Golf Architecture 101: The Three (or Two?) Schools of Design

00:00:00
Speaker 1: What is the first thing you should learn about golf architecture. The obvious place to start is the so called schools of golf course design. Most people say there are three such schools. I say there are probably just two. We're gonna dig into that today. This is the first installment of our Golf Architecture one oh one series where I discussed some basic concepts with PJ Clark. PJ is friday Golf's podcast producer champions to her correspondent and relative newcomer to the topic of golf architecture. So today with PJ Clark the schools of golf course Design. I'm Garrett Morrison, and this is designing golf. PJ. Let's let's set some levels here. What's your basic familiarity with golf architecture.

00:00:51
Speaker 2: I would say I've I've acquired some familiarity through osmosis over the last you know, nine months or whatever.

00:00:59
Speaker 1: Just being colleagues with us kind of kind of does it.

00:01:01
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I think I I think I, you know, subconsciously know more than I would give myself credit for, maybe, but uh uh out outwardly facing what I think I know is probably not that much.

00:01:16
Speaker 1: Have you have you found the topic intimidating in the past or pretentious in the past, is that.

00:01:21
Speaker 2: It is incredibly I mean, I it just it seems like it's a it's a lot of information, not in like a bad way, but it's uh, I just I don't think I'm good at golf enough to like really know what I'm looking at. I'm more concerned on like, you know, can I just try to scratch out a bogie here? Like, I'm not really concerning myself with much more than that. So, uh, maybe this will make me better, I hope.

00:01:48
Speaker 1: So maybe. Yeah, that's that's a topic to debate. I think whether knowledge of golf architecture actually makes you a better player, I would probably be better at golf if that were completely the case. But I certainly don't think it hurts and and I think that mainly what it does is it allows you to enjoy the game in a different way. You know, for me, that's that's the main motivation for it. You know, you contacted me not long ago on Slack just asking for some recommendations for golf architecture reading. What was your motivation to do that? So why do you want to know more about it?

00:02:26
Speaker 2: I mean, I as I'm going through and i'm producing. You know, you you chat with all of these architects, and it's it's it's I want to be like, you know, compelled by the conversation more than I already am, or like more enthralled, like it's cool to just like be there and listen to fine. But then as I'm you know, trying to cut clips or like find a good segment for social or trying to figure out, you know, what to put in the show notes, like what am I emphasizing what is important to people? It's an audience that I am not necessarily as familiar with or or as a part of as I probably should be. So that was my main kind of emphasis in in you know, getting to the true ethos of what we do here.

00:03:13
Speaker 1: I guess well, from that small invitation, you've gotten a full blown offering of a golf course architecture one oh one series. I'm excited to do these. I think it'll be pretty fun. It'll be it'll be like a return to my teaching days. You know, I was a teacher before before this, and you're young enough that you could have been one of my students when I when I was teaching.

00:03:36
Speaker 2: I'm ready, I got a notebook and everything.

00:03:38
Speaker 1: You've got the notebook, you're I mean, you're you're an a student already. All right, So so today we're talking about the schools, the schools of golf course design. These are these are not literal schools, right, they're they're more general philosophies that golf architects adopt in designing holes. And traditionally we talk about three schools of design. Those are penal, strategic, and heroic. I think penal and strategic are are the really important ones. So we'll spend the most time on those, but I'll briefly address heroic at the end and talk about what that is. But basically, these are like three different ways of approaching the design of a golf hole. They were developed at different times in history, they were popular at different times, but a lot of courses have examples of all of them. Right, different holes that are either penal or strategic or heroic you can kind of categorize, but not all holes like fit neatly into one or another. I think the important thing is and the reason it's it's good to learn about schools of design is that it allows you to start analyzing what a golf architect is doing right. It provides a framework for understanding pretty much any golf hole or course, you know, seeing it through the lens of the penal school, the strategic school, and the and the heroic school. That makes sense.

00:05:00
Speaker 2: So far, Yes, I think I'm with you to this point.

00:05:04
Speaker 1: At the very least, you're tracking along. Okay. The next step is trying not to giggle when we say penal school. Once we get to that point, then we've really become the serious golf architecture scholars. So penal school, what is that? There's a common misconception I think that the penal school refers to a very difficult or brutal kind of golf course. That's not really what it is. A penal golf hole or course can actually be very easy. It can also be really hard, but it doesn't necessarily have to do with level of difficulty. So what it actually is, I think, is it's a philosophy of design that tries to create a very fair playing field by penalizing poor strikes of the ball and rewarding good strikes of the ball. That's what it's really occupied with doing, penalizing the poor strokes, rewarding the good stroke.

00:06:00
Speaker 2: That that sounds like something that that should be done generally. I feel like I ideologically that makes a lot of sense to me.

