News:

Welcome to the Golf Club Atlas Discussion Group!

Each user is approved by the Golf Club Atlas editorial staff. For any new inquiries, please contact us.

Pages: [1]   Go Down

Joe Bausch

  • Karma: +0/-0
do you like obstacles like this?
« on: November 03, 2008, 12:20:34 PM »
Does modern golf architecture need more obstacles like this?!  Here is a picture (March 1914 issue of The American Cricketer) of some ruins in front of the 2nd green at Aronimink.  Perhaps it wasn't completely in play, but nonetheless it is pretty intimidating!



Or do we need more 'pits' like these near the 9th green at Huntingdon Valley (from the March 1912 issue of The American Cricketer)?

« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 12:26:38 PM by Joe Bausch »
Logged
@jwbausch (for new photo albums)
The site for the Cobb's Creek project:  https://cobbscreek.org/
Nearly all Delaware Valley golf courses in photo albums: Bausch Collection

Jon Heise

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2008, 12:29:26 PM »
What is the relative position of that... thing... to the green?  The caption leads me to believe its right in front.  Personally I dont mind the oddball obstacle on a course as long as it doenst seem forced on you to a point where is impossible to avoid.  A little off to the side and it's fun.
Logged
I still like Greywalls better.

Mike Nuzzo

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2008, 01:19:20 PM »
I love that pit.

I don't know about that thing.
Logged
Thinking of Bob, Rihc, Bill, George, Neil, Dr. Childs, & Tiger.

Sean_A

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2008, 01:22:04 PM »
I don't like the pit at all.  It looks like there is a very good chance that it would require a drop due to a lack of space to swing a club. 

I can't tell about the wall.

Ciao
Logged
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

John Goodman

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2008, 01:44:22 PM »
"it's just large enough for an angry man and his niblick"

I'm pro pit.
Logged

Anthony Gray

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2008, 01:47:14 PM »


  It has to be playable and avoidable. I would like to see more of them. They add flavor.




Logged

RSLivingston_III

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2008, 02:05:49 PM »
At a private club, both of those would be very enjoyable as a challenge as you played them a few times and learned your own way to play them.
Both would be hated by most one off visitors of a public venue.
Logged
"You need to start with the hickories as I truly believe it is hard to get inside the mind of the great architects from days gone by if one doesn't have any sense of how the equipment played way back when!"  
       Our Fearless Leader

Tom Naccarato

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #7 on: November 03, 2008, 02:34:14 PM »
I would enjoy taking on that Pit of Hell. I would play for it.
Logged

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #8 on: November 03, 2008, 03:52:22 PM »
Count me in as another vote for the pit.  That looks fantastic and would really get you thinking on where you want to allow for a miss on your approach.
Logged

Joe Bausch

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2008, 04:05:05 PM »
Notice that there appears to be multiple pits in front of that green, and the land around them appears very flat.  It somehow reminds me of one of my favorite childhood games, the wooden labyrinth:



If your ball is rolling up to the green, it can land in one of these pits and it appears to be pretty much game over at that point!
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 05:49:24 PM by Joe Bausch »
Logged
@jwbausch (for new photo albums)
The site for the Cobb's Creek project:  https://cobbscreek.org/
Nearly all Delaware Valley golf courses in photo albums: Bausch Collection

John Keenan

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #10 on: November 03, 2008, 04:07:46 PM »
The Pit by the ninth green seems to look a bit like a heart. May well be named  the Valentine Bunker
Logged
The things a man has heard and seen are threads of life, and if he pulls them carefully from the confused distaff of memory, any who will can weave them into whatever garments of belief please them best.

Jay Flemma

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #11 on: November 03, 2008, 04:13:37 PM »
Well, what about this?  Tom D and Chris C, no fair giving away what course this is...

Logged

Matt_Cohn

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #12 on: November 03, 2008, 04:43:32 PM »
Regarding that last one, it would be fine if you didn't get iffy lies in the fairway all the time that just ask you to chunk it,  and then even iffier lies off in the right rough when your ball bounces off that thing and you're playing your 4th or 5th shot from a terrible angle with OB right behind the green.
Logged

Kalen Braley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #13 on: November 03, 2008, 04:49:24 PM »
That last hole looks like it'd be good fun trying to drive my 4 wheel drive FJ up it.   ;D
« Last Edit: November 03, 2008, 04:55:47 PM by Kalen Braley »
Logged

RJ_Daley

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #14 on: November 03, 2008, 04:54:40 PM »
Jay, that solid rock wall on the Maxwell course that you've posted before from when you were at the US Open in Oklahoma is IMO, perfectly acceptable as a natural (dare I say) guirk.  I really dislike any sort of brick or rock wall in any proximity to greens as a personal matter or preference, knowing full well there are many instances of walls near greens on the ol'sod courses of GB&I.   But, I don't like'em.  The pit is fine as a hazard, in my view. 
Logged
No actual golf rounds were ruined or delayed, nor golf rules broken, in the taking of any photographs that may be displayed by the above forum user.

cary lichtenstein

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #15 on: November 03, 2008, 08:37:21 PM »
The pit would be fine if it was a green side bunker, but it is too far away from the green to be a good bunker.
Logged
Live Jupiter, Fl, was  4 handicap, played top 100 US, top 75 World. Great memories, no longer play, 4 back surgeries. I don't miss a lot of things about golf, life is simpler with out it. I miss my 60 degree wedge shots, don't miss nasty weather, icing, back spasms. Last course I played was Augusta

Jay Flemma

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #16 on: November 04, 2008, 07:32:47 PM »
Quote from: Matt_Cohn on November 03, 2008, 04:43:32 PM
Regarding that last one, it would be fine if you didn't get iffy lies in the fairway all the time that just ask you to chunk it,  and then even iffier lies off in the right rough when your ball bounces off that thing and you're playing your 4th or 5th shot from a terrible angle with OB right behind the green.

