasoning for this and they were certainly pleased that the bigger hitters will not be knocking it on with such regularity anymore.

I for one always take the views of whoever is interested to express them to me on such holes because I want to get the greatest balance between playability, strategy and fun that i possibly can throughout the course of a round of golf for all golfers concerned.

[Tom_Doak]

James:

I agree with you that nearly all good architects have been good players (if good = single digit handicaps), but don't you believe that most architects have more empathy for the 15- or 25-handicap than most low-handicap players do?  And shouldn't we?

Your story is common ... middle handicaps want their course to be challenging for the better players, and they go along with better players who make such suggestions.  They tend to go along with such suggestions even when they know it's going to bother them as players, too, though, because they don't want to be seen as wimps in the eyes of the better players.  In my opinion, you seldom get honest feedback from members when planning a renovation -- most are positioning themselves based on what others think.

[James Edwards]

Tom:

I would say that good does = single digit...  (without opening up a can of worms for myself)..  

I would certainly agree that most architects do have more empathy for the higher handicappers - well at least all the architects I have had the pleasure of meeting and discussing strategy with always have an eye on balance for all golfers ... and that doesnt just mean adjusting the tee position of the day... for the category of player.

Ive always found that with bunkering, it can in fact make the higher handicapper a better player "shock horror"...  They begin to learn about hitting the ball straight and with purpose to "avoid" the hazard to gain position "A" as opposed to off line and position "B" but it doesnt matter because they are happy enough in the light rough etc etc - its a basic theory but ive found it works on most of the courses I have ever had the pleasure of working on.

I have never really come across a low handicapper ignoring (or whatever word fits correctly) a higher handicapper when it comes to course design??

I know what you are getting at with your comment about honest feedback - alot of that is concern that they have invited you in to change their course of X Years and all the eyes of the club are on that guy or guys that said "yes to it" so they are in fear and \NEED that fantastic result - whatever it looks like in the end - and come that first day when it opens - as soon as they get the welcome feedback, everyone relaxes and the honesty finally flys out as the dust is settling...

 

[Tim Rooney]

Question with a question.What do the single digit architects omit from their design to appease the high handicapper?Eliminate greenside ballanced bunkering,fairway bunkering,etc.?The #1 absurdity observed is random bunkering 50yds greenside.

[Tom_Doak]

Being a good golfer is not necessarily a hindrance to being a good architect -- it really depends on how broad or narrow one's thinking is.

Last week I had the best player at a club cast question on the restoration of a bunker in the middle of a par-five fairway, on the grounds that he "didn't think the average member should hit his career drive and wind up in a bunker."  

Just between us, this was b.s. -- he really just didn't want the bunker to be in his way, and was looking for a way to get the weaker players who would never reach the bunker anyway to agree with him.  It was just like W telling the voters he wants to repeal the "death tax" when most of those voters never get taxed, and what he really wants is to keep the money in his family intact.

[Mark_Fine]

I think one of the keys is being able to empathize with all levels of playing ability.  If you can't grasp just how good a tour player is while at the same time understand how "not so good" a below average golfer can be, you might struggle with designing golf courses.  Furthermore, I really do think it helps to have some ability to play a decent game yourself.  If you've only ever been a 15 handicap your whole life, it might be hard to appreciate the higher level of play and to design properly for it.

Tom Doak,
I wouldn't back off on that bunker in the middle of the fairway!

Mark

[Padraig Dooley]

Good golfers were bad golfers once, they just got better. The question is can the better player remember what it was like to be a bad player and design accordingly for both.

My experience is, as Walt mentioned, that the majority of golfers are biased towards whatever effects them and rarely think outside the box. Tom's example of the bunker in the fairway illustrates this.

I think golfing ability would be well down on the list of requirements for an architect. For example, I believe Martin Hawtree doesn't play golf at all (this might need conformation).

[Tony Ristola]

Empathizing with players of all levels is why teaching pro's would have a better base of knowledge than most in the "good players" catagory. Not that all, or even most would use it.

As for W and taxes; The claim made I find a little preposterous. It doesn't matter if he's trying to protect his family's wealth, and if so, good. It simply doesn't matter if most voters won't benefit either. Since when is that the standard? Where in The Constitution does it condone confiscating wealth in this manner? This is how we have crept far away from a government of limited powers to having a large portion of society that embraces class warfare. Tom, you certainly seem to embrace Mackenzie's golf philosophy, but politically you seem to have at least one vast difference of opinion.

[Jon Wiggett]

I think Mark has it just about right. Being a good GCA doesn't depend on playing ability but the ability to understand the challenge golf presents to each standard of golfer. The idea of handicaps is to even out the chances of winning across a broad spectrum of abilities.

If a hole is unplayable for a certain standard of player then handicap becomes irrelevant and a key part to the enjoyment of the game is lost. If a course is too dull then it also becomes boring.

Good design doesn't have to be fair or overly testing but it needs to be interesting and keep the player on his toes in anticipation of the next shot.

Is this one of the reasons that many of the courses that are universally liked are not difficult to play in the length but are quirky and have an element of luck.

