Dye's artificial steep mounds

[Jason Topp]

Pete Dye's artificial steep mounds have always seemed too extreme, artificial and unnecessary to me. 


They do create a unique hazard.


What do you think of them?

[V. Kmetz]

I enjoy watching the world's best play on them (and on this course in toto)


But they, whether near my errant tee shots or near green surfaces that are 12+, would be too much for me at any level of golf I've played (as is this course in toto).

[jeffwarne]

I enjoy the mounds as hazards that require both skill and luck to navigate /avoid and enjoy the skill set required to play from them.
There is nothing natural about TPC Sawgrass-never was.



The 18 holes of water...not so much-no luck or skill involved in recovery there.
I'm well aware the course was built on a swamp, but the course is simply strewn with water everywhere that the average guy cannot avoid, while it's much less often in play for the best.


I was stunned at how homogonized the course has become since my last visit in 1984.
What was once a truly unique design, with fascinating geen and bunker complexes, has become an electric green rye grass field with super white generic looking bunkers, less daunting greens, clean pine straw rough, and water still everywhere.
Probably still a great tournament venue (but it was before)


I will say that it is very well set up for spectators with easy access and great nfrastructure.

[Jim Nugent]

It may even out, but those mounds have given lots of incredibly lucky kicks.  I saw several approach shots that were headed for traps or worse careen off mounds onto greens.  Sometimes ten feet or less from the pin. 

[Tom_Doak]

I was stunned at how homogonized the course has become since my last visit in 1984.
What was once a truly unique design, with fascinating geen and bunker complexes, has become an electric green rye grass field with super white generic looking bunkers, less daunting greens, clean pine straw rough, and water still everywhere.
Probably still a great tournament venue (but it was before)

No one remembers this, but the TPC was built in the late 1970's, when interest rates were 15% and the country was in recession.  The idea of the waste areas was all about reducing maintenance and going with a rough-looking golf course.


Later, when the economy was flush and the TOUR was becoming more corporate . . . right around the time Commissioner Beman left . . . the TOUR took the position that the TPC was their corporate headquarters, and needed to look the part.  And that was the start of the transition to what it looks like today.  [They had already started softening the greens, almost immediately after it opened.]

[jeffwarne]

I was stunned at how homogonized the course has become since my last visit in 1984.
What was once a truly unique design, with fascinating geen and bunker complexes, has become an electric green rye grass field with super white generic looking bunkers, less daunting greens, clean pine straw rough, and water still everywhere.
Probably still a great tournament venue (but it was before)

No one remembers this, but the TPC was built in the late 1970's, when interest rates were 15% and the country was in recession.  The idea of the waste areas was all about reducing maintenance and going with a rough-looking golf course.


Later, when the economy was flush and the TOUR was becoming more corporate . . . right around the time Commissioner Beman left . . . the TOUR took the position that the TPC was their corporate headquarters, and needed to look the part.  And that was the start of the transition to what it looks like today.  [They had already started softening the greens, almost immediately after it opened.]

That and poor taste/education/"fairness"


I heard some really distressing comments by locals at the public practice facilities I visited while I was there-praising the conditions and lamenting why their super couldn't do that.
Wonder what they'd say if their course lloked like what TPC will look like in May when that wall-to wall rye blows up into a brown and yellow sea of bermuda stunting struggle

[Kalen Braley]

Jason,

I will agree they look unnatural, but given the video game nature of how these pros can play, I think its a good way to penalize them for a missed green without resorting to water (too steep a penalty) or bunkers (not enough of one).

Watching over the last two days has made me think why not just build a few more courses like this where the pros and high level Ams can play all of their competitive tournaments and leave everything else the hell alone...

[Tim Martin]

It’s interesting to hear that the greens were softened not long after opening. In it’s current form it is exacting with water, narrow drive zones, and forced carries. Some balance is created by the rough height of cut which virtually assures the players a good lie. I like the mounds which require the players to hit shots with the ball above and below their feet with different trajectory’s. It is a great course for this championship.

[Thomas Dai]

Wasn't Pete Dye regularly trying to get into players heads, especially the elite players? Make them think, confuse them?
Mounds (and hollows) add visual deception and player confusion.
Back a few decades ago when many PD courses were created, range-finders and the like weren't around and although yardage books were being used the level of yardage book sophistication wasn't as high as is the case these days.
Thus the manipulation of the landscape to enhance visual deception and player confusion.
atb

PS - out of interest, is there any material buried under the mounds that they didn't want to cart away (ie a bit like olden day rock piles covered with sods/grass)?

