[Matt_Cohn]

Like I hoped and expected, I got a lot of comments about the playability of the course I posted on Monday.

I know, generally, what makes a course playable: not too many forced carries, width, hittable greens, etc. But more specifically - when you look at a drawing or a hole layout, how come up with your judgment of whether it's "playable" or not?

Is it possible to answer questions like:

-How long is "too long" for a forced carry? How many is "too many"?
-How often is it OK to have trouble on both sides of a hole? How often is it OK to close off the front of a green?
-Do you subscribe to Fazio's theory of leaving the right side, 200-250 off the tee, open whenever possible?

Give me some insight here (and also tell me how you're going to evaluate my next course).  

[JohnV]

Matt, these are some good questions.

The length of a forced carry is dependent on what you are carrying and who is doing it.  If it is normal rough or sand I think it can be a little longer.  If it is water or gorse or something else where the ball will be unrecoverable and there is no way around it, it should be shorter.

In general, anything over 100 yards is probably too long for women and anything over 150 yards too long for men.  But, from the back tees where the weaker hitters shouldn't be playing you could probably stretch it to somewhere near 200 yards.  I'd prefer to almost always see a way for the weaker player to go around the trouble or a play where the carry varies depending on the direction taken.  Then appropriately award the player who made the aggresive play with a better angle on the next shot.

As to how many are too many, I'd say that if they are done properly and varied in the requirements for carry, punishment, opportunity to avoid and shot type required to succeed, you could have quite a few on the course.  It would need to fit the ground first.

I have no problem with trouble on both sides unless it is something like OB down both sides that is tight.  If you have sand on one side and water or OB on the other I'm ok with that.  Again, give the player a chance to risk the bigger trouble and get a reward.  That is one thing that I think Fazio doesn't do enough of.  He frequently rewards the "smarter" player who plays away from the trouble rather than the one who takes a risk.

Closing off the front of the green is ok if the shot required is of a type that it can be executed and the green held by players.  Having a 200 yard par 3 where the ball must be flown to the green is pretty tough since most golfers can't fly it that far and stop it on a green.  In general I'd prefer to see the majority of greens be open across at least some part of the green, but a hole like Rayner's short holes works because the shot is short enough that most golfers would be hitting shortish irons to the green.

No, I don't subscribe to Fazio's theory.  How is the average slicer golfer going to get better if you always let him get away with it?  Besides, it is unfair to the left-handed slicer.

[TEPaul]

Philosophically I think it's a bad idea to design golf holes that actually accomodate golfers' weak shots such as a slice. I recognize it's probably not a good idea to design courses that actually over-penalize a general golfing fault like a slice but if an architect is going to consciously take into consideration such a fault in the design of his holes I'd prefer that a course actually penalize such as a slice rather than accomodate it. PVGC is such a course. More often than not Crump worked to come up with ways to penalize the slice at PVGC, and certainly not accomodate it. The famous "pimple" on the 18th green was such a conscious effort on his part, altough he considered it temporary until he could come up with a better, apparently more natural way of creating a feature on that green that would penalize the golfer who sliced that approach across that green. The large bunker on the right of #1 fairway that he worked so hard on was another conscious example of a feature that was intended to more completely penalize a slice.

[Jason Tetterton]

The Chechesse Creek Club in Okatie, SC has a hole, I believe in is #12 that has a carry of 220 + over unplayable marsh from the back tees.  With the wind blowing this can be quite a challenge.  Mr. Crenshaw didn't like this, when he made his site visit and asked that the tee be removed and moved forward for a carry of around 180 and an angle that made it much easier.  At the club, they say that Mr. Crenshaw doesn't really care for forced carries, thus the change.  Craig Lehman of Chechesse, really liked the original tee, so for the grand opening they had that tee covered with pinestraw.  When Crenshaw left they removed the pinestraw and kept the tee.  The played has the option of teeing off from either tee, but the scorecard uses the tee that Mr. Crenshaw preferred.

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:

A good start is the rule of thumb Ben Crenshaw gave me twenty years ago ... try to make the golf course playable for yourself in a 40-mph wind blowing in any direction, and you'll probably make it playable for everyone else.

What does that mean?  Partially open approaches to nearly all the greens, because if the hole is downwind you can't hold the green.  Water all alongside a fairway only if it's REALLY wide, because of potential crosswinds.

You can have all the carries you want off the back tees, just as long as the player has somewhere to go when the wind is in his face.  [Not being able to make the carry and winding up in a bunker is okay, I think ... winding up in the water or a ravine is not.]  

Off the regular tees, I wouldn't have many carries more than 100-125 yards, in case your dad [or grandfather] is playing the hole into a breeze.  We put in about a 150-yard carry on the 16th at Stonewall North, and just yesterday Jim Finegan was telling me he had to come out of his shoes to carry it by two feet!

Off the forward tees, Alice Dye used to insist that 65 yards was about as much forced carry as the average woman could stand, and even then you don't want them to have to do it more than a couple of times a round ... no forced carries from the forward-most tees would be the ideal, but most pieces of land require some.

The real place to avoid a forced carry is on the approach shot.  If the weaker players can only carry it 80-100 yards, and they are not starting from the edge of the hazard, you could be forcing them to lay up to the edge with a putter to get her next shot across ... and they still might top that one in the water.

I personally don't think there is anything wrong with having trouble on both sides of a hole, as long as you don't keep repeatedly pinching drives of a certain length.  That's the most surprising disagreement I've had with my co-designers at Sebonack; they don't think you should have fairway bunkers directly opposite each other at all.

