Apprent Contradiction from Robert Hunter

[Ronald Montesano]

Someone have the kindness to explain this Robert Hunter quote to me. I'm about to go play a Harries and I'm nearly too excited to type!

Source: P. 129 (Hunter essay on The Purpose of Hazards in Geoff Shackleford's Masters Of The Links tome.)

"If it is desired to punish the bad shots, ask one's self, whose bad shots? It is better not to punish bad shots on certain holes which are often as good as the best. How often one sees at unguarded greens a half-topped mashie run dead to the hole while a well-played pitch effects nothing. How often on a down grade a topped drive will run farther than a well-hit carrying ball. How often on holes of medium length a wild hook or vicious slice costs the offender nothing. Such bad shots should be punished, and in most cases it is not a difficult thing to do. And here the purpose is quite distinct, but we should not forget that such hazards rarely add interest to the play, and this it seems to me should be the main consideration."

And to this I say, huh?

[Tom_Doak]

He's saying that most hazards should be placed to add interest to the play, but that he thinks sometimes you should place a bunker so that a topped shot doesn't wind up with a good result.

[Kyle Harris]

He's saying that most hazards should be placed to add interest to the play, but that he thinks sometimes you should place a bunker so that a topped shot doesn't wind up with a good result.

When do they ever?

Spending a shot to ultimately cover maybe 40-50 yards is never a good result when it was intended to cover much more distance.

What I'm reading here is that Hunter is approaching the slippery slope of defining shot value through execution and not result. The view is myopic, and rarely does the golfer get away with poor execution more than a handful of times per round. However, the last sentence seems to acknowledge his teetering point. Hazards that are placed to punish failures of strategy add interest to the round. Failure in execution is almost always it's own punishment.

[Niall C]

The problem with this approach is that it would eliminate the intentional topped shot, the finger jangling thin or the full blown duck hook, which is basically 70% of my arsenal. Thankfully modern architects don't resort to such outlandish ploys.

Niall

[Mac Plumart]

I was re-reading this book the other day and I found something that had me think he was contricting himself.

He was talking about how the great courses weren't at first standardized to 18 holes.  He mentioned North Berwick, St. Andrews, Prestwick, etc. and he seemed to be saying  how great his was and how this made the courses unique.  And then in his "rules" he says that a courses needs to have two loops of nine returning to the club house and furthermore the nines need to balance each other out.

Perhaps I am misinterpretting him and I need to re-re-read it again, but this kind of struck and stuck with me from my last reading.