What can we learn anew from TOC?

[Mark_Rowlinson]

We've just seen an old lady invite the young men to come and take her and I think they didn't get any closer than the outer petticoat, possibly because they were just too tempted and tried too hard at the macho bit.  In the final round Tiger showed that patience was the way to the old lady's soul.  It all seemed to be about the R&A having found almost wholly inaccessible pin positions, even on the driveable holes (and, of the two short holes, the 11th was never threatened all week).  How much of this can the contemporary architect utilise?  Is there anything to be gained from a course only having two par 3s and two par 5s?  The Road Hole aside, how many of the other holes would be unacceptable to a client if imitated today?  Is there anything left to be imitated (on the grounds that imitation is the finest form of flattery)?

[George Pazin]

Mark, there is a tremendous amount to learn from TOC, as there always has been. Whether or not anyone will actually learn anything is another matter entirely.

Some things, off the top of my head:

- It's not necessary to have 25 yard wide fairways with penal rough to challenge even the world's best;

- Having bunkers that are actually penal makes golf more interesting;

- It's possible for a course to play short - ie just about everyone averaged over 300 yards - and still provide a challenge;

There's a lot more out there, should anyone care to look.

Bottom line: FIRM conditions with undefined holes and interesting green complexes makes for a helluva lot more entertaining golf than the modern standard of green green green with thick rough and defined strategies.

[Mike Vegis @ Kiawah]

I agree with George.  Bunkers should be penal.  That's the biggest flaw of most courses in the U.S.  Better players sometimes even aim for bunkers.  I can guarantee that no player aimed for the bunkers last week.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Mark,
This is a great topic.

A hole that continues to perplex me in thought, study and even when I have played it is #13--the Hole O' The Cross-In. Personally, I think it is the toughest mentally, of the natural 2-shotters on the course (The Road hole as you know was originally a three shotter)

The character of the course really starts to get nasty at that point, almost in a "I have entertained you this far, now you have to really work" sort of way.  

I have never seen any architect really reflect on this hole and its strengths. In fact, I think they would be more apt to point out the weaknesses, which frankly, I don't think it has any. It is just one tough hole that plays so fair, yet, provides so much illusion that it has you thinking of areas of safety and respite when they are actually false comforts. Its a scrapper of a golf hole if the wind is behind you and the elementary school bully if the wind is in your face.

I also think this is the place were I first fully realized the Behrian term, Line of Charm and that was because I was fooled by it when I played the hole for the very first time. In fact, from the safe driving are on the right which more or less is blind all the way to the green--you think--but your so taken aback by the line you see to what amounts to the pin of the 5th. I was fooled, tricked, dooped, played the patsy--into thinking that this was the obviousline to the hole. As anyone who has played there knows, it isn't!

Cheers

[Tom Bagley]

What fascinated me was the leaderboard, specifically the age of some of the leaders and the wide variety of skill sets:  long-hitters (Woods, Couples, Garcia, Goosen, Singh, Perry, Clarke, Daly), and relative short-hitters (Olazabal, Langer, Faldo).  Most, but not all, are know for extremely capable, creative short games, but not all are known to be great putters.

And look at the seniority of some of the high finishers:
2nd-Montgomerie
T3 - Couples, Olazabal
T5 - Langer
T11 - Faldo
T11 - Perry
T23 - Lehman
T41 - Watson

This seems to indicate to me that, not only was "thinking" required, but that there were different ways to play the course and succeed.  And that is the purest definition of a truly strategic course.

[Philip Gawith]

Tommy - if i am not mistaken, the 13th is discussed by Kyle Phillips in the book "Scottish Golf Links - A Photographers Journey" by Ian Macfarlane Lowe, where KP provides text to accompany the photos.

It is an excellent book if you don't have it. If I had a better memory I would tell you what he said - instead I will go home this evening and re-read it!

[Bill_McBride]

#13 is of special interest because it is really the only par 4 where you can't run the ball on the green.  

