Is Hitting Every Club in the Bag a Sign of Good Architecture?

[Sean_A]

I frequently hear about courses requiring every club in the bag.  I can only assume this means 14 clubs are used - which I would think is a rare occurrence in a round unless one deliberately does so.  I was just wondering, if a guy only carries 10 clubs and he uses all of them does this mean the architecture is any better or worse?  What if the rules change and we can now use 17 clubs.  Does this mean courses are potentially three clubs better than previously?  I think the number of clubs used is more indicative of the type of player using them than the course.  I can't count hoe many times I have gone around a high quality course and used less than the 10-11 sticks I carry.

Ciao

[Jeff_Brauer]

I've often wondered about that definition.  Sure, its good to have a variety of distance approaches, but with standardized swings and clubs, I am not sure I enjoy a course that much more if I have to hit slightly different irons. I tend to remember courses that require different shot types, like fades and draws, high and low, etc. 

In short, I think that definition is a bit too narrow to be of use all by itself.

[Sam Morrow]

I don't feel like I lost out if I didn't hit every club in the bag, I just don't want every hole to look the same. I played a course last week (Gleanloch Pines in Spring) where I think I hit every club in the bag but almost every green complex looked the same.

[Bill Shamleffer]

When one says a course is good because it "requires every club in your bag", I have always considered it to mean that the course has a good variety of distances so that it has short, medium and long par 3s, par 4s and par 5s.

Now obviously if designers want to, they can easily adjust the lengths of certain holes so that this criteria could be met.  If the course is already very ordinary, I doubt changing the lengths of certain holes will cause a course to become significantly improved.

However, I do think that the inverse is true.  Many good course designs will have a good variety of yardages.  But not just because this is the goal, but rather because an imaginative architect will want to offer a variety of golf holes.  Of course there are many great examples that do not meet this criteria.

When I am looking for a public course in my area that I will play with on a regular basis (or if I was looking for a private club to join) one of my criteria would be a good variety of holes.  Although, if other features were outstanding this criteria could be overlooked.  If I am planning on playing a course on a regular basis, it will be nice if that course will have short, medium, and long par 3s, par 4s, and par 5s.  Now if I have an opportunity to play a great course on a regular basis, this criteria may lose its significance.  But if I am comparing good courses in the same geographic area, this will be a criteria that I will take into account.

When I hear a course described as requiring every club in the bag, I consider that as just a way to describe that the course requires a variety of shots and that it does not seem contrived to achieve that variety.

[Mark_Fine]

Sean,
For this statement to hold any merit, you have to look at the intent of the architect hole by hole and how he/she designed the golf course.  Otherwise, what clubs are hit is totally dependent on the ability and whims of the individual golfer.  I sometime play Lehigh with just four clubs.  Does that mean the course is great because I used all the clubs in my bag (actually I don't carry a bag when I only take four clubs)    It's fun, it helps me work on my game and also become more creative in shot making.  It has little if anything to do with the quality of the golf architecture.

[Phil Benedict]

I don't recall hitting every club in a particular round but it's possible.

I think that variety in approach club is an important marker for architectural merit.  To me this means using clubs from each class of approach clubs: fairway metals/woods, long, mid and short irons and wedges. 

[Tom_Doak]

I think this has always been a horribly overrated aspect of design.

Years ago it was possible, but it was a good-player bias -- if the 2-handicap hit every club in his bag, including long iron and fairway-wood approaches to greens, that also implied that the 10-handicap would have to pound long approaches nearly all day.

Nowadays, it's really impossible to do anyway, unless you mean you're getting Tiger to hit a 3-iron off the tee of one par-4, and a 4-iron off another.  Tour pros are hitting wedge approaches way more than a couple of times per round.

Does that matter?  Not much anymore.  It was a lot different in Bobby Jones' day when the clubs were not matched, and you might want to test the player with all his different clubs ... but today the irons are virtually identical and you're making an identical swing, so I can't see how it matters whether you are approaching a 6-iron or a 5- or 4-iron.

