Golf architects meet: more taste, less speed?

Interesting points arising from a recent meeting of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, where design tweaks that speed up play were the subject of debate:

“A properly designed, well-drained course with ample playable areas, properly placed bunkers, visible water hazards and smaller greens usually plays fastest,” says ASGCA president Steve Forrest.

“Common sense tells us that shorter, wider courses will play faster than longer, narrow ones, particularly for the average and beginning players,” Forrest says. “But, other design elements should also be taken into account.”

While I've no problem with any plea for wider fairways, which gives an architect scope to plot two or even three different routes to the green, I hear just the faintest of alarm bells with two other suggestions raised at the meeting: containment mounding and flatter greens.

"When greens have fewer severe undulations, three putt frequency is reduced," runs the ASGCA line (excuse the pun). Fine and dandy if you're talking about recreational courses but if the course concerned has championship aspirations, I've long thought that tough greens are one of the alternatives to the knee-jerk strategy of cranking the yardage north of 7,000. With pace of play something of a hot potato after the Masters, I'd hate to think that architects might be persuaded to dismiss the option altogether.

As for mounding, "Fairways can be designed to contain slightly errant shots by strategic mound placement." About this topic, I feel the way I do about embryo research - the principle might be sound but in the wrong hands you could end up with a monster, as Ian Andrew explains here.

I shan't lie; there was a time when I would have thrilled at the sight of a hole neatly defined by mounding along its perimeter. Then I read more about my subject and learnt how a game without such limits can be even more beautiful.

Don't punish the guy who's dragged his tee shot a mile wide with anything more than a tricky line for his recovery shot. Keep the grass short enough for him to find his ball easily and cut back the foliage so that he at least has a shot of sorts. There's just as much fun in rising to that challenge as there is in keeping your tee shot straight to start with.

Mounding is a question of degree, as so many things are.
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