Why do we have to play 18 holes?

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

The thread on 9-hole golf course made me wonder, again, as to why so many people have this obsession with playing 18 holes everytime they play golf.  From that thread, it seems that the need to somehow shoehorn in 18-hole "rounds" is one of the perceived drawbacks for that routing format.  I can think of a few reasons why golfers feel obliged to play 18, but none of them really hold up to scrutiny, at least for casual games.

I personally think that a 9-hole course, easily accessible to the golfing population, that had as it's standard an under 2-hour "round" of nine holes would appeal to many players.  Rather than having to make a day of your game of golf you could zip in and zip out, if you wanted to, leaving time for other activities.  Or, maybe even a 6-hole course or a 12-hole one, depending on the land and the demand.

Why not?  Just because?

[A_Clay_Man]

Rich, why not blame it on the usga and those damn handicaps? or the R&A for TOC?

I had similar thoughts reading the 9 holer post, but do you know how hard it is to be a real trendsetter? It's not that hard at all, all you have to do, is do what you do, and when the others follow, you've done it.


It would appear that the little green monster is the real cause for the uniformity and also at the core of the issue is tradition.

I'd bet if you built a 13 hole venue and it was head and shoulders above the rest, with 18, that it was your vision and not the cloud of greed that made it so.

[let's play two]

Why 18 holes? Because 17 is never enough!!!!!!

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rich,
If you consider league play then the number of 9 hole rounds played, even at 18 hole courses, is higher than you might imagine. At a local 18'er they even have an 11 hole league that ends up on a par 3, which is just steps from the bar.


  

[Tim Weiman]

Rich Goodale:

My best friends in Ballybunion frequently play 4-6 holes, usually in evening after work. It does add to the sense of the experience being casual even if one has a little match.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Adam

I agree that the USGA  "If you play, you must display!" posting system is a negative factor in allowing us to think of golf as anything other than a 5 hour ordeal.  As for the TOC, I think I posted recetnly that one of my clubs over here used to be 15 holes, had to move in the 1890's and wanted to beuild a new 15 hole course, but were strongly advised by Old Tom Morris to build 18.  It's a shame, for the property is a bit cramped for 18, and could have been a great 15.........

Tim

Here in Scotland, my typical golfing year consists of 40-50 competitive (medal) rounds, 10-20 full 18's with friends and 50-60 four to twenty five hole late night or early morning dashes across the landscape.  The latter are what keep me sane......

No comments here TE Paul!

[Tom Doak]

Rich,

I could not agree more, even though I doubt anyone will ever pay me to design something other than 18 holes.

Some of the most fun rounds of golf I've ever played were at Pacific Dunes, when we were finishing the course in the fall and the 11 holes we'd built in the spring were just becoming playable.  We'd go out at night and play as many holes as we felt like -- 3, 7, 9, 11, 12 -- and sometimes we'd finish off by playing backwards to #1 tee after we'd played 16.  No one ever cared how many holes we played.

That was the genesis for the idea behind The Sheep Ranch -- play until dark to any green you wanted.  Alas, it appears they are going to give up on the concept and make an 18 holer out of it.

[Jeff_Lewis]

Fresh off of 8 holes at Barton-on-Sea in England, in which I played bits of all 3 nines, I was just thinking about this very same topic. Perhaps we need to design a course that comes back home after 6, 10, 12, 15 and 18, so that one can play less than 18 once in a while, just for fun.

[Gene Greco]

 I rarely do play 18 holes. At Southampton, I play 11, 12, 4, 5, 6, 7 or 9 holes usually after work. Many others at my club do the same and vary the holes between the 9's as I do.
   Maybe it is time to think in these terms when building courses in areas where land is not so readily available, ie. a muni here in the Hamptons.  

[let's play two]

Jeff and others,

People play less than 18 holes all the time. It's called a 9 hole round. In 99.9% of the courses the 9th green comes back to the clubhouse. I have walked off an 18 hole course after 12 or 13 holes before. Amazingly, no body stops you. It's like it is a free world to play any number of holes you want. Just watch yourself crossing the course. One of my favorite munis has the 7th through 9th holes within quick walking distance to the parking lot. A lot of courses have #16 near the clubhouse too. So there are already many options. Just walk off the course whenever you want to. Have a great round.

[Craig Van Egmond]

Rich,

   Lately I have been playing lots of 13 hole rounds. The new twilight rate here at the local muni starts at 2:30 and the 13th green is right next to the parking lot so it works out well with the shorter days.

I may just have to play 13 tomorrow.

[Mike_Cirba]

Rich;

Good question!

I've played a lot of nine-hole courses, but I've also played one 12 holer and another 14 hole course over the years.

Frankly, that's all the property dictated, and I don't think I felt "cheated" in the least by the unorthodox setting.  

As others have mentioned, I'd rather play good, well-conceived holes in any ultimate form than those courses that try to shoehorn in 18 holes on properties where that doesn't work very well.

