Jeff Brauer wrote:
"Heres a serious, but negative, answer to your question....
If strategy means creating a relationship between shots with some potential to appreciably improves your score, (over one hole, 18, 72, or a season's worth of play) then we can create par 4 holes that have such relationships in the nicely efficient minimum of two shots! So many par 5's - especially true three shotters - have boring second shots.
Then JHancock wrote:
"I think a problem with any hole designated greater than par 5 would be the attention span of the golfer. I would be bored after the third or fourth strike of the ball in my attempt to reach the putting surface."
And finally Forest Richardson wrote;
"Jeff -- Shall we transport you back in time and have you explain your logic to the bands of golfers who formed our great game; and who played nearly endless matches to distant targets with no regard for par, standard length or even regard for a limit to the number of golfers in such bands?"
Juxtaposed, these three remarks are interesting and revealing. Jeff Brauer obviously looks at the question from the point of view of an architect who's accustomed to visualizing golf and architecture in the context of the game today (and the last 135 years) and that certainly is in the context of par 3s, 4s, and 5s.
JHancock, is basically expressing that same reality which is today's golfer thinks almost exclusively in things like par, GIR, a final destination (green) in no more shots than three (because for 135 years golf has been a succession of par 3s, 4s and 5s and that's a difficult mindset to break now!).
But Forrest Richardson supplies an historic fact and a reality which is it doesn't have to be that way, or at least it didn't once upon a time to be interesting.
So it seems to me that it probably would be possible to create and interesting golf hole of 600-700 or 800 or more yards if it were not for the restrictions created by the "par" mindset of 3s, 4s, and 5s. The mindset of those three "par" configurations including par's half brother "GIR" has clearly made anything else appear to be an abberation or at least an unacceptable novelty.
But JeffB's and particularly Forrest Richardson's point about strategy in the context of a much longer hole is very interesting and should be developed better at least in theory.
That is that strategy today has unfortunately become reduced in the minds of far too many golfers to one shot increments. Some understand better than others how shots connect to each other to create far more interesting strategies, but nowhere near enough in my opinion.
Or maybe it should just be said that the way shots connect to each other IS the essence of strategy and that no more should be said about it, except to say that too many golfers today are missing that essential fact.
However, the mindset of 3s, 4s and 5s in a par context is ingrained in us, unfortunately, and extending the ultimate destination to a longer GIR (par) context would probably be difficult to do as much because of the lack of concentration of golfers today in overall interesting and extended strategies as anything else.
But it could be done still by very clever designers, I think. And if they could do it well and hold golfers' interest somehow it would be a wonderful reeducation into what TRUE strategy in golf is all about--ie, an intelligent and well executed series of shots that are not only reliant on distance alone!
When a real thinker such as Max Behr mentioned that an excellent example of a great strategic hole would be a par 5 (he used the longest hole in golf here for obvious reasons) where a greenside bunker (for instance) occured to the intelligent player on the tee the hole was a good strategic one. Behr also explained interesting and TRUE and REAL strategy as a situation where a risk was taken immediately to avoid a FUTURE liabilty. Do you notice how he didn't say an immediate liability? A better example of true strategy could not be given, in my opinion.
Doing a hole of 700-800-900 yards would be possible in my opinion but again it would be an architectural challenge as much to hold today's 3, 4, 5 par mindset golfer's concentration as anything else.
But I could see a hole like that twisting and turning and with all kinds of good and thoughtful stuff inside it's fairway lines creating all kinds of interesting direction angles and distance considerations at the same time all along it. If it did these things enough it would reawaken in golfers how shots really aren't individually incremental but can be a string of options solidly connected to each other in the mind of a golfer even from the tee on a super long hole.
This kind of thing would be expensive if looked at as only an individual hole, however, so I'd recommend that it be tried but possibly as a single hole that would be a composite of other holes but when playing it it would NOT really appear as a combination of parts (other holes).
"Courses within a single course" (that don't appear to be so when playing any hole) have always fascinated me. To me that might be ultimate architecture! Clearly George Thomas thought so!
But to me Forrest Richardson's point is the best (although only historic in context) that the essence of real strategy in golf is not necessarily dependent on the concept of "par", only the fewest shots at the end of the strategic journey!