Alwoodley GC - a few pics

[Craig Disher]

The Buda Cup participants were fortunate to have the opportunity to play four rounds at Alwoodley GC last week. Although the competition was fierce I managed to take a few pictures when the outcome of the hole was not in doubt.

The first tee viewed from the clubhouse.



The 2nd hole is a short par 4 with an uphill blind tee shot and a well bunkered green. The hill in front of the 2nd tee can be seen in the above picture. Most of the remaining holes are on a fairly flat plateau covered with heather and gorse.

The 3rd hole is a par 5 which crosses the 16th fairway directly in front of the tee; the fairway, as do many of the other holes, has a washboard surface, an artifact of the early farmers' irrigation troughs - a feature known as "rig and furrow." The ridges provide a randomness that can be maddening, especially when they are diagonal to the line of play. At one point, I was presented with an uphill lie and a pronounced downhill stance. The red box, now the ladies' tee, was MacKenzie's original tee. The 16th fairway is between the camera and the red box.



The short par 4 5th. The fairway has a pronounced l-r tilt and is well below the green.



Another blind tee shot - the par 4 6th. A sliver of fairway is visible on the right but the correct line is directly over the densest gorse bush.



The approach from the WRONG side of the fairway; the rig and furrow fairway is visible here.



The short par 3 7th. The prevailing l-r wind is hidden on the tee by some small trees.



The par 3 11th, a real beauty. The green has a steep back to front tilt and with the hole cut front right, it was a real test.



The short par 4 13th. Trees and heather and a small semi-circle of bunkers just 150 yards off the tee. A worrisome drive into the wind.



The brutal 450 yard 18th with the clubhouse in the background. Russel Talley is creating a pair of bunkers in the driving area on the left and smoothing out a spine that runs along the middle of the fairway and causes drives to lurch left. There are homes just behind the trees on the left and the club felt that more protection was needed.

[Mark Pearce]

Great pictures, Craig, I was hoping someone would post some soon.  A couple of them really show the rig and furrow structure well.  I think they're a great feature but then I play at a course with a number of rig and furrow fairways.

One point - I think the picture you've labelled as the 12th is the 13th?

[Jon Wiggett]

Craig,

great photos. Alwoodly is one of my favourite courses and I was lucky enough to live only 30 minutes away from it so I have played it on my occasions. I think Craig is right, what is labelled as 12 is really 13. Something that has struck me from the photo of 11 is how similar the shot requirements are to Gibralter across the road at Moortown. I wonder if the good Doctor got his idea for Gibralter from the 11th at Alwoodly?

[TEPaul]

Man, how unobservant am I?

When I played Alwoodley I didn't even notice those so-called rig and furrows.

They were obviously so much more minimal compared to some of the other courses I played around Leeds particularly Scarborough North Cliff. The latter looked to me like a massive washboard because of those rig and furrows.

I thought that feature was really cool.

First time I ever saw it.

[Mark Pearce]

Sean,

That thought occurred to me last week but was quickly dismissed.  An essentialpart of the strategy of the Redan is the way the green falls away from the tee.  The 11th at Alwoodley (and Gibraltar) both lean towards the golfer.  That pin position in Craig's photo was an almost impossible pin.  The ball landed on the green short would run back off the front edge.  Anywhere left or above the hole was in serious three putt territory.  On Monday morning Michael Whitaker managed to hold the green 12 feet or so short of the hole.  He made a run at the hole for birdie and ran 18 - 24 inches past.  Mark Chaplin's response to my query as to whether to concede the putt was to suggest that every course has a green on which members never concede putts and that the 11th was probably it (this was later confirmedby the captain).

From left or above the hole it was an achievement to leave the ball within 6 feet (not one I managed, though I did get three pars on the hole).  I suspect that the only way to get near this pin position was to land a ball short right (just inside the bunker) and run it in, though that's an even tighter shot than landing the ball short right on Redan.

I think 11 is a great hole.

[Brent Hutto]

From left or above the hole it was an achievement to leave the ball within 6 feet (not one I managed, though I did get three pars on the hole).  I suspect that the only way to get near this pin position was to land a ball short right (just inside the bunker) and run it in, though that's an even tighter shot than landing the ball short right on Redan.

I think 11 is a great hole.

I didn't completely catch Nick's description of the original geometry of the hole. Wasn't the Mackenzie tee somewhat farther to the right? If so, was the bunker originally there too?

