What came First - The Wind or the Wide Fairways?

[Peter Pallotta]

No need to expand my question further, I don't think - take it any where you want...

Peter

[Patrick_Mucci]

Peter,

I think there was an early recognition that the two needed to go, "hand in glove".

I would say that the wind necessitated wide fairways.

The Scots weren't exactly known to be spendthrifts or wasteful.

[Tony Ristola]

Wind.

Even if they used it for grazing, my bet is The Old Course, before it was The Old Course had to be little more than a series of pathways amongst dunes, Marram, gorse, sand and longer grasses. The best playing conditions had to be in the winter when there was little growth.

A case of form follows function.

[Peter Pallotta]

Tony, Pat - yes, that is the conventional wisdom, and in fact in this case the conventional wisdom (and you both) may be right. But implicit in your views is the notion that early architects viewed playablity and scoring and fairness isssues in much the same way we do today, and in my (albeit) limited reading into the history of the game and its fields of play, I don't think I have come across that kind of viewpoint.

Peter

[Mark Bourgeois]

What's a 'fairway'? -- 17th c. Scottish laird

[SL_Solow]

What was the effect of equipment?  It is pretty well documented that the fairways were widened at the Old Course by Old Tom creating much of the width that we treasure today and leading to the wide variety of strategic choices.  But wasn't that shortly after the guttie ball took the place of the featherie?  Did the increased distances of the guttie ball and the attendant greater opportunity for the wind to effect the shot play a role in motivating the widening of the course?  This is the first time i have considered the question so Ihave not finished my own analysis.  Thoughts?

[Mark Pearce]

What's a 'fairway'? -- 17th c. Scottish laird

This.  The wind was there before man, for heaven's sake.  The game evolved in the wind.

[Peter Pallotta]

Mark - of course, and hockey was played in Canada because the cold winters made the ponds freeze over....but 'the cold' wasn't responsible for dictating what eventually became the standard-sized ice surface found in hockey rinks all over North America. 

Peter

[Niall C]

What was the effect of equipment?  It is pretty well documented that the fairways were widened at the Old Course by Old Tom creating much of the width that we treasure today and leading to the wide variety of strategic choices.  But wasn't that shortly after the guttie ball took the place of the featherie?  Did the increased distances of the guttie ball and the attendant greater opportunity for the wind to effect the shot play a role in motivating the widening of the course?  This is the first time i have considered the question so Ihave not finished my own analysis.  Thoughts?

Surely when Old Tom chopped the gorse away he didn't create a fairway as Mark B alluded to, he created a wider playing corridor ? It would be interesting to know when mowers were first used at TOC other than on the greens and what exactly was mowed.

I wonder if Old Tom would have gone for this modern (US ?) obsession of adapting the course rather than your game to suit the prevailing weather conditions.

Niall

[SL_Solow]

Niall,  You are correct that I made no distinction between wide fairways and wider playing corridors.  Given the practices of the day, the corridors were the equivalent of fairways, rough being more akin to the whins, heather , gorse and the like.  Query, what motivated the wider corridors?  i suspect part of it was increased play but I am still contemplating the impact of the ball. It is obvious that wind existed before golf and I give Peter credit for not asking a question that is tautological in nature.  I think he is trying to explore the interplay between conditions and design.  I have suggested a possible additional variable to consider.  As a modern add on, the new aerodynamic balls are said to be less impacted by wind.  Does this remove the necessity for wider fairways?  But even if that is true, does the strategic imperative remain?

[Peter Pallotta]

SL - some good and pertinent questions. (And yes, I should change the thread title to 'playing corridors" - although these are/were the functional equivalent of fairways)  If, as conventional wisdom would have it, the rationale for width was related to the wind (and perhaps the wind's effect on a then-new golf ball) and on some early ideals about options and fairness and strategic interest, I would imagine that a) someone, somewhere, at some time would have made the connection/rationale explicit, in print, and b) that if it had been made explicit, in print, by one of the early masters of the craft, we just might be having the very discussion you allude to about fairway width in an era when the golf ball, off the driver, spins basically not at all (even for a straw-man like me, i.e. an average golfer).