There is a lot of thought, including among those on this board, that the par 4's at TOC are just too short to be relevant these days.  The many responses to the thread on #18 would be the best evidence.  This is really not correct, the short holes balance holes like #13, #2, #4, #17, and almost the entire layout is 1/2 par holes.  What fun!  It was great watching at the course last week, although TOC is not the best walking/watching course in the world because of the wide fairways and relatively few high spots.  Those few were packed with spectators.  So we located ourselves in key bleachers.  The one at #14 and the other at #16 were great vantage points.  I sat almost three hours at #14 and just fumed at the impotence of Hell Bunker, even given the new OB tee at 618 yards.  In all those hours, I never saw one player drive over past the Beardies and skirt Hell.  They all blasted it downwind down the Elysian Fields to about 350 yds, then blasted over Hell.  Not everybody made birdie, that's what that great fall away green is all about, but Hell is not much of a factor in those dry and downwind conditions.

The Principal's Nose on #16 is still, by contrast, feared by the players.  Downwind, many were hitting irons to stay short, leaving a 180 yd plus shot into that firm green.  

On an interesting side note, I met a retired caddy named Sandy at a party Friday night.  He said he felt the US pros would score better if they hired the local caddies because their regular caddies just didn't get TOC.  He might be right.  All the time we sat at #16 players were coming up short with their putts.  Sandy predicted that; he says #16 is the slowest green on the course because it is more bowl-shaped than other greens, holds moisture more, and is therefore slower to putt.  He was right!

With regard to #18, and #9 and #12 for that matter, who cares if the great players today can drive the green?  They still have to score better than the field to win.  The Valley of Sin requires great precision.  Most tee shots that found the green were well behind the hole, leaving a downhill slick putt which could well find the Valley if only slightly overstruck.  And what excitement to have a potential eagle hole for the last!

Shivas should probably be burned at the stake like the witches of Salem for his heretical notion that a central bunker be built on #18.

And for those who think #18 is newly reachable, Jack Nicklaus drove the green all four rounds of the 1970 Open, and I think in the playoff as well.

Once again Tiger Woods gave a graphic demonstration of how patience wins on TOC.  His combination of course management and ballstriking is invincible there.

[TEPaul]

Mark:

Your initial post asks that age old question of TOC which is----for what's considered by all to be the prototype of all golf course architecture, why is it that so much about it was never really imitated and today almost all seem to say it couldn't be?

The answer to that question has always been wrapped in a mystery, that's inside an enigma and probably sprinkled with a riddle!

To me the answer is really pretty fundamentally simple and it's contained in the fact that so much of what is TOC simply preceded the entire art and the entire existence of golf course architecture (BTW, my own definition of "architecture" only encompasses what IS man-made. That may be entirely different from the definition of architecture by others but at least mine separates into distinct categories what is natural that's ONLY USED for golf and that which is actually MADE for golf).

But still, why wouldn't golf architects recreate what is naturally occuring about TOC in it's entirety? That question has been asked and asked again by golf architects going all the way back to the turn of the 20th century.

Even the likes of Mackenzie, and Hunter and particularly Max Behr who wrote on this subject and on this fascinating question never really came to a concrete answer.

I should amend that---I firmly believe that Max Behr did come to a concrete and completely logical answer to the age-old question of why TOC was never more completely imitated in golf architecture.

A thumbnail of his answer was essentially in the creation and playing of his "games" man just inherently and intuitively does not do well by trying to make some logical order out of that which is not ordered. The natural randomness of the ground and all about it of TOC is naturally random or natural randomness and particularly without any understandable order at all on which to play a game.

Inherently and intuitively man needs to create order in the structure of his games because that allows him to so much better isolate and exhibit his physical skill, particularly against a human opponent.

This is the answer why TOC was never more imitated even if it's always been known as the "prototype" of all golf course architecture. The key is it preceded man-made architecture and was just something that man started playing across long ago before he could or even thought to actually do something to it himself in a real architectural sense.

