What Constitutes a Dog Track?

[Michael Huber]

A dog track is more of a feeling of anger and frustration than it is a commentary on architecture and maintenance. 

I play most of my golf on lousy, cheap golf courses, and there are many lousy, cheap golf courses around here.

But I do not play the dog tracks, because i hate them with a firey passion.  They really are not all that different in terms of diffaculty, blandness, and conditioning.  For whatever reason, I always struggle at dog tracks and therefore I hold a grudge.

I dont expect any of that to make sense, but quite frankly I do not care.

[Tom_Doak]

Actually, now that I think about it, High Pointe is now a dog track -- since the course was closed this summer, the two times I was there were to let our new dog run free.  She loves the place, and she is very fast.

[Jud_T]

That's because she's not playing medal play

[Tom_Doak]

No, she is not about medal play, she's all about head-to-head competition.

What she likes to do is sprint about thirty yards to pick up her football (she often overruns it), sprint back toward me, put on a move and go around me, run about thirty yards in the opposite direction, turn around, rinse, and repeat, until she can barely get a breath.  So, she finds the course "breathtaking".

[Lester George]

Greyhounds chasing a mechanical rabbit at high speed?

Lester

[Jud_T]

Hey-at least Dog Tracks are brown...

[archie_struthers]

 


Quite good you two lads  ,,,fire hydrant / mechanical rabbit  LOL

Conditioning has become more a determinant of QUALITY" than ever before ..bad conditions  = dogtrack

as for me just give me some decent greens and I could care less about anything else

[Craig Sweet]

It's all a state of mind...you might as well ask, what is "rich".

[Scott Henderson]

Our local muni has literally become a dog track - they have a guy to bring his border collie out to try and reduce the amount of "natural fertilizer" on the course from the geese.    The course is always very green because they use copious amounts of "reclaimed water," so I cannot really get into the "brown grass" definition.    It does meet my definition of a dog track because the fairways are pretty chewed up, and the rough really lives up to its name.

In summary I guess that to me a dog track is, after all is said and done, determined by condition.

[Gib_Papazian]

The definition of 'Dog Track' falls under the Tom Paul "Big Tent" theory of all things golf. To me, the term suggests the kind of course where you can meander around with a close friend and discuss children, marriage, politics or college football without feeling compelled to decipher the placement of this bunker or that swale because there is nothing in front of you more architecturally interesting than the conversation or where the match stands.

As I grow older, I've come to appreciate an occasional round at a generic muni in the same way that 20 minutes reading People magazine in a waiting room can be a form of meditation or therapy. A 'dog track' is just a grassy field with tees and pins that does not present any strenuous challenges - a layout that only penetrates consciousness on the most viscerally tertiary level.

Ceaselessly studying golf course architecture is exhausting when inundated with a stream of real world challenges. Sometimes facing 18 examples of Orwellian Overchoice in a row can be maddening. The problem with having spent years analyzing the intricacies of this insanely arcane subject is that once internalized, it became difficult to just play golf. The only cure I can prescribe is a steady diet of unremarkable dog tracks where everything is in plain sight - three or four hours of empty-headed meditation where sand is only sand and water is not necessarily a Biarritz Cape interpretative homage to a Golden Age master.

When in the mood to really read, there is no substitute for Herb Wind or Peter Dobereiner. When in the mood to simply clear my head, a little David Owen works too.
     

[Jud_T]

I've come to use the phrase Dog Track very broadly.  Amongst our regular group we refer to any course which is not good in our minds as a dogtrack.  This is more likely due to weak design or not enough property than to conditioning.