[Jim Nugent]

Tom- I think if you spoke to most pro's they would say that TOC has a lot of luck involved and on some courses they talk about things tricked up, Crans in Switzerland is another. I just dont think you can be that precise on some shots into the greens where because they are firm, you can hit into a slight upslope and the ball runs nowhere or a yard the other side and it runs sixty feet. For 99% of golfers the pitch into 12 is luck. My arguement is partially flawed as the best player in the world has won the last two opens, but a lot of shots that look good when you play them aren't and others flick off downslopes and do quite well. It might be fun, but largely its luck if its firm and fast with the luck element reducing as it becomes damper.
PS. just read the lastposts.

Adrian, you touched on the flaw in your argument.  Besides Tiger, Nicklaus also won at TOC.  So did Jones.  So did Snead, Faldo and Seve.  Hard for me to attribute that to luck.

[Tom_Doak]

Indeed.  Those winners were not necessarily all the great shotmakers of the modern era ... but some of them WERE the best course managers of any era.  They identified the areas which were most likely to produce a bad (not unlucky) bounce, and avoided those areas as much as they avoided the bunkers.

[Jim Nugent]

Archie, what did Nicklaus introduce to golf, that no other player had done before, and that made so many golf courses defense-less? 

[Tom_Doak]

I assume Archie is referring to playing by exact yardages.  Jack didn't invent that, but his success with it made everyone else start playing that way, too.

[TEPaul]

"The way you stated also made me think hard about something I hadn't really thought before ... that a big part of the reason that American golfers like their courses overwatered is NOT so much to make them green as it IS to take away the bad bounces and make them more predictable."


TomD:

Come on, you have to have thought of that before. At least you have to have thought of it in the context of green surfaces!

If any course over-waters greens and makes them truly receptive of course that's going to make things predictable and for all golfers.

If one wants to begin to up the challenge with F&F (particularly firm) they just have to dial down the receptiveness of balls stopping quick or dead on a green on impact. That is about 75% of the IMM. It sort of starts there and works backwards into the appraoches which have to be firmed up to off-set the lack of receptiveness and predicability of  the green surfaces.

Of course the DEGREE of green surface receptiveness or predicability has to be considered in relation to the type or style of archtiecture to some extent----ie a modern aerial demand design shouldn't have as much green surface firmness as some of the older designs with more open approaches.
 
 
 

[TEPaul]

JimN:

Jack Nicklaus did not invent the idea of exact yardage calculation he just popularized it. The story is he got it from a very good California amateur and friend by the name of Gene Andrews.

If Nicklaus introduced something to golf that made courses more defenseless (at least for him) it had to be his stock high fade. I don't believe a golfer before Nicklaus had a stock shot quite like his high fade. Many before him may've had a stock fade but not one with the height Nicklaus used. You had to see it to believe it. The reasons it worked so well should be pretty obvious to all, at this point. 

It's probably no coincidence that a player that uses that shot a whole lot is Tiger Woods. His only real wrinkle is they say the wind concerns him more than most tour players and so he's added a new wrinkle of really controlling the trajectory of his fade (or all his shots) when the wind blows.

It's interesting how the real champions, particularly champions in Majors tailored their games differently to similar conditions. Watson, for instance, who won five British Opens, basically hit everything with real height. If the wind was really blowing he'd just factor it in appropriately for his stock height and trajectory on full shots.

And obviously, one of his major career challengers, Lee Trevino, essentially hit everything with a low left to right trajectory.

How about major champion Billy Casper? We probably would be amazed today by what a marked draw he used on most every shot.

[archie_struthers]

 

God stuff guys ,appreciate the insights.

As to Nicklaus , he took luck out of the equation , and changed the way people played . Prior to his success , golfers were artists to a great extent , moving and shaping the ball based on the design . Hooks for a dogleg left, fades for a dog right.