And when the time finally came when man could do something about the playing field of golf, when he could begin to make and define things he obviously didn't notice that the essence of a playing field like TOC was never some defined and logical structure but was the earth's randomness, something that was inherently counter-intuitive to the creation and playing of his "games".

Behr called golf architecture's attempts to imbue the game with some undertandable logic as well as definition, the "game mind of man".

Some of the quotations of Behr explain this phenomenon to a tee.

[Rick Shefchik]

Shivas should probably be burned at the stake like the witches of Salem for his heretical notion that a central bunker be built on #18.

And for those who think #18 is newly reachable, Jack Nicklaus drove the green all four rounds of the 1970 Open, and I think in the playoff as well.

I realize the first paragraph above is tongue-in-cheek, but that is precisely the mindset that disturbed me during the discussion about a bunker on 18 (and it wasn't a "central" bunker; as proposed, it would be in line with the left edge of the green).

For every thoughtful argument against the proposed bunker, there were three that more or less said, "We've found a blasphemer! Gather the kindling!"

Is that really the spirit we're trying to promote here? Don't we want to encourage heresy, at least for discussion's sake? Isn't this a better site when we ask each other "why?" and why not?" without condemnation?

And by the way, it was acknowledged that Nicklaus drove the green in 1970. That was part of the point -- we remember it, because it was stunning at the time. It isn't stunning anymore.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Thanks for your learned replies.  I used the word imitate and probably that is wrong. I'm not particularly thinking of imitating particular holes but more of lifting concepts such as the 12th green or being brave enough to leave an entirely flat canvas such as that on the 9th.  

I think par is becoming irrelevant at many places, but at TOC in particular.  That was a fascinating championship - not necessarily exciting - and in the end the score was immaterial.  What mattered was whether the best equipped golfer could maintain his lead, which he did, or whether any of the nearly-as-well-equipped challengers could mount their challenge, which they did not.  In that respect the course won hands down - even the much maligned 18th.

I sat at the 13th for some time on Friday.  One of the best approach shots I witnessed was that of Tom Watson who drove down the right of the fairway and had a completely blind approach.  Luke Donald and (later) Tiger Woods both flirted with the right-hand greenside bunker but nobody else got into it while I was there.  The bigger problem seemed to be missing slightly left of the flag when the ball appeared (from the stand) to turn uphill, further left and run away for ever onto the 5th green.  Those who tried to take the fairway bunkers out of play by driving onto the 6th fairway did not seem to have an advantage, often running out of fairway and into rough, wispy or deeper.  Is that the effect of the new tee?

If you are an architect you are commissioned to construct 18 greens which must give a variety of pin positions with (not written in the rules of golf) certain expectations about relative flatness around the pin positions, distances from edges of greens, slopes, Stimps and all the rest.  TOC greens were Stimping at something very modest yet nobody ever tamed them.  Could you get away with constructing a green as convoluted as the 12th?  Would you be hounded out and banned from designing a golf course thereafter?  Or did the committee select unfair pin positions?

[TEPaul]

"For every thoughtful argument against the proposed bunker, there were three that more or less said, "We've found a blasphemer! Gather the kindling!"
Is that really the spirit we're trying to promote here? Don't we want to encourage heresy, at least for discussion's sake? Isn't this a better site when we ask each other "why?" and why not?" without condemnation?"

Rick:

There may be a bit of room for heresy and blasphemers on here about other courses---not much room but a little---but when it comes to TOC we pretty much automatically have to gather the kindling and set blasphemers and purveyors of heresy on fire. Roasting blasphemers generally happens far more during the winter months, though, because that's pretty much the time we need the warmth. I don't feel like roasting any blasphemers right now because it's hotter than hell in Philadelphia at the moment. I heard that the heat might break this weekend so if there's any Old Course blasphemers around over the weekend I'd be up for a good roast.

Shvas recommended putting a bunker in that football field that is the 1st and 18th fairway of TOC??? Jeesus Christ, for that we should burn Shivas, burn his parents and grandparents and all his children and any heirs he may ever have. Every known vestige of the Shvas name should be immolated for that blasphemist recommendation.

