Alternate Greens: Extinct?

[Mike Hendren]

With apologies to Patrick, why don't more modern designs feature tiny alternate greens?  While hardly my strong suit, I find short pitches to tiny greens appealing and challenging.  In fact, my favorite photo on this site is of Fenway's tiny 2,500 sf 15th green.  

I suspect alternative greens are sometimes utilized to offer alternative shot values, but I am thinking more of their relief function to reduce wear and tear on a small putting surface.

Is it any more expensive to construct and/or maintain two 3,000 sf greens than one approximating 6,000 sf?  If not, why don't we see this more often?

Regards,

Mike

[Doug Wright]

Mike,

Pacific Dunes #9 has alternate greens, one higher and to the right and one  lower and to the left. I'd be curious to hear from Tom Doak or others about its evolution--probably TD and Mike Keiser couldn't agree on which was better so they did both! It's a par 4 with a blind tee shot so I'm not sure how one knows which green is being used--do they alternate or what?

Here's a link to the hole:

http://bandondunesgolf.com/.docs/pg/PD_hole9.html

All The Best,

[redanman]

Mayacoo Lakes (Des Muirhead for J Nicklaus) opened in about 1970 and has two small island greens totally surrounded by sand at the sixth hole, a shortish par 4 (364).  Also, the shot is over water to a near island.  Like two stripper's pasties in the sand.  Quirky cool, but very unforgiving. (I don't know if the hole has been revised recently.)  This is the closest that I have seen to equal small greens to reduce wear and tear.

Belfair East has a double green for the sixth hole.  The lower right green is much smaller.  The sales people used to say "(Just like the famous hole at Pine Valley!)*" This doesn't work very well, to me.

World Woods* has #"I don't remember"  (because the routing is so screwed up).

I don't know if Fazio has built any more * .

Many Japanese courses (Never been to Nippon) have "Winter" and "Summer" greens. Can't comment on them.

Is this a gimmick, like the thread on double greens suggests that they are?

PV has two back to back (for now).

The holes I have played with double greens always seem disjointed to me, maybe like not really playing the hole that day? (Except #9 PVGC where both are superb greens.).  The right green at PVGC #8 never really seems like the real deal somehow, even though it is a fun green and shot,  Also, it  doesn't detract from the original hole and may be removed as discussed here recently.  

So, Are two greens a gimmick?  Greens within greens (Like NGLA sixth) are a lot more fun, I think.

[Slag_Bandoon]

I hope not.  Of course, most projects don't have the luxury of having excess land for these options.  They're usually trying to efficiently use the least amount of land so they can make it 7500 yards long and sell lots.  

  I do think that #8 on Bandon Dunes "Old Course" could afford an alternate green - beyond fairway left; being shorter and having a smaller target.  Perhaps protected by bunkers front right.         Just a thought, not second guessing the archie.  

  www.bandondunesgolf.com/.docs/pg/hole8.html

I wonder, does Bandon have any hidden "Keiser Greens"?

Broadmoor in Portland has two greens on #10 par 4; one for women, one, over water for the men.  The short green is not exactly artistic, but neither is much of the rest of the course.

[Mike Hendren]

Redanman,

I believe it is the two-shot twelfth at Pine Barrens that has alternate greens.  I felt that the superior left green was out of character with the rest of the course (almost Ross like with its simple shape and gradual front to rear slope,) but suspect that Fazio could not ignore the natural saddle site.  The right-hand green is significantly elevated and obscured by sand, more in keeping with the design but significantly less appealing.  

While I have come to appreciate the green-within-a green thanks to this site, it still doesn't provide the pucker factor that a tiny green does, IMHO.  Also, a lengthy three-putt is far less embarrassing than the Annie-Over pitch shot(s)!

Regards,

Mike

[Stephen Brown]

Gentlemen-

I can think of 2 golf courses w/ alternate greens.  #6 at Belfair West, Bluffton, SC (Fazio), and Greensboro Country Club's Ross Course, Greensboro, NC #18

The GCC (1909 Ross) course did not originally have two grrens, but were put in plave during a renovation overseen by Kris Spence of G"Boro, NC.  

