Who sees a difference in the two--at least in principle?

It seems to me that many many golfers and even many very good golf analysts think about good "strategic" architecture as many ways (options) of acheiving the same ends--ie the same destination (green) and the same result (par).

While those architects who tended to dabble in "shot testing" architecture, such as William Flynn, sometimes Ross and particularly George Crump and William Fownes didn't look at architecture and the principle of it requirments quite like that.

Those listed might be considered the "shot testing" architects. The expectation and even the written description and admission was that certain holes and certain courses had basically one dimensional "shot testing" requirements and if a golfer failed to pass that "shot test" or elected not to take it or was simply incapable of it his patent expectation should be to drop at least a shot--perhaps more!

"Shot testing" architecture was definitely NOT the same kind of multi-optional design of acheiving the same destination (green) and expecting the same result (par) as many of us probably think of as great and ideal "strategic" architecture.

To me the best examples of the latter would certainly be TOC and would include such great American designs as Riviera, ANGC or perhaps even NGLA.

Examples of the former would be courses such as Pine Valley, Oakmont and Shinnecock, maybe Pinehurst #2 and Aronimink.

Do any of you see the differences in these two types of architeture as I do--at least in architectural principle?

It seems to me the subject is often avoided on here for whatever reason, but the primary one perhaps being that some of those "shot testing" designs we seem to otherwise respect don't really fit in the mold of what we think great "strategic" architecture is or should be.

Sometimes a course like PVGC is criticized on here for being undemocratic and unaccomodating of all levels of players and therefore less than "ideal".

Is this just the difference between so-called "championship" architecture and so-called "ideal strategic" architecture--or is there more to it than just that?

Or does it ultimately all boil down to the fact that "difference" in golf architecture is basically the essence of it all?

I was under the impression that PV & Shinnecock represented the best of both - that they were shot testing, but not necessarily shot dictating, if that makes sense.

I've always felt any idiotic could make a course that only dictated shots - but then again, I'm hopelessly biased.

"Could you rephrase the question? (I stepped out for a hotdog halfway through your post, and I'm having difficulty refocusing)."

Gary:

No I can't rephrase the question. My suggestion to you would be to step back out and regurgitate that hotdog and then step back in here and try harder to refocus!

GeorgeP;

You said;

"I've always felt any idiot could make a course that dictated shots -"

I don't think by this post I'm saying that courses like PVGC, Shinnecock et al dictate shots exactly--the choices are there for any player to take--just that the expectation of results are clearly not the same depending on those choices.

This isn't exactly my idea--I'm merely speaking of some of the things that Flynn and Crump wrote about what they were trying to accomplish.

When it comes to mulit-optional to the same end or expected result vs multi optional for different ends and different expected results holes can't get much more different than say PVGC's #5 or Shinnecock's #7 or #11 vs Riviera's #10---all wonderful golf holes by the way!

 

I believe I see the difference you are making.  But I feel that you can only "test" shot making from one location, the tee.  Other than that you are "testing" two or more shots.

If you were to design a green complex that required a certain shot making ability, you would dictate that the player be in postion "A" in order to make that shot, which would dictate that the tee shot would also be the "test'. Hence, there would be no strategy.

I don't really see how a player could "not elect to take the test".

You could approach the premise by saying there are several ways to achieve the goal, but one way (if you have the ability) would prove to be the best.  In other words, here is the shot test presented, but if you don't pull it off, you're not dead.  You can still achieve the goal.  Not neccessarily strategic, but not neccessarily penal either.

"But to what extent is your notion of "shot-making" architecture just another way of saying "penal" architecture?"

BobC:

Not "shot-making"--"shot testing"--there's a big difference, at least to me.

When I think of "shot-making" my perception of it is it fits much more comfortably into the mold of what most people think of as "ideal strategic" architecture--basically many ways of acheiving the same destination (green) and the same result (perhaps par).