[TEPaul]

The idea and requirment to "use every club in the bag" is one that's been around a long time and one that was frequently mentioned by some of the Golden Age architects, particularly Crump. The term "Shot testing" was a very direct off-shoot of the philosophy of "using every club in the bag". They were both considered to be an example or evidence of comprehensive design variety and balance.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Sean

I think it is more a question of the skill of the golfer than anything
to do with architecture. To need to use every one of the 14 reflects
on ones game more than the course, particularly with modern clubs.
In my day I never used the complete set but certainly took time to select
those I considered using on certain courses.

Give some players a bag of 20 clubs and I expect all would be used
but don't blame the course or for that matter the clubs.

'Got to know ones limitations'  

[Philippe Binette]

The only place where the architect is kind of in control of that is on par threes, some course have all par 3s between 180 and 195 from the tips so it's kind of boring comapre to for example 140, 225, 160, 190...

outside of that, I've seen every club in the bag chart in the book Golf Course Design by Graves and Cornish and I thought it was ridiculous because:

1) 10 mph wind will mess up your calculations.

2) Nobody, I mean nobody (Moe Norman is now in another world sadly) can hit two drives on purpose the same distance on two different holes 12 minutes apart... a player will hit 270 yards on one hole and then 282 the next hole without knowing it.

It will make more sense to promote various length of holes (Oakmont, Crystal Downs) does it well

[Brent Hutto]

1) I'm pretty sure I can think of at least one uphill Par 5 on which I've hit every club in my bag. That says more about my golf game than the architecture, of course.

2) If that indeed is a complement then Sean is the man you want rating your course since he plays with, what, two irons a putter and a brassie in his bag nowadays?

3) I'd think a more refined compliment of a course would be "It requires every shot you have and a couple you don't" in the sense that arbitrary fiddling with distances and "shot values" is not a likely way to game that criterion.

[Philippe Binette]

A good comment for a golf course should be

It allows you to play golf.

[Chris Avore]

i agree with you guys that it's more just marketing speak at this point. It's an expression that's easy for the weekend duffer to relate to moreso than what Crump may have been implying during the golden age...

if I carry 5 wedges and my playing partner is walking around with 5 hybrids there's likely to be some difference there that cannot denigrate the quality of the course, and i've never walked off a track faulting the architect for why I didn't use my 6 iron that day (probably means my hack self couldn't put enough pop on on my drive so I had to use a 4 or 5 iron instead...)...

[Tommy Williamsen]

I don't think this is meant to be taken literally.  It is just a way of saying, "this course has a lot of variety in length and demands that I be able to hit, tee ball, lay-up shots, long, middle, and short irons well."

It seems to me that a good course tests as many aspects of our game as possible.

[John Chilver-Stainer]

Maybe taking the discussion from an alternative viewpoint I would say a golf course that requires repetitive distances tends towards a repetitive experience, ie monotony.

My pet hates are multiple Par 3’s with a distance of 200 yds just to stretch the scorecard rather than vary the distances. Or continuous mid length Par 4’s when a mixture of short Par 4’s and long Par 4’s would throw in more variety.

Of course wind and slopes can often alter the club choice for a similar distance but all things being equal I would a prefer variety of club choice at the cost of overall length rather than repetition because of overall length.

Bad Architecture is dependant on many significant reasons other than repetitive club choice but often one is a sign of the other.

[Peter Pallotta]

The idea and requirment to "use every club in the bag" is one that's been around a long time and one that was frequently mentioned by some of the Golden Age architects, particularly Crump. The term "Shot testing" was a very direct off-shoot of the philosophy of "using every club in the bag". They were both considered to be an example or evidence of comprehensive design variety and balance.

TE - I've wondered about this recently, i.e. whether the renaissance in Golden Age "aesthetics" over the past 15 years or so has been matched by a re-birth in its "shot testing" ethos/ideal. I'm not sure I see many modern courses that test shots and every club in the bag in the way that Crump and others did back then, and in the way they meant that term. That's why I think the shot testing-naturalism dichotomy we debate on here is a false one, i.e. the manufactured and consciously unnatural-looking courses don't seem to test shots all that well anyway, or should I say any better than the minimalist and/or naturalist courses do.  Has the growth of the game in the public realm and for the average golfer meant that few architects today can buy-into the Golden Age notion of shot testing? If so, is the renaissance not yet complete, or will it prove to be mainly an aesthetic re-birth? You know I've tried to understand Max Behr's philosophies, but maybe the problem has been that I've not realized or understood how the Golden Age idea of shot-testing is part of his overall theories on naturalism and permanent architecture and the sport of golf as a competition not against another player but against nature.

