[JNC Lyon]

Life isn't fair, golf is a reflection of life, why should golf be fair?  I've had my fair share of unfair experiences in competitive golf, why should a 20-handicapper on a CCFAD have to have everything given to him on a silver platter when everything else in his life has been given to him already?  Get out there, be adventurous, be rugged, and take life as it comes to you.

"Fairness," not "fuck" is the true f-bomb for me.

[Garland Bayley]

Bob, Sean and David,

While I haven't read those books in a while, my memory is that all the guys of the GA wrote against blindness (perhaps better off the tee than the approach) and that vision was ideal.  They ALL also eliminated cross bunkers in favor of the zig zag route.
...

I guess I don't understand what cross bunkers have to do with fairness. Cross bunkers were considered too hard for the poorer player, and therefore, not a good idea, since they want all players to enjoy the round.

John Low's principles make no mention of blindness. Many GCA's based their principles on Low's. But still, I again don't understand what blindness has to do with fairness. You can have a blind shot to a green sited on perfectly flat ground, with the green canted back to front, with all actions of the ball almost perfectly predictable. So how is blindness "fair" or "unfair"?

[Melvyn Morrow]

Tom

I was not accusing you and others on this site of anything, just making a generalisation that putting a meal on the table of designer’s family is not the reason many of them decided to design courses. I like to think that we all have a duty of care be it our lives, family or career. A responsibility to do what is right, alas in the last 50 years that does not seem to apply to many of the modern courses, perhaps born out of the hope of making money over given the golfer the game he deserves.

Our modern society always drops to the lowest common denominator, or over pampering the Champions instead of generating a happy balance well above the lower levels. While I sympathise with the walking wounded be it through age or medic condition (remembering that I am one of them), the game should not be handicapped for this minority. Nor should courses only exist for the long hitters/Champions. The very heart of our game comes from the challenge, so that I believe is what designers should be seeking, certainly to curtail the need for the long aerial shots. Give the game back to the thinking golfer, don’t bore him with shallow hard sanded bunkers, island Greens, super manicured parkland courses or easy hazards that does not even raise a concern if they are caught in one. Remember exiting a hazard is not akin to exiting a burning building, where no thought is required, just follow the signs. Golf requires thought, or it should do and understanding the consequences of one’s actions, hence the importance of that thought process.

Easy, fairness is the lazy game for the non-committed player. If he/she can’t be bothered to step up to the mark, then what the Hell are these people doing in a Golf club let alone on a golf course. And why are designers bending over backwards to pacify these destroyers of the game of golf. 

It would appear that since the war (WW2) the golfing hierarchy has been acquiesce to the bottom and top end feeders in the game forgetting the vast majority who want to really experience the joy (and also let’s not forget have to foot the majority of the bill) of that once great game called Golf.

Melvyn

[Jeff_Brauer]

Maybe someone will have to define “fair” for me, other than “I know it when I see it.”

Lets run through a few real life design examples to see how YOU, as Golf Course Architect or even as a golfer would like to see things handled….

Example 1
After the routing is complete and fixed, the LZ on one hole has a 15% cross slope to the left.  With proposed bent fairways, you know balls will roll off the fairway at that slope.  Do you:
•   Keep it natural, accepting most tee shots cannot access the fairway
•   Make the fairway wide and flatten it to 4-6%, making a cut shot to the high side of the fairway the only shot that will likely hold the fairway
•   Flatten it to 2% so a shot that hits the fairway stays on the fairway, perhaps building up a small lip on the low side to further assist holding shots.

Example 2
A green site is naturally canted to the back.  Do you:
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker the front so an approach will most likely roll out to the back of the green
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker about 20 yards from the front so an approach can roll out on the green
•   Build a green that tilts back to front to “accept the shot.”

Example 3
A green site sits where there is a big crosswind.  Do you:
•   Build a long skinny green to really challenge iron accuracy.
•   Make an average width green to make it more difficult than the average approach shot
•   Widen the green to make it more approachable given the typical conditions


Answers of yes or no should suffice to these straightforward examples of typical feature design problems.  Yes, I understand that in the context of 18 holes that if you do it once, but not every time, it puts you in the grey areas of edgy design.