"Shot testing", on the other hand was considered and visualized by the likes of Flynn and Crump and Fownes as sort of a "ring the bell at the country fair" type of thing or at least "see how high you could run the weight up the scale". If you could do it (ring the bell that is) or chose to try in real "shot testing" architecture, it was very demanding for most for sure. The whole idea seemed to be not to offer situations (designs) that offered many and creative ways to play single shots (or a progression of them) to the same basic end (destination) or result (score) but more of a challenge to one's ability to analyze what he truly could and couldn't do or was likely to do--how well he could analyze what he was truly capable of at his absolute maximum best, in other words.

Could "shot testing" architecture as visualized and offered by Crump at PVGC be considered synonymous with "penal" architecture? Absolutely--no question of it at all. Crump mentioned this many times and in no uncertain terms. He believed if you chose to try something that was highly demanding and you failed to pass that severe test you should be penalized and very severely. Fownes very much felt the same way about his architecture and said so many times.

But the severe penalty should very much come from faulty choice as much as faulty excecution (faulty choice of course being overreaching your maximum ability or capacity). But the options they offered for choosing something other than the severe "shot test" was to definitely pay something for refusing to try the test in the first place--and do something (even ideally) more within one's capacity--and that something was definitely a shot.

But for those who tried the test and either failed to execute properly or for clearly mentally overreaching their ability the penalty was to be even more severe--more than one shot--perhaps many.

The real reason I make a post like this one is I'm so interested in the evolution of architecture both in what was being created particularly in that earlier era but also in why!

And writing a book on William Flynn, I clearly see where he was trying to take this evolution. He was trying to evolve it into something a bit more grey-area (than a PVGC and Oakmont) where the penalties were not so severe but that they should still clearly be there in the minds of all golfers. I think it's not coincidental that Flynn at his very best--clearly Shinnecock--created a design that has often been labeled "the hardest fair test of golf!" Again, I don't think Shinnecock happened that way by accident--it was clearly thought through in minute detail--both in principle and also on the ground. Flynn was evolving in interesting ways from those laboratories where he cut his teeth--Merion and PVGC!

I wrote a long article not long ago about the original Philadelphia School of architecture--a "school" that I believe the unique "American Championship" golf course emerged from. Primarily the school resided at PVGC and its long and collaborative creation.

Another reason I make a post like this is I see what I think is too much analysis of golf architecture in the sort of reward side of the overall risk/reward equation that is and should be all good architecture. I see too few analysts even very good one look closely enough on the risk side of the equation.

Most talk about holes and compare them as to which is easier or harder to make a par on or perhaps a birdie (the reward side). I'd like to see that analysis always combined with a commensurate discussion or at least recognition of what the worse scenario (risk) may be or is likely to be. That's total golf to me--that's thinking golf--the very best kind of all.

I believe so many golfers and even analysts focus so much on the reward side of the all encompassing "risk/reward equation", sometimes even to the exclusion of considering or noticing risk that it should be renamed the REWARD/risk equation.

As you can tell, Bob, there's definitely in this thread a real undercurrent of that scoring spectrum barometer we once talked about on here that you tried to develop statistical analysis for to determine if it meant something as to the quality of golf holes.

I think it does and I think you do too--and I think a lot of it has to do with recognizing and understanding the differences in architecture (and certainly the differences in how to play different architecture--that there was and maybe should be real "shot testing" architecture (with its penal downside) as well as what's considered the more "ideal strategic" type.

I just love the evolution of it all and when you look back or even forward it's OK that there is such difference!

Matter of fact, more and more I feel that the vast differences in architecture (severe "shot testing" architecture all the way to the most imaginative mutli-optional "end up at the same detination and same result type of super ideal strategic architecture") is truly the essence of golf!

"I believe I see the difference you are making.  But I feel that you can only "test" shot making from one location, the tee.  Other than that you are "testing" two or more shots."

Rick:

Absolutely! When you say 'you can only "test" shot making from one location, the tee' that's another concept or let's say reality that I feel most all golfers have fallen into. They look at strategy, if they look at it at all, in single shot increments almost exclusive of what comes next. This has gone on so long that architecture today constructs right into that "single shot" mentality of architecture. You just solve this particular problem and once that's done you solve the next one.

