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John Kavanaugh

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #25 on: December 06, 2022, 09:55:57 AM »
Why not punish golfers who swing recklessly? Boomers who now hit it shorter and straighter still pay most of the bills. Don’t make us quit competing just cause we got old.

Ally Mcintosh

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #26 on: December 06, 2022, 10:07:32 AM »
There are far better words / sentences though, Sean.


Challenging at least means something.

Fun means something as well. The issue is knowing the writer to better understand the language.

Ciao


You’re just reeling off a soundbite there, Sean. When I need to understand the writer to comprehend a three letter word, it’s not a great choice of word.

I think you understand the word fun just fine. But to fully understand the writer's context it certainly helps to know the writer. Otherwise, fun would be the same for everyone.

Tom

One reason why some tourists don't fully enjoy Scotland is due to a heavy schedule of championship courses. Paying too much attention to lists and not enough attention to logistics and a better variety courses.

Ciao


I agree with your second point wholeheartedly. A good trip means a good mix of course types with sensible logistics (usually meaning less travel).


To your first point, my issue with “fun” is exactly because I feel it IS being defined the same for everyone….


But all of that diverges from the point of the thread that Ira tried to return to and that Jeff also moved back towards. Apologies.

Jim_Coleman

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #27 on: December 06, 2022, 10:57:02 PM »
   This thread was originally posed in the context of renovation/restoration making a course harder or easier.  From my limited observations, there are two kinds of restorations. One makes major changes to the existing course - removing trees, moving bunkers, adding bunkers, improving the bunkers that has deteriorated over time, changing hazards - very much changing the architecture of the course.  Philly Cricket and Bel Air come to my mind.  I don't think there's much debate that Philly Cricket became more difficult, and better.  I also suspect that the general consensus is that Bel Air is better post restoration, but maybe not necessarily whether it's harder.
   The other kind of restoration is the one where not much is changed.  Trees are removed, bunkers are left in the same places but improved, some bunkers are removed because they weren't there originally, fairways are widened. and that's about it.  I don't see how anyone can take the position that these types of restorations make the course anything but easier - better (more fun) maybe in the view of some, but inarguably easier.  A course gets easier when trees and bunkers are removed and fairways are widened.  It gets harder when bunkers and other hazards/obstacles are added.
   So, I guess my point is that one has to be specific about what changed from the before to the after. The answer to the question posed lies in the detail and can often be objectively determined. That's what slope and course rating address.  And again, just because a course was made easier or harder doesn't answer the question of whether the change was an improvement.  That's subjective.

John Challenger

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #28 on: December 07, 2022, 08:01:30 AM »
When most golf courses decided to make renovations in the years before the beginnings of the Second Golden Age (late 1980s and early 1990s), the changes seem to have been mostly about repairs (e.g. new sand traps because the old ones were 30 years old) or essentially about "dumbing down" the course (containment mounding, flat fairways, tree campaigns, bunker elimination, simpler greens). When it dawned upon Pete Dye that some of the pre-WW2 Golden Age golf courses were the designs of geniuses whose ideas had been lost (was it Pete Dye who was the first to realize this idea? If not, who was it?), the world set off on a new path in recovering/restoring those golf courses and building new ones based on the rediscovered principles. It was like the Renaissance rediscovery of Greek culture 1400 years later. On this topic, a great read: "The Swerve: How the World Became Modern."

Perhaps, the first and most fundamental problem that Golden Age designers were attempting to solve was whether an architect could design a golf course that served both high and low handicappers at the same time. Their solutions to this stubborn problem might have been one of the keys that unlocked the Golden Age. Most believed, then and now, that a golf course design could not really have it both ways: either it had to be designed for the top golfers (too hard for the average handicappers) or for the everyday golfers (too easy for the low handicappers).

In some ways, it still seems like we don't really quite believe that doing both is really quite possible. Maybe it's because of slope? We can rate a golf course's difficulty today so that handicaps will accurately equalize the highest number of matches between different levels of players. I know that's not quite the rationale or process, but we could assign slope with a mathematical model that solved for creating the highest number of even matches between golfers of varying abilities and it would demonstrate the relative difficulty of a golf course.

On another tangent, to rate the best courses, slope is obviously not the answer, or we could just rank courses by their slope. The best courses do seem to solve for the above mentioned design problem.

The other idea that I thought was interesting came from an article by Tom Simpson, and he actually gets it from Arthur Croome: the biggest hazard for the average golfer is in his own head. Don't play the low handicapper's game. Rather, think your way around a well-designed golf course. But again, this suggests that a golf course can be designed in a way that solves the fundamental problem.
« Last Edit: December 07, 2022, 09:21:29 PM by John Challenger »

Thomas Dai

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #29 on: December 07, 2022, 08:27:50 AM »
John, I can’t help but reckon that five words in your original post are pretty crucial here, namely “When corridors are sufficiently wide”. I’d also link this to forced carries.
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Niall C

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #30 on: December 07, 2022, 08:45:46 AM »
“Perhaps, the first and most fundamental problem that Golden Age designers were attempting to solve was could an architect design a golf course that served both high and low handicappers at the same time. Their solutions to this stubborn problem might have been one of the keys that unlocked the Golden Age. Most believed, then and now, that a golf course design could not really have it both ways: either it had to be designed for the top golfers (too hard for the average handicappers) or for the everyday golfers (too easy for the low handicappers).”
 
