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George Pazin

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #25 on: November 30, 2009, 04:37:36 PM »
What's the rumpus?

To me, rumpled implies natural, or at least not overly landscaped "fair".

And I've always thought of it more as something that influences stance and thus shot, not its inclination to promote the ground game.
Big drivers and hot balls are the product of golf course design that rewards the hit one far then hit one high strategy.  Shinny showed everyone how to take care of this whole technology dilemma. - Pat Brockwell, 6/24/04

Patrick_Mucci

Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #26 on: November 30, 2009, 11:05:35 PM »
nuff said:


Jud, those fairways probably sand based and probably drain exceedingly well, plus the overall slope of the land is toward the water.

In locations where the soil conditions aren't sand, and you don't have a general slope toward a body of water, drainage and permitting is a more difficult task.

But, they sure are neat looking

Joe Hancock

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #27 on: December 01, 2009, 06:50:35 AM »
Well, there's been several good comments concerning rumple and the ground game/ strategy.

But, and I assumed this would happen.....the main interest in rumple seems to be in the aesthetic.....not that there's anything wrong with that!

Joe
" What the hell is the point of architecture and excellence in design if a "clever" set up trumps it all?" Peter Pallotta, June 21, 2016

"People aren't picking a side of the fairway off a tee because of a randomly internally contoured green ."  jeffwarne, February 24, 2017

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #28 on: December 01, 2009, 08:56:57 AM »

In the modern game, who runs it up from over 60 yards or under 200 yards?

I would say a good majority of golfers play the game on the ground...it may not be their intention, but the ball probably rolls into greens a good number of times.

Kellly,

You are right of course. They say 70 is the new 50.  But, as we hit our 70's (and 50's and 60's) it turns out that 160 is the new 200 yards!  

To others:

I still maintain that rumples, while they have their advantages, work best in sandy soil and when and where there are some kind of rumples in nature.  Where nature provides rolling hills, I think rolling fw are a better match overall visually and can stll provide a nice sidehilll, downhill, or uphill lie.  Gentler rolls can't provide a left sidehill lie with a right sidehill stance as well, that is for sure!

I also recently reread Tom Watson's Strategic Golf and somewhere in it he says its always a good idea to find the flattest area of the fw with your tee shot.  If rumpled, I prefer to grind off at least a small portion of the fw to a leveler slope for those few golfers smart enough to try to find it, and at a variety of distances from the tee over the course of the round.  Rumples make it tougher, but do they introduce or negate strategy?
« Last Edit: December 01, 2009, 09:04:42 AM by Jeff_Brauer »
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

JC Jones

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #29 on: December 01, 2009, 10:00:22 AM »
Well, Joe, since you are insisting that this thread be all about you and your questions ;D ...I'll play the game.....

I like the rumpled look as much as anyone. But, if one were to design a golf course where the ground was fully intended to be utilized strategically, would you do the outrageous rumpled look we've seen in recent posts?


No, I don't believe you would.  I think that rumples and contouring around the green add shot variety to the ground game but I dont think you would do rumples for the sake of rumples that (I agree) have become vogue for some faux-minimalist designers (i.e. DMK).  However, if the rumples are there to begin with, I think a good architect would leave them there and figure out the best ways to utilize them.

So, in sum, I think rumples are an integral part of the ground game but just like anything else, there is such thing as too much of a good thing, especially when it is completely manufactured.


Quote
Am I over-thinking strategy and the need for the ground to work in harmony with the rest of the course, design and maintenance included?

Joe

Does over-thinking pre-suppose actual thinking? ;)
I get it, you are mad at the world because you are an adult caddie and few people take you seriously.

Excellent spellers usually lack any vision or common sense.

I know plenty of courses that are in the red, and they are killing it.

Joe Hancock

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #30 on: December 01, 2009, 11:56:38 AM »
JC,

Thank you for finally getting your priorities(me!) straight.  :)

I agree with your observations about the implementation of rumple...sometimes it's done "just" for the look....sometimes that's important. With DeVries' work, we try very hard to be not too clean, but we don't over-cook the rumple either....it's a look thing as much as anything, but it does impact play as well. Too much, as you said, can be a detractor to play as much as an addition to it.

What led me to this topic is that I've often thought of strategic design from the players perspective. In order to make a player chose one route/ one shot type over another is to offer alternatives....a shot on a direct line vs. a shot that deflects off a feature, for example.