[Doug Siebert]

Reason to play 18?  On a lot of courses, it is a hell of a walk from 15th green to the clubhouse  

I don't buy the USGA handicap thing as a reason, they have a system to post 9 hole scores, and nothing stops you from declaring you are not playing a "stipulated round" before you start -- i.e., you decide it is a practice round and you are going to play two balls on some holes, or replay shots that are too crappy (though the best way to get better is to replay shots that are too good!)

A lot of courses in the US don't make it easy to play 18, many of cart only courses don't even have a 9 hole rate.  And many courses that do have a 9 hole rate make it so high relative to 18 that you don't feel like you are getting your money's worth to only play 9.  I'll bet those people talking about playing 6 holes aren't paying a daily fee.  You wouldn't play 6 holes very often on a course that charged you the same price for that as they did for 18!

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Thanks for all the thoughtful comments.  Great to see that I am not the only one to make a habit of playing as long as I feel like it.

However, I have never played 5, or 9 or 13 or even 16 on any 18-hole course that I have paid serious money to play, or that it was possible I would never play again.  So, there are limits to (at least my) idealism.  What I'm really arguing for are courses that:

1.  Accessible (not only in terms of membership/daily fee issues but in terms of actaully getting there).  Who wants to drive for an hour and then play 6 holes?
2.  Flexible in design, allowing for playing different routings when possible, and always SAFELY.
3.  Flexible in pricing, to allow for partial rounds.

On this latter point, how about a golfcourse that priced by time spent on the course?  Punch in and punch out a time clock.  If you play 27 in 3 hours you pay the same as if you play 9 in the same time?  Sounds like chaos, but I really think, in my gut, that it could work, and could influence slow play.....

Finally, who's going to design these courses?  It is unfortunate (to us but not to him!) that the Tom Doak's of the world have bigger fish to fry than trying to build good but affordable 12-holers in East Podunk, particulary since (as Tom says, very rightly and honestly) there just ain't owners out there who will pay him to do it.

Well...as we all know from being here (and some recent threads) there are a LOT of really qualified GCA's out there who are looking for work.  Maybe this is a viable niche fo them.  And, maybe the Doak's/Coore's of the world can do a little bit of pro bono work for those projects which have merit.  Not a bad way  to try to grow the game (and the ultimate market......).

PS--Doug, whose post nearly crossed.  You are right about the USGA accommodating partial rounds in their handicapping system, however........

a.  I would suspect that only 1-2% of the golfing public knows about this complexity and uses it properly (based on TE Paul's oft quoted stat that less than 1/2 of all posters know or or use ESC!) and faithfully, based on my observaiton that far too many people post falsely (viz. The Donald) or rarely at all.
b.  My issue is not with handicaps, per se, but with mindset.  If you go out onto a course in the late afternoon, like Craig Edgmand, planning to play 13 do you HAVE to say to yourself and your playing partners on the first teee:  "Ladies and Gentelemen and Myself, I am playing a titleist Pro VIII, number 2, with a smiley face mark, and this is NOT going to be a 'stipulated' round!"  In a rational world, I think not.....

[TEPaul]

Rich:

Thank God you're such an iconoclast! Out of your fertile mind and willingness to always question convention comes some really great food for thought!

Not that that food hasn't been there in the past to be thought about but my belief is very few have ever really tried to place the whole entire groaning feast on table at one time and to really analyze why it got the way it is--how it all got cooked and placed on the table (which is now) the way it did!

But now might be the time! Others have tried, because I've been reading about their thoughts and ideas but oddly the way to do it in my opinion is to take everything back to the very beginning and first analyze why it got this way--peice by piece!

When you do this it becomes apparent that golf and all that it is and has become did not get this way by applying any part of its evolution to some great overall master plan!!

It got this way out of the oddest piecemeal evolution you can imagine! And when something evolves that way it's always a matter of sort of cutting and pasting and molding here and there to achieve some overall desired effect that unfortunately basically becomes sort of stuck in an enormous mold of TRADITION!

For that reason golf and all it is--like the 18 hole thing--is not dynamic at all! Basically it resists change to attempt to overcome confusion of any kind! If it didn't resist change this way, through tradition, the entire jerry-rigged Rube Goldberg that it is would be exposed for what it is and might just collapse into the ill-fitting pieces it probably really is!

So there!

But your iconoclasm is great and I think if this thread doesn't diverge into something else there may be some unbelievably good thought in here and you are so right that basically all this is a big MINDSET! But all the little pieces that have evolved to create this mindset is the deal to understanding clarity and solutions to the problems of golf today!

But let's try to analyze why it is as it is and how it got that way! For that I think we need to go back near to the beginning---maybe to around 1850 and look at how things began and started to evolve.

If we do that I believe we can find some amazingly good and fundamental answers to some of the questions you ask and some great solutions to some of the problems you see!

