Forced carries

[Rich_M]

According to many of the golden age architects a forced carry is to be avoided if possible.  The realities of inland properties and wetlands issues certainly work against this concept.

Two courses (one classic, one modern)immediately come to mind in which forced carries are almost a defining feature..Pine Valley and The Ocean Course at Kiawah.

Is this design concept usually a result of making the best of the limitations of a particular site or a desired feature..how many forced carries is too many?  How long a carry is too long?

[JIm Sweeney]

If they have to use the "hit two in the water (arroyo, quarry, whatever) then drop on the other side" rule, then the carry is too far.

[Doug Siebert]

Some courses that don't have that rule ought to, not because the carry is too long but because some people have trouble with a 100 yard carry even if they can carry it 200 yards without much trouble.  Even for good players a reasonable carry over a sea cliff with a precipitous drop and the sound of waves crashing below puts a bit more in the pit of your stomach than a similar carry over 6' prairie grass, even if the penalty is worse for the latter (lost ball versus water hazard)

If a course does have more than the usual number of pretty long forced carries they should make sure people know that before they embark from the tips.  I'm not really a believer that people playing from the tips who don't have the game for it really slows things down all that much (if they drive it into the gunk on the left or right, looking for those balls is why they are slow, not playing an extra 25-50 yards per hole)  But the one exception is forced carries that are made long enough players without the game have trouble consistently making them.

[Eric Pevoto]

Good question Rich.

I think a significant factor is whether the forced carry is from the tee or through the green.  Being able to put it on a peg allows for a little leeway.  

  

[A_Clay_Man]

I don't know that I agree with the premise that golden agers felt a certain way and if anything they felt the opposite. Pebble beach, Cypress point as well as I'm sure quite a bit more all use the forced carry to perfection.

As I was waiting for this page to download prior to reading the post I was struck with a contrarian thought. That was; maybe those wonderful old pictures which shows just how penal the courses actually were (especially with that equiptment) That Perhaps the archies were weeding out those who could step up to the challenge of the forced carry and sending those who couldn't or wouldn't to the bowling alley where they belong. Almost a form of planned obsolesence where the plan is to not encourage the uninitiated to step on a course until their abilities match the challenge. Another way to ensure keeping pace.

[cary lichtenstein]

I belong to a course designed by Robert Von Hagge in Jupiter, Florida that has 10 forced carries. If you get a change to play it, I think it is terrific. I chose to buy in this community because of the challenge of the golf course. Admirals Cove.

[ForkaB]

I used to belong to Sawgrass CC which had the distinction of begin the only course where a PGA Tour (tm) pro withdrew from the tournament (the pre-Dye TPC) in the middle of a golf shot--his ball was not going to make the forced carry over water fronting the tee at the 10th.

All this bother about forced carries is stupid, petty and whiney (to quote a beloved member of this site).  As I always say, if you can't make the distance, go to a tee where there's less resistance......

[TEPaul]

I think this whole idea of forced carries and what exactly they are on any golf course is pretty clear really (in the old days and now).

If an architect was asked to design a golf course that was expected to be for general use (a large spectrum of all players) he could and should certainly design forced carries but he should also try to design a way around them for that entire spectrum of playing levels and from EVERY TEE! To the degree that's possible given the various limitations of various sites that is clearly more ideal (it simply offers a great degree of diversity in how the course could be used).

However, there is one massive caveat here that's been mentioned on this site about 100 times regarding the carries that clearly were long (some thought excessive) once upon a time and maybe today for some at a course like Pine Valley with no real alternative to those long carries.

It should be understood that that was the way Pine Valley was intended to be. Crump had every intention of creating a few forced carries with no real alternative. Why? Because his golf course was intended by him to be for good players and pretty good players exclusively. And in his mind the course was constructed in many ways to be a "test", a real shot making "examination"!

If any golfer was not good enough to make those forced carries at Pine Valley basically neither Crump nor the club wanted those kinds of players to come to Pine Valley--and frrankly both Crump and the club are known to have said so many times.

And when those types of players did come to Pine Valley Crump and the club was fairly astonished that they actually appeared to enjoy themselves given the difficulty of those forced carries and a number of other complexities about the course for golfers who were not very good.

It doesn't make sense to me when people say that Pine Valley is less than ideal because it never accomodated every level of player. It was never intended to do that. Just the opposite in fact---that was part of its unique "ideal".

The intention of the architecture of Pine Valley was to be an "ideal" test for a high level of golfer only and according to the evaluation of the world of golf architecture back then and probably to this day it reached that intended "ideal" as well as any course on earth ever did!

To think perhaps that making alternatives to some of Crump's no alternative forced carries would make the golf course more ideal somehow would be wrong and would in fact be a real corruption of Crump's unique "ideal" (regarding forced carries and other complexities and demands)!

[Tim Weiman]

Tom Paul:

I've had the experience of playing Pine Valley with someone that could barely hit a golf ball one hundred yards and saw no evidence that the man didn't enjoy himself.

Indeed, he seemed to enjoy himself more than anyone in our group!

Was it painful for the rest of us? Yes, especially the man's caddy.

[Rich_M]

It seem important to make a distinction between the nature of the hazard that you are confronted with.  A carry over a waste area where the ball can be found and played is much (albeit at a great disadvantage) more desirable than a carry over water or wetlands where the cost of failure is stroke and distance and a ball.

My initial comment about the golden age architects (not favoring forced carries) may  have been more accurate when referring to the situation where failure to carry results in a lost ball.

Also the forced carry which features the strategic option of biting off as much as you dare to gain an advantage  much more interesting than the carry over a hazard with no bail out??

[Bob_Huntley]

Its all very well to say go to the forward tees, but what about the poor chap who still cannot carry the ball 180 to 200 yards?

[ian]

Rich,

Its a reality with the new enviornmental restrictions. We have a creek where the conservation authority wants 30 metres, ie. 35 yards on unmaintained long native grass. This feature runs through a large area on the site and must be crossed to access other areas. In design you try to limit long acarries like this to directly in front of a tee so that you can hit off "the peg" and have a reasonable carry. The tough part comes when the natural area crosses after the tee shot or in front of the green. A par three is reasonable, but where do you cross the hazard in a par 4, 300 out? 350 out? this is a difficult choice because you can begin to remove options from weaker players. On a par five you can front a green, but this can agian begins to limit options for the weaker player. As you can tell I have not given an answer because everything is site specific. All I can say is we have not had a piece of land without enviornmental restrictions in 10 years and I'm hard pressed to remember a course without some kind of a forced carry. Sucks when you think about it, but the reasons it is done for are gerally correct.

[Doug Siebert]

Its all very well to say go to the forward tees, but what about the poor chap who still cannot carry the ball 180 to 200 yards?

I've never seen a course where the forward tees required a carry of 180 yards.  The regular tees (for some definition of "regular" in these days of 5 or 6 sets of tees) don't require such a thing very often, for that matter.

These days my dad is maxed out at about 150 yards on carry distance, but when we played Muirfield a couple years ago he didn't move up to the green tees like I suggested, he played back with me (tees that day were Open tees on all the par 4s, up one set on the 3s and 5s)  On some of the holes he couldn't make the carry to the fairway, so he aimed down the mowed walking path between the teebox and fairway.  And actually hit the damn thing a few times!