Obviously, those answering with all the first answers would build what most would consider an “unfair” or at least pretty difficult golf course.  Those averaging a “2” for the answer are tweeners, and the picking the third option in all cases would probably make you a believer in ultimate fairness.

These simply illustrate that I arrange the features to at least allow a shot to be played one way.  If you absolutely cannot hit an intended target with any shot, I feel its bad design.  In reality, such as the fairway LZ question, I wonder if only being able to hit it with one shot type is great design.  Certainly, it leans to penal if it demands you play a particular shot, and of course, anyone who doesn’t hit the high cut driver (or can’t) will say its unfair.

What say ye?

[Melvyn Morrow]

We must stop thinking that penal is bad, what’s bad is potential golfers running away from penal.

Penal makes the golfer think, it forces his interest and more so his focus, something that today’s so called owners can’t seem to grasp. Fall foul of a modern hazard and if you have more than a few seconds delay then you are labouring the point, yes in other words they are not traps, hazards just minor inconveniences enabling the golfer to continue more or less uninterrupted on his route. Penal makes you think, take an alternative strategy, knowing that you must deviate from your current path because you overshot your mark or hit a wayward ball, whatever it’s your error, so you pay for it. Like Pot Bunkers the way forward is not always the way out, a short chip to one side or another being by far the more cost effective way to proceed. But you need to think it through.

The question is do or can modern golfers think their way through, have their minds been so accustomed to aids that they are losing the ability to think or figure it out for themselves, in fact can they be bothered to do so.

So Fair and/or fairness needs to be removed from anything to do with golf. Golfer likes and dislikes should for the most part be ignored and designers left to do their job of producing a courses fit for the purpose of playing thinking golf.

Penal is great when balanced with options, forcing the golfer to pull his shot rather than let fly, when he does he may fall victim to a hidden deep bunker forcing a side exit rendering his long hit totally pointless.

We seem to have been scared to talk about penal since WW2, yet it is what makes strategic so effective. If golfers are not tested we end up with the boring long aerial game, long courses and pointless fairways.  Golfers should not be able to say ‘that Hole would not be built today’ certainly after just enjoying himself while playing it.

It’s Golf for Heaven’s sake, it’s not meant to be predictable, fair or easy.

Melvyn

[Garland Bayley]

...
What say ye?

I say ye confuse the typical definition of fair used on this site and by architects of the golden age with the concept of difficulty.

Fairness as I understand it from this site and reading the golden age architects has to do with randomness of golf, a game playing in nature on natural sites.

[John Kirk]

More broadly, calling a feature on a golf course 'fair' or 'unfair' is a category mistake for which you would be drummed out of Philoosphy 101. But we've been around that block too many times already.

Bob 

Exactly.  The argument falls apart with the question "define fair".

[Melvyn Morrow]

"define fair" Why, perhaps we should say "define golf" and see if fair is anywhere within that definition.

[DMoriarty]

Maybe someone will have to define “fair” for me, other than “I know it when I see it.”

Lets run through a few real life design examples to see how YOU, as Golf Course Architect or even as a golfer would like to see things handled….

Example 1
After the routing is complete and fixed, the LZ on one hole has a 15% cross slope to the left.  With proposed bent fairways, you know balls will roll off the fairway at that slope.  Do you:
•   Keep it natural, accepting most tee shots cannot access the fairway
•   Make the fairway wide and flatten it to 4-6%, making a cut shot to the high side of the fairway the only shot that will likely hold the fairway
•   Flatten it to 2% so a shot that hits the fairway stays on the fairway, perhaps building up a small lip on the low side to further assist holding shots.

Example 2
A green site is naturally canted to the back.  Do you:
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker the front so an approach will most likely roll out to the back of the green
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker about 20 yards from the front so an approach can roll out on the green
•   Build a green that tilts back to front to “accept the shot.”