[Ken_Cotner]

No reason most of the time.  I played a wonderful 8 holes yesterday with my mother-in-law and father.  My daughter caddied for the first time, so I could only have 6 clubs.  Misread a birdie putt so I fined her  

Fewer clubs plus fewer holes equals more fun!

KC

[A_Clay_Man]

Doug- I was always under the impression that ALL scores must be turned in, whether you stipulate or not.. With equitable stroke differential being used on rounds less than 18 and greater than 12 holes. On a 13 hole venue that would be impossible, no? Now with the 9 hole option on the computer most of it is moot.

This thread has reminded me of a story my friend Gary tells about the first time his wife accompanied him on the course. After the first hole she was returning to the cart with the flag stick. He said to her "what are you doing?" and she innocently replied that she just figured how else would they know that you had played all the holes. Of course Gary informed her of thier apathy towards how many, once they had the green fee.

[Mike Hendren]

Rich,

For most, I suspect it's obsession with score.  Your post is timely.  To remove the bitter taste of another Titan's choke job to the Baltimore Ravens, I took my 10 year old son out Sunday with 1.5 hours of daylight left.  To get him out on the big course for the first time I had to bribe him with a cart.

The upside was that we played holes at random, typically choosing short holes with no carry requirements.  He played fron the 150 marker, so I found myself just hitting golf shots.  What a blast!  

It reminded me of growing up, when my dad and I would play after work, sometimes nine holes, sometimes a convenient three hole loop with one club plus putter or putter only (the original Ram Zebra was good for about 170 off the tee on non-irrigated Bermuda fairways).

Regards,

Mike

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEPaul,
It was 90 years after St. Andrews became an 18 hole course that the rules recognized a stipulated match to consist of 18 holes but there was  reference to any number of holes as a match so long as it was "agreed" upon by the sides. Around 1934 this wording changed and a stipulated match was 18 unless "decreed" otherwise. In the '50's the stipulated match was 18 holes unless "decreed" otherwise by "committee" and remains so today.

Orwellian mind control tactics, no doubt!

[TEPaul]

JimK:

A "stipulated round" in the context of using a committee is a tournament context and that needn't really change.

A "stipulated round" in the context of handicapping requirements is something else altogether and is probably what is most responsible for this present "mindset" (as Rich Goodale calls it).

I think it can be shown that the implimentation (by the ruling bodies) of the efficacy of not only hole by hole posting (in the context of playing a golf course in its normal progression) but also INDIVIDUAL HOLE posting in any order can basicially produce the same desired affect and result for handicap purposes that the ruling bodies are now trying to achieve with a single round gross score (or a portion of it--ie 13 holes and the remainder ESCed).

If this can be done (and I believe it can be done unbelievably well with the help of computerization) it could allow this "18 hole mindset" to be broken and golfers could feel much freer to play any way they wanted to or could!

[Craig Van Egmond]

Rich,

I figured out a way around the whole USGA stipulated scoring, ESC thing by not keeping score!  I have found my enjoyment of the game has gone way up. On my 13 hole rounds I don't even take a scorecard with me.  I decided earlier this year that since I don't play competitive golf  that there is no reason for me to have a handicap and therefore no reason to keep score.

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Some great stuff on here about what golf is really about, which is NOT necessarily about "stipulated" rounds or 6 hour rounds or even "rounds" at all (if you assume that one can happily "square the circle" and find his or her own "course" out there amongst the tees and greens).  I'll lie low for a bit longer.......

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEPaul,
Perhaps I wasn't being clear. I was trying to establish a possible connection between what is in the rules and how that may affect a golfer's mindset in relation to playing anything other than 18 holes.
I failed.  

[TEPaul]

JimK:

You didn't fail at all. You're being very clear. What's in the rules doubtlessly does and has affected the golfers mindset. What's part and particle to the handicapping system very much affects the golfers mindset regarding the 18 hole round too!

[Doug Siebert]

Mike H,

Your story reminds me of the first few times I played golf.  I was maybe 11 years old and my dad took my brother and I to the U of Iowa's old course (now a soccer field) which was a little 9 holer on low lying land they'd gotten tired of trying to keep dry.  They'd let about half the course grow over to weeds since it was always too wet, the rest was mowed properly but otherwise abandoned (no flags, tee markers, etc. and more importantly no greens fees)  So I guess the first few times I played golf I didn't play 9 or 18, it wasn't until we were visiting relatives the following summer that I played my first real round of 9 holes at a muni in Hillsboro, Kansas.


Rich G,

Hey, take that idea of paying based on clocking in/out to Golf Digest and maybe a few places will read about it and want to see how it works.  I can't think of a better incentive to get people to move along than for them to know it is costing them money.  It'd be worth a try, though I wonder about the unintended consequences -- "sorry, you can't play through us, the time we sit and wait for you to move through is costing us money!!"  Maybe stick 'em with a big penalty if they finish more than 15 minutes after the group in front