[Thomas Dai]

If the men’s yardage is to be a little over 6,000 I wonder on the yardage of the very forward front tees.
I’m thinking here of those players who struggle to hit the ball much over 100 yds, hate forced carries and play longer holes driver-fairway metal - fairway metal - fairway - metal - etc - etc. And there are more of them about than many younger males and lower hcp players realise, and they surely deserve to be able to play as well. And their money is very useful income within the game.
Atb

[John Kavanaugh]

Is this golf's version of pickle ball?

[Tom_Doak]

Is this golf's version of pickle ball?

Not deliberately, since I don't know what pickleball is!

[John Kavanaugh]

Pickleball is tennis on a smaller scale. It is very popular with people who don't have the time or physical ability to learn tennis. To me it appears to be where many people want golf to go.

[Jeff Schley]

Pickleball is exploding at CC's sure, but moreso in retirement communities.  My parents live in 2 Dell Webb communities (1 in Chicago area, 1 in Sun City West, AZ) and they have replaced some tennis courts with pickleball and put lights and even heaters in some of them.  I played it growing up in gym class and it was always very popular as you use the badminton tennis courts and nets and was a bunch of fun.
Less movement, more action, less skill than tennis needed, quicker total game time.  Good game and this IMO will only continue to grow. 

[John Kavanaugh]

No one graduates from pickleball to tennis. Let's hope PickleDoak doesn't have the same effect.

[BCrosby]

So golf at Swinley Forest is to golf what pickleball is to tennis?


Bob

[John Kavanaugh]

Swinley Forest is 6400+yds par 69 with two par 5's. I don't see the compariso.


I will be shocked if PickleDoak doesn't have a few secret back tees hidden from the unwashed. This seems to be a theme for his resort courses.

[Tom_Doak]

I will be shocked if PickleDoak doesn't have a few secret back tees hidden from the unwashed. This seems to be a theme for his resort courses.

That's true, but none of those courses were built on this theme.  I hope they don't ask for that.


As for Swinley Forest, they have actually lengthened two of those holes since I played it [the 5th and 15th] to make them par-5's.  In the 1980's, par wasn't on the card at all, but the 12th [which they measured as a double dogleg to add yardage] was the hole that was nominally the par-5, so that it was par-68.


I haven't insisted that our course have no par-5 holes.  At Rye, the first hole is 481 par 5; the first hole at West Sussex is also a short 5.  Cavendish has one, too - the 14th.  So they are all five par-3's and one par-5.  I would not be surprised if that's where we wind up, but I'm sure there will be much discussion about it with the client, when the time comes.

[Peter Pallotta]

I think you can now have one or even two Par 5s and it would be very good -- because you'd already envisioned them as *Par 4s*.
I think that might be the key to building a very good Par 5, i.e. don't start off trying to build one. 
The run-of-the-mill Par 5s, the thousands of average ones scattered across the land, were all planned as Par 5s right off the bat, with all that this functionally entails (e.g. using up some ground, upping the total yardage, fitting the usual pattern/model of Pars, giving the hacks a chance at a birdie putt etc) and that it usually results in, i.e. not a very good golf hole, and a boring 2nd shot, and a very large green with one shelf. 
Peter

 

[John Cowden]

There’s another course in Fife that I make a point of playing on every visit:  Golf Club House at Elie.  No par 5s!  6200 yards!  And an elegantly wonderful walk.  Here’s hoping, and with good reason, that TD’s effort is equally as much fun.   I’ll bet it will be. 

[jeffwarne]

No one graduates from pickleball to tennis. Let's hope PickleDoak doesn't have the same effect.

a good late night chuckle

[Thomas Dai]

Routing and angles in relation to the prevailing wind and slopes? Short par-5's into the wind and playing into upslopes? Short downhill par-3's where the ball goes high and the wind blows it all over the place?
atb

[Jim Nugent]

Tennis courts are 2.4 to 3.2 times bigger than pickleball courts. Tom's course would have to come in around 2000 to 2500 yards to be comparable.   

[John Kavanaugh]

Every year I get older society tries squeezing me into a smaller and smaller box. I am simply protesting the attempted and ongoing shrinking of our playing fields. I fell for the move up a set of tees con. I won't fall for an artificial equipment rollback based on par.

[Tim_Weiman]

Tom, is there any thought to the idea of leaving some land available if you needed to stretch a few holes out to make the par 72 number if it is not well received?

No.  They have hundreds of acres more land, so I suppose that's always an option.  But I wouldn't have signed up for the gig if I thought they were going to give up on the concept easily.  Making a design "more conventional" is not an assignment I'd want.