Happy New Year,

Stephen Brown

[Tyler Kearns]

When the Winnipeg Int. Airport was expanded, an old Stanley Thompson design, Assiniboine GC was reduced to 9 holes. To help alleviate the redundancy of playing the same course twice, alternate greens were built at holes #3,5,7. On holes 3 & 5, the alternate greens yield alternate approaches to playing the hole, thus they really do feel like two different holes.

Tyler Kearns.

[Doug Siebert]

Well, depending on how modern is modern, my home course was designed in 1954 by Robert Bruce Harris and features a double island green on the par 3 13th.  There are also two distinct teeing areas at a 45 degree angle from the greens (three if you count the tee complex at the bottom of the hill for women and seniors)  There used to be even more, but that was before my time.  The following hole, the par 4 14th, used to have two fairways, also before my time.

I'll try my hand at posting a picture here...sorry for the poor quality, I'm just stealing it off the website.  They can't even be bothered to keep the scorecard on the site up to date so there's no hope for getting decent photos.  Well, there is a better one there, but its a 3.5MB bitmap and I'd get death threats from modem users if I posted that one!  Its at http://www.finkbine.com/images/13enhance.BMP

The picture is taken from the very front of the top teebox, there's one down lower about 80 yards left of this location, though it almost always plays to the left green (haven't played the lower box to the right green in several years)  The greens are (I'm guessing) probably about 3500 sq ft each, even with the collar they are smaller than #17 Sawgrass, but not so exposed to the wind.  Though you really can only see it in the big image, there's a rail line running behind the water to give us some of that Pine Valley atmosphere on #13 and #14

[Jim_Bick]

River Course (Fazio) at Kiawah. #5, I think.

[BCrosby]

Alternate greens were once very common in the SE.

East Lake, Augusta CC, Athens CC and many other courses had them. Most were gone by 1960 when all season bent hybrids became available in the South. One of the greens was seeded with rye and used in the winter. The other was Bermuda and used in the warm months.

Typically the "real" green, the designed green, was the summer green. The winter greens were viewed as temporary and usually stuck in out in the fairway without their own bunkers or contouring.  

There were some wild variations on this theme. At Athens for a couple of years in the '40's they experimented with overseeding only half of each green in the winter. You were required to drop away from the half that had not been overseeded. There were a couple of cold springs where the rye wouldn't die back enough to let the Bermuda grow in, so the greenskeeper blow-torched the rye to kill it.

Bob

P.S. Country Club of the South (Nicklaus) has alternate greens on the short par 3 on the back. No. 12(?). About 125 yards. A creek separates the two greens.

[texsport]

Japanese summer/winter greens are mostly for snob appeal I believe. Whenever I've tried to engage a Japanese host in a discussion of the merits of alternate greens, the conversation always gets back to"...we're better than... because of our seasonal greens".

I always am under the impression that the summer greens were installed first and the winter greens added since the summer greens are almost always more elaborately bunkered and more naturally sited.

With the Japanese economy in a deep rut, there may be fewer of these in the future.

texsport

[A_Clay_Man]

I haven't seen too many but of those I have, I often leave with the grass is always greener feeling.

[Mike_Cirba]

Jim Bick;

Yes, Tom Fazio built two greens on the 5th at the River Club course at Kiawah, and they both work quite well on this short par four.  One is to a low-lying green next to water, and the other sits on the adjacent hill, each creating a testing approach while offering quite different demands.  

Good stuff!

[Matthew Mollica]

From the latest pics from Barnbougle Dunes, it appears the course may boast alternate putting surfaces on one hole.

The first picture in Evan's post shows the preliminary route plan, with the 10th boasting two different greens.

As this hole is on the eastern side of the course, it may not survive the reconfiguration which may occur on that segment of the property....



As an aside, is the inclusion of alternate greens :

a. a bit kitch
b. a nod to designers of times past
c. good use of two good natural features in close proximity
d. a hole boasting more flexible play / strategy
e. all of the above

Matthew

[redanman]

Given the apparent terrain, the overall landforms and the pictures (Devoid of BIAS but lacking all the FACTS  ) #10 Barnbougle looks potentially very interesting.  In that sort of landform I can easily imagine two distinctly different exciting greensites to approach from a single fairway.  It would be a shame to build only one.  Shame to hear that it may never get built that way.

I have limited links experience and have not encountered two separate greens on a hole.  Are there examples from pre-WWI where just such holes were built in Ireland , Wales, etc.?

