DECADE vs. Golf Course Architecture

[Philip Hensley]

Interesting article in Golf Digest about Scott Fawcett and a summary of his DECADE system. Normally would not be directly related to architecture, but this article discusses architecture in shot making decisions and also includes replies from Andy Johnson.


Has this data nerd created a golf cheat code? | Golf News and Tour Information | GolfDigest.com


I don't think data and architecture necessarily conflict, in fact data may better help us understand how to design courses that challenge the best/better players while making it more playable for the worse golfer at the same time.


One of the interesting thoughts that came from the Memorial Park project was Tom Doak saying that Koepka told him (paraphrasing) that when there's too much trouble he just aims at the middle of the green. And Tom said that he wanted to figure out ways to keep the pros from just aiming at the middle of the green, or figure out a way to make them think the middle of the green is safe but make it so that it's not safe.


Tom has made a few comments on here in recent years that makes me think he either has looked into some of this data stuff, or has talked with enough players to be ahead of the curve in regards to understanding what the data is actually telling us. Or maybe he just intuitively figured it out.


In the article the author says that following the DECADE system has taken out some of the "romantic" side of golf for him. That is, to play optimal golf according to data in an effort to shoot the lowest score possible, by leaving all the decision-making to the numbers, is not as fun.

[Kyle Harris]

The entire point of playing competitive golf is to integrate with as little of the architecture as possible.


Whatever it takes to eliminate doubt is the only path to success.

[Tom_Doak]

Hi Philip:


My initiation to this stuff was working for Pete Dye, and in particular talking through the design of the Stadium course at PGA West.  Pete had watched the Tour players plenty by then, and he taught me how conservatively they played.  There is not much that Scott Fawcett is teaching that Jack Nicklaus didn’t do intuitively.  (When we were playing the opening round at Sebonack, Jack mentioned he would never go for the green on a par-5 unless he was 100% sure a good shot would get there.)


Pete also had me spend a bit of time analyzing the USGA’s new Slope System to see what it told us about the different misses for bogey golfers vs scratch players.  Basically that boils down to, low handicaps are much better at distance control with their long clubs, so make longer approaches about accuracy, and only short approaches about distance control.


I have also had the Tour’s ShotLink data for a couple of the courses where we consult (Cherry Hills and Waialae), and if you are looking as an architect, it’s pretty easy to see if the players are favoring one side of the fairway for certain hole locations, or even just whether they should be.  (If all the birdies came from left of center, that’s a hole worth emulating, because it rewards the players who recognize that.)


I’ve worked on projects with Jay Siegel and Mike Clayton and Jack Nicklaus and Brooks Koepka, and now Padraig Harrington is going to be my sounding board for some tweaks to The Renaissance Club.  And I have talked with lots of others over the years.  I’ve never got to spend time w Tiger Woods, but I agree with Fawcett that he had his attack points mapped out in his head more precisely than anyone - because his circle of good shots was tighter than anyone else’s.


I only read Mark Broadie’s book two years ago, when I realized that’s how most of today’s players are taught to think.  Like Mr Dye, my interest is in figuring out how to use their approach against them.  One example of that is greens with contour in the middle, where being short-sided is not as bad as having to putt over the contours, and aiming at the middle of the green is essentially aiming where a contour might kick you the wrong way.  The players know they shouldn’t do that, either, and then they get confused.  I am really challenging them to be more aggressive, in a way that rewards them if they can pull it off.


It’s funny that this data driven method has become SO accepted that if we put a hazard in the middle of the landing area, there’s not 70 yards to either side, so now the players’ reaction is THAT’S UNFAIR!  And the Tour will try to talk you out of doing it.  The contour in the middle of the 18th fairway at Memorial Park was much discussed; when they couldn’t talk me out of building it, they tried to convince my client, and then they went to Brooks to tell him it would be too controversial.  Luckily I had warned them both that would happen at some point, and they had my back.