Peter

[Sean_A]

Well, if we are to use TOC as the example, I don't believe wind had anything to do with the widening of the course.  It was a numbers game.  The course was crowded so it was widened.  I am not sure any of the changes at TOC which eventually came to be seen as strategic master strokes had anything to do with design and everything to do with creating space for golfers and trying to keep the course in good nick.  I think the wind arguments come much, much later.

Ciao

[Mark Bourgeois]

Peter,

Nice analogy, well played. As far as TOC goes:

(6) The tendency to widen courses is much to be lamented. Forty-five to sixty yards is plenty wide enough. This is wider than St. Andrews used to be thirty years ago, when the course was better than it is now. I note that Mr. Deally, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Charles Hutchins in laying out the new course (that last word in golf) at Sandwich have kept a width of rather under than over fifty yards.

-- CB Macdonald, 1904

This puts TOC as skinnier in 1874, widened later. Wouldn't that be too late to correlate to the adoption of the gutty? Perhaps Sean could go to Macpherson's book for addl info.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tony, Pat - yes, that is the conventional wisdom, and in fact in this case the conventional wisdom (and you both) may be right. But implicit in your views is the notion that early architects viewed playablity and scoring and fairness isssues in much the same way we do today, and in my (albeit) limited reading into the history of the game and its fields of play, I don't think I have come across that kind of viewpoint.

Peter,

I think CBM's quote, citing ideal fairway width as between 45 and 60 yards is telling.

While the book was written in 1928, prior to that, CBM spent a considerable time abroad studying and playing the great courses of the UK.

One would have to believe that his tenets regarding fairway widths had roots in the UK

Peter

[Tom_Doak]

Tony, Pat - yes, that is the conventional wisdom, and in fact in this case the conventional wisdom (and you both) may be right. But implicit in your views is the notion that early architects viewed playablity and scoring and fairness isssues in much the same way we do today, and in my (albeit) limited reading into the history of the game and its fields of play, I don't think I have come across that kind of viewpoint.

Peter,

I think CBM's quote, citing ideal fairway width as between 45 and 60 yards is telling.

While the book was written in 1928, prior to that, CBM spent a considerable time abroad studying and playing the great courses of the UK.

One would have to believe that his tenets regarding fairway widths had roots in the UK

Peter

Patrick:

I am certain that the fairways on classic American parkland courses [all the Philadelphia and NY courses] were 40-60 yards in the 1920's, because I have seen aerial photos to prove it.  And I assume that they were built at that width, and narrowed later.

I'm not as certain that the fairways on British links were ever that wide.  There aren't any aerial photos back before 1925, and most of the older photos you see of the links courses are relative close-ups of greens and bunkers, so it's hard to get an idea of fairway width.  Certainly, some of the early-century courses such as Sunningdale look quite wide from old pictures, but it's possible the architects of those made them wider, since the heathery rough was more severe than the native grasses on the links.

The quote in Macdonald's book [which is taken from a magazine article he wrote in the early 1900's] is actually the earliest reference I've seen to the width of golf courses, apart from the stones at St. Andrews that mark the original width of The Old Course.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak,

How much of "width" in early American courses would you attribute to the large gang mowers employed to cut the fairways ?

In the 50's I recall that they we're quite large and required a considerable turn radius.

I liked the width, or the appearance of width on the 2nd hole at Sebonack.
Pretty neat when you have two other flanking fairways blending with the center fairway to form football field like width.
The bunkering schemes on all three holes are nicely combined as well.
As much as I'd like to play # 2 downwind, I wouldn't want to play #'s 3 and 18 into the wind.

How much did wind direction and potential velocity influence the routing and individual hole designs ?