[ForkaB]

This is slightly tangential to the topic, but at least somewhat responsorial to doctorredanman.

On many, if not most, of the non-links courses in Scotland, golf can be played in the winter, only if you allow the "real" greens to have rest from time to time--from frost, water saturation, etc.  As a result, in winter golf over here, you tend to play a course that has one or more "winter" greens, which are normally small (rarely over 1500 square feet) bits of mown fairway or rough, usually to the side and/or short of the summer target.  I have noticed in recent years a trend to "formalize" some of these little beauties by shaping and maintaining them througout the year (when I say "beauties", there are some incredible creations, but threre are also far more slothful dogs, which are just a lazy greenkeeper's (or greens commitee's) way of saying--"bugger off!" you winter golfers!

Does this exist in the usually frozen north/northeast of the US?  If not, why not?  Why not have a chance to play at least some of, say, Oak Hill, when you get one of those winter thaws.......?

[redanman]

Rhic

Recalls to mind "temporary greens", obviously.  Bits of hastily mowed fairway, usually not too creatively done.   In Colorado we used them quite a bit as we had (They obviously still have) wild daily temperature variations in the winter. These in Montana were the inspiration for that  now ubiquitous, mostly loved personally despised oxymoron-soft spikes.  

Back to the off-topic, I think the usual USA temp is not anything more than an afterthought where are you implying that these "winter" greens actually have some thought process in their creation?

Bill

[Tom Doak]

Tom Fazio has done this five or six times that I've seen.  In addition to those mentioned, the 13th at Pelican Hill is a short par-3 with two greens (one of them tiny), and the 11th at Shadow Creek originally had two greens, although I believe they've removed the left-hand green.  (The hole was very similar to one at Pine Barrens.)

I'm not a big fan of alternate greens, but there are occasionally reasons to do one.  At Pacific Dunes, we just couldn't decide which green-and-tee combination (tee for the tenth hole) was better.  Mike Keiser liked the lower ninth green site but the upper tenth tee; I preferred the upper ninth green site and the lower tenth tee.  So we built both; in the end I think I like the lower ninth green better, but I like how differently the tee shot plays depending on which green you're playing.

(P.S. to Doug Wright:  they always post which green you're playing to on the ninth tee, but if you're playing to the upper green you can see that flag from the tee.  You can sometimes even see the flag on the lower green depending on its exact placement on that green.)

As for Barnbougle, the routing isn't finished yet, but that tenth hole will likely stay.  It's a par four right along the beach, kind of like the first at Machrihanish, and you don't many chances to play off the beach in golf.  The alternate green in that case is designed just because it's likely that the main (left) green will be buried under windblown sand on occasion -- the wind comes off the beach every day, and there's plenty of drifting sand where we want to put the main green -- so sometimes the maintenance crew will need a day or two to get the sand off the main green and get it back in play.  Better that than abandoning the beachside green site altogether, don't you think?

P.S.  Did I miss it, or did no one mention the mother of all twin-green holes, the ninth at Pine Valley?

[HW]

#18 at Manufacturers Golf Club has a dramatic two green finishing hole.

Options:  Normal set up is a nice par four.
             Second set up is a challenging par five with the
             third shot all up hill to a green next to the club
             house.
By 'all up hill' I mean there is a trolly/chair lift to carry your golf bags up to the club house.

Perhaps a different thread:  How many courses do you know that have a trolly, chair lift or outdoor elevator?
Any history on the Manufacturers' lift?  It has to be 40? 50? years old.

[TEPaul]

Tom Doak said:

"P.S.  Did I miss it, or did no one mention the mother of all twin-green holes, the ninth at Pine Valley?"

This is a very good point as one should take a close look at why Pine Valley's #8 and #9 did eventually utilize an alternate green.

The original 8th green is very small and was definitely taking a tremendous beating during a time at Pine Valley of inordinately high rounds per year.

The options for Pine Valley were obviously to redesign the ORIGINAL #8, probably make it larger and more accomodating of the amount of play. The decision, very wisely, in my opinion, was to leave the original alone and to build an alternate for it to take the pressure off it. At that time apparently the club alternated play, half on the left and half on the right to allow the original (left) to repair and more easily be utilized with good surface conditions.

These days the amount of play is down substantially from that high rounds per year time when the right alternate was built and today the left takes a much larger percentage of the play.