Hogan talked so much about trajectory , flattening it out for a back pin , hitting ih high  and soft for a short one....and the great ones shaped the ball to fit the shot....not Nicklaus......he smashed it high and far and controlled his distance better than anyone who had previously played


That's how they play today ....and seriously it relegates a lot of design features impotent.....the pros just hit it higher and higher and farther and farther , there is little need to worry about trajectory like the old pro's did

there's got to be a way to bring shotmaking  , and a little luck back into the game .... 

[Tom_Doak]

Archie:

When I played with Nicklaus in the opening at Sebonack, at one point he referred to a shot (going for a particular par five in two) as something he could do "80% of the time."

So I asked him when he was playing in majors, what odds did he have to have before he tried something?

He basically replied that he never tried a shot unless he was 100% sure a well-struck shot would do the trick.  Of course, that's not the same as guaranteeing success ... you don't always strike the ball perfectly, even at that level.  But it was clear Jack never left any room in his mind for doubt.

[Lou_Duran]

Not many of us are that good that we can calculate the effect of successive obstacles like those found at TOC and execute the shot accordingly.  In fact, most of us are just trying to aim down the middle of a wide corridor, and hope that we can somehow avoid the hazards and find the ball again somewhere in its confines.

I also wonder how many of these wild bounces and "rub of the green" factors were part of the intentional design process as opposed to luck or happenstance that appeared after construction.

Is an unexpected good bounce on a poorly struck shot more rewarding or appreciated than a bad bounce from a well executed stroke is despised?  Do we give a course higher acclaim for consistently rewarding good play or for intermittently forgiving poor shots?  There is probably some research in social psychology that supports the former. 

[JESII]

Lou,

Clearly we are responsible for our own good bounces...and since they happen once for about every five bad bounces we should be happy to take the credit...

[Tom_Doak]

Lou:

I have actually seen good players get really pissed off when they hit a bad shot and it takes a completely lucky bounce and winds up close to the hole.  One of my former clients did that on the 15th at Stonewall ... he hit his tee shot fat, but it landed 40 yards short of the green on the perfect spot on that downslope, and wound up a foot from the hole.  It made him hate the whole course that you could get away with such a thing!

However, relatively few people think they are SO talented that they aren't willing to accept their fair share of good breaks.

[Tom_Doak]

Interesting, too, that you can combine this with my earlier posts to conclude that there is no such thing as BAD luck (because if it was bad luck you are admitting that you aimed close to whatever screwed you), but there is such a thing as GOOD luck (because you weren't attempting to land there).

[Anthony Gray]

  I'm joining this a little late, but I love design when the best shot option is to land the ball off the green and let it roll on. OR allows for that shot.

  Anthony

[JESII]

Tom,

How small does an inconsistency need to be for it to be considered luck when the ball hits it and reacts different than it would anywhere immediately around that spot?

[Lou_Duran]

Tom D,

As I've gotten older I've learned to accept the bad bounces with more grace.  I've never been that good to be perturbed by good fortune, even when it was totally undeserved.

Your take on bad luck is an interesting one.  It does assume that the golfer can ascertain the likely outcomes from far away distances, and have fairly precise knowledge of micro weather conditions and maintenance practices.  I suppose that years ago, when I hit my wedge approach from the middle of the fairway to a front pin on the 3rd hole at Cabo del Sol, the location of the sprinkler head just off the fringe in line with the hole should have been given its due consideration, and, as the ball rocketed over the green and into the rocky desert scrub, my reaction should have been one of contrition for not having chosen a more prudent path.

 

[Peter Pallotta]

For some reason, I'm reminded of writer David Mamet's corrosively hard-nosed sentiment:

"When someone says they've suffered enough, I take it as proof that they haven't".

Peter 

[Tom_Doak]

Lou:

I would indeed call a bounce off a sprinkler head bad luck.  In fact, one of the things that drives my company nuts is the proliferation of sprinkler heads around greens in modern irrigation systems ... heads throwing in next to heads throwing out next to quick couplers and valve boxes and little sprinklers to get a "pie" area they can't cover otherwise.  It's nuts! -- and it likely leaves the area around the green with wet spots, which are just as bad.