Example 3
A green site sits where there is a big crosswind.  Do you:
•   Build a long skinny green to really challenge iron accuracy.
•   Make an average width green to make it more difficult than the average approach shot
•   Widen the green to make it more approachable given the typical conditions

I would hope that an architect would consider such things as fairway cant, green cant, and prevailing wind prior to routing the course, but then what do I know?

The types of "unfair" features above form the backbone of many of the great holes of the golden age.  Many redan holes utilize a green that slopes away.  Hog's back holes and CBM's punchbowl at NGLA and even the original theoretical concept for the biarritz utilize ground slope to magnify the disadvantage on all but the perfectly placed shot.   Holes like the 12th at Augusta work because they are located in positions with tricky wind.  

But the above examples are meant to convolute the concept of fairness into something else all together.  They are loaded examples of holes that just may not work as golf holes at all.  Obviously great architects did not route courses with holes which really could not realistically function as such, and setting that up as a standard tells us little or nothing about the way they viewed "fairness."

Here is CBM on what might today be considered a discussion of unfair lies:

Errors in play should be severely punished in finding hazards, but now the golfer wants his bunkers raked and all the unevenness of the fairway rolled out.  A player does not get the variety of stances or lies than in olden times one was sure to have.  A hanging lie or a ball lying in any position other than level is a blemish to the modern golfer.  The science and beauty of the game is brought out by men having to play the ball from any stance.  To play the game over a flat surface without undulations leaves nothing to the ingenuity of the player and nothing is presented but an obvious and stereotyped series of hits.  Today there seems to be a constant endeavor to make golf commonplace, to emasculate it, as it were, of its finer qualities.  

Note that it isn't even a discussion of fairness in his mind.   The items some might consider unfair he considered the "finer qualities" of golf.  

Here is CBM more directly addressing the issue:

So many people preach equity in golf.  Nothing is so foreign to the truth.  Does any human being receive what he conceives as equity in his life?  He has got to take the bitter with the sweet, and as he forges through all the intricacies and inequalities which life presents he proves his metal.   In golf the cardinal rules are arbitrary and not founded in eternal justice.  Equity has nothing to do with the game itself.  If founded on eternal justice the game would be deadly dull to watch or play.  The essence of the game is inequality, as it is in humanity.  The conditions which are meted out to the players, such as inequality of the ground, cannot be governed by a green committee with the flying divots of the players or their footprints in the bunkers.   Take your medicine where you find it  and don't cry.   Remember that the other fellow has to meet exactly the same inequalities.

These hardly sound like the words of someone preaching fairness, do they?  

[Matthew Essig]

Maybe someone will have to define “fair” for me, other than “I know it when I see it.”

Lets run through a few real life design examples to see how YOU, as Golf Course Architect or even as a golfer would like to see things handled….

Example 1
After the routing is complete and fixed, the LZ on one hole has a 15% cross slope to the left.  With proposed bent fairways, you know balls will roll off the fairway at that slope.  Do you:
•   Keep it natural, accepting most tee shots cannot access the fairway
•   Make the fairway wide and flatten it to 4-6%, making a cut shot to the high side of the fairway the only shot that will likely hold the fairway
•   Flatten it to 2% so a shot that hits the fairway stays on the fairway, perhaps building up a small lip on the low side to further assist holding shots.

Example 2
A green site is naturally canted to the back.  Do you:
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker the front so an approach will most likely roll out to the back of the green
•   Keep the natural contour, and bunker about 20 yards from the front so an approach can roll out on the green
•   Build a green that tilts back to front to “accept the shot.”

Example 3
A green site sits where there is a big crosswind.  Do you:
•   Build a long skinny green to really challenge iron accuracy.
•   Make an average width green to make it more difficult than the average approach shot
•   Widen the green to make it more approachable given the typical conditions


Answers of yes or no should suffice to these straightforward examples of typical feature design problems.  Yes, I understand that in the context of 18 holes that if you do it once, but not every time, it puts you in the grey areas of edgy design.

