Name 5 factors that help signify good golf architecture

[Dan Herrmann]

I was driving around town this afternoon and got to talking with my wife Laura about what factors signify good golf architecture. She came up with a darn good list:

1.  Green Complexes - strategic interest and lack of boring designs
2.  Forced Carries - too many causes Laura to have no fun
3.  Tee placement - how they set up angles, and the way the tee is canted to the ideal playing corridor
4.  Bunker placement
5.  "Doglegs" - how doglegs fit into the routing - left vs right quantity.

I thought that was a pretty good list.

What would your list look like?

[Phil McDade]

Dan:

1) variety;

2) unpredictability;

3) a sense of discovery;

4) a feeling of being at one with the land (in other words, minimal artificiality);

5) a sense of completeness -- that all facets of your game have been utliized and tested.

[John Moore II]

I was driving around town this afternoon and got to talking with my wife Laura about what factors signify good golf architecture. She came up with a darn good list:

1.  Green Complexes - strategic interest and lack of boring designs
2.  Forced Carries - too many causes Laura to have no fun
3.  Tee placement - how they set up angles, and the way the tee is canted to the ideal playing corridor
4.  Bunker placement
5.  "Doglegs" - how doglegs fit into the routing - left vs right quantity.

I thought that was a pretty good list.

What would your list look like?

Slow lead-in to my upcoming thread: Has your wife ever played Old Town? She may or may not like it. I hit the ball 300+ yards off the tee, so forced carries don't bother me, but there are numerous instances out there where a creek/stream must be carried in order to play the hole, possibly 7 times on 6 holes so it seems to me. But certainly Old Town has the other 4 in abundance. Old Town photo tour and write-up to come in short order.

[Dan Herrmann]

John,
Nope to Old Town - Laura's tee shot is about 160-ish, so she's acutely aware of forced carries. (She makes up for the short tee shots by aways being within 10 feet of the fairway centerline) I'm looking forward to your  thread on Old Town!

PS - I really like forced carries..  Come of the most interesting forced carries I've come across are on the Hurdzan/Fry Hershey Links (PA) from the back tees.  This 11-ish handicapper isn't going to score well from back there, but he'll have a lot of fun trying.

[Kirk Gill]

A quick stab at it -

1. Ball in the air fun - angles off the tee, interest in approach shots going over stuff and around stuff.
2. Ball on the ground fun - ground movement in fairways, around and on greens. I love to see the ball roll and take the curvatures of the land.
3. Variety - If a course is taking you on some sort of journey, there should be easier parts that need to be taken advantage of, and harder parts that need to be negotiated without giving up too many strokes. There should be up and down and right and left and some sort of ramdomness to bunker placement.
4. An aesthetic point of view - I'm not tied to one look, aesthetically, regarding green shapes or bunker shapes or fairway mowing lines, etc., but I like it best when it's obvious that the architect had a specific point of view that they carried through the course, rather than creating a hodgepodge.
5. Brain and body testing - A course needs to make you think, and also needs to require proper execution. The punishment for failure doesn't need to be mulitple strokes or lost balls, but over the course of your round you have to make proper choices and then make the shots, or watch your playing partners walk away with your folding money.

[Garland Bayley]

1. Variety
2. Variety
3. Variety

Am I beginning to sound like a real estate agent?

4. Challenge for the scratch golfer, while letting the less accomplished get around without some of the things Laura mentioned.
5. No reliance on overbunkering to titilate the bunker fetishists.

[Ken Moum]

I was driving around town this afternoon and got to talking with my wife Laura about what factors signify good golf architecture. She came up with a darn good list:

1.  Green Complexes - strategic interest and lack of boring designs
2.  Forced Carries - too many causes Laura to have no fun
3.  Tee placement - how they set up angles, and the way the tee is canted to the ideal playing corridor
4.  Bunker placement
5.  "Doglegs" - how doglegs fit into the routing - left vs right quantity.

I thought that was a pretty good list.

What would your list look like?

At this point in my golfing life, I'd be happy if the courses I play had two or fewer dumb holes.  Sadly, for the most part that seems to be asking too much.

K

[Eric Pevoto]

1. Variety
2. Angles
3. Variety and angles.
4. Courage.
5. Humor.

[Adrian_Stiff]

1. A blend with nature to create an extension of the ground to a golf course.
2. Green complexes that promote the easiest practices to grow good turf.
3. A course that allows maintenance to be affordable and areas cut by the easiest and safest methods.
4. Challenging lines and options that rewards good golf shots and sets penalties for errant shots.
5. Long term vistas.

So its a combination of what is good for golf and good for turf in my book, 95% of the golfing world find conditioning important so the architect must always be thinking of creating the best situation for that grass plant. Too many 'golf pro-designers' dont have that in their mind set and position bunkers/ problems in the exit area from the green to next tee, that forces traffic movements into concentrated areas which can cause turf health problems.