If one were to design a hole with various routes, rumple(or lack thereof) could affect which route the player chooses. The players ability also comes into play. If I have the choice between a flop shot or a bump-and-run, I go the ground route due to LOFT(the acronym type). With my own preferences in mind, i would try to design a green complex with multiple options on the ground as well as a straight ahead aerial option. I also happen to think it provides a bit more adventure.

All that to say that a plateau type green isn't acceptable...it most certainly is! Variety needs to be present. A punchbowl green would be the exact opposite, and likely provides the most options as it would be almost 360 degrees of choices.

Too many thoughts and ideas, not enough clarity on any of them....but something to think about on a cloudy day.

Joe
" What the hell is the point of architecture and excellence in design if a "clever" set up trumps it all?" Peter Pallotta, June 21, 2016

"People aren't picking a side of the fairway off a tee because of a randomly internally contoured green ."  jeffwarne, February 24, 2017

Eric Smith

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #31 on: December 01, 2009, 12:26:30 PM »

Too many thoughts and ideas, not enough clarity on any of them....but something to think about on a cloudy day.



... bring on the RumpleMinze!  8)




Kirk Gill

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #32 on: December 01, 2009, 12:34:54 PM »
I think one of the reasons I'm so enamored with rumpled fairways is that none of the courses I grew up playing had them. There was generally some slope to each hole, either side-slope or up or down hill or some variation (I grew up in Colorado), and on the flatter courses there might be the occasional hillock or use of mounding. Nothing, though, like what's seen  on some of the links courses or on courses like Ballyneal. I like it for a lot of reasons. First, because I love watching a ball roll on the ground. Second only to watching a ball arc through the air, it is to me one of the basic joys of golf. Playing the roll is just fun. Playing the roll well is even more fun. Second, a rumpled fairway adds strategy, or at least choice, to the tee shot. If I'm thinking at all about where I'd like to play my next shot from, then finding a reasonably level place in the fairway to hit from is important. I like the notion that if I miss that spot, then I get a more challenging lie to hit from, but not something like rough or bunkering, where your next is more in the realm of a recovery shot. Third, from an aesthetic viewpoint, it's so different from the look of the courses I grew up on. That close-mown grass (to me a look that is FAR from natural, but none the less beautiful because of it) draped over all of those little slopes and valleys.....is just gorgeous.
"After all, we're not communists."
                             -Don Barzini

Jud_T

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #33 on: December 01, 2009, 01:43:10 PM »
Eric,

Now that's what I call rumpled... ;D
Golf is a game. We play it. Somewhere along the way we took the fun out of it and charged a premium to be punished.- - Ron Sirak

Niall C

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #34 on: December 01, 2009, 02:01:09 PM »
Anthony,

Even in the rolling but not rumpled midwest?  Gentle, but smooth rolls are the more natual topography in any place I have lived......

Spot on Jeff. Surely context has to be a factor.

Also when the course is playing fast and fire you don't need over elaborate rumples to make the ground game interesting. Indeed overly countered rumples which basically present banks and abrupt ridges can spoil the ground game and make the player take the aerial route.

Niall

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #35 on: December 01, 2009, 02:06:46 PM »
Niall,

Thanks. You know, I have read and heard TePaul posit that bunkers should be reduced because they are not natural in many places away from the sea coast.  The same is really true of rumples, too.  If we praise natural, but then also praise building rumples where non existed, providing we move enough earth to tie them into the greens and surrounds, well I get confused.

If that is the way you want it, then philosophically, you may as well admit you want to build what you like, and just damn nature all together, no?  Funny, but that sounds exactly like what you guys criticize Fazio, et. al., for isn't it?
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Scott Warren

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #36 on: December 01, 2009, 02:25:00 PM »
Eric, any chance of listing where each of those pics are from?

Niall C

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #37 on: December 01, 2009, 02:49:49 PM »
Jeff

I haven't played any of Mr Fazio's courses so can't comment. I have however played a few Trent Jones courses and thoroughly enjoyed them even though there was nothing to tie rumples any rumples into apart from adjacent housing development, not that I noticed any rumples of course. I just took the course for what they were and enjoyed them for it.

I suspect if I played a Fazio I would enjoy it just the same.

Perhaps its because that is the type of course I expect on a residential development and therefore it appears in context to me. I'm not sure, but I'm not offended by it. A course where the architect has clearly shifted mountains of earth to create a "natural look" that doesn't gel with the surrounds, well it just looks odd.

You wouldn't come to Scotland to play desert golf courses and I don't go to the states to play links (fast and firm, yes where conditions are applicable, but not links, or at least Scottish style links).