I have talked about this with Andy Johnson a lot, too, and I agree with him that the data is overrated, unless your goal is to finish T-12 every week.  As we were discussing on another thread just yesterday, on Sunday the guys you’re watching are playing at their best.  Their circle for a miss is tighter, they feel more comfortable hitting a draw or a fade or going for a certain flag that fits their eye.  The averages no longer apply.  Also, the system would have told Ballesteros never to go for the 10th green at The Belfry, but thank God, Seve was not there to lay up and cash a check for T-8.  The system will not beat a player who’s in good enough form to aim at the pins and not make many mistakes.

[Philip Hensley]

Hi Philip:

There is not much that Scott Fawcett is teaching that Jack Nicklaus didn’t do intuitively.  (When we were playing the opening round at Sebonack, Jack mentioned he would never go for the green on a par-5 unless he was 100% sure a good shot would get there.)

Interesting that you say that, and Scott also says, that the greats of the game always played this way, we just didn't have data to show that it was "right" (other than all the wins  )

I have talked about this with Andy Johnson a lot, too, and I agree with him that the data is overrated, unless your goal is to finish T-12 every week.  As we were discussing on another thread just yesterday, on Sunday the guys you’re watching are playing at their best.  Their circle for a miss is tighter, they feel more comfortable hitting a draw or a fade or going for a certain flag that fits their eye.  The averages no longer apply.  Also, the system would have told Ballesteros never to go for the 10th green at The Belfry, but thank God, Seve was not there to lay up and cash a check for T-8.  The system will not beat a player who’s in good enough form to aim at the pins and not make many mistakes.

This makes sense.

One thing that the data shows is that bogey (or worse) avoidance is more important than making birdies. You can't force birdies to go in, but you can force yourself not to take a risk that if it doesn't pay off, costs you strokes. Limiting your downside keeps you from taking yourself out of it, which Nicklaus said his goal was to be in it and let the other guys shoot themselves out of it.

It also limits the effects of your bad golf, when you are not in good form. The quote "golf is about how good your bad shots are" seems to apply here.

[Peter Pallotta]

Luckily the many Decade dogmatists and data-crunching dilettantes and the loud sweaty grunts of pumped-up long-hitting disciples are still offset by champion ball-striking youngsters like Morikawa hitting elegant draws into tight pins, and by lanky 21 year olds from South Africa getting 200 mph ball speeds seemingly with little effort and even less drama. And luckily too, a winning game still demands that you make most all of those 5 footers for par, and more than your share of birdies from 10-20 feet. Scott F might very likely be describing *his* game, and mine and yours and 50 million other games -- but I'm not nearly sure that he's describing the best of all games. 

[Mike_Clayton]

One (twitter) argument/discussion I had with Scott was around his contention centre-line bunkers constituted "lazy architecture"


"So, The Old Course is a 'lazy course' and Tom Simpson, C.B Macdonald, Alister Mackenzie,Bill Coore, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse (and many others obviously) were "lazy architects?"


His point (I think) was centre-line bunkers punished good shots - i.e any shot within the 65 yard cone within which you should be able to play and not cost yourself a shot.


Which isn't to say a lot of his data isn't very good. As Tom said, it's nothing Nicklaus didn't do intuitively - Peter Thomson too.

[Peter Pallotta]

Mike - I defer to your opinion, but is that really true about Nicklaus?

I mean, I know he focused on 'eliminating the left side of the golf course' by routinely hitting his fade [more of a straight ball, I think, that seemed to want to move a little right at the end]; and he often spoke about not beating himself in majors, by playing conservatively and waiting as others made costly mistakes; and judging from what his contemporaries said, he didn't often fire right at the pins but instead often seemed content to aim 15-20 left and/or at the centre of the green and let his shot drift a little right.

BUT: is that the same approach that SF is promoting these days, one in which he advocates for essentially ignoring the architecture and what the architect intended as an unimportant and basically meaningless factor?

