"I have only been there once, but I was surprised that the first hole at PV was visually cut off from the tee."

MikeS:

I think what you mean to say is the first green is visually cut off from the tee.

You're right about that and in my opinion that would be one of my first suggestions in tree clearing (ie take down enough trees on the inside of the dogleg to make the green visible or partially so from the tee----the way it once was).

3-4 other holes fall into that category now and would be more than a little awesome if enough trees were removed to show the greens or parts of them from the tee.

I'm talking about:
#6!!
#11
#12!!

But I'm saving the best for last;
#13!!!!!!

And I mean from the left tees! Crump very much wanted to do the latter and I can document that and prove it. He even cleared enough trees to do that. One can't help notice that on the old aerials.

Wayne:

Don't forget, I'm from Long Island and I've played those east end courses many many times. The difference is I did that way back when during those years when I spent too much time in and around Southampton (and in retrospect probably unfortunately so).

However, it's probably a good thing, all in all, that back then I didn't care or think much about golf course architecture. It's always benefical to see things from both sides---if you know what I mean by that.

Going back fifty years courses like NGLA and Shinnecock impressed me far beyond most others even if I probably didn't know why.

Sorry for the NGLA/Shinnecock tangent.

The punishing difficulty of SH for the average to high handicapper playing from the correct tees is more myth and popular simplicity than fact.  I know the that this idea has been ingrained in the minds of golfers but I do not for a second think there is a solid basis for this belief.  In fact, I think Shinnecock Hills is very difficult for the better players but not so difficult for the average to high handicapper.  Of course wind will affect how the course plays as it does at its next door neighbors.

I am very fond of NGLA (much more so than any other in the Macdonald/Raynor/Banks portfolio) but it does not inspire me the way it does most folks in golf and on this site. Let me try to examine some of the reasoning.  There is more fairway acreage and short grass areas at NGLA than anywhere else in America for such a short course.  The skill of super super Bill Salinetti is evident throughout the golf course.  The width and recoverability on that golf course make it far easier for most mid to high handicappers.  The fairway bunkering is rarely in play for the good players (an evolved flaw in most Macdonald courses), the shortness of the course and difficulty relative to par makes the golf course more enjoyable than challenging for better players.  Of course the greens are difficult to score on because of size and contours, especially so for average to high handicap golfers that must confront the approach shots to the manufactured greensites.

Why Macdonald chose the land he did in terms of interesting topography (Sebonack is largely far more compelling) and soil quality is curious.  Is it because that is where a perfect Redan site was found?  They had nearly complete agronomic failure at the start because they were basically trying to grow grass on straight sand; a problem faced at Pine Valley as well.  It wasn't until Flynn came in during 1918 that they were able to resolve that issue with a large scale intervention.

In general, I believe most golfers like generous landing areas.  Yet one should remember, Shinnecock Hills was far wider than it was today.  That is a maintenance practice and not architecture.  If we are discussing the way the courses are presented today, SH is much more constrained off the tee shot than NGLA or Pine Valley.  But it started out with 55 yard wide fairways.  The angles created by bunkering, offset fairways and offset greens are much more interesting than NGLA.  

Golfers also like overt greens difficult contours or not, they like to see clearly what confronts them.  Subtle complex interplays of slope are not as appealing to the eye and far more difficult than they look.  The Shinnecock greens, especially fully extended to their original dimensions have a lot of subtle interplays of slopes, short grass areas and bunkers.  These take a long time to figure out.  Better golfers that attack pins on the periphery can get into a lot of trouble missing the green.  Golfers that play conservatively to the center of greens may not make many birdies, but they will avoid bogeys and worse.  Making putts on man-made looking Macdonald greens gives more of a sense of victory than making putts on the far more natural looking Flynn greens.  The strict demands of Macdonald's green contours and greens within greens (Puritan) is easily observed by the player.  The subtle, seemingly simple demands of Flynn's greens (Quaker) are much more vexing.  [By the way, anyone interested in cultural anthropology is encouraged to read Puritan Boston & Quaker Philadelphia by E. Digby Baltzell]

Human nature as it is loves the look hard play easier approach versus the look easy play hard that you get with Flynn's courses and especially greens.  There is much that appeals to the simple nature of man in the design styles of Macdonald and other architects compared to Flynn.

