Uncomfortable on the tee?

[Tony Ristola]

Blind shots don't make me uncomfortable.  You have to pick a line and execute.  If you don't, well you can take solace in the fact you executed the shot but simply chose the wrong line and will do better next time.  

For me, what seems to be more unsettling are tee shots which obscure a portion, a side of the landing area, and when it's the best side to be...even more so. It just plays with my mind a little...sometimes enough to play with my commitment to the line, or actually getting me to play a little away from the optimal line.  I don't think it's bad, on the contrary...in my case it's an effective form of warfare.

Does this bother you?  If not...what psychological, optical tricks get to you?

[Brian Phillips]

Tony,

That doesn't bother me as much as a fairway that has no bunkers or anything else to guide me.  No signals to let me know where to hit the ball (or try to).

BP

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tony,

Great topic, and one I think should get more response.

As a golfer, I hate tee shots where you must aim ob or over water to work the ball back to the fairway (Road Hole excepted)  I like aiming out over safe ground.

Blind is okay, providing there is a notch in the ground or some kind of indicator.  There is always the excitement of cresting the hill and hearing "This is my Titleist, Tony, lets check the one under that corpse to see if it's yours>"

I was going to post this on another thread, but I was once chewed out by a tour pro (not one I have worked with) when I aligned some forward tees about half overlapping with the back tee.  He found that an uncomfortable look, although I never figured out why.  He acted as if I was the last person on earth to know that design theory, although I have never heard it from anyone else.

The hidden portion of the fairway does get uncomfortable, I agree, as does the fairway with no hazards as distance markers, or directional clues.  Another one is the tee deep in trees to a wide open fairway.  Just what is that wind doing anyway?

[redanman]

I thought that the topic was the tenth at Shinnecock!  

I think that the uncomfortable nature  you get on certain tees or shots relates to one's own personal weakness in game, mental or physical and this is a good thing, missing in some notable architects work.  

In fact, I virtually never feel unconfortable on a Fazio course and that is a notable thing. A good reason on him being calling  "The World's greatest living architect" being  such a  disappointment.  

Downhill and blind together is a powerfully unsettling demand for this golfer's game.  In general I thnk uphill is harder to judge, but having played the first 6 or 7 years of my  golf life on flat courses this was the hardest to learn.  But once I lived in Colroado and dealt with altitude, trajectory, elevation change and effective loft all affecting distance control, I think I have it now,  , better at least!

So, two categories here of discomfort, distance control and directional confidence for the golfer to be set off by.  Add uneven lies, uncertain wind and voila!  The Alfred Hitchcock school of architecture.

-----One last thing, is the driver for you, the poster the most unpredictible club for distance control and directional confidence?  If so, are there different tricks for the tee shot and for the approach and even the layup?

The  good demanding layup on a par five can be very nerve wracking, proportionally more so with more and more Hitchcockian values.

Good thought provoking topic.  I too lament few responses, but .....

[TEPaul]

This is a good topic and my view of it is an architect should really mix it up here. Some holes that set up well for most golfers and some that generally make him feel uncomfortable or even show him nothng much at all is a must.

A really good model for this topic would be NGLA, in my opinon. Just as the greens are exceptionally variety in look and contour in the most unexpected places, the tee shots and how they make a golfer feel are the same or more so.

Line a golfer up visually on the tee and give him visual keys all the time on every tee? No way! Some of the older architects even recommended certain situations probably using various design elements that removed visual clues and keys from the golfer which made him think wholly for himself, search the as much as he can see, trust what he was seeing and dialing in, thereby forcing him to trust himself and his swing sans any architectural indications.

This is precisely the essence of a lot of what Shackelford has been saying for years. Remove the architectural keys and clues now and then and let the golfer begin to learn what the opposite of architectural "road-mapping" is all about.

I even hate to hear people say, "this is the way the architect intended the hole to be played". The best architects, in my opinion, create situations that are astoundingly less than obvious and leave it to any golfer to think he's figured his strategy out all by himself or not. Frankly, this point is one of the fundamentals of Max Behr's thinking.

This is another reason I like Pacific Dunes so much. There were a number of holes that were very much less than obvious. On one hole that I now really love, I hit a good 2 iron off the tee and when the ball was in the air I realized what I'd done and said to myself, "why did I hit the ball there?" I hit it there because I really didn't look very carefully at the whole hole and the area I hit it to look so inviting. Wrong!

That's a big part of what I see as good architecture.

[Tom Doak]

I was bigger on "deliberate discomfort" ten years ago than I am today.  Frankly, it doesn't make you any fans or help you get more work.  

I know several good players who discounted all the good parts of Stonewall I, because there are several tee shots which don't give good visual cues to the first-time visitor (1, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18).  In hindsight, a couple of these could have been handled better, although others were unavoidable due to the distance between the crest of the highest hill and Route 345, and the buried gas line which prevent cut-and-fill.

