Here we are, trusty weapon in hand, standing in the tee box of the 12th hole at Quaking Catalpas Country Club, gazing off in some vague direction of where we imagine our destination might be lurking around the corner behind trees so tall they’ve likely been around since the Martin Van Buren administration, a patch of tall fescue, a body of water the size of Lake Erie, and a bunch of rascally white sand dotting the landscape, wondering why we ever chose to take up this nightmarish game in the first place. Torture! We could’ve been playing ping-pong. But no, out here we are, about to balance our bedimpled orb onto its peg prior to sending it careening off down the fairway (we hope!) and then ambling on down said fairway acting all the world as though we know what we’re doing.
The cursed addiction
If you are among those cursed with a golfing addiction, it can come down to this: each and every piece of land your eyes happen to land upon can look like a potential hole. The undulations, gentle or otherwise, yielding hidden treachery and an array of possible nasties. An attractive tree. A healthy-looking pond around which to devise a diabolical par three.
When the US Men’s Amateur Golf Championship was recently played at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, MN, a single thought immediately propelled its way into my consciousness, which is about all one man can stand, of course. In 1970, participating in the men’s US Open Championship on the then-less-than-decade-old Hazeltine, golfer Dave Hill, when asked what Hazeltine needed, caustically replied, “Hazeltine really did lack only 80 acres of corn and a few cows. They ruined a good farm when they built this course.” That is decidedly not the golf course we would hope to conceive.
Just enough to be dangerous
All foolishness aside, following years upon years of contemplation unencumbered by anything that might be described as actual knowledge on the subject, lately I’ve been engaged in a spot of reading on the subject of golf course design, as in maybe just enough to be dangerous, but not so much that osmosis has sprung up and inadvertently inflicted unintentional internal damage.
Oftentimes, it’s wise to begin with what you know, and with that in mind, here’s what we’re going to do. Seeing as how we can’t do this all day, as the ShamWow guy would say, let’s take two holes, coincidentally two that come back-to-back, from the golf course on which I grew up, and yak about what makes them what they are. This examination will take place from the player’s point of view. (And although the LPGA is one of my favorite things on Earth, in this case that’ll be two male players.)
The most challenging holes
But before getting ahead of myself any more than usual, to get a line on how a living and breathing seriously good player (GP) would look at and go about things, I chatted with Jacob Modleski, a sophomore on the Notre Dame University men’s golf squad. Modleski recently reached the quarterfinals at the US Men’s Amateur Championship and earlier this year won the Jones Cup Invitational.
“What kind of a golf hole challenges you the most?” I asked, before launching into elements of course design. “Mentally,” said Modleski, “I would say it’s holes where there’s very visible trouble. In general, you can see trouble out in front of you. You have to be very focused to not see that in your routine, in your process. It makes it easier for you to steer away from it, and then you may not hit a bad shot, but it’s not quite as good as it normally would be because it’s in the back of your mind. There are ways in your pre-shot routine to get that out of your mind, but it’s easy to have it creep back in.”
The first hole under discussion – let’s call it number five – is a dogleg left, par five from an elevated tee, trees and out of bounds to the left, with a bunker extending maybe one-third the way across the fairway at the dogleg, leaving a large expanse of fairway to the right. Playing it as the crow flies, the second shot looks at an ever-narrowing fairway, trees still to the left, while to the right more trees, taller ones, dropping off into a minor canyon, protect that side of the green. At the left front of the green awaits a bunker, out of which more than one player has sent his shot sailing off into the canyon. (As a wise man, my dad, once said, “Why bother ruining a pair of $50 pants searching for a two-dollar golf ball?”) Whack it over the green, and, owing to an immediate drop-off, you’ll be needing another hearty swat to get it back in the vicinity of the putting surface. There’s trouble here … and opportunity.
Necessary excitement
Five brings to mind this from “Some Essays on Golf Course Architecture,” by H.S. Colt and C.H. Alison: “Players are beginning to see how easy it is to place bunkers at correct distances, but few perhaps realize how difficult it is to arrange for the natural features to provide to the fullest possible extent the necessary excitement for the course, and to supplement these features without destroying the natural beauty of the site.”
“Necessary excitement” means, to yours truly, if there’s anything one seems to need when creating a good golf hole, it’s providing options for the GP to go about playing his business of attempting to finish out the hole with the lowest score possible yet risking catastrophe in the pursuit, while simultaneously not making things totally discouraging for the not-so-good player (NSGP) yet still providing some hope for a lower number on the scorecard. Five, in fact, provides the NSGP with the opportunity for a birdie if navigated with a reasonable degree of competence. At the same time, the GP’s goal is to be on the putting surface in two and putting for eagle.
Modleski and I talked about dispersion, that is, the tendency for a shot to wander left or right of the chosen target, a concept that has been developed and explored by the DECADE course management system. Not to get into some sort of arcane doctoral dissertation here, but even the best players in the world, when hitting driver, for instance, tend to experience at least a 50-60 yard dispersion rate, that is, seeing the ball come to rest 25-30 yards to either the left or right of the perfect, intended line. (A large part of the reason for that can be attributed to the clubhead speed generated by the player, usually faster the better the golfer, yet the faster the clubhead speed, the more margin for the introduction of error should clubhead meet ball less than squarely, and humans being humans, well …. you get the idea.)
“What it comes down to is how wide it is from the left edge of where you want to hit it to the right edge of where you want to hit it,” Modleski said. “If that gap is 60 yards or more, then you can hit it with a driver almost every time. If it’s less, you keep going down until you find a club that fits that dispersion.”