I tend not to close off the front of the green more than once or twice ... ideally I wouldn't close them off completely at all, but then again variety is the paramount ideal, so once or twice is okay.

I don't believe in favoring the slicer by leaving the right side of the fairway open ... I want a reasonable amount of balance in the course.  However, when working on a sideslope, I will be aware that people are more likely to slice and try to avoid routing a stretch of holes that slope left-to-right.

Now, by saying all this I'm opening myself up to good players telling me I'm too soft on poorer players; that's always been one of the criticisms of my work.  And there is certainly scope to have an occasional course which isn't so playable, a la Pine Valley, if that is what the client really wants.  But you are writing off a lot of potential paying customers that way, so you'd better be sure that's what you want to do.

[Gary_Mahanay]

Tom Doak,

Are you saying that you like fairway bunkers directly opposite each other?  Or that you would stagger them at different distances on each side and this is what the Nicklaus people don't like?  Sounds like pretty big difference in ideology if I understand what was in your last post.

Gary

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I never heard that you were too easy on anyone, so don't sweat that part of your reputation.  For that matter, you sound absolutely mainstream in that post.

Your discussion with Jack and company reminds me of discussions I have had with other tour pros. As an example, look at pictures of Colbert Hills 7, with an angled in carry bunker left and two bunkers right.  He hated the carry bunker.  I said it sets up draw aiming at the right side bunkers, and he said "what if my shot doesn't draw?"  

Another CH story - we were in the Audubon Program, and trying to hold to 90 acres of turf, which meant some forced carries from the Championship tees over native prairie.  Jim said we could go 210 yard downwind, and maybe 180 into the prevailing wind.  One spring day we were out there when the wind was blowing from the north and he tested a few 210 yard carries and couldn't make them. Everything went back to a 180 yard carry, using Crenshaw's 40MPH (from the wrong direction) theory.

Other than a few specific things, most good players like what average players need.  Adding/creating features that don't kil average golfers just makes sense.

As Tom mentions, a forced carry to a green doesn't bother good player, and they like the run up option (although lord knows they use it about as often as I use power tools).  I agree with everthing Tom says, and , only have a forced carry to a green 1-3 times a round, greens across the line of play about the same, etc.

I will only pinch fw bunkers across from each other once or twice a round. Its as much for visual reasons as any.  Its easy (even with staggered bunkers) to pinch them so tight that the view of the fw between them dissapears, which most golfers find uncomfortable.

I hate water on both sides of a fairway or green. Its nice to have a bailout one side or the other.  It seems having different value hazards on either side sets up better strategy than equal value hazards on both sides.....

I try to leave the right side under 250 yards open on about 2/3 of the long holes, instead of going for a 50-50 balance.  Some of that is practical, too.  Since I put most paths right, fw hazards simply constrict traffic and cause turf wear.

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff:  No wonder everyone gets our courses confused!    Just goes to show you can have similar beliefs and yet build very different-looking courses.

Gary:  In general, I seldom put fairway bunkers directly opposite each other, I prefer to stagger them, so I'm getting along with Jack and Jim Lipe just fine.  But every once in a while I think it's okay to pinch the fairway somewhere -- again, for the sake of variety.  In the case of the ninth at Sebonack, I just think it would look good, and Jack thinks I'm being too penal toward the average golfer.

[A_Clay_Man]

I know we are touching on forbidden fruit, but...

 will there ever be anything average about those fortunate to get to golf at Sebonack?

[Doug Siebert]

I don't really see anything wrong with demanding some pretty long carries from the back tees, perhaps once or twice a round, but there should be a reason for it, not just sticking tees on the edge of the property, measuring 250 yards and marking that as the edge of a man made lake.  I really hate that sort of thing.  But if there was a particular spot that just works perfectly as the tee site, and there happens to be a ravine that requires a 250 yard carry, so be it.  The nice thing about having one or two really demanding carries from the tips is that the starter can tell people that on the first tee, and might get some of the "wanna get my money's worth" crowd to move a set up.

Of course if you really do get out into that kind of carry range, it shouldn't play into the prevailing wind, and the guys setting the tees up in the morning should be keeping an eye on the weather so if it will be into the wind the tees are put up on the next teebox!

[TEPaul]

Doug:

I think any architect who actually creates a back tee that has a minimum forced carry over 250 yards over water with no reasonable way around that is completely insane and should be roundly criticized for even conceiving of such a hole. By that I do mean a "FORCED" carry of a minimum of sometihng like 250 yards!

That kind of thing can definitely not be rationalized by saying that someone playing that tee should not be on it either! That might work in recreational golf but it sure doesn't work in tournament golf and that kind of thing can create an eternal disaster that's never acceptable.

Probably the best example of that I know of is Merion East's great 18th. Thank God the forced carry is not over water but still the forced carry on that tee shot is too long and it always has been!

PVGC has lots of forced carries but until recently not a single one of them was over about 175 to 200 to some part of safety!

[Doug Siebert]

Well, come to think of it, I'm not sure I've actually seen a FORCED carry as long as 250, I can think of a couple that are probably 235 or 240 (I haven't played Merion, of course)  The holes I was thinking of aren't truly forced since there is a bailout, but I guess I think of them as forced because the bailout on these holes is like a 7i way off a less than ideal direction.  I think of that as bad, but I guess if you think about it in the context of #16 CPC the layup there would be a wedge and the hole is a par 3 and I doubt too many will criticize that hole as bad design.

But I guess on the aforementioned holes if I played on a day when the wind was blowing in at 25 or 30 mph and the guy putting out the tee markers was getting divorced from his wife then that ugly little layup in the wrong direction is going to look pretty good!

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