Is 25 yards the right width....

[Mark_Rowlinson]

....for the fairways (lowest cut) on a members' club with handicaps ranging from +2 to 24 for men and +6 (YES!) to 36 for ladies? There is a further 5 yards strip of first cut on either side of the fairway and then it's the jungle.

[JMEvensky]

....for the fairways (lowest cut) on a members' club with handicaps ranging from +2 to 24 for men and +6 (YES!) to 36 for ladies? There is a further 5 yards strip of first cut on either side of the fairway and then it's the jungle.

Are you saying a 35 yard wide corridor and then lost ball?

Just from my own single sample experience,your higher handicaps will complain to anyone/everyone until the corridors are widened.You'll hear the word "unfair" more times than you can count.

Just curious,how old is the distaff +6?

[Mike Nuzzo]

Yes, if you play a game called driving it straight is more important than anything else or masochists delight.

Golf doesn't have to be hard to be good.

[Alex Miller]

I think 30 yards is a better width, though I'd say an even better rule would be that the fairway should be bunker to bunker so that all hazards are in play for balls to roll into them.

[David Bartman]

The width of the fairway should differ depending on the each hole.  Easier holes should require more accuracy and harder holes should require less accuracy.  This of course is generalization, so it really depends on why a hole is difficult or easy, but a course should have different width fairways based on the characteristics of that particular hole. 

More importantly, does the +6 lady gamble?  and where is your club?

[Jason Thurman]

Sounds like the overall corridors are pretty narrow and bordered by trees. With that in mind, I actually think the course is more playable with 25 yard fairways than with 30 yard fairways. 25 gives you enough of a buffer of rough to keep a lot of offline shots from getting lost in the woods. Going to 30 would leave you stuck with 2.5 yard rough buffers. I think you'd lose a lot more balls that way.

The best option is probably to widen the corridors, but that's not always realistic. I think the second best option is probably to stay around 20 yards and keep the rough thick enough to slow a ball down but short enough to be playable.

[Mark_Rowlinson]

I'm not going to say any more yet, because I think there is already food for thought. However, by 'jungle' I don't mean impenetrable forest. This year (incredibly wet) I mean impenetrable rough. The trees are probably 20 yards to either side of the mown fairway.

Yes, the +6 (two of them) girls are internationals, still in their teens and watch this space....

Interestingly the + handicap men are not in their first youth, one of them in his 40s, the other in his 50s.

We do have two European tour players as male members, but, as they don't play in club competitions, they don't have handicaps, and as professionals probably couldn't have.

As it happens I'm quite a straight hitter - very short, so I'm a high handicapper. But what is the advantage to any member of the fairways being wider? Why might they be better at 75-yard width?

You will realise that there is a club agenda behind my asking these questions. To have reasoned arguments one way or the other would be be very beneficial.

[A.G._Crockett]

Absolutely not!  That is far too narrow for ANY handicap to enjoy the game, and too narrow for most to even play the game at all.  I think the average at Carnoustie in the Open From Hell was 22 yds. or something like that.

For those widths to work, you'd better be playing an executive course, and any easy one at that. 

[Jaeger Kovich]

There is no such thing as the right width in generic terms like that. Each course should have fairways of varying widths dictated by how to create the most interest out of each individual hole. On top of that, the width of the fairway on each individual hole should not be the same width throughout, but rather shrinking and stretching through the turns and different landforms to again add more interest to the hole.

... if you put 25 yards of fairway on a flat hole, it is much different then 25 yards on a hole playing across a side slope.
... if you have 25 yards of fairway on a hole that plays in a side wind, it is in effect much smaller then 25 yards with no wind.

.. if every fairway on a course was 25 yards from start to finish, I might want to puke! There are terms like scale and composition that every architect should be considering when grass lines are determined, if those are disobeyed for something like this, it would be horrible aesthetically and compromise tons of strategy and design work.

[Garland Bayley]

....for the fairways (lowest cut) on a members' club with handicaps ranging from +2 to 24 for men and +6 (YES!) to 36 for ladies? There is a further 5 yards strip of first cut on either side of the fairway and then it's the jungle.

Every book I have read that was written by a GCA says that is less than 1/2 the width you need.
You are talking about what they narrow the US Open championship courses to so that they can identify the straightest driver of the week.
The width is only suitable for the +6 lady at the course in question.

[Chris Buie]

The average PGA touring pro misses 4 out of 10 fairways.
From this elementary fact alone it should be painfully obvious that what the majority of designers ask from the average player exceeds their capability. I wouldn't want to do a lot of that as a designer. Why would you? There is not a shortage of courses 'average player' can't handle. There is a shortage of courses which are in line with their skill level.  I'd want to make easy courses if I was a designer just to provide a balance to the overall scheme. 'Average player' gets beaten up constantly. I would not be interested in doing that. The challenge would be to make it interesting - which I think can be done.
So, I would say 25 yards is not the right width.

[BCrosby]

25 yards is too narrow UNLESS you have dull greens that can be approached equally well from any angle. In that case, what the heck.

If, however, you have interesting greens, fw width will give significance to their architectural quality. Placing a drive in the right spot will matter; if you don't you still have a challenging shot from the fw. Which is more fun than hacking it out of whins.  

I read a Travis article a while back in which he said that average fw width circa 1905 was 70 yards.

Bob  

[Jason Thurman]

I'm not going to say any more yet, because I think there is already food for thought. However, by 'jungle' I don't mean impenetrable forest. This year (incredibly wet) I mean impenetrable rough. The trees are probably 20 yards to either side of the mown fairway.

