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What you see is not what you get

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Patrick_Mucci:
I played a course yesterday that had more than a few
FALSE FRONTS.

They are a wonderfully deceptive feature.  They make the player pay for shortcomings on the shot to the green and on the recovery shot, especially if the pin is up front, just behind the ridge of the false front.

Has this feature been diminished by the quest for information on the part of today's golfers ?

Unfortunately, the golf course also provided yardages to the center of the green on the fairway sprinkler heads.  
This data allows a golfer to ignore or override the tactical signal the eye sends to the brain, in favor of laser accurate data from a reliable source.

As a deceptive design feature, have FALSE FRONTS become extinct due to yardage markers.

Name some modern courses that use them on more than a few greens.

TEPaul:
GMGC has a number of false fronts and the one on #18 is going to be enhanced to really be effective.

The playability and strategic consequences (with the higher greenspeeds) is what's talked about today with false fronts but originally, it's my understanding that false fronts served the primary purpose of not being a deceptive feature so much as actually the opposite!

The false front was used to "demark" where the green and its dimensions (side to side) was! It was a way of "lapping some green space down" so the player approaching the green from below, for instance, could have a better idea where the green was!

Patrick_Mucci:
TEPaul & Shivas,

Why do you think so few of them are created today ?

Willie_Dow:
Tom
 ???Are there some false fronts at Applebrook?  I have not played the course, but my tour with you and Mike Cirba, Rich Goodale, and Tom Huckabee, back in October, indicated some of this design thinking by Gil Hanse/Bill Kittleman.

TEPaul:
Furthermore, if you analyze classic architecture carefully something like the false front may show itself as being almost a necessary feature in some cases for architectural and construction reasons.

Those that have read a good amount of what older architects wrote can hardly help but notice that they seemed somewhat contradictory in what they wrote and what they actually did.

The best example may have been Ross. Clearly he said he thought it wise to avoid blindness particularly blindness of green surfaces but then he built so many greens that had blind surfaces. The false front may have been one way of sort of compromising on that apparent contradiction.

But then clearly the false front was an effective (and inexpensive) way of "transitioning" architecturally from a green surface that had to be "leveled" to a large degree in relation to natural topography that was too sloped to build a green on natural grade so the false front was an effective "transition". Otherwise the architect would have had to grade way out off the front (sides, back whatever). And in some cases he may not have even been able to use that site and its topography and grade without "transitoining" features like this!

This is really no different in architectural effect than the more common greens that have an enormous high, deep bunker on the low side of the green sites overall topography. That bunker is certainly there for strategy and such but the mundane reason is architecturally it's there to support the entire green surface itself that had to be build up more level than the original topography once was.

False fronts serve that architectural purpose too!

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