Did Nicklaus 'ignore the architecture' or only play his fade or never go pin hunting during his back nine charge at the '86 Masters? Didn't he win there 6 times precisely because he knew in his bones how to play that particular golf course/design, ie where to hit it, where to miss, when to attack and when to play safe? And when he was winning there, was he using an imprecise 'cannon' (to use SF's word) or instead a precision rifle, and actually hitting the shots -- and the spots -- he wanted to and was aiming at? And isn't this exactly what Tiger Woods was able to do too, over and over again?

I know: the notion propagated by SF is that he is proving by data what the greats of the past knew intuitively.

But I'm not convinced. Not when we're talking about the greats -- who were great in large part because they had immense and superior *skills*, eg they could hit 1 irons higher and straighter than others hit their 7 irons.

Talent isn't proscribed by data, is it? If you're an 'outlier' why would you want to play as if you were the 'average Tour pro'?

[Sean_A]

Pietro

Jack is well known for saying the key to TOC and Muirfield (and thus indirectly many championship courses) was to avoid bunkers, which in most cases meant for him... don't reach the fairway bunkers. That to me sounds like Jack thought the risk of being tempted was too high. So yes, Jack had to execute, but he developed plans to avoid the archirecture. In other words, he often took the rabbit route even though he had the skill to take the tiger route.

Ciao

[Thomas Dai]

There's a further aspect that tends to get forgotten about in discussions of this nature.
As Mike C mentions, of elite players Nicklaus had it, Thomson had it, many others too, but some not. Occasionally a club player has it, although there's a huge difference between playing a 1-round comp on your home course to a practice round/4-round/4-day event when travelling the world and playing under the pressure of the spotlight ... patience.
Does the player, any player, have the patience to play thoughtfully, constantly taking the odds of success/failure on every shot they will play into account for 18-holes yet alone 72-holes over 4 consecutive days including when necessary playing pretty conservatively?
atb

[Tom_Doak]

Koepka, for one, is not “ignoring” the architecture.  His view of it is just different than yours, that the fairway lines and American style bunkers aren’t things he should be concerned with.  If he’s going to hit 9-iron out of a fairway bunker, big deal; if it’s a nasty pot bunker, he will lay up and hit 7-iron instead.


But being on the wrong side of the hole IS something to be concerned with at a major championship, and that’s when his approach pays off.  Week to week, not so much.

[Tom_Doak]

One (twitter) argument/discussion I had with Scott was around his contention centre-line bunkers constituted "lazy architecture"

There’s lazy architecture, and there’s lazy math.


In olden days Nicklaus would have said that a cross bunker 280 or 300 yards off the tee was lazy architecture.  Fawcett has just turned every bunker into a cross bunker to make the math easier.


Great players now feel entitled to 70 yards of immunity.  Nicklaus would have laughed at that, because he didn’t have the luxury of hitting wedge to every par-4.  If they roll back the ball, these guys might have to go back to math class.

[Mike_Clayton]

Absolutely. The math is based on 'sending it' from the tee to get as close to the green as possible. See Bryson at Winged Foot.
Roll it back, put them in the rough with middle irons and not short irons and the maths completely change.
Nicklaus' back 9 at Baltusrol in 1980 was a master class in fairways and greens. He didn't miss one of either.

[Mike_Clayton]

Mike - I defer to your opinion, but is that really true about Nicklaus?

I mean, I know he focused on 'eliminating the left side of the golf course' by routinely hitting his fade [more of a straight ball, I think, that seemed to want to move a little right at the end]; and he often spoke about not beating himself in majors, by playing conservatively and waiting as others made costly mistakes; and judging from what his contemporaries said, he didn't often fire right at the pins but instead often seemed content to aim 15-20 left and/or at the centre of the green and let his shot drift a little right.

BUT: is that the same approach that SF is promoting these days, one in which he advocates for essentially ignoring the architecture and what the architect intended as an unimportant and basically meaningless factor?