[Adrian_Stiff]

Up until maybe 1985 most golf course used trailed gang mowers for fairway cutting here in the UK, so almost all courses were 10 yards wider around the greens. I think a combination of factors led to narrowing but triplex mowing was/is costly.

As already mentioned Fairways was not really part of original golf, its through the green. Places like Westward Ho! had 200 yard fairways at certain times of the year, if there was no mowing other than the sheep it was what they chewed.

I dont think anything is really to do with Wind.

[Rich Goodale]

Peter,

Nice analogy, well played. As far as TOC goes:

(6) The tendency to widen courses is much to be lamented. Forty-five to sixty yards is plenty wide enough. This is wider than St. Andrews used to be thirty years ago, when the course was better than it is now. I note that Mr. Deally, Mr. Lucas and Mr. Charles Hutchins in laying out the new course (that last word in golf) at Sandwich have kept a width of rather under than over fifty yards.

-- CB Macdonald, 1904

This puts TOC as skinnier in 1874, widened later. Wouldn't that be too late to correlate to the adoption of the gutty? Perhaps Sean could go to Macpherson's book for addl info.

Mark (and Sean and Peter)

James Balfour's "Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links" (reprints available for peanuts on Amazon) tells you all you would want to know about the course widenings.

As for the wind, it was always and always will be there, regardless of whether or not we reduce our carbon footprints.

Rich

[Niall C]

With regards to fairway widths in the UK, many courses had some form of grazing (usually sheep) right up until the late 1920's in some instances. As we now, animals rarely graze in straight lines and probably relished longer grass in the rough so the need for wide fairways probably wasn't an imperative back then and I imagine mowing wasn't nearly as frequent as it is now. I think it also might be wrong to assume that TOC provided the template for the average UK golf course in many respects including fairway widths.

The most startling thing I find about photographs of early golf courses is how open they are with little or no trees, gorse, whins or bushes. The other thing is the lack of definition. Its often hard to distinguish fairway from rough, probably for the reasons mentioned above. Another thought is that about the time that mowing became more prevalent in place of grazing, that courses in the UK were getting the bunker treatment very often with flanking bunkers left and right, front of green which would restrict the angles of approach somewhat and perhaps therefore the width ?

Niall 

[Peter Pallotta]

Thanks gents, good thoughts.

Pat - I noticed something different in the Macdonald quote -- i.e. that it is another example of the early and influential architects promoting width, but without mentioning or relating this ideal to the wind (or absence of it).

To be clear, I'm simply noting that I can't find (maybe others have) an early articulation of one of our modern-day rationale for wide fairways, i.e. wind. And, given this, I am wondering what (late developing?) rationale might tell us about how we experience and want to experience the game, and might reflect back to us an image of our expectations for the game's fields of play.

Peter

[Sean_A]

Pietro

I don't think you find the origins of width and wind back in the good old days.  I think once rough started to become a serious issue (with the advent of watering systems) then width was compromised.  It hasn't been until my lifetime (and I think the second half) where folks have recognized the issue of lack of width on windy sites.  Lets be honest though, this is still just a murmuring.  Most of the time width is addressed as a reaction to trees.  Even then it is difficult to get my head speed up without chucking the agronomic argument into the pot as well.  The vast majority of golfers "accept" narrow fairways as golf.  Their reaction is that golfers should be in the fairway and if one is not the punishment is justified.  It doesn't occur to them that a great many shots that aren't accommodated should be.  I am hopeful that archies will lead a trend (to date they seem to have been very reluctant to be the leaders in their own field) to widen fairways by taking into account climatic, arboreal and topographical elements.  Its an uphill battle though because fairways cost money and at a time when many courses are just getting by....well you know where I am going.

Ciao   

[Patrick_Mucci]

Peter,

If you read CBM a little further, page 395 I believe, he comments on the wind and golf, and the almost required marriage of the two.

I think you can make a connection between his writing about width and the wind