Who was that old Musselburgh pro, who said the customer is always right?*




* I looked this up, and it is credited to Marshall Field, a Chicagoan, among others.  Also, in Japan the phrase is "The customer is a god."  American suck-up pales by comparison.

Tom,


Congratulations! Very happy to hear about this project.


FYI, I was actually hoping to work at Sand Valley this year, but at the last minute a couple things came up for me that forced me to cancel my plans.


Maybe next year.


Good luck on this project. Having grown up playing Pelham Country Club, I don’t quite see the need for 7,000 yard courses.

[Jim Nugent]

Every year I get older society tries squeezing me into a smaller and smaller box. I am simply protesting the attempted and ongoing shrinking of our playing fields.

Haven't golf courses headed in the opposite direction as shrinking, for at least 120 years?

[Kalen Braley]

Every year I get older society tries squeezing me into a smaller and smaller box. I am simply protesting the attempted and ongoing shrinking of our playing fields.

Haven't golf courses headed in the opposite direction as shrinking, for at least 120 years?

Jim,


You're right on the money here, they have gotten bigger and bigger with projects swallowing more land, money, and resources in general .  I for one am not buying Barney's argument in pointing out the one super rare exception in a sea of tens of thousands. 

[Tom_Doak]

Every year I get older society tries squeezing me into a smaller and smaller box. I am simply protesting the attempted and ongoing shrinking of our playing fields. I fell for the move up a set of tees con. I won't fall for an artificial equipment rollback based on par.

John just doesn't like reminders that he is getting old.  I sort of understand this, and have a feeling I'll understand even more in 5-10 years.


The last sentence, I don't get.  Artificial equipment rollback based on par?  From what I saw of the scoring at Aronimink, they could just roll back par to 68 for most / all Tour courses, and maybe stave off the inevitable equipment rollback for another decade.

[John Kavanaugh]

Tom,


Speaking of being downsized into smaller boxes, be very careful about downsizing your house just because you are an empty nester. We moved into a smaller house and it took about a week for my wife and I not to be able to stand the sound of each other breathing. And I don't travel as much as you. We moved back into an even larger house than we sold.


It's my observation that many people who have given up on equipment being rolled back are looking at other ways to get us to dial back the game. An artificial equipment rollback so to speak. One way of doing this is to eliminate the requirement of the long ball. Shorter holes and courses with a corresponding lower par would be one method. If you can't take the distance out of the driver take the driver out of the game.

[Peter Pallotta]

You're splitting hairs, John - but, from your particular perspective and hierarchy of values (so it's all good).

From my particular perspective and hierarchy of values, if we never get another golf course with the word "mammoth" in its name, this will all have been worth it.

The 'stop sign' everyone saw pretty much all at once had an impact/effect because everyone knew (deep down) that we simply can't keep building & maintaining courses with so much turf -- and that it doesn't matter even one little bit if that amount of turf comes from too much length or too much width.

The task here, the important one, is to make sure that this 6200 yard Par 68 course is a really really good one, so that it serves as a model not for similar/duplicate courses but for the *idea* that a more compact course is a better one -- ie so that it proves commercially viable and thus provides a sound economic underpinning (for those who finance golf course construction) to keep building on a more modest (and sustainable) scale. 

No matter how you think (at the moment) that this might negatively impact you....
   
Peter 

[Tom_Doak]

Speaking of being downsized into smaller boxes, be very careful about downsizing your house just because you are an empty nester. We moved into a smaller house and it took about a week for my wife and I not to be able to stand the sound of each other breathing. And I don't travel as much as you. We moved back into an even larger house than we sold.


It's my observation that many people who have given up on equipment being rolled back are looking at other ways to get us to dial back the game. An artificial equipment rollback so to speak. One way of doing this is to eliminate the requirement of the long ball. Shorter holes and courses with a corresponding lower par would be one method. If you can't take the distance out of the driver take the driver out of the game.

John:


I appreciate the advice in the first paragraph, although my wife said just last week she plans to stay in this house forever - which surprised me, but she's the boss of that.


As to the second paragraph, my thought is, what's wrong with pulling things back in a bit, and asking good players to be a little more accurate if they want to bomb and gouge?  Is it really "taking driver out of their hands" to ask them to hit a 30-yard fairway instead of a 100-yard-wide one?  Yes, they could probably hit 5-iron off the tee instead and still have a short-iron approach into a lot of holes, but I'm not going to make them do that ... I just hope to make them think about the risk and reward of always hitting driver, instead of always giving them license to bomb away.

[John Kavanaugh]

Tom,


I'm very excited that you have taken the baton in the race against unrequited width.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,


I'm very excited that you have taken the baton in the race against unrequited width.

Come up with me to impress that on the client.  I will need all the help I can get!

[John Kavanaugh]

PM me the details. I'll be there.

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