Obviously, those answering with all the first answers would build what most would consider an “unfair” or at least pretty difficult golf course.  Those averaging a “2” for the answer are tweeners, and the picking the third option in all cases would probably make you a believer in ultimate fairness.

These simply illustrate that I arrange the features to at least allow a shot to be played one way.  If you absolutely cannot hit an intended target with any shot, I feel its bad design.  In reality, such as the fairway LZ question, I wonder if only being able to hit it with one shot type is great design.  Certainly, it leans to penal if it demands you play a particular shot, and of course, anyone who doesn’t hit the high cut driver (or can’t) will say its unfair.

What say ye?

Example 1: option 2... I would make the green complex acceptable to shots from the rough though.
Example 2: option 2... Sounds like the most challenging yet totally "fair" option to me.
Example 3: depends on the length of the hole

[Jeff_Brauer]

Matthew,

Good answers.  I would answer about the same.

David,

While gca's would consider all those issues during routing, the simple fact is that space limitations or other factors usually leave some areas with those kind of typical choices, among others.

As to your first quote, over the years I have come to grade the micro contours in my fw with more slope.  Some gca's use the 2% minimum for drainage as their fw guide, but it does get a little dull.  But, to me, a hanging lie on a micro basis is different than a macro fw grade that kicks a tee shot off the fw, so your points don't directly address mine.

Your second quote isn't a direct comparison either.  CBM did argue for messy bunkers to give difficult lies, but none of my examples addressed those maintenance issues, they were design questions.  And, they still stand - do we know if CBM ever designed a fw that rejected shots right off it if they hit the middle?  Did he ever state that was good design?

We know he used Redan greens, but he did leave a way for the ball to stop on the green, as I suggested in one of my options, no?

In reality, I have always wondered about some of his greens, like the bottle hole green at NGLA.  With frontal bunkers on a pretty long hole, I never saw the real advantage of playing left and right and figure it was pretty hard to hold at least that green back in the day.  So, maybe he built difficult to hold greens on occaion.

[Rich Goodale]

In situations such as Niall describes in his opening post (i.e. bad lies due to man's inconsideration of others) the issue has nothing to do with golf course architecture and everything to do with human nature.  The easiest way to solve this problem is for the USGA/R&A to declare man a "burrowing animal."

[DMoriarty]

Jeff Brauer,

You expect me to come up with quotes that directly address your hypotheticals?  Ridiculous.  The quotes address issues raised by the original post, and the quotes represent CBM's attitude toward fairness in golf.  Your understanding is apparently much different than theirs.

But even so, CBM designed a number of holes where nearly perfect ball would be deflected into a much more difficult position. The ground slope short and right of the blind Sahara green is one example.  The sloping ground on the landing area of the punchbowl hole at NGLA is another.  In a fact a number of the holes at NGLA feature severe ground slope in the fairway and the ground slope kicks the ball into an unfavorable position.  Rather than being flattened to the requisite 2% grade (or whatever) the natural contour is being utilized to make the game more interesting.  Such are the "finer qualities" of golf.   Strategic golf is based (in part) on the idea that the nearly perfect shot being might be harshly punished.  That is NO any conception of fairness with which I am familiar.  

Plus Jeff you demanded that we go "read the damn books" before we challenge you.  Well I have read the damn books and your claims that these guys were big advocates for fairness in golf is . . . maybe Bob Crosby would put it more politely . . . but I think it is absurd.   Where in Scotland's Gift is CBM advocating fairness in golf?   Where does John Laing Low advocate for "fairness" in golf?  Where does MacKenzie?  How does the concept of "fairness" shape their design philosophy?  So far as I can tell, they weren't all that concerned with the concept of fairness as presented in the initial post of this thread.  Rather, they saw such unfairness as the essence of the game.

Your comments are thus far unsupported. The modern approach (or what was the modern approach before a few like Coore, Doak, and Hanse were willing to seriously and honestly look to the past) differs in the conception of "fairness" and randomness.

[DMoriarty]

Wow.  Hi Rich.  Good to see you posting.  