00:06:09
Speaker 1: It stands to rationality, right. That that's why it was developed in the first place, because it's like a very reasonable way, a very common sense way to approach golf course design. Right. So you know, penal design, it's a it's a way of placing hazards. Right, You're placing hazards to catch wayward shots, and in doing that, you're penalizing the poor strikes of the ball. If you hit the ball far enough and straight enough, you will be rewarded by being on the fairway or being on the green. It's kind of a or B, black or white. That's penal design. So I want to I want to try to help you understand each school of design by imagining a golf hole, very simple golf hole, straight away par four, four hundred yards. Okay, that's it. We just have we just start with a T box and a green straight away four hundred yard middling, medium, medium, par four. All right, So how would we place hazards on this hole in order to create a penal design? See some of these features, you know, can can change in nature. You know, they don't have to be bunkers, they don't have to be water whatever. The placement of the hazards is what we're talking about. So I'm imagining, if I'm a penal architect and i want to turn this straight away par four into a golf hole that fits my philosophy, I'm going to put a cross bunker, like a bunker that goes across the front of the fairway, because you know, if somebody tops the ball or somebody hits it really thin, I want them to end up in that bunker. I don't want them to end up in the fairway. And you've seen you've probably seen players like hit a low ball that ends up going farther than their normal drives right, and so as a penal architect, I'm trying to avoid that. I'm putting that cross bunker there to catch those shots. Then I'm also considering hooks and slices. So I'm gonna put bunkers, maybe multiple bunkers, maybe one long or two long bunkers down both sides of the fairway. All right, Now, I've penalized the wayward shots. So if you hit the ball straight, you're in the fairway. Okay, now the green, I'm gonna put a bunker in front of the green, another cross bunker in front of the green, because if somebody comes up short, if somebody doesn't hit it far enough, I want them to be in that bunker. I don't want them to then bounce onto the green and then hooks or slices. Two bunkers on both sides of the green, then a bunker. Long. Somebody hits it thin, they'll end up in that bunker. This is kind of an ideal penal hole right now. Now a couple of other factors. I want the fairway to be fairly flat, because if somebody hits the fairway, I want them to be rewarded. I don't want them to have some kind of funky lie because of the little undulations in the fairway. I want I want them to get a level lie. And then I want the green to fairly flat. Two, because if they hit the green, I want them to have a fairly simple putt because they're being rewarded for that good approach. I don't want them to have some double breaking putt.

00:09:11
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:09:12
Speaker 1: So that's that's my golf hole. That's the ideal penal golf hole. How do you feel about that golf hole? Does that all make sense to you?

00:09:20
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean and like you said, I assume you could replace that front cross bunker with a pond so that you can you can just go into the water then instead of a bunker or whatever. Like I guess my main question would be does it does it matter? Like do you care? Are you putting like you want to penalize hooks and slices off the tee? Say like are these ten yards off? Are these twenty yards off? Like? How extreme? Like I hit a draw and I tend if I leave it open, I my miss is like way right generally right, and like if I'm really pushing it right at like am I? If I hit it too far right? Am I over your bunker to that point? Then?

00:10:08
Speaker 1: Interesting? It depends levels of difficulty. Remember how I talked about like a penal golf hole can actually be pretty easy. So just imagine that hole that I laid out for you.

00:10:20
Speaker 2: Like what you laid out I think is like a pretty simple Like I would feel good about playing that hole a flat fairway of flat green, Like I feel like it's pretty straightforward there.

00:10:32
Speaker 1: But if I made the fairway twenty yards wide and put the hazards where I put them right close to the fairway. Yeah, then it would start to get really hard. If I made the fairway eighty yards wide, then it would be pretty simple, pretty easy. So it just, you know, a level of difficulty. It kind of depends. Now you know, there's there's another way to approach this, where you would say, Okay, if we want the ideally fair golf hole, then what we'd do would be to make the penalties more severe as you get farther away from the fairway.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:11:02
Speaker 1: So maybe you have just rough on the sides of the fairway, and then a few yards off of the fairway you have bunkers, and then a few yards farther off the sides of the fairway you start to have trees or water. Yeah, and so the penalty gets greater the greater the misses. The concern of the penal architect is to make the ideally fair golf hole. Now, okay, you've already said this seems like a kind of rational way to approach building a golf hole, make it fair. What do you think are what would be the problems with designing a golf hole like this? Do you think I.

00:11:40
Speaker 2: Feel like, well, I was just gonna say, I feel like it's a lot easier to make it harder than it is to make it easier, Like it is easier to throw water or bunkers or grown out rough for out of balance, whatever that it is to like give somebody truly a flat, lie truly a flat, like a well sloped putt, like any of those things. I feel like it's easier to put obstacles in the way than it is to actually reward people.

00:12:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, probably true. And it could get away from you a little bit as an architect, right if you start piling up too many obstacles, if you get over enthusiastic about it, then you end up with a kind of monstrosity of a hole. Now, what about what you're thinking about when you're playing this hole, when you're standing on the tee, do you have any choices in front of you?

00:12:33
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess like you could take less than driver to in the hope of hitting it straighter, Like if I'm just trying a four hundred yard hole, if I'm just trying to punt, you know, six iron six iron kind of thing, like I don't know that could that could be a thought of mine if I'm really trying to not hit it in any bunker.