Wayne: Let's discuss myths and reality.  Reality is that better players are usually longer off the tee but still don't hit more than 60% of fairways.  The fact is that their recovery shots are a whole lot better so the question is how tough is a course to recover from errant shots.  Don't look simply at numbers as to where they would hit their best tee shots, rather, look at how difficult it will be for them to recover from errant shots.  At SH with a reasonable amount of rainfall and thick and tall rough grasses eating up errant tee shots, it is a whole different game.  Firm up the greens and it gets really tough. And this difficulty is there for players of all levels playing from the correct tees.

Let's deal with another myth: Most golfers, including good ones, don't like shooting bad scores. So most would rather play a course where they can play well and not get beat up.  Probably 99% of golfers would not find NGLA too short for them, so don't minimize it because of that top 1%.  It offers challenges to golfers at all levels, and perhaps it can look simple to some, but don't judge it from the perspective that every shot will be perfectly executed.  

Wayne -

Great post.  I hope someone can equal it on behalf of NGLA.

Yes: great thread, fine posts - thanks.

JES, a question - you describe what PV is like for a player trying to make pars. What's your sense of how it plays for the golfer aiming to make bogies i.e. playing to make no worse than bogey on any hole?

Conversely, you describe SH in terms of a good golfer playing for fun and simply posting a score. How does it play for the golfer (say, you) aiming to go as low as possible? Re: PV you mention 'working backwards' from the green site as being  necessary - is that not the case at SH?

Thanks
Peter

Great thread.

Kind of off topic, I know #9 at PV has an alternate green.  But I swear I remember another one soon after it.  Does the par 3 10th have one as well, or #11?

Michael, #8 and #9 have alternate greens.

Wayne,

A question about SH fairway width's. Could they be narrower as a result of hosting recent Open's?

I am in complete agrrement on hole #9. I believe it to be among the 5 best par-4's on the planet. It is a monumental hole...

Thanks for the comments.  Pine Valley would probably be a little challenging for me because I can miss a fairway even when its 75 yards wide, but it sure sounds like it merits the #1 ranking with Shinnecock not very far behind.

"JES, a question - you describe what PV is like for a player trying to make pars. What's your sense of how it plays for the golfer aiming to make bogies i.e. playing to make no worse than bogey on any hole?"

Peter:

Interesting question indeed.

I believe I once posted something of an answer to that quesiton on here but maybe it was years ago. On the other hand, maybe I never did post it. If I didn't the reasons are pretty obvious.

1. I didn't want to give away one of my trade secrets about how I sometimes tried to play that course because I felt maybe it was a little embarassing under the circumstances.

2. I didn't want what I was saying to sound anything like I was suggesting it was some kind of course weakness.

But let me back up for a moment because at this point you probably have very little idea where I'm coming from much less where I'm going with this answer.

First of all, if anyone is lucky enough to play Pine Valley it's pretty logical to expect they would do everything they could to shoot the best possible score they could, in other words try to go as low as they could, and that goal would probably require that they take a bunch of chances (risk/reward) in that attempt.

I think I used to do that years ago playing there and I sure did try to do that if I played in something like a member/guest match play event.

But then I started playing in Crump Cups and with that I took on a whole new and different way to play the course and a whole different way of looking at the course in a risk/reward scoring sense.

The first order of business in the Crump Cup is to try to qualify as high (in as high a flight) as possible. Obviously qualifying is stroke play. If any Crump contestants no matter how good get really careless down there in Crump qualifying they can end up not qualifying for match play at all.

There is an old term down there that people use about that course. It's called the Pine Valley "others". The term is sort of lore but believe me it is true and some of the best golfers in the world have suffered some famous Pine Valley "others". They are things like quads or worse or double digits on a single hole. They result generally from stubborness on recovery shots and a quick compounding of one bad situation after another. There are plenty of parts of that golf course that produce those "others" and you have to know where they are and what to do to minimize real loss of shots if you get in them.

Anyway, when it came to stroke play qualifying for the Crump Cup I started to look at the course much differently simply to try to figure out how to avoid making worse than a bogey on any hole there. Of course avoiding making one of those Pine Valley "others" was always a given or it could take me right out of the tournament.

I came to realize that approximately half the holes down there (eight to be exact) have forced carries to the greens themselves. The rest have some form of open fronts.