[Jon Wiggett]

The easiest way to solve this problem is for the USGA/R&A to declare man a "burrowing animal."

Bomb and GOUGE method could lead to this

[Niall C]

Niall,
Crusty bunkers? Pot-luck lies? Matted rough? Sounds like some of the courses I play.  

All those things are taken in stride when the green fee is $15, but they become unfair when it's $150.

Golfers have grown soft, a mound that once deflected a ball away from its intended resting place has been replaced by a containment mound that guides it there, and golfers love it.  
  

Jim

Thats a very good point. Does our perception of fairness change with the cost of green fee ? I've often thought that I'm happier when I'm playing some muni thats fairly scruffy round the edges having paid a modest green fee than being treated to a game on a championship course (taking the enjoyment of the company out of the equation). I think its perhaps because I tend to judge the latter but simply enjoy the former. Perhaps fairness or my perception of it, goes along with the cost.

DT

I was thinking of fairness in general sense although in my initial post I tended to concentrate on the maintenance side of things rather than the design side. I was also thinking that if we could get away from the pursuit of fairness that it might actually be rather liberating to the architect as he could adopt devious traps to trip up the unwary.

Jeff

I agree with an awful lot of what you say althouh perhaps not quite your interpretation of what the old dead guys said but certainly what they did. And as ever you turn your mind to the practicalities of the question.

Niall  

[Garland Bayley]

...Where does John Laing Low advocate for "fairness" in golf?...

From John Low's Principle #8: "That a course should never pretend to be, nor is it intended to be, an infallible tribunal of skill alone. The element of chance is the very essence of the game, part of the fun of the game."

[Niall C]

Garland

Good example of Low advocating unfairness or the element of chance as he put it while earlier someone noted that he didn't believe in bunkers that left you without an "out". Arguably, and I might argue the case myself, an example of do as I say but not as I do, or something like that.........now where did I put that glass of wine ?

Niall

[Jeff_Brauer]

David,


Well, its all a mixed bag and to be fair, I haven't read Low in a while and he was really a bit earlier.  I will take your word for it that CBM espoused unfair stuff, as per your examples.  I am certainly familiar with the quotes you make.

There are examples in other GA writing, such as the recent discussion of Colt on putting greens (putts shouldn't run away like the swine possessed by the devil) and many from Ross, Mac, etc. Most wrote that blindness was to be avoided, if possible.  Even Maxwell's greens, which can certainly de-green a putt weren't that way when designed for green speeds of the day.

IMHO, the GA, maybe starting in the 20's when those guys books came out generally didn't design too many shots that would careen off a green or fw.  There were a lot of courses built, and the thoughts became more standardised between the bigs of that decade.  Some even scoffed at Raynor and his template holes and geometric look.  In other words, I believe that the thoughts of Ross etc. varied somewhat from CBM quotes that you cite.
  
As I mentioned, I think it is a long slow process from nature to architected courses that fit how the game was played rather than let it be random.  As I also mentioned, I personally think it accelerated when JN got in the biz along with other pros and the emphasis turned so much to designing for tournaments that never come to most courses.  So, we aren't that far apart, really.

I really couldn't make out your last thoughts, but I think I have a great understanding of what those guys were thinking.  When I read many of their quotes, it sounds to me like the same arguments we hear on this forum!  I know many read things more in black and white, but I don't believe that a single quote can sum up what they were trying to do.

You gave some excellent examples of CBM and his tough shots.  I guess I could give some of Ross and his crowned greens, but wait, we know from Rich Mandell that he didn't really build them that way.  Old pics show them pretty concave and accepting.  I only know of two Ross reverse slope greens, hardly an center bunkering, and really, any bunkers that look a whole lot different than modern bunkers.  Ditto for MacKenzie.  

If anyone can, go show me where these guys did a lot of holes that careened good shots a long way off center?