[Mark Pearce]

I think (and at this point it's worth remembering that Nick was speaking after a dinner at which much sustenence had been imbibed) that the current tee was a Mackenzie proposal (you'll recall the note in the top right of Mackenzie's plan) which was not effected until the 10th green was moved, after Mackenzie's time.  I don't recall any suggestion that the bunker was not original.  I think it would have served a similar purpose even with a tee to the right.  I think the hole also used toplay a little shorter, so a semi-blind bunker short right might have made a lot of sense.

[Mark Pearce]

Sean,

You're right, it does look like that.  The very front of the green is so strongly sloped that you've almost got a false front, I think that aids the deception.  I never visited the left side of the green but can say that the middle of this green was not a good place to be for that pin.  I know Tony Muldoon got up and down from pin high on the very left edge on Thursday, he may have a comment on whether it started uphill before running down to the flag - I don't think it did but the real difficulty was the strongly downhillleft to right slope as he got near the hole.

[James Bennett]

I have posted this before - from the Mackenzie drawings in the clubhouse.  It shows (to me) that Gibralter at Moortown (then #17, as #11 was the 18th to the original clubhouse) was the inspiration for the amendment to Alwoodley #11.  I have also attached the Alwoodley #11 arse pic of Nick Leefe (unintentional shot).

Even the walk to the next tee (Alwoodley #12) is like the next at Moortown (now #11).

You can also see the original green location (#10) and tee/green location (#11) on the drawing.





James B

ps  I also have a better image of the whole map, courtesy of Nick, if you are a devotee.  It is a big file!

[Craig Disher]

The slope from the hole to the front of the green is steep. Mark B played directly at the hole, landed midway between the hole and the front of the green; his ball rolled back to the front edge. Mike Whitaker played almost to the hole and just missed an ace. A birdie was conceded. I think the play to that location is to the right, off the hill between the bunker and the green. I played there 3 times, made one birdie but had the other 2 hang in the wet grass.

I think the 2 most difficult greens are the 10th and 11th. At summer speeds and from the wrong location, a 2-putt would be an all-world save.

[Mark Pearce]

Craig,

Brutal greens, those two.  On Thursday afternoon I wasat the back of 10 in two, with the flag two thirds of the way (or more) back.  I Took a six and can't, in all honesty, say that any of those four putts was a truly bad one.  In my attempt to two-putt I somehow left my first putt short, leaving an almost inevitable further three putts.  I would imagine that the members, if they get past the hole on 10 would simply settle for a three putt, with a chance of a two putt if they sink a long one back.

[Jon Wiggett]

James,

seems I was right and wrong. I always knew that the 10th green had been pushed back but asumed that the 11th was original which is not the case. So the 11th at Alwoodly was inspired by Gibralter at Moortown.

I haven't played Moortown for quite sometime now but the last time the old clubhouse was still standing behind the 11th green.

[Brent Hutto]

The short par 4 5th. The fairway has a pronounced l-r tilt and is well below the green.

Note the forecaddie standing in the heather to the left of the fairway. GCA's own estimable "RT" doing a combination of ball-spotting and course research on Wedensday morning.

Another blind tee shot - the par 4 6th. A sliver of fairway is visible on the right but the correct line is directly over the densest gorse bush.



The approach from the WRONG side of the fairway; the rig and furrow fairway is visible here.

I believe the second of these two photos is mis-captioned. IIRC, that is in fact a left-handed golfer (handsomely clad in a striking red-and-black jacket) hitting an approach from the more desirable left edge of the fairway.

This is a tee shot that sets up advantageously for lefties. With the prevailing wind over ones right shoulder, a high faded tee shot will go very long while there's plenty room to aim right to keep the ball from fading into the left heather. Another fade seems minimize the effect of that same breeze on the ball once it lands near the green.

BTW, this event must have set some sort of record for lefty golfers. I played in an all-lefty threesome in the third round (myself, Sean Welch and Andrew Mitchell) and for Friday's singles match at Moortown six of the twelve combatants were playing sinister golf.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Does anyone else believe there is a very clear purpose to the rig and furrow at Alwoodley, that while it was found "architecture" or at best vernacular (genius loci anyone?) the good doctor made much more of it, and in fact at a wealthy club such as alwoodley could have had horses drag pans down the fairway should they not have conformed to or served a design principle or effect he found desirable?

Seriously, the man was possessed by a genius and as such could not have let anything go by that did not serve some aim?

Personally, I think the Good Doctor's genius, connecting feverishly in that fateful cold winter to his experiences in the Boer War, made him harness those furrows to to a larger purpose.

I have an idea but off to dinner and airplanes....

[Jon Wiggett]

Mark,
I believe that the good Doctor believed in taking the land as he found and only changing it if it was an improvement to the 'sporting challenge' of the course. I don't think any GCA would build R&F but if your interest is as the good Doctor then they would certainly enhance it. Only a blind man trying to bring some kind of perverted 'fairness' to the game would waste money removing such a feature.