[Kirk Gill]

One question I have - is there a tendency amongst low-handicap golfers to equate "good" with "hard" when it comes to design, and to consider that any improvement to a course will result in the course becoming more difficult? Would an architect with a higher handicap number be more likely to equate "good" with something else than "hard?"

[Mark Smolens]

Mr. Gill, is Ballyneal a "good" course?  It certainly can't be described as "hard," if hard is defined as in some manner to mean penal.  The higher handicappers in the group I was in loved the course in our two days there -- they thought it was "fair" to them.  The single digits loved it to.  Therefore(?) I would say that good does not equal hard. . .

[Tony Ristola]

Kirk,
I agree with you that hard and good seem to go hand in hand with better players. That's the difficulty of discussing golf architecture.  Generalizations come with tons of exceptions. In stating club pro's who've taught would be good potential candidates for golf architecture, only reveals part of the equation. I think good teachers would be the best qualified among the good players to design a golf course that takes all golfers into consideration. Perhaps they would be more tolerant in the difficulty dept., but would they have the skills for the art?  Could they route a golf course? Marry engineering and strategy? They may excel in one dept., but what about the rest?

[Tom_Doak]

In my experience of consulting at older clubs, there is a universal fear that our suggestions (for removing trees, widening fairways to their original width, even making greens larger to bring the corner pin placements back into play) might make the course "easier" or reduce the slope rating.  It's not just the good players -- nearly everybody thinks "easier" is a step backwards, or else they just don't want to be seen as wimps who need to make the course less challenging for themselves.

It has taken me a long time to perfect the explanation that some changes will make the course "easier" or "harder" but we are not trying for one or the other, we are just trying to make it more interesting and to bring back a lost nuance of the original design.

This "harder" mantra is a significant cause of the defacing of good old golf courses.

[Tom_Doak]

Also, the people who don't like Ballyneal as much as Sand Hills generally say that it isn't as hard.  And the people who like Dismal River like it because it's harder, which defuses the first argument.

[BCrosby]

Tom -

The complaints you heard about making courses "easier" are eactly what we are hearing about proposed changes to our course here in Atlanta.

Curiously, most of it is coming from high handicap golfers. It's something I didn't expect.

There is still an assumption out there among everyday golfers that hard = good. And even harder = even better.

We try to tell them that some changes will make some holes play easier from some angles (taking out trees does that often), but that other holes will be more challenging because of added length, changes to green angles, etc.

But there is this anxiety that opening playing corridors, removing trees and other vegetation, etc. are all going to diminish the status of the course because bogey golfers will find some of their 7's turned into 6's.

It has been an eye-opener for me.

Bob

[TEPaul]

I do not think a person's ability to understand what works well for various levels of golfers has anything inherently to do with what kind of golfer that person is.

Some people just have it and some don't, and how they play golf isn't always the determing factor to whether they have it or whether they don't.

To me the key is a person's ability to be observant as well as his ability to apply his observations well.

[Jeff_Mingay]

In my experience of consulting at older clubs, there is a universal fear that our suggestions (for removing trees, widening fairways to their original width, even making greens larger to bring the corner pin placements back into play) might make the course "easier" or reduce the slope rating.  It's not just the good players -- nearly everybody thinks "easier" is a step backwards, or else they just don't want to be seen as wimps who need to make the course less challenging for themselves.

It has taken me a long time to perfect the explanation that some changes will make the course "easier" or "harder" but we are not trying for one or the other, we are just trying to make it more interesting and to bring back a lost nuance of the original design.

This "harder" mantra is a significant cause of the defacing of good old golf courses.

I think Robert Trent Jones' work at making a number of high-profile 1920s era courses "more difficult" for championship play, beginning in 1951 at Oakland Hills, are undoubtedly several of the most influential events in the history of golf in America.

Amazing. Fifty-six years later, the Oakland Hills hangover remains.

[TEPaul]

"In my experience of consulting at older clubs, there is a universal fear that our suggestions (for removing trees, widening fairways to their original width, even making greens larger to bring the corner pin placements back into play) might make the course "easier" or reduce the slope rating.  It's not just the good players -- nearly everybody thinks "easier" is a step backwards, or else they just don't want to be seen as wimps who need to make the course less challenging for themselves.

It has taken me a long time to perfect the explanation that some changes will make the course "easier" or "harder" but we are not trying for one or the other, we are just trying to make it more interesting and to bring back a lost nuance of the original design.

This "harder" mantra is a significant cause of the defacing of good old golf courses."


TomD:

If you want to get their attention on this "easier" thing (and if you want to tell them the truth too) just tell them that it's basically maintenance practices that make a golf course play harder (or easier).

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak,

I'd agree with you.

I think that good architects transcend the bias of handicap, forging a balanced challenge for all golfers, one that doesn't favor one game over another.

[Greg Murphy]

Many good players definitely believe a good hole is a hard hole, so naturally it follows, you can't make a hole better by making it easier.