(A bright young architect who is criticized for failings like this should probably respond that he did it intentionally!)

I still don't want to give the player a road map where to go, and as Tom noted, there are several holes at Pacific Dunes which are hard to figure out at first glance.  However, there's not much there which is deliberately hidden from view, either.

No one has worked harder at making players uncomfortable on the tee than Pete Dye.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I generally design for comfort on the tee, because we do so many public courses and because golfers seem to like it.  Does anyone go out to specifically be uncomfortable?

I have always believed any subtlety or misdirection basically comes from the contours of the fairway, which most golfers don't really look at, unless obvious.  There should be places to hit or not hit, based on getting extra roll, or a more level lie, etc.

[A.G._Crockett]

Jeff Brauer
Would Mike Strantz be an example of an architect that intentionally makes the golfer uncomfortable?  I am a big, big fan of his courses, and one of the reasons is that many of the tee shots are visually intimidating, yet relatively easy to execute if you commit to the shot and make a decent swing.  I should also add that he always shows the golfer where the shot SHOULD go, even if it doensn't look attractive from the tee, primarily through hiding part of the landing area.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I love his courses, too.  In fact, the second hole at the quarry at Giants Ridge is almost a direct "lift" of his 11th at Tobacco Road. The first tee shot at Tobacco Road is pretty intimidating, but not if you hit it far enough, only if you hit it about 220, if memory serves.

For good players, in general, if you show the way to go, they are comfortable.  For them, Indecision = Uncomfortable.  As Tony says, if you know a blind hole, you can pick a line and commit.  So, what makes it hard to commit to a shot?

Some tour player say things like Brian said - no defintion and wide fairways.  That need for definition is what makes Pete Dye NOT use fairway bunkers on his cape holes - it makes them harder to judge w/o visual markers.  He also uses 10-20 degree angles. 30 or more would be more clear to the golfer.

Some cite Augusta 13 (before fairway narrowing) as a good example.  With 60 yards of fairway and a small creek, they would feel like an idiot going in the hazard.  Thus, as the week goes on, they aim farther and farther right, self negating the advantage of the hole.  (Not that it matters as much with modern distance)

An interplay of staggered hazards on either side of the fairway can trouble them, if they have to aim at a reachable target bunker and curve it around a carry bunker.  They ask, what if it doesn't curve?

[Matt_Ward]

Tom Doak said it best regarding the efforts of Pete Dye in this category. I don't believe I've played a design by Pete that doesn't feature the "intimidation" factor on at least a few holes.

Pete gives you the option in hitting driver, but the pain of a miss can be soooooooooooooo profound to your psyche -- especially if you suffer from your foolishness early in the round because it then preys on your mind the rest of the way around. A good example -- the 1st at Oak Tree! How about the tee shot at the par-3 4th!

What makes me "uncomfortable" is not having some sort of safe or bailout option. I'm not talking about having some silly thing like bunkers on both sides but when an architect may have a bunker on one side and YOU THINK that playing away will benefit you. Only after taking the bait do you then find that you have boxed yourself in to a possibility with limited play options. Yes, you're tempted to play near the bunker, but playing too far away can mean a heavy penalty if you execute in an indifferent manner.

redanman mentioned the 10th at Shinnecock and I also agree. But the key for me to being uncomfortable is in having a multitude of options. Sometimes the very thought of deciding can be quite "uncomfortable."  

[Tom Doak]

I think Jeff explained Pete Dye's driving holes very well.  By using a 10-degree or 20-degree angle along a hazard ... let's use the 18th at the TPC as an example ... he makes it impossible for a left-to-right player to pick out a safe line.  He forces them to start it out over the water and fade it back.  If they start it safe and dry, they'll miss the fairway right.

When the angle is 30 degrees or 45 degrees, players can pick out a spot along the hazard line and cut it back safely from there.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

That is the hole I was envisioning.  I found Pete's TPC fairways intimidating because of their angles.  It was the first course I had played where the angles made me pick both distance and direction.  If I am off, and will only hit it 230 or so, I had to pick a line to accomodate differently than if I thought I would hit a full tee shot.  I hit enough clunkers that it was a real consideration.

[Matt Kardash]

I don't know about you people but i feel very uncomfortable on straight holes..especially if the tee is elevated. To me there is no tougher driving hole than the straight one. I feel like there is no margin for error for some reason. When the hole curves even slighty i get a better feeling.

There is a par 5 hole on my home course that is only 500 yards, but it is the only hole that is dead straight. Well, basically i drive the ball 300 yards, and in 5 or 6 years I've hit the green in 2 once. Just goes to show you how much straight holes pose problems to my drives.