[Tim Gavrich]

I'm a fan because they introduce an element of the game that receives pretty much universal praise from this board when it comes to links golf.


If you hit a squirrelly shot, you might get away with it or you might get really screwed. It heightens the extent to which the course requires mental fortitude as well as golf skill.

[Jim Nugent]

If you hit a squirrelly shot, you might get away with it or you might get really screwed. It heightens the extent to which the course requires mental fortitude as well as golf skill.

The ones I've seen around the greens act more like containment mounds, bouncing off-line shots back into play, onto the putting surface, sometimes close to the pin.  Not a huge sample size, but I've seen maybe five shots like that the past few days. 

[Jeff_Brauer]

I was stunned at how homogonized the course has become since my last visit in 1984.
What was once a truly unique design, with fascinating geen and bunker complexes, has become an electric green rye grass field with super white generic looking bunkers, less daunting greens, clean pine straw rough, and water still everywhere.
Probably still a great tournament venue (but it was before)

No one remembers this, but the TPC was built in the late 1970's, when interest rates were 15% and the country was in recession.  The idea of the waste areas was all about reducing maintenance and going with a rough-looking golf course.

Later, when the economy was flush and the TOUR was becoming more corporate . . . right around the time Commissioner Beman left . . . the TOUR took the position that the TPC was their corporate headquarters, and needed to look the part.  And that was the start of the transition to what it looks like today.  [They had already started softening the greens, almost immediately after it opened.]

I had always heard that the waste areas were impossible to maintain, as grass and weeds just grew too well in the FL rains.

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As to the greens, I recall Jim Colbert was on that committee to soften them.  His reported comment was, "Pete, you put a nice mound right in the middle of the first green, right where everyone wants to hit their shot.   That was okay, but you liked it so well you did it 17 more times."

[Tom_Doak]

I had always heard that the waste areas were impossible to maintain, as grass and weeds just grew too well in the FL rains.

That's true, they were grown over within a couple of years.  The original plan was to run through them with a tractor and a rake and scarify them, but the bermuda was too aggressive.  Nowadays they would just hit them with roundup on a regular basis, but nobody used it back then like they do now.

[Thomas Dai]

As to the greens, I recall Jim Colbert was on that committee to soften them.  His reported comment was, "Pete, you put a nice mound right in the middle of the first green, right where everyone wants to hit their shot.   That was okay, but you liked it so well you did it 17 more times.

[/l]

Ah, pretty much the same reaction to that in 1927 by the some of the Committee of the Alister MacKenzie laid out course I mostly play. "Ridiculous mounds" was their choice of phrase. Some things never change I guess!

atb

[Jeff_Brauer]

Thomas,


If anything, I would presume it has gotten "worse" because implements, length and skill have made getting close to the hole a lot easier than 100 years ago.


Colbert was more adamant than most pros I knew. He varied his shot pattern when pins were tucked, and his standard play was to aim from the middle to the high side of the green and curve back to a tucked pin.  He always felt the middle should be the safe spot on an approach.  When you recall the USGA slope system, even for good players a 10% width and depth area (to length of approach shot) is all they can hit, or 15 x 15 yards for a 150 yards approach.  If a center mound divides any but the largest green, the effective target becomes less than that. 


So, the good player argument that if they can't hit a target and hold near where they hit (a la, no mounds kicking their shot across the green) it is probably not fair for them, and probably too hard for anyone else.


I had Notah Begay III play in a grand opening where he hit everyone's shot on a short par 3.  No matter where he hit his 140 yard wedge, it would spin away from the hole location to a minimum of 10 feet.  He didn't think that was good design, or at least pin placement.  I have also seen him rant against the little change of grade around a hole location that makes it impossible to chip and get it close to that location, at least from the planned bail out area (in this case, at Dallas National, a fw chipping area right of the green, again where you would expect ams to land.  He does understand the concept of certain misses being "death")  There, halfway to the hole, a little change of grade from 2% to 4% for about 10 feet just short of the cup, carried chips all the way across the green no matter where you landed it or tried to play.


Lastly, a former design associate put a mound in the middle of the green on a Colbert project.  I didn't say anything but knew he wouldn't like it.  He dressed down my associate, then said he wanted him as a pro am partner, because "You must be the best damn player in the world if you can hit it close on this green!"


I don't expect this post to change anyone's mind here, but just confirming with Thomas that yes, good players do see architecture in ways that reflect their supreme skill, believing it should be rewarded as close to always as is humanly possible, LOL.