I never had a problem with the lies in the fairway, Matt.  When was the last time you were there?  I don't see to many iffy lies on the fairway on the pic either.  With a short iron in your hands, or more likely a wedge, distance control is not like to be the issue.

Nice eyes, Brother William, you are correct, it's 16 at Dornick Hills in Oklahoma, which I saw when I covered the PGA Championship last year.
Logged

Andy Hughes

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #17 on: November 05, 2008, 09:11:58 AM »
Joe, have you been down to Whiskey Creek a little north of DC?  This old farmhouse sits in the middle of the 18th fairway. Not as imposing as the ruin you found, and not in front of the green.


Logged
"Perhaps I'm incorrect..."--P. Mucci 6/7/2007

Mike_Cirba

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #18 on: November 05, 2008, 09:43:07 AM »
That old pit at the extinct Huntingdon Valley course is devastatingly beautiful.

Just as a historical footnote, it was almost certainly the work of one A.H. (Ab) Smith, who is one of the great unknowns of Philadelphia golf, who was a member and head of the Green Committee there and who worked tirelessly over a number of years to "stiffen" the course.

Along with winning the first Philly Am in 1897, he won again in 1911, fourteen years later.

He was also a founding member of Pine Valley, along with his brother William Poultney Smith, and the man responsible for the creation of the term "birdie" in a match at Atlantic City with his brother and George Crump (and Tillinghast, I believe).

He also did much of the design of Cobb's Creek with Hugh Wilson and company, and was responsible for the design of the Karakung course and Juniata (with Alan Corson, Ed Clarey, and Frank Meehan).

If anyone could be called responsible for the creation and advancement of public golf in Philadelphia, it would have been Robert Lesley as the driver, but it was primarily Ab Smith who got it done on the ground and who consistently fought for expansion of the idea in the decades to follow.
« Last Edit: November 05, 2008, 09:45:08 AM by MikeCirba »
Logged

Brent Hutto

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #19 on: November 05, 2008, 02:20:35 PM »
So let's say the "pit" in question is unfairly small and steep. Literally no room to swing a club and only a fool would try to play a shot out of it...

How it that different from a water hazard (albeit a very small one in this case)? If you hit into the pit you can proceed under an unplayable lie rule very similarly to the procedure for a ball hit into a hazard, no? And people occasionally step into shallow water and (foolishly) try to play the ball out with a wedge, don't they?

I think a pit like that would be especially appropriate on a short Par 3 or short Par 4 where the player can be assumed to have an 8-iron or shorter in hand and therefore should reasonably be able to play well away from it.
Logged

Sean_A

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #20 on: November 05, 2008, 05:57:23 PM »
Quote from: Brent Hutto on November 05, 2008, 02:20:35 PM
So let's say the "pit" in question is unfairly small and steep. Literally no room to swing a club and only a fool would try to play a shot out of it...

How it that different from a water hazard (albeit a very small one in this case)? If you hit into the pit you can proceed under an unplayable lie rule very similarly to the procedure for a ball hit into a hazard, no? And people occasionally step into shallow water and (foolishly) try to play the ball out with a wedge, don't they?

I think a pit like that would be especially appropriate on a short Par 3 or short Par 4 where the player can be assumed to have an 8-iron or shorter in hand and therefore should reasonably be able to play well away from it.

Brent

The difference is:

1. If the water was pre-existing it can either be intelligently used of kept out of the design.

2. If a water hazard is built, there is usually an additional reason such a drainage or resevoir for its existence - so it serves another purpose as well.

3. I don't see the point in building and maintaining a hazard in which the ball can be seen and touched, but not played.  First and foremost, I want to find my ball relatively easily and have a chance to hit it.  I don't think this is too much to ask.  The pit can easily be made a bit bigger to allow for one of the funnest shots in golf - the recovery. 

4. I am not usually a big fan of water as a hazard precisely because the fun of the hole comes to an abrupt end.  Of course, there are exceptions, but they usually involve water in which my ball can be retrieved or a special body of water such as an ocean.

Ciao
Logged
New plays planned for 2024: Nothing

Mike Hendren

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #21 on: November 05, 2008, 06:09:18 PM »
Love the first picture.  Ironically I was driving by a construction site yesterday where they had stored the top soil on a huge mound and grassed it over.  My first thought:  Alps hole with alternate wrap-around fairway. 

Mike   
Logged
Two Corinthians walk into a bar ....

Kyle Henderson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #22 on: November 05, 2008, 07:21:56 PM »
Quote from: Tom Naccarato on November 03, 2008, 02:34:14 PM
I would enjoy taking on that Pit of Hell. I would play for it.

Ah, but one is sure to miss it if they aim for it, unless they're tour material. Such is the way of the golf gods.
Logged
"I always knew terrorists hated us for our freedom. Now they love us for our bondage." -- Stephen T. Colbert discusses the popularity of '50 Shades of Grey' at Gitmo

Justin Broderson

Re: do you like obstacles like this?
« Reply #23 on: November 05, 2008, 08:10:11 PM »
I'm in the same boat as Tom I would love a chance at the Pit is looks like a lot of fun.  Is it bad that I think thats fun? 
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up