And what does that end up doing or creating in architecture? It ends up just basically following some architect's "garden path" or not. Is that the most enjoyable thing to do in golf? Not to me it isn't. I don't even really know how so much modern architecture got to that point--I don't know whether golfers sort of made or asked architects somehow to do that or architects did it for some reason and golfers just went along with it and accepted it as the norm and the necessary in golf.

The better architecture to me is when the architect can seem to somehow take himself and his own ideas out of the equation as to how any golfer looks at and plays his course. The best architecture to me is when the most golfers feel they can find their own unique ways (strategies).

You bet real strategy is putting two or more shots together and real "shot testing" architecture is putting together two or more of one's absolute best two or three shots or recoginizing that a price will very likely be paid--always in dropped shots resulting in higher numbers (the effects of the risks).

This is why I find a man like Max Behr so fascinating when he says that the best and most thoughtful architecture is a hole, for instance a par 5, where that interesting little bunker up by the green basically occurs to the player on the tee before he hits his tee shot. That's what Behr calls creating "unity" in architecture. That means to me that when that occurs to the player on the tee the player may then create his own unique strategy (plan) to deal with that little bunker way up there best long before he comes to it. In this way the player may not seem to be dictated to be anyone as he creates and executes his plan (strategy--ie what he ideally wants to do throughout the entire hole!).

But then one needs to ask how would a Max Behr arrange the other features on that hole to perserve the thought of that bunker two to three shots hence up by the green in that player's mind standing on the tee before deciding what to do. Well, that's obvously very interesting too and is a subject for another day that begins to get into the essence of all of Max Behr's fascinating philosophies on golf architecture.

You also said:

"If you were to design a green complex that required a certain shot making ability, you would dictate that the player be in postion "A" in order to make that shot, which would dictate that the tee shot would also be the "test'. Hence, there would be no strategy."

That may be so--and in a real way I am saying on this thread that the style of architecture I've tried to identify on here by a few examples (PVGC, Oakmont etc) as real "shot testing" architecture just may not be what so many on here think of as "strategic" architecture--at least not in the same way as they perceive multi-options of arriving at the same destination or result in many ways as almost the requirement of good strategic architecture.

But I think of some of what I call real "shot testing" architecture as very strategic too--just in a very different way I think. To me the latter is basically more of a numbers evaluation before you put the tee in the ground.

Take a hole like Riviera's #10. Anyone who can hit the ball fairly long and decent can look at that hole from the tee and see at least three really distinct choices of both distance and direction that can result in approximately the same overall result over time given the risks and rewards of each option. That's what I would call an incredibly well balanced strategic golf hole in the "ideal" sense that many of us probably think of as classic strategic (multi-optional) architecture.

On the other hand one with the same ability can stand on the tee of CPC's #16 and look at two really different choices--one the extreme "shot testing" go for the gusto and grab the brass ring or come to ruination option or the other to the left with the expectation of far less risk and probably much less reward.

I probably wouldn't call those two latter options (CPC's #16) well balanced at all--except of course in the minds of some golfers for all kinds of odd and varied reasons.

Both to me are strategic but in vastly different ways--although I don't think real "shot testing" architecture is strategic to most on here at least nothing like the more classic strategic Riviera's #10 is.

Take a hole like Riviera's #10. Anyone who can hit the ball fairly long and decent can look at that hole from the tee and see at least three really distinct choices of both distance and direction that can result in approximately the same overall result over time given the risks and rewards of each option. That's what I would call an incredibly well balanced strategic golf hole in the "ideal" sense that many of us probably think of as classic strategic (multi-optional) architecture.

Tom et al. --

Wondering  -- as someone who hasn't played Riviera:

Wouldn't an "ideal" strategic hole not only offer various options, but also force (or, rather, inspire) the good player to freshly weigh those options every time he plays it -- depending on the hole location, the wind, the maintenance meld of the day?

Does Riviera No. 10 force (or, rather, reward) that daily reconsideration? Or do players tend to find their one way of playing it and stick with it?

Tom,

There is certainly a vast difference between the two types, although I like that you have avoided the word "penal" because it has too many negative connotations.