[Mark_Fine]

Mark,
The article Tom and I wrote for Golf Tips Mag in July covers this exact topic!  Sorry I can't post it.  We can learn a lot from this Open and I wish people who manage golf courses would learn from it.  George sums up much of it quite well.
Mark

[TEPaul]

Mark:

I've never seen the contours of TOC's greens but even though some of them looked pretty dramatic on TV I doubt they'd run right out of pinnable space with faster speeds even considering the build up in speed balls would have off some of those dramatic green contours. They flashed a stat on TV on the size of those greens. The average size of an Old Course green is almost 29,000 sf. Jesus, that's about 5-6 times larger than an average green over here. Some statistical nerd even figured out how far a mower would have to travel to cut one of those monsters and it was something like 5-7 miles!  

Tiger even mentioned that he felt like he had to pivot on a few of those putts.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Bill, well said except Hells bunker would have been very much in play if the wind had been from the opposite direction which is the normal summer prevailing one. Then the right tee shot becomes much more dangerous as well. I look forward to hearing about your trip.

[Bill_McBride]

Tom, thank you for your support!

I hope to see Shivas in Chicago in a few weeks and will personally thrash him at that time.  Rick, my tongue was indeed so firmly lodged in my cheek that I couldn't speak for several hours, but like Tom I think a bunker in the middle of that great open space doesn't make much sense.  Sorry to disagree, but hey, that's my right, right?

[Rick Shefchik]

Bill -- Absolutely.

And I assume you grant Shivas, me and the one or two other heretics on this subject the same right.

[George Pazin]

That's it, Bill, I'm buying the gas and the wooden post. I'll meet you in Chicago. Try to swing by Minneapolis/St. Paul and snag Rick and we'll make it a 2 for 1 barbeque.

[A_Clay_Man]

If you are an architect you are commissioned to construct 18 greens which must give a variety of pin positions with (not written in the rules of golf) certain expectations about relative flatness around the pin positions, distances from edges of greens, slopes, Stimps and all the rest.  TOC greens were Stimping at something very modest yet nobody ever tamed them.  Could you get away with constructing a green as convoluted as the 12th?  Would you be hounded out and banned from designing a golf course thereafter?  Or did the committee select unfair pin positions?

Mark- Some of the best new modern designs have pushed the envelope. Black Mesa, The Rawls, Pinon Hills are just a few with wildly undulating greens.

 I even seen a few Fazio greens which have pushed passed the envelope.

[Bill_McBride]

Rick - the freedom to disagree is what America is all about.  Whether you and Shivas are right or wrong!

[Jim Thompson]

The eternal lessons of St. Andrews are many and many more are still to be learned.  Those which I am reminded of after this last Open are as follows:

Features regardless of their nature, penal or beneficial, should always have an impact greater than their actual size.  Examples - bunkers should be the bottom of the funnel that is fed by outer sides that are in play and appear benign.  Mounds should deflect at angles greater than their own width.

O.B. is a feature not a condition.  The fact that 18 is drivable and oft times downwind makes the O.B. behind it a strategic feature which punishes the avarice of a player thus controlling length.  Just as a hazard behind a firm green that slopes away from the player towards a hazard increases the sensitivity of the shot.

Unbridled power, greed, can, and should, be punished.  The Gordon Geckos of golf do not get a free pass do to the singleness of their approach to the game.

Angles work.  Angles created by bunkers and other penal items, gorse, are superior to angles created by mow and / or seeding lines. Those angles are intrinsically related to how they interact with the features of the goal, the green site, its pin placements, and the amount of distance that can be placed between its uses.

Openness is its own temptation and bait.  The fact that the Old Course seems so open and vast only serves to tempt the player into more errors of aggression.  Causing a player to restrain his own game in the face of such temptation is the third leg of the golfing triangle, often the least tested.

The line of charm should change relative to weather and pin location.  Most courses are single faceted and devoid of multiple directional strategy and linear distance strategy.  This ever changing relationship is the sign of true greatness.

The Old Course.  A good reminder.