The sixth hole at the Wascana Country Club illustrates this well. It measures about 425 yards. It's is a gentle cape style dog leg right with a convex fairway. A natural water hazard runs tee-to-green along the right. Tee shots hit a bit left or through the dogleg bounce further left into trees that border the left side of the fairway. Tee shots hit a bit right bounce further right into trees that border the right side of the fairway. You read that right. Trees are planted along the margin of the water hazard that runs the entire length of the hole along the right side.

If you miss left, you're chipping out to the fairway on your second shot. If you miss right you're chipping out to the middle of the fairway on your second shot. For variety, if you miss a little further right and put your ball in the water, you're chipping out to the middle of the fairway on your third shot (instead of your second). Real interesting.
 
I have contended for years the hole (along with a couple of others that also have the bizarre feature of trees planted along the margin of natural wetland/creek areas) would be much better without the trees along the water. Many agree but the response from a couple of better players has been that the trees should stay because they make the hole tougher. They certainly do. Removing them would make the hole easier. Yes. But easier is often more interesting. Without the trees, the hole could be designed to tempt players to flirt with the water, on both the tee shot and the shot into the green. As is, it's tough but about as boring as it gets, and needlessly so.

But making a hole better by making it easier to many strong players is like saying you can make something stronger by making it weaker.
 

[Ken Moum]

Many good players definitely believe a good hole is a hard hole, so naturally it follows, you can't make a hole better by making it easier.

That's precisely the kind of thing I was hining about when I started this thread.

The other category is the guy who hit a ball into a bunker on the inside of a dogleg trying to cut the corner of a short par five, and discovered he had tree in his line that prevented him from going at the green.

He got the bunker filled in, because he thought the "double penalty" was unfair.

But he also wanted more trees planted at the turn of the dogleg, which is 200 yards from the tee. And he couldn't understand why I thought it was ridiculous to punish the 180-yard hitters for being in the middle of the fairway. They weren't threatening the green from 290 anyway.

Ken

[BCrosby]

About 1960 Life Magazine asked 18 pros to pick the best holes in the US and give a little explanation as to why. Turns out the pros picked the holes they thought were the most difficult.

Except for noting the strategic strengths of the 13th at ANGC, difficulty was the first, the last and the only criterion they used.  

(As an aside, I wonder if the best players from the 1920's would have chosen holes based on a wider set of criteria. For example, I would think that Jones might pick a hole like the 14th at TOC because of its playing options. He's quoted several times as singling out the 14th for those reasons.)

The larger point is that most golfers see gca only through two concepts. The first is course conditioning. The second is difficulty. When a golfer is asked what he likes about a course, his answer virtually always comes in one of those two boxes.

It's as if the whole vocabulary of golf architecture - one developed over the last 100 years - is a foreign language. In many cases its a vocabulary they've never even heard before.

How is that possible? How is it that architecture issues that have been argued over ad nauseum for decades, that have been discussed at length in best selling books and in major golf magazines, how is it those issues have had such a limited reach among golfers?  I am honestly mystified.

All of which might be chalked up as just another sociological oddity except for the fact that - as Doak notes above - if you are making changes to an older course, the absence of a basic vocabulary about gca becomes a real impediment. Especially when trying to describe the rationale for various course changes to the membership.

I (and others) have been trying to do just that at my club recently. The good news is that we seem to be making progress.

But along the way I've sometimes felt like a surgeon explaining the need for liver surgery to a patient who didn't realize that he had an organ called a liver.

Bob
     

[Ken Moum]

It's as if the whole vocabulary of golf architecture - one developed over the last 100 years - is a foreign language. In many cases its a vocabulary they've never even heard before.

How is that possible?

As someone who never thought much about these issues until I read, in order, Doaks' Anatomy of, MacK's Spirit of, and Thomas' GCA in America, I have pondered your last question a lot.

My theory is that it was lost in The Depression and WWII.

I believe that the wisdom and writings of Thomas, Ross, MacKenzie, Behr and Tillie would have held sway in the golf community at large if we hadn't suffered the Dark Ages of GCA.

But when periods of enlightenment are followed by periods of intellectual regression, it's only natural that the knowledge would be lost.

Imagine, for instance, If the native people of the Americas could have built on the architectural foundation of Pachu Picchu.

And what do we make of the lost knowledge from the Library at Alexandria?

The golf courses I grew up on were built by people who couldn't have known anything about the language and concepts developed in the Golden Age. And none of them had likely seen the great courses of Scotland.

So we have a couple of generations of golfers who grew up with almost no model for excellence. Except the few who got to play places like Cypress Point, Prairie Dunes, NGLA, etc., etc. we were ignorant of the possibilities.

Heck, my dad was as avid and well-read as any I have ever known and I can't imagine he even knew NGLA or Prairie Dunes existed.

In that environment, somehow hard came to be a synonym for good. And competitive golf became an examination of who could execute a series of difficult shots the most precisely.

Of course there have been exceptions and exceptional people along the way--The Classics of Golf library is one exception to the lost knowledge. And the beloved architects of this site are as well.

But before a golfer of my generation (I'm 60) can come to enlightenment, there must be an awakening. I cannot tell you how hard it is to get my friends to understand why narrow, tree-line fairway aren't the pinnacle of golf course achievment.

Ken

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