How Open Is Your Mind ?

[Tom_Doak]

TE:  Don't egg him on.  My apology was sincere.  I don't need another beat-down from him, and poor Noel Freeman certainly NEVER wants to see another display of golf as bad as we both put on that day.

As to the 15th at Pacific Dunes, there is plenty of trouble on the tee shot.  Ran just can't reach it. 

[Matt_Ward]

The issue  was attempting to raise / re: proportionality is tied to my belief quality architecture doesn't grade shots by just an "A" or "F" basis. Or as many would know from our schools days just ... "pass or fail."

Quality architecture can provide grade distinctions that provide for some narrow distinctions. No doubt you will always have luck / rub-of-the-green moments but theu should be so prevalent that the core architecture that is provided is then defeated on a consistent basis.


 

[Tom_Doak]

Matt:

That's a much better way of phrasing your issue.  I've talked about the same thing as "shades of gray" ... where a drive that's slightly further offline makes it slightly harder to get close to the hole, because of an intervening contour or bunker.

The beauty of that is that it doesn't necessarily involve a fairway bunker or rough, so it doesn't impact the average player much at all ... only the player seeking birdies.  Essentially, that's what The Old Course would be like, if you took out the fairway pot bunkers.

[Matt_Ward]

Tom:

I may have phrased the issue better this time -- but fundamentally I've always believed it. Proportionality is the mechanism for identifying key distinctions between certain places on a course versus others. In some case just a few feet to one side or the other can have a factor in terms of a number of elements. As a result, the elements of reward and punishment - the core of what any design needs to discern, can certainly have the "shades of gray" you mentioned.

Courses that are over-the-top in terms of demand fail because they don't provide enough reward -- those that are fairly ordinary don't really provide for any real identification of shots that are well-played.

Unfortunately, there are a number of people on this site who see golf design as being the province of just a handful of existing designers (past or present) and therefore feel that only such courses that mimick these styles are worth playing -- hence -- the tagline for this thread.

[Rich Goodale]

Matt and Tom

Good discussion.  Even though golf scoring is integral, the way holes (and courses) play is fractional, and varies by the player and the day.  This is just one more of the mysterious things of golf which make it so intriguing and addictive.

Rich

[TEPaul]

"As to the 15th at Pacific Dunes, there is plenty of trouble on the tee shot.  Ran just can't reach it.   "


TomD:

No, he certainly can't----at least he didn't on that particular day and that seemed to both confuse and disturb him deeply. He even screamed at me; "How can a design like this tee shot get any worse when a man of my length and ability can't reach the trouble?"

At first I considered just keeping my mouth shut but I just couldn't restrain myself and so I said to him: "Ran, part of it may have to do with the fact we are just walking the course today and we don't actually have any golf clubs or balls with us."

He seemed to get even more excercised over that though!

PS;
I should have realized something was amiss that day when Ran told me he wanted to take a photo of me holding my finish on the tee shot on #2. I said; "But Ran, we don't have any golf clubs." He said: "That doesn't matter." And so he has a photo of me holding my beautiful finish after the tee shot on #2 but there's no club. I do recall it was an excellent tee shot though.

[George Pazin]

The issue  was attempting to raise / re: proportionality is tied to my belief quality architecture doesn't grade shots by just an "A" or "F" basis. Or as many would know from our schools days just ... "pass or fail."

This is a wonderful point. The problem that I see with emphasizing each shot meet its just reward is that I believe it tends to lead to pass or fail courses. But, as you have highlighted many times, I don't have the breadth of experience of others, so perhaps I am mistaken in this observation.

[Peter Pallotta]

... Even though golf scoring is integral, the way holes (and courses) play is fractional, and varies by the player and the day...
Rich

Rich - I don't understand this, but I have a feeling that I really should.  Can you explain a bit more of what you mean.  I literally get lost with words like fractional and integral, so please don't be afraid of making it too basic...

Thanks
Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Integral -- your bad drive into a bunker means you're going to make a 5 instead of a 4.

Fractional -- your poor drive to the wrong side of the fairway means you're going to average 4.7 over ten rounds, instead of 4.1.  You'll get away with the poor drive some days, but not others.

That SOUNDS ideal, but the latter is much harder to achieve than you think.  A greenside bunker won't have nearly that much of a fractional effect.  To make position in the fairway worth half a stroke generally requires a pretty severe contour in the green, or just in front of it ... the exact kind of feature many good players denounce as "unfair," because they don't admit they were on the wrong side of the fairway to start with.

[John Kirk]

Q:  How open is your mind?
A:  Not very.  I'm 50 years old and I've made up my mind.  Applies to all subjects open to interpretation.


Seems to me Pete Dye builds courses where the penalty for a miss is severe.  Narrow, flat fairways with water, sand or severely undulating rough on all sides.  I would consider his designs, based on what I've seen, too penal for my liking.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tom - thanks. That was crystal clear, even for someone who failed highschool math. And interesting: spoken like a true architect. Because if I know my Rich, he'll come back and say that ANY golf course - by its very nature - will "play fractionally", independently of what an architect has done or not...   

John - funny, but before reading your post it never occurred to me what a happy and peaceful man Pete Dye must be, i.e. a man with one clear goal in mind for a whole career, and a clear (and unwavering, even in the face of high-powered criticism) idea of how to achieve that goal.  No wonder he laughs so much....