Mark, in that case, I think the real issue isn't the 25 yard wide fairways, but the 35 yard wide playing corridors. Lots of high handicappers play just fine from the rough, and many even play better from rough than fairway. But the "jungle" lurking is much too close and should be cut back, based on what I'm hearing from you.

[Jason Topp]

It is hard for me to imagine any course that is at its best for member play with 25 yard wide fairways. Dave Pelz did a study described in his Short Game Bible (described at pages 11-23) in which he attempted to quantify how accurate PGA Tour players hit golf shots.  He found that most players were consistent in the amount of error they averaged with all full shots.  On average he found tour players had averaged about a 7% error in their shots with the full range varying from 5% to 10% for the most part.  Thus for an average club player that hits the ball 200 yards, such a player would miss the fairway more than 50% of the time even if he hit the ball as well as an average tour pro at the time Pelz did his study.  (probably the early 80's - I suspect tour players are more accurate now).

  Thus, assuming flat ground automatically makes the center of the fairway the ideal target with no options because the margin for error is too small.  Add wind or slope or other factors and the margin decreases further.

If the middle of the fairway is always the target, it detracts significantly from the interesting decisions one can be forced to make in a round of golf.  Any features of greens that make approaching from one side or the other interesting becomes irrelevant because any benefit is outweighed by the cost of a wayward drive.  Taking an aggressive angle off the tee becomes a much more low percentage play.  Aiming for a flat spot in the fairway in order to have a more straightforward iron into the green becomes a matter of random luck rather than choice.  

Every great architect with which I am familiar described the ideal purpose of hazards to tempt the player to make an aggressive play rather than to punish a mistake.  Use of hazards in this fashion makes for a more interesting game, inspires one to improve in an effort to be able to pull off shots that the player has not been able to hit in the past.

Hazards designed solely to punish result in dull, defensive play.  The purpose of the game becomes avoiding trouble rather than gambling.  The game changes very little from day to day because the goal of each shot is similar throughout the round. Poor players are going to shoot higher scores regardless of whether or not hazards are there to punish themselves by virtue of the fact they are hitting poor shots.  Rough lining narrow fairways is the ultimate hazard that punshes rather than tempts.  It is a hazard that should only be featured for those golfers that consider a trip to the dentist a high point of the year.

[A.G._Crockett]

I'm imagining playing a course in the South with lush late-summer bermuda rough; it grows so fast that the mowers can't keep up at times, and the ball goes right to the bottom.  With 25 yd. wide fairways?  I'll take up bowling.

[Randy Thompson]

Golf is in crisis for a lot of reasons but a big factor in my opinion is too many courses are no longer fun and maintained for the low handicapper when the majority of the players are high. Twenty five yard fairways contributes heavily to this factor. I would guess that if you polled the membership more than 80% would be in favor of widening considerably!

[John Kirk]

25 yard wide fairways, with 5 yard buffers between the fairways and deep rough, are about 1/2 the desirable width.  Narrow fairways like this would discourage a strong, young adult beginner, or even intermediate player.

However, the very narrow fairways would compel a player to learn to hit the ball straight.

[Chris DeNigris]

There is no such thing as the right width in generic terms like that. Each course should have fairways of varying widths dictated by how to create the most interest out of each individual hole. On top of that, the width of the fairway on each individual hole should not be the same width throughout, but rather shrinking and stretching through the turns and different landforms to again add more interest to the hole.

... if you put 25 yards of fairway on a flat hole, it is much different then 25 yards on a hole playing across a side slope.
... if you have 25 yards of fairway on a hole that plays in a side wind, it is in effect much smaller then 25 yards with no wind.

.. if every fairway on a course was 25 yards from start to finish, I might want to puke! There are terms like scale and composition that every architect should be considering when grass lines are determined, if those are disobeyed for something like this, it would be horrible aesthetically and compromise tons of strategy and design work.

This....

Saved me several keystrokes. Thanks Jaeger 

[Ken Moum]

I agree with those who say that a setup like this would cause them to give up golf. I have seen fairways that narrow, except that the trees are WAY closer to the short grass than you describe.

It's actually a Perry Maxwell that got screwed up by planting oak trees in the 1940s.

Since it's here in Topeka, I have played it few times. 

It's about as much fun as a broken leg.

K

[Mike Nuzzo]

25 yards is too narrow UNLESS you have dull greens that can be approached equally well from any angle. In that case, what the heck.

[Nigel Islam]

I'm totally with Jason on this one. I honestly could care less how narrow the fairways are. I can stomach a half shot lost in the rough, but I don't like searching for balls (particular my playing partners) because of knee high rough. The corridor width seems to be the bigger issue than the 25 yard fairways to me. Now your plus players may feel differently because they can do things from the fairway I can't.

[Patrick_Mucci]

....for the fairways (lowest cut) on a members' club with handicaps ranging from +2 to 24 for men and +6 (YES!) to 36 for ladies? There is a further 5 yards strip of first cut on either side of the fairway and then it's the jungle.

Mark,

I think it's far too narrow.

25 yards used to be US Open width

How can golfers, exponentially less skilled, have such a narrow DZ

[Philippe Binette]

Depends on the width and the slope,  among others to define the width of fairways

On a slopy and windy site, 40 yard wide fairways might play like 15 yards wide....

That s what make sagebrush a fun course and tobiano a walk in hell

[Sean_A]

We can talk about the individuality of each hole, but 35 yards of width on par 3 is quite tight.  This sort of narrow corridor is only heightened on other holes.  There may be some holes out there that are better for narrowness, but it ain't many.

Ciao