Hopefully not to change the subject on this thread but how do you all feel about greens that have sometimes an excessive amount of greenspace that is not pinnable but functions for other reasons?
I may be stating the obvious but that to me in its many forms is what makes many greens so interesting and others sometimes a bit odd and yes, maybe unnecessarily over the top. And it would be interesting and educational for all of us to site real green examples of how this can work well and create some exciting and imaginative play and where it may not. After a while we will probably be giving examples for Archie's original question of what's "over the edge".
We will probably end up coming up with examples that show courses and greens that have the "flexibility" to create the kind of "play variability" that Ed Baker mentioned at Salem that was so much fun. If you read his last post he coincidentally shot the same score under entirely different green speed conditions and had a ball doing it both times. Apparently his mindset and approach to both rounds was entirely different too. It sounds to me like Ed Baker probably felt he played two entirely different golf courses although in both cases it was just Salem!
That to me is excellent "flexibility" at Salem and sort of proves to me that its greens are well designed to continue to function well across the green speed spectrum and still be reasonable somehow although probably offering a wide variety of strategic possibilities.
In the last few years I've been searching some of these older greens (with the modern greenspeeds) to see how they still do accomodate various pin positions (or lack of them) and what it all means to what any golfer needs to do.
I've run across a few courses and a few greens that all of this seems to be getting to the outer limits of function but somehow some of these greens are so good and imaginative that they are still working!
The way to do it is to just search out the old hole plugs or fill-ins. On some greens you can find up to 10-12 of them. It seemed to me that Somerset Hills was very high on unpinnable greenspace but what was still pinnable and how the unpinnable space worked with the pinnable was really very neat and impressive. I felt on a few greens at SH that maybe 75% of their greenspace was unpinnable but very functional and interesting in how it worked with what was left. On the 13th for instance I counted about seven old hole plugs in a perfectly straight line across the green's impressive mid-swale. The entire first half of the green seemed unpinnable to me!
Probably the most extreme example I've seen to date was the 4th at Apawamis that had pinnable space in a thin line all across the front of the green with the rest being basically an enormous "kick-up" slope that had the potential to filter balls back to the front or improperly played approaches off to the left somehow! This green was apparently too much for the members (and Bill Perlee) and has recently been redesigned by Gil Hanse. I shouldn't say redesigned I should probably say restored because originally it appears that the green may have had a series of front to back "steps" that Gil and Rodney are trying to recreate.
There are so many interesting examples out there and how they are still working somehow.
And then when you see a guy like Bill Coore crouching low in front of a green and pointing out how some amazingly interesting things are going to happen to the ball with various shots and trajectories on some of the new greens coming like #7 at Friar's Head, you are encouraged anew!
Form does follow function somehow or should. The spectrum of how it does is so interesting. And when it doesn't it is quite apparent and very quickly apparent.
It probably doesn't work well for an architect to just create greens that look good and interesting or photogenic or whatever. They have to pass the ball test too!
For the architects it's probably sort of like how my Dad taught me how to play golf and hit the ball. He just taught me all the fundamentals and how to adjust them for various shots and shot types. Golfers of his era hit the ball many more and different ways then most of us do today. And the flip-side of that education (he told me) was that when things are going wrong to just apply those fundamental and their variations because ultimately there is only one real teacher and guide in golf and it's the ball!
Think about that! How cool is that? Let the ball be your teacher and your guide. And I guess that would work perfectly too for good architects and what they create on the ground.
I'm not certain of it but I think that a designer like Bill Coore spends endless hours with his team creating and analyzing this kind of thing and I also feel that Ben Crenshaw comes in from time to time and puts his stamp on it. Crenshaw, in my opinion, probably has a wholly unique talent in doing this because of what he is as a golfer (extraordinary putting, chipping ability and imagination). I think that Ben can just LOOK at what is getting created and is created and probably just "feel it in his bones", if you know what I mean. And that is probably when good things and great greens get created and also when mistakes don't get made!
When all is said and done they probably do let the ball be their guide and generate the test--and if things aren't right they probably adjust it! It's sort of like something George Bahto posted on here a couple of years ago. He said he once spent hours on the right fairway shoulder of NGLA's redan just tossing and rolling the ball in all kinds of directions! And what an incredible spot that must be for an architectural TEST! If you do stuff like that long enough really good golf architecture probably just gets imbued into your bones!