Jim S:

Sprinkler heads and poor finish work around them are a raw deal.  A contour is not, to me, if the architect left it there for you.  Of course I am assuming perfect local knowledge of the course, which few people ever attain.  I'm just encouraging them to try.

I have repeated this story before, but when I worked for Pete Dye, there was a cart path on the 18th hole at the TPC of Connecticut that he had to decide upon.  The choices were to get it down to where members could easily access the fairway, and have it potentially in play for long-hitting pros; or, to keep it way up on a hill away from play, making the members hike down to their drives the other 51 weeks of the year.  Pete brought the path down to the fairway.  He said, "If I were playing for $300,000 and there was a chance I might hit a cart path and lose a tournament because of it, I would play away from that cart path.  But I know these guys will swing away, and if they hit the path, they'll blame me."

That goes perfectly with what Walter Woods told me in St. Andrews:  "A good player will see that, and allow for it."  He was talking about a patch of poa annua in a fescue green, but it applies to everything else, as well.

[TEPaul]

When it comes to "luck" I just love this story---love it!

It happened to a good friend of mine, Mark Shuman, one time in US Amateur qualifying at the Wilmington CC.

I don't know whether he was at the very end of the day or what (even though he is incredibly mathematical) but he knew, just KNEW, that all he needed on the last hole (a par 5) was a par and he was into the US Amateur.

He hit a good drive and he was within range of the green over a pond. But he said to himself---why risk trying to carry the pond to the green as a birdie certainly wasn't needed?

So he decided to just layup in front of the pond, hit a wedge onto the green, two putt, make the US Amateur at Wilmington and get outta Dodge.

He had like 160 to reach the pond so he takes out a 7 iron and then remembers Hogan's adage that if you're going to lay up, then LAY UP. So, he takes out an 8 iron and tells his caddie if he's going to lay up he's really going to lay up. His caddie gets into this and says, you might flush that too and get in that pond. So, Mark says: "You're right, Hogan says if your gonna lay up than REALLY lay up." So, Mark skips right over his 9 iron, takes out a PW, flushes it, it lands about 30 or more yards short of that pond but right on top of a sprinkler head, bounces about 20 feet in the air and gets right into that pond!!

Mark makes a bogie and misses the US Amateur by one!

Did he blame the architect, the design or bad luck? Of course not; he took total responsibility for all of it, laughed about it not long after the pain subsided and that incident became one of our favorite stories.

LUCK-SMUCK. Shit happens; it's golf! 

[Kalen Braley]

Tom D,

Interesting discussion so far and I'm particulary curious how you view smallish ridges.  If the play into a particular pin location is best achieved by taking advantage of a slope on one side of a ridge, is it not bad luck if the player misses this ridge on the wrong side by perhaps only a mere 2-3 feet and the ball is kicked away into a brutal spot where recovery is next to impossible? It seems in this case a player could have a very close miss yet be penalized severly.

The 14th at Pac Dunes seems to come to mind where two similar shots hit only a foot or two apart on the front part of the green could lead to two massively different end results.  It seems in this case, there could very much be both bad and good luck components at work here, especially when said course usually plays with massive winds where even the best players couldn't consitently hit a smallish target.

[Damon Groves]

Kalen and Tom -

I like the 14th at Pacific and greens like it because you don't always know what you are going to get. A little bit of surprise and unpredictability never hurt anyone.

That being said you would not want that situation on every green but a few times a round makes for some fun.

[Lloyd_Cole]

Kalen

You beat me to it.
I believe there are contours on many courses which work on such a small scale that from 150 yards the best in the world could not accurately predict the outcome after the ball hits the ground. And then when the wind is a factor, and it isn't a constant - then I believe we are engaged in educated guesswork.

