[Tim Gavrich]

I think the ground game is offered in places in modern golf course design at times.  I had a blast for the 31 holes I played at Callaway Gardens back on the 1st of March in our first tournament.  They had not overseeded (Halleluia!) their fairways and so the course was a comely brown, and very firm tee-to-green.  I considered hitting a few low approaches that would have landed short of the greens there, but ultimately opted for higher shots because the greens were pretty receptive.

At Wintonbury Hills in CT, the ground game is very possible.  Quite a few greensites have kickslopes short and to the sides to accommodate lower shots.  The main example I can think of is the par 3 12th, a downhill ~165 yarder where I have hit a few chip-7 irons in order to watch the ball trundle down the end of the fairway and onto the green.

I think that in most American golf at least, the ground game should be encouraged, but it will likely always be a mere option, rather than the order of the day.  I know that for competitive (i.e. low-single digit handicap and better) golfers, 95% of the time the high shot is easier to execute than a running shot.  From my perspective, then, the ground game is not a huge factor.

[Brett_Morrissy]

I agree with TD's order of Windy locale and then an agreeable super.

Would like to add the next two being: Turf type, very dififcult to get a ball to land, release and run if it is a couch like santa ana around the green sites.
fourthly - water must be next - clearly too much also makes it impossibly difficult - but even with dry conditions, without the above three, it won't happen. 

[Tom_Doak]

The thing that I failed to add to my previous post, that I usually remember to point out, is that it doesn't matter so much whether we can MAKE a good player use the ground game.  What matters more is that there are a lot of golfers [seniors and juniors and women] who have ONLY the ground game, and for all of those players, who are frequently approaching greens with fairway woods even from 125 yards out, having an open approach and a bit of contour that may help or hurt them is THE key to making the course interesting.

There is always room for an exception once or twice in a round, but in general, I like to believe that every hole should give the player hitting a 4-wood approach a chance of getting the ball to stay on the green.

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()