Challenging but not difficult

[Tommy Williamsen]

     [size=0pt]Links magazine quotes Darius Oliver as saying, "The best courses are challenging rather than difficult, and I think that's the chief difference between the great modern courses and the 1970's-early 2000's--a period when golf became longer, harder, and narrower, and more one-dimensional." He adds that courses like NGLA, Pine Valley, Royal Dornoch, and the Old Course are more generous off the tee and allow the player to use his imagination more. [/size][size=0pt][/size]
[size=0pt]I have to admit I am not of one mind on this dichotomy. I am not always certain about the difference between challenging and difficult. I would think that designing a course to be challenging yet not overly difficult would test an architect’s skill. It is easy to see that a course with narrow corridors, lots of water, and punishing rough would be on the difficult side of challenging. Maybe the trick is not to make a course difficult but to make it challenging but not boring. Boring might be the enemy of golf more than difficult. I played a new course this summer in Mississippi that the guys I was with loved. It was challenging, I guess, but I found it pretty boring. How does one strike a balance between challenging, difficult, and boring? [/size]
 

[Peter Pallotta]

Tommy -
I'm not of one mind with this dichotomy, either. I suppose we're expected to read it and simply nod our heads in sage agreement, but I'm not sure I know what the phrase actually means.
A fairway that's wide but dramatically canted (or with a reverse cant, relative to the slope of the green or the bend of the fairway): is that 'challenging' or is it 'difficult'? Is it 'one dimensional', or is it 'fun'?
A small, perched and contoured green, with tightly-mowed surrounds and a deep bunker short-and-right: challenging, or difficult? Is it too 'hard'?
Conversely, a wide course with large greens, like a Gamble Sands: from what I read and can tell, it was not meant to be 'difficult'; but is it 'challenging' instead? And if so, in what way? Or is being 'fun' the key? *

Peter
* I could say that it's fun for me but might not be for you, or that it's challenging for you but difficult for many others; but that's not the way the professionals/writers seem to be using those words these days. Implied instead is some nameless RTJ or early Nicklaus course, and assumed is a general agreement that fun is not *that*.

[Mark_Fine]

The best courses are challenging but not difficult for WHO?  That is the question??

[Cliff Hamm]

 My interpretation of this would be high slope, lower course rating. Tobacco Road  comes to mind.

[glenn.hackbarth@gmail.com]

Isn't a course "challenging but not difficult" when it couples safe options with opportunities to gain advantage with well-executed, but higher-risk, shots?


Having just played at Streamsong, I think #17 on Red exemplifies challenging but not difficult.  It is a medium-length par 4 with a long bunker diagonal to the tee shot on the right and another bunker that intrudes into the fairway on the left.  Between the bunkers, the fairway is narrow -- perhaps 20 yards.  Just as the fairway narrows, it falls significantly to a lower level.


With a carry of perhaps 235 yards from the middle tees, a player can go over the right-hand diagonal bunker onto the downslope, leaving a 50-60 yard uphill pitch into the green, which is unguarded from the right side of the fairway.


Alternatively, a player can take play short of the left-hand bunker and still have a short iron (7 or less) into the green.  Some flag positions, however, will be protected by a greenside bunker on the left.


It is not a difficult hole.  A mid-handicapper can easily make a bogey or even a par.  Yet a birdie-hunting aggressive player can also end up with a bogey if the attempt to fly the diagonal bunker fails.  The face is quite steep.


"Challenging but not difficult."  For me, the phrase is synonymous with strategic design.

[Mike Hendren]

Alex, who is Donald J. Ross.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I have often used the example of creating, for instance, a mid iron approach shot, calling for a high fade to a narrow back pin position.  Theoretically, that design is equally as challenging if the guarding hazard is a 2 foot deep bunker or a 20 foot deep bunker, no?


I understand that a 20 foot bunker, or water, would play havoc in the mind when planning the shot, probably guiding the golfer to be more conservative in planning the shot, perhaps more towards the bigger middle of the green.  The other side of the coin is having a reasonable recovery shot makes it more tempting, perhaps causing the golfer to be more aggressive, and fouling himself up.  Generally speaking, I think most would agree that being tempted to be aggressive is the goal of strategic architecture.