By the way (and off your tag line) did I ever mention that I was in LA and less than 30 feet away from him when James Brown got his Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame? He sang a song, and collapsed at the end, and his people had to come with his cape and carry him off. On the same visit, Harry Dean Stanton sat next to me at my table in the Viper Room at 3 in the morning and sang "Georgia on My Mind" before leaving behind his vodka and grapefruit juice (which i drank). Thought with your fondness for music you might get a kick out of that...

Peter   

[Matt_Ward]

What plenty of people fall into the trap in thinking is to presume wider fairways really mean something. Far too often they are wide for the sake of being wide -- the element of positioning to a certain point matters little because the green designs and those elements closest to it will accept just about any type of shot from just about any position. As Rich mentioned the aspect of "fractional" elements.

Sad to say but so much of modern design has abandoned the concept of sound driving of the ball -- most especially, working the ball from one side or the other. It's either extreme bowling alley narrow fairways or the wide as Kansas type holes with little in terms of strategic implications.

My father used to say a six-year-old can make an 80-foot putt but it takes a golfer (he was a Hogan disciple) to hit the driver on command with sufficient distance and work the ball on command whenever needed.

Doak's statement of golf being "shades of gray" or my common thinking with the usage of grades by degree is what really elevates the ordinary to extraordinary for me when golf design is talked about.

For the "shades of gray" to really occur you need people who thoroughly understand the land they have and how golf shots -- of all types -- can be played from a myriad of positions. Few people really take the time to provide that kind of detailing. When it does happen it's a joy to behold.

[John Kirk]

Thanks, Peter...

You and I share a passion for music.  The older I get, the more I like James Brown.

Van Morrison did a rare interview the other day on CBS Sunday Morning.  The interviewer ended the conversation with a comment about "Brown Eyed Girl", which Van has historically written off as "pop fluff", or something to that effect.  But Van in recent years has been less critical of the song, and plays it regularly near the end of his shows.  Anyway, Van started giggling about the song, and finished the interview with "Well, I guess if you can shake your ass to it, it can't be all bad."

Your Harry Dean Stanton story is to die for.  I live for stories like that.  Now that I no longer drink, my chances of experiencing anything remotely similar are miniscule.  This June we'll share a few more stories together.

[Rich Goodale]

... Even though golf scoring is integral, the way holes (and courses) play is fractional, and varies by the player and the day...
Rich

Rich - I don't understand this, but I have a feeling that I really should.  Can you explain a bit more of what you mean.  I literally get lost with words like fractional and integral, so please don't be afraid of making it too basic...

Thanks
Peter

Peter

Tom D kindly explained it above (Thanks Tom), although what I was meaning by "integral" is not exactly what he means.  I was referring to the fact that regardless of the probablisitic assessment of fractional shot values, one must always end up recording an integral score, whether playing stroke or match play.  So, whilst being on the wrong vs. right side of a fairway might increase the expected score, the actually score will always be integral.  Tom does make a good point that certain mishaps (i.e. hitting into a pot bunker where you have to blast out sidieways) are effectively integral penalties, but the next shot will still have some sort of fractional score expectation, IMO.

As to your assumption in a later post as to what I might say, it is only fractionally true.  Even the simplest hole on the simplest course will have some variance in fractional score expectation depending on execution, but that variance might be in the two decimal point range, i.e. essentially trivial.

As Matt says above, one of the things (maybe THE thing) that makes golf so great is the constant ebb and flow of achievement and expectation, which is seriously elevated at the greatest of our golf courses.  Perhaps, maybe probably, this is one way of defining that elusive term "great."

Cheers

Rich

PS--Viper Club at 3am with A list celebrities?  That trumps sitting around the bar at (place the name of your favorite anachronistic whipping boy of a club here....) with a bunch of often jaded old men, at least IMHO......

rfg

[Mike_Cirba]

In the immortal words of Quatto from "Total Recall", "Open Your Mind!"

[TEPaul]

"Q:  How open is your mind?
A:  Not very.  I'm 50 years old and I've made up my mind.  Applies to all subjects open to interpretation."


John Kirk:

Well, that's you. As for me, I'm 64 and my mind is extremely open.

Matter of fact, if you stand next to me on a sunny day and look in either ear you can see light out the other ear. I have somehow been fortunate enough to have reached that state of mind that Arnold Haultain claimed was ideal for a true "country walk." That ideal "country walk" state he mentioned was called "complete vacuity of mind."

But Haultain was a small timer compared to me since apparently he could only acheive such an exalted mental state on a beautiful country walk while I frequently walk into a room or whatever and I have absolutely no idea what the fuck I'm doing there.

It's actually remarkably blissful.

[Matt_Ward]

I just wonder how open are minds when visiting a course that is less in terms of basic conditioning. For example, if it's over-watered or the greens require a full shoulder turn to get a 10-foot putt to the hole or other such abnormalities.

Personally, I'm willing to concede a good deal but if the overall conditioning is THAT abysmal then my mind will not permit such elements to be cast aside with no regard. A good example being Apache Stronghold in AZ but there are other candidates I can add as well.

Or ...

The flipside -- if conditoning is SO GOOD that additional points are provided even when the design is simply ho-hum at best.

In either case -- are minds really open to see beyond the surface ?