Of mice and men at Manawatu Golf Club

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

Now this is a tough par 3...

I can understand the need to keep flooding at bay but I'm a little nonplussed at the golf factors behind the decision to revamp the par 3 16th at New Zealand's Manawatu Golf Club...

'Palmerston North golf course architect Tommy Cushnahan was engaged by the club to do the re-design...
...As far as Cushnahan is concerned, it allows him to design an improved hole. "The trick in golf course design is to make it playable for any golfer without taking it away from the top golfers."
As it is now, everyone has to fly the ball on to the green to avoid the bunkers, and that's too tough for many.
"It's a very difficult golf hole for any members to play and for the majority of people who pay their dues," Cushnahan said. "You want the golf experience to be fun."
He wants the bump-and-run shot to become an option.'

The hole measures 145 yards from the middle tee to the centre of the green. Personally, when I can no longer hit a ball 145 yards on the fly with any club, I'll give up the game for fear of what I'm doing for the blood pressure of those behind me. I cannot believe that in the land of Colin Meads and Jonah Lomu, there are grumbles about a 145-yard par 3.

What might have happened were floods not a factor? Would Mr Cushnahan have still been briefed for a full-scale revamp, or would reducing that front bunker, making it teasing rather than terrifying, have sufficed? Or might the members might have had a brainwave, opened up the green by playing the hole as a 120-yarder from the forward tees and saved the club a few grand in the process?

And then there's that big patch of open turf between the two bunkers. Controlled fade, anyone?

All right, I'm on the other side of the world but I've seen the thing on Google Earth and as greens go, I think it has a good shape, with plenty of pin placement options. I'm a high-handicapper and I still say I've seen far tougher things than this on a golf course.
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Pic of the Day - Washington's Skamania Lodge Golf Course

Golf course design's most iconic picture?

Reading Geoff Shackelford's pithy jabs at human foible on his eponymous blog (the digs at PGA Tour suits alone are worth the visit) it's easy to overlook the fact that this is far more than just another voice churning out snapshots of opinion in the blogosphere.

Shackelford has a serious body of work to his name and is one of golf course architecture's great champions among the press pack.

Certainly, if you're looking to get a handle on the subject for the first time, or even if you're just after a refresher course on what's right and what's not in the industry, Grounds for Golf: The History and Fundamentals of Golf Course Design, notwithstanding the slightly forbidding feel of its 300 pages, will ease you into your topic as well as anything else I've read to date.

Beautifully complemented by aerial hole layouts from architect Gil Hanse, the text examines the Old Course's influence on the game, the various schools of design thought and the factors that go into creating a memorable golf hole, with several classic holes and courses examined in detail to support the author's arguments. Not quite sure I share Shackelford's thoughts on the need for 'humour' in course design, mind: I'll grant him 'quirkiness' but it may be that your handicap has to reach a certain level of distinction before you can see the funny side.

It's heartening, however, to see him become the first architecture maven I've come across who's prepared to acknowledge the existence of computer games as a means of enhancing your understanding of what makes good piece of golfing real estate. Like a political candidate with an alcoholic cousin, I've tended to keep fairly quiet about my own collection of 400 courses on three different computers (am I the only person still getting a buzz out of Tiger Woods 2000?) but not any more...

On the subject of of 'buzz', one of the things for which I will remain most indebted to Shackelford's book, is the introduction it has given me to this photograph.

It shows Alister Mackenzie preparing to tee off at the 16th on his masterpiece at Cypress Point and I stared at it for some time, struck by the way in which the creator is so magnificently dwarfed by that which he has created. Did the enormity of his own achievements ever confront Mozart so graphically, I wonder? Was Rembrandt ever wowed like this, no matter how big the canvas on which he worked?

It's hard to know how Mackenzie felt in this picture, whether the artist in him gave him pause over his ball, or whether Scottish pragmatism saw him swing away without a second thought, reflecting merely on one of his better days at the office.

Whatever, when I think of golf course designers from now on and what they might be striving for beyond the pay cheque, this is the image that will forever spring to mind.
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Pic of the Day - Utah's Soldier Hollow Golf Course

After years of tacky Chinese exports, guess who's reversing the trend?

Take a look at this.

Struggling to make it out? It's a green in the shape of an eagle. The head's that white bit at the top.

I want you to see it, to soak it all in before I give you the full link to the accompanying article. That way, you get to judge it without any preconceptions.

If you think it's cute, neat or - shudder - 'the future', get the hell away from this blog. We're never going to get along.

Still here? Then here's the article. You may not be entirely surprised to note the culprit's designer's surname. Let's just say the family trade is like the little girl in Longfellow's poem. When it's good, it's very good but when it's bad, it's horrid.

I don't care how 'marquee' a name you are, there is only one step further down from animal-shaped greens.

Tee shots through the vanes of a windmill.

May this 'marketing tool' gets precisely the clientele it deserves.

Bunker mentality mars golf's great thrill

Much as the solitary, small bunker dimpling the green's front border is one of my favourite design teasers, I'm right with Jeff Mingay when it comes to deriding the sandy fetish that sees the approach to too many greens reduced to air travel only.

Sure, the running shot onto the putting surface hearkens back to golf's formative years and that's all well and good but it also provides a simpler, more mouthwatering piece of theatre.

For when you hit even the most exquisite flighted approach, with the best will in the world you only really get to savour the last few seconds, when your ball finally descends and pitches within a foot or two of the hole.

Until then, your eyes are up and down like a fiddler's elbow, constantly flickering between the flag and your ball, high against the clouds, as you try to assimilate the two. It's like trying to enjoy a cabaret when the singer's in one room and the band in another.

With the low runner, on the other hand, it all unfolds right in front of you on a single plane - the distant flag, the ball scampering across the turf and the tantalising question of whether it has enough juice to get there.

There is a reason my heart sinks slightly whenever I see a green with a yellow doormat.

[Image via Wikipedia]
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Pic of the Day - Bermuda's Mid Ocean Club

So how does the Mile-Long Club view course design?

Some nice soundbites in this Mark Leslie article, How penal is too penal? but while it's quite right that the view of the majority should prevail in any golf club's plan to renovate its course, that's not to say the minority view isn't of interest.

If you're a scratch golfer, hitting it further than Sam Snead ever dreamed possible, how do you view the state of golf course design today?

(a) "Just fine. There are still loads of perfectly accessible courses out there that challenge my game.  You mid- to high-handicappers are so alarmist..."

(b) "Thanks to my hugely well-paid job, I just play where the pros play. Long as Phil and Tiger aren't getting bored , neither am I."

(c) "You know how Alexander the Great wept for a lack of fresh worlds to conquer? That's me."

OR

(d) "I WAS getting a little bored, then I had a brainwave. Instead of spending a small fortune on a new set of top-of-the-range clubs, I spent it on renovating my dad's clubs. I'm now off 10, 40 yards shorter and the laughing stock of the clubhouse but my love for the game has never been stronger."

Do tell...

[Image via Wikpedia]
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Pic of the Day - Scotland's Corrie Golf Club

Course design showdown inevitable

I've always wondered what would ensue when a golf architecture purist came up against the Great Unwashed and chose to treat it as an exercise in evangelism.

This forum thread finally enlightened me. Awkwaaaard...
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Pic of the Day - Mt Huff pitch 'n' putt. Did I mention I'm not proud?