Alwoodley is a great course. The only negative that I can see in the last 20 years is that they have cleaned up the bunkers that are not in the direct line of play. IN the 1980's they were full of weeds and looked half abandoned which some how added to the romance of the place.

[Tony_Muldoon]

What a great course, somewhere I would be happy to return to any time.  The trees are mostly not in play but the heather was brutal.  Compared to many (most?) Heathland courses the greens were far from flat and greatly added to the enjoyment.   Definitely in my top 5 Heathland tracks.
Also I’m surprised no one mentioned the bounce on the fairway.  The conditioning on the Wednesday was outstanding.  Tee shots bounce 10-15’ in the air and landing a ball short of the green gave an entirely predictable rollout.  With the good winds we encountered it made for great golf.


Due to the great competition I often forgot to get many snaps.  I would have loved to show the rig and furrow on two as it’s the only time I’ve seen it run directly in line with the hole. Mark I think he deliberately used it in different directions when mostly it always seems to run at 90 degrees to the run of play.  Hopefully these fill in some of the blanks above.


Approach to 5.  One of the mot attractive holes I’ve ever seen. And deceptively hard to score on too




The great t shot at 10 – the hole is very reminiscent of the Addington (11 too)

 


12




14




15
What a green!


16


17


18 and an attempt to show the controversial ridge



The 18th at Moortown 2.5hours after it stopped persisting down.

[Mark Bourgeois]

But I thought that might be the point, Tony, the bounce.

When you consider the angle of the inbound tee ball against the angle of the rig and furrow, then you can see the effect was to tilt the fairway forward and generate a high kick, an apparently unnatural kick I might add to an eye and mind that sees and calculates a lower bounce according to the average or general cant (slope) of the fairway, which for the R&F holes is not that much.

And because the R&F are not random but ordered, the bounces don't carom off in random and to the mind "acceptable" directions but rather bounce high yet along the direction of the tee shot.

(Stare at some louvers at an angle to see what I'm thinking: the far half of R&F is out of play while the half facing the tee "closes ranks" to present a fairway at a steep angle to the angle of attack.)

To say this bounce is disconcerting is understatement.

I think MacKenzie combined this feature with a framing of many holes in gorse, bush, angle and / or tree to create a blindness that was different from the way I usually think of blindness.

The mind works out a certain expected bounce, doing those innate and advance calculations that minds do, and then - whammo, where'd that LURCH come from!

Its disorienting, unexpected, and vaguely offensive.

Speaking for nobody else, it through me into a sort of disequilibrium. It felt surreal, almost like we'd been thrown into a place where the laws of physics mostly applied, but in some ways didn't seem to.

These two features I felt made the blindness far different than what is encountered on another course: it made it into a psychological hazard of extreme discomfort.

I have not seen enough MacKenzie courses to form a good judgment, but just personally and IMHO it was not until this course that I started to understand this whole business of MacKenzie's wartime lessons not really in camouflage or camouflage as deception, but camouflage cum disorientation.

It's wierd, I tell ya...

[Brent Hutto]

Because the rigs have two surfaces, the extra bounce is not determined but rather biased by the placement and orientation of the r&f relative to the line of ball flight. You can get bounce forward (more often) or upwards and not forward (less often) from transverse r&f. Or when they are on a diagonal you can get a prevailing bounce that is forward and to a favored side but once in a while you can get a bounce that arrests the forward motion and throws it to the other side instead.

Or the ball can hit at the bottom of a furrow and not really bounce much at all on any given shot. And as Mark mentions this is superimposed on the large-scale slope of the fairway in the landing area as well.

Not only does this increase the uncertainty of a given shot's response, on a given hole it changes the risk-reward situation especially with the diagonal r&f. If the prevailing bounce is to the right (which seems in my memory to be the more often experienced orientation) then you probably want to play to the left edge of the green. Yet if there is a gorse bush or bunker on the left that may not be the best play because of the one bounce in five that hits the left slope of a rig. So you find a compromise that may involve a chance of leaving the ball short of the green or even flying it onto the green and letting it roll through.

[Rich Goodale]

I tend to agree with Sean that we are overexaggerating the furrow thing at Alwoodley.  I personally didn't see any significant deviations of ball flight or length depending on where or how you hit a furrow--surely nothing of the magnitude that occurs on the (much larger) humps and hollows of links courses.  The fact that GCA.com's #1 idiot savant, Tom Paul, played Alwoodley and didn't notice them, confirms this (non)observation.  Sean is also right that Alwoodley is one of very many clubs that have built courses over existing rig and furrow/runrig systems.  We've discussed this a number of times before on this forum.  The main MacKenzie tell that I noticed was the blindness of so many tee shots, which I attribute to his Old Course obsession.  Because of this, the only way you could really determine the effects of the furrows was through measurement, rather than observation.  Looking at it in this cold light, there wasn't much "there" there, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein.