If you look at that GOLF Magazine ranking, the top ten courses are divided fairly evenly between the two types, and few of the panelists seem to recognize the difference!

I was standing on the eleventh tee at Shinnecock the other day thinking how it's really too severe of a golf hole for about 96% of people ... there's really not even a good choice of spots to miss the green and try and get up and down.  The same goes for the 17th at Sand Hills or the Postage Stamp or the 13th at Merion.  And the people who love "strategic" architecture are some of the first to nominate these among the greatest of par threes!

I'm not saying they're awful, and there's certainly room for a few "testing" holes on any course.  It's just funny how people go back and forth without recognizing the difference.

One of the distinctions Tom Paul may be looking for is that one strategy would be to play the course where the least amount of "shot testing" is needed. But on courses where there is no option no choices,  you are less likely to find any spot, where the least amount of "shot testing" is required.

Does that make any sense?

What would #17 at the TPC at Sawgrass be considered - penal or shot testing as you call it?  How about #7 at Pine Valley?  

Tom,

Aren't you talking about what's been labeled heroic architecture?  The options exist, roundabout route vs. tempting route, including the spectrum of combinations.  

The whole risk/reward equation falls flat if the most tempting route doesn't offer a penalty (or penalties) in balance with the reward.  Tragedy/Hero

Isn't the situation similar to Behr's discussion on man vs. nature, which has been discussed before?  IMO, it's one of the more interesting concepts discussed on this board.

In a situation with options, the golfer who opts for the testing route and fails has nothing to blame but his own ability (physical or game management).  

If the situation or shot is simply dictated to him, is he then more likely to blame the architect, the one who has set up the situation?  I understand that Behr was specifically discussing the golfer recognizing man's hand in feature design, but isn't this basically the same concept?

The most fun courses I've played have a variety of both.  I can tell you of a new one that qualifies.

While I've not played it, I have walked it, and I wonder, if PVGC #7 offered an alternative route, but rewarded the player who played two strong shots over Hell's Half Acre, would it be a better hole?  Perhaps if you looked at it in the context of that single hole, alone, it could be improved upon with an alternative route.  

On the other hand, with those two testing shots sitting in between the 6th and 8th, both holes with great angles and options, I believe it offers variety and rhythm at that point in the round.

   

David:

What a post. I wasn't planning on fielding such thoughts this early in the morning but seeing as you're now probably out on the golf course with three hours of sleep dragging your ass around I think you definitely deserve some thoughtful answers to your post.

First of all, it's a bit hard for me to answer all the strategic soccer and football analogies to golf's strategies since I view the structure and strategies of those two "games" as too different from golf and its structure and strategies, for a number of reasons.

Golf is so unlike many of the other games as A (player's) ball in golf is not vied for as in such games as football, soccer, tennis etc. That fact immediately makes comparing the sports and their strategies quite difficult or perhaps in some ways meaningless.

But even Max Behr (whose brother, BTW, was a world class tennis player) did attempt to compare the strategic structure of a tennis court in the context of the "game mind" of man and his on-going attempt to create more of a defined, bounded and specifically dilineated structure in golf architecture and its strategies--which in many ways he viewed, obviously, as stultifying to a more natural and open architectural structure and strategies that he occasionally referred to as "wild golf".

This is much of the meat of his distinction between golf the "sport" and golf the "game". Clearly Behr preferred the former and was concerned about the onslaught of the latter (man's "game mind" always setting rules and boundaries) as he viewed it as always impinging on Nature's side of the balance in natural golf and its architecture (the "sport").

So I'd prefer to use tennis as the analogy to golf rather than football or soccer only because Behr did. Behr spoke of the side-lines of tennis as the "pressure points" of the structure of the game just as he analogized and spoke of the "pressure points" of hazards in golf and its architecture.

What did he mean by "pressure points" in both games? He meant those were the areas of highest risk for the player--but obviously the ones for the greatest and most immediate reward as well.

In tennis the sidelines were the greatest RISK to the player trying to place his ball near it due to the greater likelihood of going "out" (the boundary) and losing what he called the "medium of exchange" in the game--the point!