[Mark_Fine]

Challenging for one might be a complete pushover for another.   This is the most subjective of all golf course review criteria.  I played last week at Calusa Pines in Florida.  I was paired up with a young player (great guy) who simply obliterated the golf ball.  He only needed 3W to drive the one 310 yard par four.  A mid iron was plenty for his second shot into a 560 yard par five (really just a medium length par four for him).  His definition of challenging vs difficult is likely much different than most of ours.  The same goes for a great putter playing a course like Streamsong Blue vs someone who struggles to two putt on even the flattest of greens. 



Challenging but not difficult is very personal. 

[Kalen Braley]

I'm not sure how often you guys in the biz even try....but I would think a course that tries to be everything to everyone would be very difficult to pull off.


The closest course I can think of is Pebble beach.  Not overly long, but small greens to make it challenging for top notch players, and average/lesser players aren't used to having many GIRs anyways....  with the obvious bonus of epic views/scenery/location for everyone to enjoy.

[Thomas Dai]

The thread title and the Darius Oliver quote are slightly different.
The DO quote says “challenging rather than difficult”.


Attempting to be as brief, simplistic as possible, I would say -



Challenging = you’ve got a chance if you think and play well
Difficult = too much for you, you’ve not got much chance, probably best move up a tee or two


Atb

[Dan Smoot]

Challenging but not difficult???  I think Tom Doak hit a home run at Pacific Dunes.  Its not particularly long or penal.  With its width, it gives you options but if you put the ball in the wrong place off the tee or second shot, it gets very challenging and even difficult.  Add to that the tight lies, firm conditions, wind, rain, green movement and bunker placement, you get all the challenge you want.  Each hole is unlike another and the journey never feels overwhelming.

[Tommy Williamsen]

i guess the poster child for difficult would be PGA West and challenging Streamsong, any color you wish.

[Mark_Fine]

Tommy,

I thought both the Red and Blue courses at Streamsong were excellent (I called them the public versions of Sebonack).  My playing partner that day liked both as well but thought the greens on The Blue were just too much, too difficult for him.  To each his own. 


This is a bit of that GD "Tough but Fair" philosophy which I never liked and thankfully they have moved away from for the most part.  Fair is a terrible word to use to describe a golf course. 


I understand what everyone is saying here but this is very much individual golfer (or at least golfer skill level) dependent. 

[Tom_Doak]

To me, "challenging" is descriptive of individual shots, and "difficult" descriptive of the course as a whole.


My aim is to present good golfers with challenging shots, but not so many of them that the course winds up being too difficult for everyone else.


This is easiest to do if you are in a windy place.  You can assume that the wind will make even the easy shots harder, so that the course will not be downgraded too much by good players, who realize you are giving them some leeway for an adverse wind.  That is likely one reason my courses in windy locations [near the ocean, or in the sand hills] are ranked higher than those in calmer climes.

[jeffwarne]

  That is likely one reason my courses in windy locations [near the ocean, or in the sand hills] are ranked higher than those in calmer climes.

That and the ocean and sand hills....

[Peter Pallotta]

I was reading about 2 courses recently, one from the 1990s and one from the 2010s:
The former is Tom D's Black Forest, the latter David Kidd's Gamble Sands.
Tom doesn't often comment on Black Forest, and David isn't here to comment on Gamble Sands.
Just from pictures and write-ups and golfers' comments, it is striking how very different two courses (by two architects often lumped into the same camp) can look and feel; and stark too is the difference in the kind of golf  being offered, and even more so in the kind of *expectations* (in terms of what for golfers qualifies as challenging, interesting and fun golf) being addressed.
I suppose it goes without saying that this is all a matter of personal tastes and temperaments, but from my own perspective I think we've lost something in the last 20 years, and that in the 'balancing act' that is quality gca we have in recent years tipped over too much to one side.
In other words: I don't think there's much of a risk these days that in trying to make a course challenging architects will end up making it too difficult. I think it's more likely that in being afraid of making a course difficult rather than challenging, architects will end up making it neither, and 'merely' fun instead. (I like fun, and of course there's nothing wrong and much right about it -- but I do think there's a balance to be struck).
Peter

[Garland Bayley]

     [size=0pt]... How does one strike a balance between challenging, difficult, and boring? [/size]

Build in the dunes usually rules out boring, and creates challenging. Letting livestock maintain the rough preserves challenging, while mitigating difficulty.

[Tommy Williamsen]

     [size=0pt]... How does one strike a balance between challenging, difficult, and boring? [/size]

Build in the dunes usually rules out boring, and creates challenging. Letting livestock maintain the rough preserves challenging, while mitigating difficulty.

Let's see. Wonder where you could be talking about?