Tom D,

Interesting discussion so far and I'm particulary curious how you view smallish ridges.  If the play into a particular pin location is best achieved by taking advantage of a slope on one side of a ridge, is it not bad luck if the player misses this ridge on the wrong side by perhaps only a mere 2-3 feet and the ball is kicked away into a brutal spot where recovery is next to impossible? It seems in this case a player could have a very close miss yet be penalized severly.

The 14th at Pac Dunes seems to come to mind where two similar shots hit only a foot or two apart on the front part of the green could lead to two massively different end results.  It seems in this case, there could very much be both bad and good luck components at work here, especially when said course usually plays with massive winds where even the best players couldn't consitently hit a smallish target.

[Tom_Doak]

Kalen:

I have an EVEN BETTER Pete Dye story for your example.

After the first TPC tournament at Sawgrass in 1982, after Mr. Dye had been thrown in the pond by Jerry Pate, he went back to the locker room to change into some dry clothes.  Ed Sneed and Tom Weiskopf were in there waiting for him to ask him some questions about the course.

Ed had played with Hale Irwin and related a story on the par-3 13th.  Both of them were trying to use the contour in the middle of the green to feed their ball down to that day's hole location.  Both hit the same club on the same trajectory.  They landed two feet apart.  Irwin's ball checked, took the slope and wound up three feet from the hole; Sneed's ball stayed up on the top deck leaving him a very difficult 40-footer.  Ed asked the same question you just asked -- he said not even Tour pros can expect to hit within a foot of where they aim, so wasn't it unfair for the results to diverge that much?

So Mr. Dye asked him why he would aim for that slope in the green, if he's not accurate enough to control what happens?  He aimed for that slope only because he was too chicken to aim for the flag because of the water on the left!  If he'd aimed for the flag he would have had the slope for a backstop if his shot was slightly long. 

If the ridge in your example is so small that it's beyond your ability to hit it consistently, with an unpleasant bounce waiting on the other side, your mistake was in course management, not in missing the shot by two feet.  You should have aimed three feet further to the one side.  You are trying to play the cool shot and not the smart shot.  Which is fine, if that's what you enjoy ... but you have to accept the risks that go with it.

[TEPaul]

"He basically replied that he never tried a shot unless he was 100% sure a well-struck shot would do the trick.  Of course, that's not the same as guaranteeing success ... you don't always strike the ball perfectly, even at that level.  But it was clear Jack never left any room in his mind for doubt."


TomD:

I find that remark of Nicklaus's to you most interesting and one that could probably be very easily misinterpreted. I would think a most appropriate followup question for you on that remark would've been to ask him to explain fairly comprehensively what-all he meant by "well struck" and what percentage of the time he felt he could produce a "well struck shot".

I believe Nicklaus was pretty unique in his true ability to "visualize" a shot preshot (apparently almost like a mental video) as well as his unique ability to reduce competitive golf to a virtual "numbers game" in all kinds of ways.

[BCrosby]

Tom Doak's Dye story above is an excellent example of why taking about the "fairness" or "unfairness" of a design feature is almost always a misnomer.

As my philosophy prof used to say, it is an pretty egregious category mistake.

Bob

[Kalen Braley]

Tom,

That is a perfect example.  Interesting you mention the risk/reward component because I'm not sure many would consider that as such on a small interior contour, but nonetheless it sure manifested itself that way on that hole.

While I do agree in principle that players puts themselves in the bad spots they end up in .... its seems to me that if a player hitting a poor shot, gets a GOOD break by having it luckily hit a contour and nestle up to the hole, it also follows to say its BAD luck if a well struck shot just barely misses on the wrong side of a contour leading to a big number/bad position.

And if we extend this to the average weekend warrior who in many cases is just trying to hit anywhere on the green or fairway, then it seems the nature of how the breaks go is even more arbitrary and only slightly better than random at best.

BTW...love the 14th at PD...it was just odd to see my playing parters hit what I thought were OK tee balls and get penalized so brutally.  I was lucky enough to land it in the right spot and managed a birdie in my one and only playing. 

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()