Squiggly Fairway Line Syndrome

[Tim Gavrich]

The thread on Muskegon CC made me do what I always do when I hear something about a golf course I'm not familiar with--head straight to Google Maps to look at it. The course does look pretty interesting--nice, compact routing, a couple interesting green shapes, and those damned squiggly-line fairways. There are a few straightaway holes where, for no reason I can discern, the fairways are cut in sine-wave squiggly lines, rather than straightaway or, when the hole bends, a smooth curve.

I've seen this plenty of other places too, where the fairway edges seem to meander back and forth with no rhyme or reason. The 8th hole at my high school alma mater's home course, Simsbury Farms GC in Simsbury, CT, is a straightaway, uphill 300 yard par 4. The fairway could have and should have been of uniform width all the way up both sides to the green, interrupted by the fairway bunkers on either side at around 80 yards out, but instead they were all squiggly. And uniformly squiggly!

Am I the only one who doesn't get/hates this practice? It just seems to me that one bonehead golf course operator decided to do this one time in the 70s and then all his bonehead course operator friends copied him.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tim,

I dislike it, too.  Years ago, Pete Dye mentioned to me that he preferred pretty straight fw lines for a few reasons.  Chief among them is that he raised the edges of fw, and ran the fw cut up and over the ridges to produce a vertically flowing line.  If you go around every mound, you end up with a look resembling Shark's teeth, IMHO. 

Even for those cases when the fw line should jog in and out, I have measured the flows that I like, and found that a fw cut that curves to the middle faster than 1 yard for every 7 yards of length ends up looking to sharp to my eye.  A lot of the ones you probably are looking at are far squigglier than that.  Ditto, BTW for cart paths.  I don't mind the look of a long flowing alignment, but when I see the visual "points" of a sqiggly path, my eye really draws to it.

[Bill_McBride]

Tim, I'll bet you're a bowling fan too. 

There was a thread on this recently.  The straight liners may have won. 

[David_Elvins]

I always assumed it was post WW2 course designers, not operators who started it.  

Curvy lines look pretty on a plan, unfortunately they look reasonably terrible from the ground, especially when no regard is given to incorporating 3D features or ground contours into the fairway lines.

[Tom_Doak]

The worst curves, to me, are the ones that come off a set of plans ... Robert Muir Graves had almost a template for those, curving in and out repetitively every 40-50 yards or so, having nothing to do with the contours of the ground.  It's a landscape architecture school thing.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tim,

You're right, it was a 70's fad that took hold with some.

I call it the "free style" or "free form" school of architecture.

I believe that Geoffrey Cornish and some of his disciples embraced it.

I saw course after course eliminate their straight lines in favor of wavy fairways.
Ross and other "Golden Age" courses were "adjusted" for the sake of ................. what, I don't know.
At the same time, planting to "freeze" these wavy lines soon followed.
Fortunately, many courses returned to their senses and straight fairways.

[Garland Bayley]

...
Am I the only one who doesn't get/hates this practice? It just seems to me that one bonehead golf course operator decided to do this one time in the 70s and then all his bonehead course operator friends copied him.

I attended a green committee meeting where the super was instructed to mow the fairways in curving lines, because after all were are a country club. 

The super is a pretty level headed guy, and as is usual is instructed to do things by people that know nothing about golf courses. I showed the committee information about and overhead view of the road hole at St. Andrews, and the only person in the room that knew where it was was the super.

[David_Elvins]

What sort of person thinks this looks good?

[Tim Gavrich]

Tim,

You're right, it was a 70's fad that took hold with some.

I call it the "free style" or "free form" school of architecture.

I believe that Geoffrey Cornish and some of his disciples embraced it.

I saw course after course eliminate their straight lines in favor of wavy fairways.
Ross and other "Golden Age" courses were "adjusted" for the sake of ................. what, I don't know.
At the same time, planting to "freeze" these wavy lines soon followed.
Fortunately, many courses returned to their senses and straight fairways.

Pat--

Indeed, Simsbury Farms is a Geoffrey Cornish course. But so is Hop Meadow Country Club, the course I grew up playing. And Hop Meadow's fairway lines are far sensibler. I wonder what caused the departure, and I wonder which course was the departure (if it's as simple as that).

David--

EXACTLY! At the delightful Copake CC, the 14th is a wonderful uphill par 4 much like the one in your picture, squiggly fairway and all. Just mow the damn thing in a line and get out of the way!

[Ken Moum]

What sort of person thinks this looks good?

This is certainly better:



But I have to admit that growing up on dead flat golf courses, with fairways that often look like a bowling alley, I like to see a fariways that sort of "meander" in a natural-looking fashion.  But that's not so easy to do.

K

[David_Tepper]

I recently played Duff House Royal, a lovely parkland, A. Mackenzie course in Banff, Scotland. The only discordant notes on the course were the wavy mowing patterns on the edges of the fairways. Otherwise the course was very, very good. 