Did Nicklaus 'ignore the architecture' or only play his fade or never go pin hunting during his back nine charge at the '86 Masters? Didn't he win there 6 times precisely because he knew in his bones how to play that particular golf course/design, ie where to hit it, where to miss, when to attack and when to play safe? And when he was winning there, was he using an imprecise 'cannon' (to use SF's word) or instead a precision rifle, and actually hitting the shots -- and the spots -- he wanted to and was aiming at? And isn't this exactly what Tiger Woods was able to do too, over and over again?

I know: the notion propagated by SF is that he is proving by data what the greats of the past knew intuitively.

But I'm not convinced. Not when we're talking about the greats -- who were great in large part because they had immense and superior *skills*, eg they could hit 1 irons higher and straighter than others hit their 7 irons.

Talent isn't proscribed by data, is it? If you're an 'outlier' why would you want to play as if you were the 'average Tour pro'?

Peter,


As I understand it SF is a proponent of driving as far as you can - 'sending it' (not the approach of Thomson or Nicklaus) because the math says you score lower 1/ the closer to the green and 2/ inside a 65y cone whether you are on the fairway or not.  Just avoid the places certain to cost you a shot.


Nicklaus many times played with a 3 wood off the tee in order to be more likely to hit the fairway.
SF rightly points out you are no certainly to hit the fairway with a 3 wood or a long iron - so why not go with driver. The big difference is, the longest drivers are 40-50 yards longer than Nicklaus' era which profoundly changes golf course strategy.


Scott also showed up the mistake of the 1980s approach to par 5s which was to lay up to a favourite number - e.g 80 yards.
His data shows the closer you are to the green the lower you score.


I think Jack had pretty good instincts about when to play at a pin and when not to. He went at it at 13,15 and 16 in the 86 Masters but played safely right at 11 and left at 12.


Steve Williams told me years ago he'd never seen anyone play like Tiger in the sense he could switch immediately from playing incredibly aggressive golf to very conservative golf depending on what he needed to do to win a tournament.  Or vice-versa.
The one time I remember that not working out was against Rich Beem in the PGA. Tiger looked as though he assumed Beem would falter and steady golf would win. Instead Beem had a couple of birdies (from memory) and in a mad rush Tiger put on an incredible rush at the end but came up just short.

[Kyle Harris]

One (twitter) argument/discussion I had with Scott was around his contention centre-line bunkers constituted "lazy architecture"

There’s lazy architecture, and there’s lazy math.


In olden days Nicklaus would have said that a cross bunker 280 or 300 yards off the tee was lazy architecture.  Fawcett has just turned every bunker into a cross bunker to make the math easier.


Great players now feel entitled to 70 yards of immunity.  Nicklaus would have laughed at that, because he didn’t have the luxury of hitting wedge to every par-4.  If they roll back the ball, these guys might have to go back to math class.

Nailed it. He can say that a rollback won’t invalidate the data on which his system presently works, but I still believe that is one of the reasons he tends to eschew the idea. Stagner is in a whole other world with that, but that’s a different conversation.


Remember. Scott’s entire point is what any great coach does for their athletes.


Eliminate doubt.


Some people’s brains are wired such that statistics, no matter how it is curated, eliminate doubt.


Whatever gets you to “send it” works.


Golf needs more Scott Fawcetts. He’s as decent a HUMAN as there is out there and I’d love to play golf with him or have him as a regular at any course under my care.

[jeffwarne]

Pietro

Jack is well known for saying the key to TOC and Muirfield (and thus indirectly many championship courses) was to avoid bunkers, which in most cases meant for him... don't reach the fairway bunkers. That to me sounds like Jack thought the risk of being tempted was too high. So yes, Jack had to execute, but he developed plans to avoid the archirecture. In other words, he often took the rabbit route even though he had the skill to take the tiger route.