By the way, that's a ton of forced carries to greens for a course that old when the ground game approach was more prevalent back in that day. (Merion, interestingly, has about the same mix of forced carries to greens).

Shinnecock, on the other hand, has much much fewer penal forced carries into greens.  

So what I would generally do is sort of club down on those open approach holes and err into the approaches and on the forced carry holes I would sort of mentally take out the flags and just try to hit those greens anywhere. Adding to that there are some holes where you just learn what to avoid at all costs around those greens.

So my philosophy was to never make worse than bogey and it generally worked really well. I knew if I was in those approaches I could chip and putt for par at least half the time and I knew I would generally make a few birdies here and there too. Back in those days it seems like I generally chipped in at least once a round.

Basically I did this kind of thing because off the tee compared to the people I was competing against I was very short. The same wasn't so true with my irons though.

And I also applied to all this something I came to realize over time competing against good players and that is they make a whole lot more mental mistakes than one would generally suspect.

This all eventually got down to something like what professional gamblers do in horse racing. The deal is not whether the odds on any horse are representative of what a really intelligent bettor and rater thinks they should be, it's a matter or whether they aren't. And the latter almost always happens because bettors aren't really using they heads that well when they bet. So the goal becomes picking horses that bettors don't recognize the potential of well enough.

I hope that answers your question well enough about how to play Pine Valley if the goal is just to avoid bogeys. If you want a hole by hole analysis of that strategy, I'd be glad to give it to you as reflected in my own game.

Now, JESII may see this a whole lot differently than I do.. He plays in Crump Cups now and he knows how to play that course for his game just as well as I do for mine. Plus Sullivan Jr is a whole lot longer and better than I ever was.

The deal with Pine Valley is what's true about any golf course but with Pine Valley because of the danger there and those famous Pine Valley "others" it's magnified bigtime.

The deal is to first REALLY know your own game, what you're capable of and what you generally aren't (obviously this gets down to some pretty sophisticated risk/reward understanding and application). And then it gets down to really understanding that golf course and how dangerous areas and situations can combine in a heartbeat to really waste shots.

As for Shinnecock it took me years and years but I think I've finally figured out what can make that course hard for really good players. To say the least it is anything but obvious and for that reason the course is a very great one in my book.

 

I can validate both of Tom's points there...1) he was extremely short relative to his peer great amateur players...2) and on the other side, he was too damn good from there on into the hole to have even the slightest clue what a 15 handicapper must be thinking when they are trying to get onto the 8th green at Pine Valley...

I think the architecture at PV is more obviously great.

I think the architecture at Shinnecock is more subtly great.

Overall, I think PV has more great holes conceptually...say, about 15 or 16 of them.  

However, it's not a fair contest until Pine Valley gets ahold of their tree problem.

"2) and on the other side, he was too damn good from there on into the hole to have even the slightest clue what a 15 handicapper must be thinking when they are trying to get onto the 8th green at Pine Valley..."

Sully:

You know, this is an area that I just can't believe isn't more discussed on here and with golf and golf course architecture generally. This is, in fact, the payoff in that old fashioned "tortoise and hare" analogy so often applied to golf.

For some odd reason, I happen to think this is one area that Tom Doak understands perhaps as well or better than almost any golf course architect alive or ever.

The reason I say that is because the two "halves" of golf---ie the "long" game and the "short" game are never take much differentiated in either golf or golf architecture thinking or discussion.

And, I just can't imagine why not.

Maybe it's the ultimate Walter Mitty effect in golf.

My point is one can always dream what it's like to hit a tee shot or whatever like most of these scratch players but the point is some or most just can't and they never will be able to.

(It didn't take me long to understand that Jay Sigel could drive the ball 50 to 75 yards by me back then and there wasn't anything I could ever do about that).

But on the second half of golf holes and the short game I felt I could compete with him or anyone else and that's important for a player to know and feel.

The point is the "long" game takes both talent and particularly strength and some people, for whatever reason, just don't have the latter and they never will.

But the "short" game is a whole different world. That part takes understanding, imagination, a realistic outlook, and practice and practice and practice, and lastly a real belief in yourself to be able to do what you know you can do through the feedback of practice.

The ultimate point is it doesn't take strength and for that reason I think that's the area where almost anyone can learn to compete with almost anyone else, and in more cases than one might suspect to compete with them or beat them in a whole golf sense.  

SAVY?!