[Adam Clayman]

Add freedom to Pat's list and now we are taliking.

[Dan Herrmann]

Good answers!

[Jeff_Brauer]

For most golfers the top five are:

Their score on the first hole
Their score on the 2nd hole
Their score on the 3rd hole
Their score on the 4th hole
Their score on the 5th hole....

[Mike Demetriou]

1.  Quality of Fish Tacos
2.  Varieties of Gazpacho
3.  etc...

Sorry, couldn't resist.  I'm looking forward to seeing these answers.

Eric, what did you mean by humor? Could you give us an example of humor which worked well, and poorly?

[Terry Lavin]

1.  Excellence and variety of green complexes.
2.  Variety within par-3's, par-4's and par-5's in terms of direction, doglegs, hazards and/or length.
3.  Consistency of look, feel and playability throughout the entire golf course.
4.  A layout that offers the opportunity for a strong challenge to a good golfer.
5.  A layout that a player can have a reasonable degree of fun while playing to his/her handicap.

This is off the top of my somewhat empty head.  There surely are other factors, but I'd venture to say that every course that I've played that I felt had good architectural bones met or exceeded each of these five factors.

[George Pazin]

No one sees a good walk as evidence of good architecture?

That and the ability to simply find your ball and play it again are two of my top factors.

[Terry Lavin]

No one sees a good walk as evidence of good architecture?

That and the ability to simply find your ball and play it again are two of my top factors.

George,

Of course, you're right.  The "walk in the park" factor of the Golfweek rating is always something that is in the front of my mind when I play somewhere.

[Michael Huber]

One of my pet peeves is a hole that is forced or shoehorned into the property for the sake of par.....sometimes you can find a goofball 475 yard par 5 that is impossibly convoluted.  Sometimes it's a 280 yard par 4 crammed into a setting that may be better par 3 than par 4. 

I get the feeling that in these cases, it's not the architects call:  instead, the owner would rather see a par 72 or par 70 instead of just swallowing some pride for the sake of total yardage or par. 

[Scott_Burroughs]

1.  Perfect, lush, & green conditioning (includes bright, white, manicured bunker sand)
2.  Waterfalls
3.  Attentive, fawning service
4.  Quality of 19th Hole food & drink
5.  Hotness of cart girls

[Eric Pevoto]

Nice one, George.

Mike D.,

As to humor, the first example in the positive that comes to mind is the D.A. at Pine Valley.  The green at #10 Yale is another that brings a smile.   

To the negative?  See above if they're played poorly.

[Carl Rogers]

1.  Perfect, lush, & green conditioning (includes bright, white, manucured bunker sand)
2.  Waterfalls
3.  Attentive, fawning service
4.  Quality of 19th Hole food & drink
5.  Hotness of cart girls

I have had to wait, until I was about 50, when I got lucky enough to for a golf course to be built nearby that did not have to resort to such tricks.  At some level, you can not blame the general golfing public for not knowing what they do not know.

[Jeff_Brauer]

1.  Perfect, lush, & green conditioning (includes bright, white, manucured bunker sand)
2.  Waterfalls
3.  Attentive, fawning service
4.  Quality of 19th Hole food & drink
5.  Hotness of cart girls

Two points on your list:

Waterfalls are a lot rarer than the amount they get discussed here. I bet there are not more than 100 waterfalls on golf coruses in America, about 1 per every 100 posts about them here.  Like the exageration of how many tour pros hit it over 300 yards (less than 20% of tee shots this year) the waterfall effect is overstated and shouldn't be mentioned even in a jest post.

Second, if you get attentive fawing service from hot cart girls, its a top 5 factor.  Attentive fawing service from the senior citizen who is marshalling for free golf in retirement probably doesn't count.  For that matter, quality of 19th hole food and drink can't rank as highly now that most golfers eat out on the course as an excuse to get attentive fawning service from those hot cart girls.

FYI, there are three cart girls at a mid range fee public course I redesigned in DFW that net over $50K a year in tips.

I will give you the white sand and lush green as the top point, though.

[Mike Nuzzo]

I bet there are not more than 100 waterfalls on golf coruses in America.

I'll take that bet.

[Richard Choi]

I'll take that bet too! I think I counted something like 10 waterfalls on Experience at Koele alone!

[Mac Plumart]

1...If the course is ranked in the Top 100
2...If it is designed by Coore & Crenshaw
3...If it is minimalistic
4...If a PGA Tour Event is played there
5...If it is private, greens fees must be over $200 per round

[Jeff_Brauer]

I may be a little of on total waterfalls.  But 18 holes times 15,000 courses is 270,000 holes.  Even if there are 270, that is 0.001% of holes having a waterfall.  540 is 0.002% and there can't be more than that, can there?