Cheers!

JT

[Tom_Doak]

Mark R:  I have always been a fan of the twelfth hole at St. Andrews and I have tried to build modified versions of that green on a number of occasions ... the seventh at The Rawls Course is one of them.

I would agree with the first poster who mentioned the penal nature of the bunkering and it does make me wonder why we don't build a course with sod wall bunkers on one of our sand-dune sites.  So far all of our clients have preferred the big blowouts which we did at Pacific Dunes, which are much sexier in photos ... actually Mike Keiser had to be talked into those, but he did NOT want any sod wall bunkers because he was afraid they would irritate the poor golfers and slow down play too much.  Maybe true, although it takes a while to rake yourself out of some of these big flashy bunkers everyone likes, too.

As to the flatness of the ninth, the only modern hole I have seen which is anything close to that is the second at Talking Stick (North), which is a much more interesting hole than the 9th on The Old Course.

The main thing I learned from watching this weekend was how all those abrupt contours around the greens STILL DO come into play when the surface is firm.  Even the little approach to the tenth confounded a lot of guys!  There is just so much more going on around those greens than anyone has built on a new course in the past hundred years ... and it's not just because architects lack guts, it's because we lack the talent and imagination of mother Nature, or maybe those star-making shapers are just all over-rated.  (Even Sand Hills falls woefully short on presenting those kinds of contour in play.)

But, by the same token, I am certain that a modern version of The Old Course would not win any GOLF DIGEST awards, and might not even make GOLFWEEK's top 100.  Not many people truly appreciate the "shot value" of an approach shot that a pro can't get within forty feet of the hole.

[Doug Siebert]

I agree with George.  Bunkers should be penal.  That's the biggest flaw of most courses in the U.S.  Better players sometimes even aim for bunkers.  I can guarantee that no player aimed for the bunkers last week.

I'm pretty sure I heard Vijay asking his ball to get in the bunker on the ROAD HOLE!  Given how easy they made it, it was probably preferable to him that it go there rather than hit hard on the green and end up somewhere much worse.

The changes to that bunker really went wrong.  By making it larger, more players played even shorter to avoid it, but when they went in it it was quite an easy play for just about every one I saw attempting it.

[Ed Oden]

The eternal lessons of St. Andrews are many and many more are still to be learned.  Those which I am reminded of after this last Open are as follows:

Features regardless of their nature, penal or beneficial, should always have an impact greater than their actual size.  Examples - bunkers should be the bottom of the funnel that is fed by outer sides that are in play and appear benign.  Mounds should deflect at angles greater than their own width.

O.B. is a feature not a condition.  The fact that 18 is drivable and oft times downwind makes the O.B. behind it a strategic feature which punishes the avarice of a player thus controlling length.  Just as a hazard behind a firm green that slopes away from the player towards a hazard increases the sensitivity of the shot.

Unbridled power, greed, can, and should, be punished.  The Gordon Geckos of golf do not get a free pass do to the singleness of their approach to the game.

Angles work.  Angles created by bunkers and other penal items, gorse, are superior to angles created by mow and / or seeding lines. Those angles are intrinsically related to how they interact with the features of the goal, the green site, its pin placements, and the amount of distance that can be placed between its uses.

Openness is its own temptation and bait.  The fact that the Old Course seems so open and vast only serves to tempt the player into more errors of aggression.  Causing a player to restrain his own game in the face of such temptation is the third leg of the golfing triangle, often the least tested.

The line of charm should change relative to weather and pin location.  Most courses are single faceted and devoid of multiple directional strategy and linear distance strategy.  This ever changing relationship is the sign of true greatness.

The Old Course.  A good reminder.

Cheers!

JT

This post from Jim Thompson came up in the results of an unrelated search.  I haven't read this thread, but I thought Jim's post was so good that I would bump it.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

Nice to be reminded of this. Have we learned anything more following a very different Open Championship last year? Once again, a front-runner was not caught.

[Jim Thompson]

Wow! Those were the days!

Cheers!

JT