I think this was a really good move, not unlike the basic structural process used with historic buildings and such that if you're going to do anything additional to them to do it in such a way that if you want to return to the original you can easily undo what was added!

Possibly the same was the thinking with another very famous unusually small green--Riviera's #10 and its alternate off to the right!

The alternate right green at Pine Valley's #9 is another story altogether but a very interesting one!

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

River Course (Fazio) at Kiawah. #5, I think.

Actually, the alternate greens are on Cassique here on Kiawah Island -- a Watson design...  They actually have totally different holes that alternate from day to day.  One's called "Nip and Tuck."  I don't remember the name of the other (Cassique is one of the private courses here on the other side of the tracks -- we "resort" people don't get a chance to get over there too often.  In fact, I've only played Cassique three times and The River Course once...).

[BCrosby]

Unlike Scotland, the winter/rye greens in the SE were not just patches of mown fairway. They were real greens. There is a Ross routing for the NLE 18 at East Lake where he provides for them. But they did not have their own bunker complexes, at least in the drawings I've seen.

There is a lot of talk in these parts about replacing bent with new Bremuda hybrids. People are getting fed up with the fragility of bent in hot, humid Georgia summers. Some of you turf guys will know more about this.

But if bent is replaced with new Bermuda hybrids that go dormant in the winter, courses are left with the choice of either overseeding greens with rye (expensive and a threat to the health of the Bermuda) or reinstating their alternate winter greens.

If that is where things are heading, architects will have a whole new sub-specialty they can put on their business cards. "Alternate greens - you lost 'em, we'll find 'em."        

Something to keep an eye on.

Bob

[A_Clay_Man]

I like off topic so i'll throw this out. Back in the day before anyone knew about the realities of el nino, there were winters in Chicago that seemed unusually warm. On many of these days we'ed try to find a place to whack whitey around. One of the places that was open year round was in Bensenville. Thay had 36 holes and at least 18 were always open. They had winter greens on every hole but that didn't matter because they had a twist. The twist was, a hole that was bigger than big, it was probably 2 or 3 times larger than the offical cups, like a small bucket. I was instantly enamored with the change in strategy. Now, I was trying to hole everything out from anywhere inside 150 yds.

[TEPaul]

How and why Pine Valley's right #9 green came into being is unusual and interesting.

The original (Crump's #9 left) was a green whose surface contour and slope were not working well for play and the membership. The original left green was longer than the present left with a very long upslope (considered mostly unpinnable) with a very shallow back tier. It was considered a very severe two tier green. It was apparenly difficult to get balls up the front upslope and hold them on the back tier and balls were running over the green down towards the 18th fairway. Good players apparently thought it best to lay up in front of the green and play for a five.

C.H. Alison recommended and designed the right alternate green as he claimed it was more cost effective than redesigning and rebuilding the original and also that the membership could have the convenience of a green in play when the right alternate was being built.

This recommendation was approved but apparently the right alternate was constructed later to Alison's design specs probably by William Flynn and George Thomas!

Eventually the left original was redesigned and rebuilt by Perry Maxwell who also redesigned and rebuilt original left #8 but not to Alison's approved plans but to his own!

Interestingly, Crump was the first to recognize that the original left #9 was not working well and had very definite plans to rework the whole hole adding considerable length to it, making it play as a bit of a dogleg left and to rebuilt the severe green.

One wonders how he could have added considerable length to #9. That may have been contingent on his plans to make #7 play more as a double dogleg hole (certainly using Hell's half acre) but playing the second shot well out to the right with the left side of the landing area over Hell's Half acre turned into more rough ground and wasty bunkering. The ideal area then to approach the green on #7 would have been well out to the right and might explain the right orientation of the present green better.

[Mike Hendren]

Tom Paul,

From photographs, I had assumed that the shot value for the alternate greens at Pine Valley's 8th are similar and the sole purpose of the second green is to provide relief so that the small green size can be retained.  Your post seems to confirm that.  

From other posts, it appears that alternate greens more typically are utilized for variety, or employed where the archie can't decided between two excellent green sites.  

I had the Pine Valley rationale in mind and the appeal of tiny greens in mind when I started this thread.    

Tom Doak,

Any more expensive to build and maintain two 3,000 sf greens than a single 6,000 sf green?

Regards,

Mike