Consider dispersion
Dispersion is a critical factor here on number five, which one could also say about most any hole, given two seconds worth of thought. Newcomers to the game, naturally, are taught to choose the bull’s eye for where they want the shot at hand to wind up and from where they will play their next, then deal with the consequences when things don’t exactly pan out, which they rarely do, and, it might be added, they are ill-equipped to deal with. For the NSGP, a bit of situational awareness says the smart option for the tee shot is relatively straightforward: Choose a line perhaps 20 yards to the right of fairway bunker and a club that would reach that spot without carrying the ball much further and on into the rough, with the goal to set up a second shot looking straight down the middle of the fairway and squarely at the green.
Let’s say the GP is feeling overly rambunctious today and decides the best move is to pull the driver out of the bag and aim down the tree line, fully expecting his natural draw to kick in and, should all go well, find his second shot anywhere from the center to left of the fairway likely no less than 75-100 yards from the green. Should that come to fruition, cha-ching!
On the other hand, more than one thing could go wrong with this risky, possibly high-reward approach. On this particular day there’s enough of a crossing breeze, hard to detect while standing on the tee, to help nudge the GP’s tee shot jusssst far enough to the right (did I mention that where the fairway narrows as one approaches the green, it becomes somewhat firm and unforgiving?) to send it through the fairway and into the far rough, where old-growth trees stand between it and the putting surface. Barring a miracle, kiss a possible eagle try good-bye and be thankful you didn’t smack it clear on down into the canyon.
As the GP stands and watches, the NSGP, from his fairway spot around 150 yards, for a fleeting second contemplates the wisdom of choosing a longer club and taking aim at the faraway green, which he could reach with the shot of his life, but then he remembers he’s a NSGP and the odds of a lifetime shot right here, right now, are about as good as winning Powerball®. Furthermore, from here he cannot see the flagstick, which is obviously tucked behind the trees on the right side of the green.
With a shorter club, maybe a six iron, he again takes aim down the middle and, this being where Modleski’s admonition against seeing the potential trouble that awaits would come in handy, promptly sends the thing a tad off line to the left, a.k.a. the direction of the bunker to the left of the green. But it doesn’t get that far, instead returning to Earth on a less-than-soft patch of fairway that kicks the ball further left, where it eventually comes to rest adjacent to the number six tee box, a heinous spot indeed from which to play his third. The fact he had the right idea does little to reduce the sting. Around this time the NSGP is wondering why he didn’t go to the casino instead.
The Big Chance
What has the course designer done here?
The NSGP could, if so inclined, not worry about being quite so close to the fairway bunker with his tee shot, and instead seek refuge in the fat part of the fairway to the right of the bunker, an option provided by the designer. But it is tempting, in a he-man, limbic region of the brain sort of way, I guess you might say, to take the former approach, thereby unnecessarily bringing the fairway bunker/tree line into play. Meanwhile, the GP has succumbed to the lure of taking the Big Chance.
As the fifth hole, it comes at a juncture in an 18-hole round where one’s scorecard hasn’t reached any level of maturity – under normal circumstances, the GP isn’t much more than one or two above or below par at this point, and in taking the chance at an eagle, should disaster strike, not a whole lot has been lost as there are still 13 holes remaining to fix things, or at least un-wreck them. Soooo, hell yes, bombs away!
However, should number five come later in the round, maybe number 15 or 16, the GP’s outlook on things could well be entirely different depending on how things have been going to that point. But for now, finding oneself stuck behind a tall stand of trees ain’t great, leaving the GP to ruminate over the old saw that you should aim not only so your good shots wind up okay, but that your middlin’ to lousy ones should as well, à la what Modleski has been trying to steer us to do.
Sneaky par four and the Golden Bell
Let’s move on to the number six tee, where a relatively short, sneaky par four, heading back in the direction whence came number five, stands before us. The sixth, from the tee, looks up a fairway that gently rises in elevation but no so much that those teeing off fail to notice the bunkers to the left and right, positioned pretty much at the length a NSGP would be looking for his tee shot to come to rest in a not-so-generous yet not-so-penurious expanse of a fairway that, we might add, slopes off to the left towards the tree line. Yes, but guess what the NSGP sees? That’s right.
At the same time, the GP sees none of that – his big issue arises on the approach shot, with a green fronted by another pair of bunkers that slopes toward the back, and the left side sinks out of sight, all stuff he might consider when back at the tee. Modleski does, for a split-second. Then what? “On six, I’d say, when in doubt, hit it as far up there as you can, then figure it out.”
While a par-three hole didn’t enter today’s discussion, it’s hard to overstate how integral good, playable ones are to the overall design of an 18-hole course. A kindergartner could tell you an 18-hole golf course simply composed of par fours and fives chasing each other up, down, and all around is bound to get stale quickly. Ideally, interspersed are four and no more than five par-threes, varying in length as a means of forcing the player to deploy a different club on each.
For those harboring the misconception that a par-three hole simply cannot be all that diabolical, if there’s one all golf fans know, it’s number 12, known as the Golden Bell – the shortest hole on the course, and famously, at times, its most dangerous – at Augusta Country Club, from which every spring the Masters tournament unfolds on our TV screens. Golf Monthly, in detailing what the 12th can do to a player’s psyche, brings us the tale of two-time Masters winner, Bubba Watson and the 10 he produced in 2013’s final round:
“How did he make 10? Well, he holed a 15-footer to avoid an 11! Analyze Bubba’s 10 in depth, though, and it pretty much sums up everything that can go wrong on The Golden Bell: tee-shot into Rae’s Creek, third shot from the fairway into Rae’s Creek, fifth shot from the fairway into the back bunker, sixth shot from the bunker back into Rae’s Creek, eighth shot from the back bunker played out almost sideways to avoid a potential repeat, ninth shot chipped 15 feet past the hole, and 15-footer holed for 10.”
Fore! •