[David Harshbarger]

Mowing lines define the boundaries of a hazard.  They should have a reason.  The wavy ones  are arbitrary and pointless. Does anyone really think that drives of 190, 230, and 270 should be allowed to stray, but those of 210 and 245 not squarely played should find rough?  It's silly.

[Ally Mcintosh]

I agree with all said... But I will add that when you have large native mounding / dunes / topography, it looks worse if you cut a straight line... In those cases your fairway cut has to follow the ground to a certain extent...

[Sean_A]

I agree with all said... But I will add that when you have large native mounding / dunes / topography, it looks worse if you cut a straight line... In those cases your fairway cut has to follow the ground to a certain extent...

Si.  Nothing worse than seeing a cut line down the middle of a mound. 


Ciao

[Adrian_Stiff]

What sort of person thinks this looks good?

95% of golfers.

[Paul_Turner]

What sort of person thinks this looks good?

David

Is that Coombe Hill?  A typical, bad, remodel effort in England.

[Tom Kelly]

Adrian is right.

“Squiggly” fairway lines seem to have been overdone at a lot of courses but straight line uniform width fairways just end up looking like motorways which is probably as bad if not worse in my opinion. Flat and 'smoother' land seems far more susceptible to both problems as there are no/fewer small undulations to break up the lines.

This an interesting recent thread that seems relevant. Jim Urbina’s feature interview mentioned in the thread is worth a read.

http://www.golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,53152.0.html

[David_Elvins]

95% of golfers.

Your contempt for the average golfer shines through again.   

[Neil White]

What sort of person thinks this looks good?

David,

Your photo exemplifies everything that is wrong with some course maintenance practices.

First off you have the arbitrary squiggly line syndrome to the edge of the fairway. 

This is then further compounded by what appears to be a double width clean up cut both up and down the fairway.

Worser still, you then have the ruddy awful double-cut criss-cross fairway pattern that for most golfers typifies an excellent venue.  This is also evident in Ken's picture.

These guys obviously have too much time on their hands.  Thing is, they have probably gone with the squiggly line to appear more 'natural' and then filled it with an 'unnatural' attack on the visual senses.

What's wrong with one side cut up the fairway and the other down?

Neil.

[PCCraig]

It's a terrible look, especially on classic golf courses. My home course recently (within the past 5 years) converted a couple of the historically straight lined fairways into the goofy squiggly lines. 

[Adrian_Stiff]

95% of golfers.

Your contempt for the average golfer shines through again.   

My comment is not contempt in the slightest, it is a remark that I believe is true. I think the biggest winners in life are those that can look at something and cast a fair assessment regardless of their motive or even belief, you have to sometimes understand (and I am not referring this to you as individual) that what you may like may not work with the masses. Voting with the minor head is very dangerous if it involves money and its done a lot on GCA. I personally am in the 5% camp but I think if you showed that pic to 20 golfers very few would find that mowing causing offence, perhaps if you showed the same hole with 'mown halves' you would narrow the margin......but it is a fact at the moment the world likes green stripes.

[Adam Lawrence]

I think in fairness the mowing lines would be irrelevant to the overwhelming majority of golfers. Striping, well, maybe, but I can't see that most people would notice whether the fairway edges were straight or curvy.

[Sean_A]

95% of golfers.

Your contempt for the average golfer shines through again.   

My comment is not contempt in the slightest, it is a remark that I believe is true. I think the biggest winners in life are those that can look at something and cast a fair assessment regardless of their motive or even belief, you have to sometimes understand (and I am not referring this to you as individual) that what you may like may not work with the masses. Voting with the minor head is very dangerous if it involves money and its done a lot on GCA. I personally am in the 5% camp but I think if you showed that pic to 20 golfers very few would find that mowing causing offence, perhaps if you showed the same hole with 'mown halves' you would narrow the margin......but it is a fact at the moment the world likes green stripes.

I think David was complimenting you. 

I can understand folks not liking the busy look, but I wouldn't get all worked up about it. 

Ciao

[Paul_Turner]

Regardless of the aethetics it has to cost more time and $ to do this.

[Sean_A]

Regardless of the aethetics it has to cost more time and $ to do this.

If It were my course and it cost more to do the above I would tell the Super to knock it on the head.  There is no way the squiggly look is worth more money as I don't think the vast majority of golfers care either way. 

As with all these aesthetic issues, often times it comes down to expectation.  A top club may feel it is expected of them to present their course in a certain way, whereas for the lower echelon clubs will likely go with the pragmatic approach.  Of course we have seen many, many good second tier courses suffer through years when using the pragmatic approach.  Think of how greens shrunk, trees grew and fairways narrowed.  I don't think conscious decision-making was in play most of the time, just a matter of expediency at the time. 

Ciao