On the other hand, the likelihood of REWARD was heightened at that sideline "pressure point" as that was the place the opponent (the human opposing force vying for a common ball that golf does not have) was least likely to get to and return the ball and oppose his opponent (player)!

And unbelievably, and probably in someways hard to understand, Behr transformed in his analogy of tennis (architecture) to golf architecture the dimension of HEIGHT to basically take the place of the "pressure point" sideline of tennis (being only a dilineation of length and width) AS WELL AS the opposing force of the tennis opponent vying for a common ball.

As golf is not played with a common ball and is played only as opponents playing in tandem, the dimension of height essentially became, to Behr, the "hazard dimension" in golf again to take the place of the sideline "pressure point" of tennis as well as the opposing force of the opponent (to return the ball from the sideline "pressure point").

Clearly hazards do have length and width but I think one can see how the idea of penal height is important and significant to the hazard feature in relation to the length and width of safe areas (fairways).

To go farther and reiterate that golf is a game played with a ball NOT vied for by a human opponent, as in tennis, soccer and golf, the "medium of exchange" (in Behr's phraseology) becomes a shot or a stroke--as in tennis it's the "point" and again in golf (and its architecture) the hazard feature in a way takes the place of the opposing force of the opponent in tennis as well as the opposing reality of going "out" at the "pressure point" of the sideline boundary and losing a "point".

Again, golf's structure and reality is the increased potential of losing a "stroke" at golf's "pressure point" (the hazard feature) or potentially gaining a "stroke" by challenging successfully that "pressure point".

I hope all this in some way relates to your thoughts and analogies of soccer and football to golf and its strategies. But my overall point in this thread is really only to stress that in real "shot testing" golf architecture the demand is very great to realize a reward (playing the hole in less strokes) but that  the realization should also be great that failing that severe "shot test" is also costly (to very costly) in strokes lost. And that the temptation to attempt that severe "shot test" MUST be balanced by the realization that to NOT take that test will very likely ALSO result in the loss of that "medium of exchange" in golf (the stroke) too--although perhaps not as many or perhaps not at all. Of course, and again, that's all balanced by the fact that the more conservative alternative does still hold the possiblitilty of making up that medium of exchange along the way before that mini competition (the hole) is done.

All this fascinating contemplation going on in the mind of any golfer at the same time makes it all so interesting.

What will happen if I try A (high risk), B (some aggressive/conservative compromise) or C (conservative play)?

What will happen to my choices in relation to all the same things going through my opponents minds as we play along in tandem never vying for the same ball?

No wonder golf is so interesting and thoughtful! A man like Behr seemed to want to somehow make it more interesting and enjoyable by increasing the thoughtful options and possibilities and apparently making it more ongoing instead of coming to an instant halt in the penal gutter just off some narrow dilineated center corridor of success.

And so he was more an advocate of a more classical strategic architectural set up in architecture that probably offered and allowed more alternative ways of reaching the same destination (green) in the same result (strokes).

And by increasing those things it became more apparent to any golfer that the strategies were more a creation of the golfer and less that of the architect.

Do you see, in a real way, how that increases the ability of an architect to hide his hand--of course always aided by the degree to which an architect can make features that don't look as if he did make them?

Tom- I'm sorry I can't get behind PV because I don't know it but I do know the ninth at Cypress. There, the player has all those thoughts you describe in this last post of yours. Where? how? should I? can I? will I? and as you state this is the pinnacle of what golf's allure should always be. Thought provoking both intellectually and emotionally.

Having been injured that day at CP I appreciated more than most the genius of the design. Since I wasn't able to conceive of a shot over 215 yds. I played the course (from tips) as conservatively as I have ever played a round of golf. Without the challenge of the perpendicular hazards and the choices presented by the diagonal hazards what thinking is involved? Probably only emotional thinking because otherwise my shot has already been dictated to me, and either execute or don't. If I don't, I have the next shot to execute. Overcoming adversity is also a major aspect of the essence (or my enjoyment). Without the adversity, the sport would be less thrilling and tat amount to bowling without the retriever and only one pin.

Is it IQ versus EQ and the best of the best test both constantly and forever?