Many months ago there was a thread on Castle Stuart which got quite heated over bunker design and the use of sleepers. There was much toing and froing and people producing old black and white photos to justify the look. At the end of the day it was clear that the course just looked out of context to (most) UK golfers who participated in the thread but was OK to overseas players. Whoever was right or wrong (we were right by the way  ;) ) didn't make it a bad course.

Anyway back to the point about strategy and rumples, I suggest that subtle is better.

Niall

Eric Smith

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #38 on: December 01, 2009, 03:36:32 PM »
Eric, any chance of listing where each of those pics are from?

Youbetcha

My family's farm in Tennessee


The rest of these are from contributors on here.

This one I'm not sure...possibly Sean Arble took this one?


This is one of Sean's pics of Pennard.  Hey I'm going to meet you here Scott at Buda 2010!


Again not sure...?


Barnbougle Dunes


Goodwood


Wolf Point


San Francisco


Oakmont


Aetna Springs


Rarity Pointe


George Pazin

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #39 on: December 01, 2009, 04:08:05 PM »
Thanks for labeling the pix. A few things to note:

- photos tend to not show contours well, unless taken by an experienced photographer, who may use shadows and lighting to emphasize contours

- photos are also subject to a compression effect, for instance, when taking a shot down the fairway with a telephoto lens

To use Oakmont as an illustration (only one of those I've experienced personally :(), I doubt anyone would call Oakmont rumpled, but to my eye, at least, it does not appear as smoothed out as many modern courses. That could just be my bias, as I strongly dislike how smoothed out many modern courses seem to be.

Just my $0.02.
Big drivers and hot balls are the product of golf course design that rewards the hit one far then hit one high strategy.  Shinny showed everyone how to take care of this whole technology dilemma. - Pat Brockwell, 6/24/04

Scott Warren

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #40 on: December 01, 2009, 04:24:38 PM »
Thanks Eric!

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #41 on: December 01, 2009, 11:49:52 PM »
For my money, the best ones there are Wolf Point and Goodwood, and perhaps Barnbougle Dunes.

The key to the rumple is that the mounds and ridges also have mounds and ridges on them! Kind of like having a Starbucks opening up inside a Starbucks!  The Rarity Point is not, IMHO, rumpled. It is a series of nearly symetrical man made ridges that are too smooth to earn that label.

For the mowing perfectionists out there, the Goodwood shot shows some minor mowing problems. Not enough to sway me against it, mind you. 

I gotta ask....is Goodwood really the name of that course or is someone pulling my.....
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Adam Lawrence

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #42 on: December 02, 2009, 03:47:40 AM »
Jeff - yes, (this) Goodwood is in Canada, and it's a new course developed by Gordon Stollery, the owner of Angus Glen, and designed by British architect Martin Ebert.

Martin first showed me fully grassed pictures of the place fully three years ago. Robert Thompson http://www.ontgolf.ca/g4g/2009/03/20/random-notes-for-a-friday-goodwood-a-go-cypress-returns/ has more on the rather extended grow-in there.

Gordon Stollery provided some of the funds that were used to reconstruct the Askernish course in Scotland... a place that is also not short of rumple!
Adam Lawrence

Editor, Golf Course Architecture
www.golfcoursearchitecture.net

Principal, Oxford Golf Consulting
www.oxfordgolfconsulting.com

Author, 'More Enduring Than Brass: a biography of Harry Colt' (forthcoming).

Short words are best, and the old words, when short, are the best of all.

Jeff_Brauer

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Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #43 on: December 02, 2009, 08:39:53 AM »
Adam,

Thanks. Well, leave it to a Brit to have really studied rumple and put it in well.

It is just very hard to do well. Not only does the gca have to have a method to avoid regularity of mound/ridge/earthform placement, he then has to find a way to get the shaper out of the same mentality.  So many times if you compliment a shaper on something, you come back to find he has repeated it, hoping for another compliment!

Not only do you need to put random nicks and cuts and mounds in existing ridges, you need to put random nicks and cuts in randomly placed ridges to get that effect.  AND, each nick and scallop must be slightly different from the others as well.
Jeff Brauer, ASGCA Director of Outreach

Brad Swanson

  • Karma: +0/-0
Re: Rumpled....good for the ground game strategy?
« Reply #44 on: December 02, 2009, 09:05:20 AM »
Nobody on overwatered fairways :(

In my part of the world , midwest USA, there is NO ground game. Every course is overwatered to the point of silliness. 90% of the members are clueless and think green equals good shape.

Mike,
   Make the trip up to Marquette to play Greywalls if you are looking for an exception to your rule. 

Brad