John


I’d be interested to hear where you get the idea that “most believed” that you couldn’t successfully design a course for both the low handicapper and the high handicapper. Who were these people ?


It seems to me that the Golden Age guys solved the puzzle fairly readily and wrote about it in many of the books that we now consider required gca reading. In basic terms, rather than cross hazards at set distances going straight across the course to provide forced carries they instead advocated the placement of hazards that allowed weaker players to skirt round them but at the loss of any advantage that would have been gained in successfully taking them on. 


If you refer back to those books (Golf Architecture, Some Essays on Golf Course Architecture, The Architectural Side of Golf etc) and look at the diagrams/plans you will see what I mean. You’ll also note they achieved this with the weaker player playing off the same tee as the stronger player. Modern architects seem to have lost the ability to design courses that do that.


Niall


edit - I perhaps should have said "A lot of modern architects" in my last sentence rather than tarring all with the same brush
« Last Edit: December 07, 2022, 11:04:34 AM by Niall C »

Kalen Braley

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #31 on: December 07, 2022, 11:00:31 AM »
“Perhaps, the first and most fundamental problem that Golden Age designers were attempting to solve was could an architect design a golf course that served both high and low handicappers at the same time. Their solutions to this stubborn problem might have been one of the keys that unlocked the Golden Age. Most believed, then and now, that a golf course design could not really have it both ways: either it had to be designed for the top golfers (too hard for the average handicappers) or for the everyday golfers (too easy for the low handicappers).”
 
John

I’d be interested to hear where you get the idea that “most believed” that you couldn’t successfully design a course for both the low handicapper and the high handicapper. Who were these people ?

Niall


Niall I would tend to agree here.

I don't know how Memorial Park plays for the average weekend Joe, but after watching a few weeks back, they mentioned that it plays as one of the toughest courses all year long on the PGA Tour.

Max Prokopy

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #32 on: December 07, 2022, 08:57:10 PM »
A related question to this--maybe the same question--is the relationship of course difficulty to "fun."  Most of us play golf because it is a game--and games are to be "fun."  Of course, people can achieve fun in many ways--satisfaction of overcoming difficult obstacles, development of friendships, relaxation, etc.  But, I do know that if a renovation of a course ceases to make playing it fun for many players, it has failed.  Making a course fun (however it is defined) for as many players as possible seems to be the ultimate goal.  Hard to define--but even harder to achieve.


A great many players I know talk of fun before and after the round but beat themselves up pretty good while playing. Many American club golfers have a masochistic streak, so if we're talking about the US, I'm with Ally.

John Challenger

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #33 on: December 07, 2022, 10:21:35 PM »
Niall, It seems like when asked to make golf course improvements, architects are often forced into the position of either toughening the course or making it easier. Before a reno/resto, the golfers are saying both, "you're going to make it too hard," and the reverse. Tom says that if he has a choice between making a hole harder or easier, he mostly chooses easier because the large majority of golfers are happier. I suppose architects doing a resto/reno are often looking for some sort of sweet spot between the two, which would mean that the course stays about the same in terms of slope.

What golfers would really like is to have their cake and eat it too. They would like the architect to make the same course tougher for the low handicappers and easier for the average handicappers. When this happens, does the slope go up for the low handicappers and down for average golfers? If the architect puts bunkers in the way of the short hitter's proper path, and the course gets harder for the short hitters who play the course properly, then the slope definitely ought to go up, but the over-bunkering makes the course worse. 

The course really ought to have some properly placed bunkers that are fully out of play for the long hitter's tee shot, but offer a benefit on the next shot to the shorter hitter when taken on. The game for the high handicapper might be mostly about avoiding risk, and for the low handicapper about taking on risk, but variety matters to all golfers. 
« Last Edit: December 07, 2022, 10:24:30 PM by John Challenger »

Thomas Dai

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #34 on: December 08, 2022, 04:01:48 AM »
A related question to this--maybe the same question--is the relationship of course difficulty to "fun."  Most of us play golf because it is a game--and games are to be "fun."  Of course, people can achieve fun in many ways--satisfaction of overcoming difficult obstacles, development of friendships, relaxation, etc.  But, I do know that if a renovation of a course ceases to make playing it fun for many players, it has failed.  Making a course fun (however it is defined) for as many players as possible seems to be the ultimate goal.  Hard to define--but even harder to achieve.
A great many players I know talk of fun before and after the round but beat themselves up pretty good while playing. Many American club golfers have a masochistic streak, so if we're talking about the US, I'm with Ally.
May I suggest a slight amendment ..... "Many American club golfers have a masochistic macho streak." Ego and vanity before brain, which pretty much links in with the OP.
atb

Adam Lawrence

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #35 on: December 08, 2022, 04:56:22 AM »
What golfers would really like is to have their cake and eat it too. They would like the architect to make the same course tougher for the low handicappers and easier for the average handicappers.




Being totally honest I suspect that a lot, possibly even the majority, of golfers would ideally like the architect to make it harder for everyone else and easier for them.
Adam Lawrence

Editor, Golf Course Architecture
www.golfcoursearchitecture.net

Principal, Oxford Golf Consulting
www.oxfordgolfconsulting.com

Author, 'More Enduring Than Brass: a biography of Harry Colt' (forthcoming).

Short words are best, and the old words, when short, are the best of all.

John Challenger

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Re: On Making the Golf Course "Too Hard" or "Too Easy"
« Reply #36 on: December 08, 2022, 01:32:22 PM »
Adam, You hit the nail on the head! :) :)

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