Ciao

This says it very well.
Power is a huge advantage-not just because it allows you to hit long drives when given the all clear,
BUT also because it allows more "all clear" situations when the hazard is simply something like 2-3 inch rough, which is far less of a hazard for a high speed player.
Also, a powerful player like Nicklaus could lay back, avoid the dangerous architecture and still hit a high towering shot to the green, even though further(and safer) away.


I have mixed feelings about DECADE , but clearly it's good for someone who lacks experience and/or hasn't thought well in the past.
For years, I have spoken to students about golf being cumulative, and that if they hit high risk shots every hole, the law of averages will kill them, and ultimately doom their cumulative stroke play score.
BUT....
Part of the game is spiritual for me, and much of the joy comes from PLAYING the game, not adding it up in the end.
Additionally, much of the golf I play, and many people, is match play, where cumulative is LESS important, and the effect of pulling off a dramatic(seemingly) high risk shot can be devastating to an opponent, and satisfying to the player.
When I see a fade shot, I have a hard time hitting my more reliable draw-even though my stats might tell me the draw is the right shot for me.
Put another way, it''s an awfully low % of people who should base their satisfaction and results on the absolute safest and most reliable way to play what should be a GAME.


As far as architecture,(To me), this goes back to playable/findable course borders-at least on one side, even if the hazards are pretty severe  with the playable corridors.
Many people would simply be better off hitting a 3 or 5 wood or a hybrid on double side lost ball gunch golf holes-even when there is ample width.


But where's the fun in that...?

[Jason Topp]

Good article and thread. 


I think Scott ad Lou's ideas pose a very interesting challenge to course design.  I have tried to engage with them but their holiness about their approach and very aggressive reactions to anyone that disagrees with them make it so exhausting that I gave up with Lou and somehow got blocked by Scott.


Course design for tournament play should be thoughtful about creating doubt and temptation for the player approaching a course in this fashion.  Scott's videos point out that course design is very formulaic and that he sees the same calculations on almost every course he analyzes. 


To me that is a shortcoming in design approach that architects should remedy.  A great design tempts - even if the player knows that he should not be tempted.  It is probably more difficult to tempt given the Decade System. 


 I think Scott would be a great interview for this site. 

[Tom_Doak]

Course design for tournament play should be thoughtful about creating doubt and temptation for the player approaching a course in this fashion.  Scott's videos point out that course design is very formulaic and that he sees the same calculations on almost every course he analyzes. 


To me that is a shortcoming in design approach that architects should remedy.  A great design tempts - even if the player knows that he should not be tempted.  It is probably more difficult to tempt given the Decade System. 


 I think Scott would be a great interview for this site.

Seconded, I would love to see that interview.  I might contribute a couple of pointed questions!


And I agree that tempting good players is a big part of design.  That is one of the reasons I say my style is not so different than Mr. Dye's, because I learned those tricks from him and I still deploy them often.


One of my friends has told me that their takeaway from all of my short par-4's is that you should NEVER go for them, and always play safely.  If that were true, that would be a real shortcoming, because you want to keep players guessing what they should do.  But then I realized that my friend was right, from his own perspective -- but just because he isn't good enough to be taking those risks, doesn't mean the balance is the same for better players.   


It does concern me, though, that we are talking so much about course management as if everyone is a Tour player, which is decidedly not the case.  The same principles may apply to the average golfer, but the same conclusions do not.

[Peter Pallotta]

Why have many good players won 6 or 10 'regular tour events' during their careers, while only the very best players have won 6 or 10 + majors during their careers (along with 20-60 other tournaments)? Might it be because lots of tour events have been played on average-run of the mill designs, while many majors have been played on some great golf courses and the very finest examples of golf course architecture?
Which is to suggest: maybe gca 'doesn't matter' only until it *does* matter. Tiger Woods at Royal Melbourne, for example.

[Thomas Dai]

It does concern me, though, that we are talking so much about course management as if everyone is a Tour player, which is decidedly not the case.  The same principles may apply to the average golfer, but the same conclusions do not.