Niall,

Well, David called them loaded questions, and truthfully, maybe they were.  But they were pretty realistic examples of how a gca fleshes out a design after routing.  And, as usual, no one really answers the practical questions!  Mostly, the amateur architects here love to spout off theory and rant and rage, but never really get pinned down with any real life practicalities!  Of course, I expected that, having tried similar excersises in my dozen years here on golfclubatlas.........

As to your Low quote about leaving an out, I would agree, and agree that is a nod to fairness and practicality!  Really, what purpose does a 2 or 3 shot penalty serve in golf?  If one shot is enough to determine a hole or match (and also make recovery possible in match play) would you specifically design a bunker to be non recoverable?  Its form follows function and someone will still have to tell me what the function of designing a fw that you cannot hit, a hole you cannot par, etc.

As I said, one way to play a hole is fair.  Two ways is strategic.  No ways is just goofy!

Cheers.

[Niall C]

Jim

Having just reread my response to you its clear I'll never get another invite to a half decent course again for being an ungrateful sod. When it all comes down to it, I'd happily play on a ploughed field if the companies good.

Jeff

I think the thing about the old dead guys and their writing is that when you try to define a design philosophy it must be hard to not become prescriptive about how you go about things. My view on golf courses, like many other things, is that variety is the spice of life. Defining or trying to live upto a definiton or idea of fairness must immediately create limitations. Just a thought.

Niall

[BCrosby]

...Where does John Laing Low advocate for "fairness" in golf?...

From John Low's Principle #8: "That a course should never pretend to be, nor is it intended to be, an infallible tribunal of skill alone. The element of chance is the very essence of the game, part of the fun of the game."

Garland - Unless you are a non-native speaker of English (in which event we will cut you some slack), you can't be serious about the above.

Low is making the opposite point. Fairness for him was not a goal of gca. As he says, golf courses are not "tribunals", and  the "element of chance is the very essence of the game".

Bob

[Garland Bayley]

...Where does John Laing Low advocate for "fairness" in golf?...

From John Low's Principle #8: "That a course should never pretend to be, nor is it intended to be, an infallible tribunal of skill alone. The element of chance is the very essence of the game, part of the fun of the game."

Garland - Unless you are a non-native speaker of English (in which event we will cut you some slack), you can't be serious about the above.

Low is making the opposite point. Fairness for him was not a goal of gca. As he says, golf courses are not "tribunals", and  the "element of chance is the very essence of the game".

Bob

No, I'm just too economical with words. The post was meant to illustrate David's point.

[BCrosby]

Understood.

Bob

[Jeff_Brauer]

Niall,

Well, its always a balance of prescriptive vs the situation in front of you, and (except apparently for Raynor) the desire to try something new.  Certainly, no one formula can account for all of design.  Even CBM had his "ideal course" prescribing the ideal sequence and length of holes.  I doubt he ever found a piece of land that supported that perfectly, nor did Raynor. 

But I still maintain that there was a slow recognition that as courses got built, they may as well get built to create good play, hence the prescriptions of 75% of greens being cuppable (Colt) etc.  Slow progression to logical design solutions, and perhaps overdone to "forumula" by some time in the 70's, etc.  No doubt maintenance equipment also accelerated the trend to sameness that designers of the last decade sort of revolt against.  But, that is not exactly discussing fairness, either. 

And I agree that it was more fair conscious after pros got involved int eh 80's, mostly JN.  The old pros were more accepting of bad luck, and the PGA Tour would have played down mainstreet in the 40's and 50's if they offered enough money.

Again, long slow progression of design and maintenance fairness.  GA guys recognized some things and accepted others, and as time went on, others recognized other things and it built.  Even with the poster boys of the new wave, like C and C, their 14th at BT stirs discussion exactly for the reasons I mention - even on a short hole, its considered by many too hard (or unfair) because a good tee shot has such a small chance of staying on the fw, no?

[JESII]

Kyle Harris has posted an article by Hugh Wilson on bunker construction which said they should be built to let out a good shot because a pit which only lets a shot out directly sideways (one shot penalty for everyone) does nothing to distinguish skill...not sure I but it, but he was around during the golden age.

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