Thanks for any thoughts on this
Peter 

[Tom_Doak]

Tom P:

If you can find a specific instance or two where George Crump mentioned "hitting every club in the bag" I think it would be more significant than you realize.

A few years back when somebody started a similar thread, I looked through all of the old architecture books to see who mentioned the concept first, and I couldn't find it anywhere.

[Wade Whitehead]

A great course doesn't require you to hit every club, but it does require you to play every shot.

WW

[George Pazin]

I'd rather have a course that allows or encourages unusual shots with the same club - maybe a high fade, maybe a low runner, etc - than just a bunch of different stock irons.

If the only thinking required is "What's my yardage?", it's probably not going to be the type of course I cherish.

[Jason Connor]

I don't think this is meant to be taken literally.  It is just a way of saying, "this course has a lot of variety in length and demands that I be able to hit, tee ball, lay-up shots, long, middle, and short irons well."

It seems to me that a good course tests as many aspects of our game as possible.

I agree.  I never thought it'd meant I'd hit my 1-iron, 2-iron, 3-iron, etc all in the same round.

But rather it would require me to hit driver, hit irons off the tee, test my long, middle and short irons from the fairway, etc.  This is important in today's driver-wedge world.  I think we old-schoolers would appreciate such a course.

So does this mean more not interpreted literally?

[Tommy Williamsen]

Tom P:

If you can find a specific instance or two where George Crump mentioned "hitting every club in the bag" I think it would be more significant than you realize.

A few years back when somebody started a similar thread, I looked through all of the old architecture books to see who mentioned the concept first, and I couldn't find it anywhere.

Not sure these are definitive, but a google search produced this.

http://www.google.com/search?q=George+Crump+every+club+in+the+bag&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Phil Benedict]

I think this has always been a horribly overrated aspect of design.

Years ago it was possible, but it was a good-player bias -- if the 2-handicap hit every club in his bag, including long iron and fairway-wood approaches to greens, that also implied that the 10-handicap would have to pound long approaches nearly all day.

Nowadays, it's really impossible to do anyway, unless you mean you're getting Tiger to hit a 3-iron off the tee of one par-4, and a 4-iron off another.  Tour pros are hitting wedge approaches way more than a couple of times per round.

Does that matter?  Not much anymore.  It was a lot different in Bobby Jones' day when the clubs were not matched, and you might want to test the player with all his different clubs ... but today the irons are virtually identical and you're making an identical swing, so I can't see how it matters whether you are approaching a 6-iron or a 5- or 4-iron.

Tom,

Don't you try to incorporate approach distances into your designs so that low handicappers will hit most of the club groups (eg long and mid irons) during the course of the round, if not necessarily all 14 clubs?

[JESII]

I think this has always been a horribly overrated aspect of design.

I think you've read to much into it Tom. I don't think the intent behind the quote...whomever coined it, and whenever they did...was for quality to be determined by the number of different clubs each individual player hits in the course of ONE round. I think if any one of us thinks about their favorite places to play golf...OFTEN, if we could...it would be a place that provided real variety of shots. At the very least Tom, that is one of the attributes so often placed on your courses.

[Sean_A]

I think this has always been a horribly overrated aspect of design.

I think you've read to much into it Tom. I don't think the intent behind the quote...whomever coined it, and whenever they did...was for quality to be determined by the number of different clubs each individual player hits in the course of ONE round. I think if any one of us thinks about their favorite places to play golf...OFTEN, if we could...it would be a place that provided real variety of shots. At the very least Tom, that is one of the attributes so often placed on your courses.

I am not sure how we can read too much into it.  I took the idea at face value rather than code for something else.  To me the idea of variety and using all the clubs in the bag are very different things.

Ciao

[JESII]

Well then, elaborate on the distinctions if you please...