Which kinda inter-relates closely to the thread I raised recently about perceptions, expectations, desires and ‘divine rights’. What’s going on, or not going on, inside a players head is vital, key. The old Bobby Jones quote about the importance of the 5 inches between the players ears comes to mind.
Atb

[Jason Thurman]

One (twitter) argument/discussion I had with Scott was around his contention centre-line bunkers constituted "lazy architecture"


"So, The Old Course is a 'lazy course' and Tom Simpson, C.B Macdonald, Alister Mackenzie,Bill Coore, Tom Doak and Gil Hanse (and many others obviously) were "lazy architects?"


His point (I think) was centre-line bunkers punished good shots - i.e any shot within the 65 yard cone within which you should be able to play and not cost yourself a shot.


Which isn't to say a lot of his data isn't very good. As Tom said, it's nothing Nicklaus didn't do intuitively - Peter Thomson too.

This sounds more like an argument FOR centerline hazards, to me. If there's an architectural feature that can negate the otherwise "always true" math that he preaches, it seems like one worth using.

[Tom_Doak]

Why have many good players won 6 or 10 'regular tour events' during their careers, while only the very best players have won 6 or 10 + majors during their careers (along with 20-60 other tournaments)? Might it be because lots of tour events have been played on average-run of the mill designs, while many majors have been played on some great golf courses and the very finest examples of golf course architecture?
Which is to suggest: maybe gca 'doesn't matter' only until it *does* matter. Tiger Woods at Royal Melbourne, for example.

Exactly.  As Reggie Jackson once said, when a stats person "proved" that clutch hitting was just random, "It's funny that nobody says that about Jack Nicklaus."

[Tom_Doak]

This sounds more like an argument FOR centerline hazards, to me. If there's an architectural feature that can negate the otherwise "always true" math that he preaches, it seems like one worth using.

It is, absolutely.  Pete Dye just loved it when players sounded off on what they didn't like about a golf course.  His last instruction to me for doing the drawing of the Stadium Course at PGA West was, "You know what those guys complain about.  Put in more of that."


But you are not going to see much of that on PGA Tour courses today, because there are like 40 PGA Tour executives pushing back against it.  You're only going to see it at a major championship venue they don't control, which is why architecture matters more at major championships.

[Bill Seitz]

"Fawcett begs his players to stop trying to make birdies, for the numbers suggest true golfing greatness comes from bogey avoidance."

This reminds me a lot of what started happening in baseball 15-20 years ago.  Stop trying to get hits.  Scoring runs  results from avoiding outs.  Aesthetics be damned.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I remember reading "Pro", Frank Beard's diary of the year 1969 on Tour.  He explained that to get to -1, if you made a bogey, you needed to make 2 birdies (or an eagle, I guess) to get there.  Again, not much new here.  If there is, it's that today's Tour Pros may as well wait until the 4 par 5 holes to go for birdie, hope for one or two putts from the middle of the green drop, and that's how you get to 66-68.  Beard didn't have that luxury of reachable par 5 holes, or certainly not as many of them.


Jim Colbert, a grinder if there ever was one, once told me he aimed at most pins after he made the cut because he knew the others would, too.  So, I asked, what happens if you aren't on your game?  Answer: "You finish close to last."  But, as a guy who ground it out on tour, he wasn't playing for a decent 10th place check.  I don't know what the current mantra is.  Funny idea, though.  Maybe the winner isn't low score...it's the guy who shoots closest to a prescribed score, like -12 or something.  That might make them play less aggressive, LOL, at least after they hit that number.

[Padraig Dooley]

Scott and Lou are great follows on twitter, interestingly a while back Scott claimed the only reason to play golf was to shoot the lowest score possible and seem to struggle to understand why someone would play if they weren't concerned about score.

If you are only concerned with score, the decade system is the logical thing to follow but there's many reasons to play other than score and why wouldn't you try shots with high risks, the joy of them coming off is hard to beat and if they don't you can always try again another time!