Excellent and very fun to play course, nonetheless!

[Tony_Muldoon]

Perhaps because I'm used to them they didn't surprise me.  I do think it's reasonable to conclude they were deliberately left in place on the fairways and that (from memory) they were smoothed off in the areas where you would be playing the short game.

[Rich Goodale]

It's wierd, I tell ya...

Mark

"Weird" was one of my 10-year old's spelling words for the week, and when I corrected her homework for her/your rendition ("wierd") she berated me with the "'i' before 'e'....." rule, which actually made me think, and when you confirmed her theory, self-doubt began to creep in, and I could imagine her teacher, Miss Hutchison, mocking me when we came to the parent-teacher meetings next week, so......I went to the dictionary.

As my relatively modern (1970) one is hidden under piles of important papers in my office, I looked through my 1898 version, which I inherited/stole from my grandmother, and was interested to find that in those good old days, when Pat Mucci and Bob Huntley were just wee pups, the primary meaning of "weird" was "Of or pertaining to fate; concerned with destiny."  The "'e' before 'i'" anomaly is due to the fact that it derives from the Scots language.

This pretty much says it all, vis a vis golf course architeture, at least.

[Jon Wiggett]

It is interesting how some people seem to think that Mackenzie deliberately designed the R&F. This was not the case but rather they were a feature of the land that was intergrated into his design. Mackenzie was active during a period where the sporting challenge of the game was seen as a plus and so was encouraged. This attitude allowed GCAs to be more creative and use unusual features more in their work. These days on all but the lowest budget projects R&F would be dozed flat in the interest of 'fairness'.

[Mark Pearce]

Rich,

I saw at least one ball hooking towards the rough on the 2nd bounce back into the centre of the fairway, presumably off the r&f.

As I've said, we have r&f at the Northumberland.  Colt, however, went a bit further than Mackenzie.  We have at least one green (the 6th) where the dominant feature is the rig and furrow structure and others where it is still apparent but less dramatic.  Putting on fast greens to a pin perched on top of a rig can be scary.

[Rich Goodale]

Mark

It's hard to imagine a golf ball travelling 200 yards or so at speed and then being significantly diverted sidieways by a relatively small and flat and soft feature like furrows, but you're the physicist on this thread, and you do acknowledge by the use of the word "presumably" that the tee shot is completely blind, so we really do not know what happened.....

Cool feature of those Northumberland greens.  I'll bet the members have a colourful Northeastern nickname for oor man Colt.

Sean

To me, micro undulations are mostly man discovered, not man-made, like rigs and furrows.  Think of the shot from the middle of the fairway, sitting 20 yards out after a good drive, to the reasonably flat green at the first at Dornoch.  You are nearly there, but you have to play a shot of skill and cunning to get close to any pin, and greater men than you or I have putted towards middle of the green pins into bunkers from that position.

I personally think that Alwoodley would be an even more interesting and challenging course if they had not flattened the r&f features in that 20-yards-in part of several green complexes.

Rich

[Mark Pearce]

Did anyone else notice that,on the aerial photograph of the course hanging in the clubhouse the rig and furrows are clearly visible?  There are at least three distinct sets of r&f structures (three seperate smallholdings?), two with r&f running East-West and one (in which the 6th fairway and 7th sit) running North - South.  I'm surprised that there wasn't a standard orientation for an agricultural feature like this.

The different areas also appear to have different frequencies for the r&f pattern.  The NS region appears to have a far shorter wavelength than the two EW regions.  Comparing both to the r&f at Northumberland, Alwoodley appears to have shorter wavelength r&f.

Rich,

When a golf ball travelling at, shall we say 100mph (a drive might leave the club of a very flat belly at 180 mph, it's slowing down all the way for the next 300 yards and speeds are much lower for shorter golfers and shorter clubs), hits a firm and fast fairway, it can change direction very significantly.  The biggest change in direction of that ball I saw bounce was not left to right.  When it hit the ground it was travelling towards the ground, afterwards it was travelling away!

We've all seen balls bounce at angles off larger features (how often does a ball landing on the side of a bunker bounce at a wild angle?).  Why shouldn't a ball travelling predominantly vertically down (as almost any ball is, as it nears the ground) take a significant sideways bound from a feature like the r&f, particularly if it impacts at the point of greatest slope?