00:12:57
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the full priority of the golf hole of the design is on hazard avoidance, then maybe you consider clubbing down and trying to hit a straighter shot. So you know, certainly a course analytics, a course management expert would advise you against that, would advise you to get it as far down the playing field as possible. But that's neither here nor there. I mean, this is the design is kind of motivating you maybe to think about trying to hit it as straight as possible. But I would just point out that that's basically all the golf hole is making you think about. It's making you think about hitting the fairway and hitting the green, and that's basically it. And that can be fairly boring on repeat plays because you're not getting much dynamism in playing this hole. There's not much variety from day to day, and so that could potentially be an issue.

00:13:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I feel like if you're if you have you know, eighteen holes, whatever you take out the part threes, if you have fourteen holes of bunker lined fairways, then you're kind of getting into the same thing. No matter if it's you know, three hundred and thirty yards or six hundred yards, it's kind of the same system of I just want to play this as straight as possible, and however long it takes me to get down there, it takes me to get down there.

00:14:16
Speaker 1: There's not very there's not really that many ways to design a penal golf hole. Now, there are some courses that do this pretty successfully find some variety in these concepts, but ultimately you're kind of trying to when your priority is fairness, the variety of the golf course is a little bit limited.

00:14:34
Speaker 2: Now.

00:14:35
Speaker 1: I'd also raise another point here, and that is that penal golf courses tend to be harder for average players, players like you and me, and easier for really expert players, because you know, what really expert players are good at is hitting it long and straight, you know, and that helps on any golf course. But on a golf course where that's the only requirement, where that's all you're thinking about, all you have to do, then a PGA Tour pro is going to ace that test time after time after time, whereas a player like you're, you know, we occasionally have trouble just getting the ball off the tee. Yeah, those golf courses are set up to punish us.

00:15:21
Speaker 2: So is that more of a like a I don't know. I don't want to call it like a systemic failure. But there are more of you and me than there are PGA Tour pros for sure, that's right. So is that a good thing or a bad thing?

00:15:37
Speaker 1: Well, I guess it depends on what the purpose of the golf course is. I mean, you're familiar with Bethpage Black, right, Yeah, that is a golf course that prides itself on being hard. I would say there are maybe some strategic holes out there, but for the most part, the concepts are fairly penal, as in, the hazards are kind of flanking and and et cetera.

00:15:56
Speaker 2: Right, that was my biggest takeaway, Like, I remember the first time I ever played there that, like, the greens are not that bad, and that's what I was most worried about. And I did not have a tough time on the green. I put it really well, and I was like, these are not fast and there's not a lot to them. It's just getting beat up on your way down there is what kills you.

00:16:18
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, Yeah, And you know, if you it's a fairly it's a fairly straightforward test on a lot of those holes. Right, you got the bunkers on the sides of the fairway, you got the bunkers around the greens. If you're on the green, then then the greens are relatively simple most of the time. So the primary test is physical, right, you know what you need to do. You got to hit the fairway, you got to hit the green, and if you don't do that then then it's rough. Yeah, yeah, right for sure. So in any case, that that is an example of a you know, beth Age kind of sits in between some of these categories. But but I think it's probably a good working example of what a penalal golf course design can look like. Now on this point of it tending to be harder for average players than for expert players, there's an interesting historical narrative to tell here about when penal architecture was popular and when strategic architecture started to emerge, and why it is that a lot of architects decided to move on to a different philosophy or different approach to designing golf courses. One example was Royal Saint George's. This is an Open championship golf course. It hosted its first Open in eighteen ninety four, and this was a modern golf course at the time, which means that it followed a kind of penal philosophy of design. Now, the land was wild that you know, it's like linksland, wild, rumpled linksland with some crazy holes. But the hazards that were built tended to be penal in their intent. Their intent was to capture these wayward shots. There are these bunkers that you had to carry off of each t and there were different results, rewards and punishments depending on how good your strike was. In eighteen ninety four, players were playing with the old Gutta Percha golf ball, some equipment that is extraordinarily hard to use, and so even really good players were challenged to make these carries consistently because of the vagaries of the equipment. Eighteen ninety four Open Championship were all Saint George's, a primarily penal design. The winner, J. H. Taylor shot three twenty six over four rounds. His rounds were eighty four, eighty eighty one, eighty one. That won the Open Championship. Okay, then It was a very different time, but the course was hard. Ten years later, a couple of things that it had happened with the equipment. Golf had gotten more popular, more science had entered into the construction of the equipment. The biggest thing was the change of the ball from the old Guta Percha ball to the Haskell ball or the wound ball that just went way farther. Nineteen oh four Open Jack White, not of the white stripes, this was this is a golfer. He shot two ninety six, That is thirty strokes better than Jay H. Taylor's winning total. Jack White shot eighty. He didn't start off well eighty seventy five seventy two to sixty nine. Raking seventy was an incredible idea in the eighteen nineties, but it had become less so as the equipment had gotten better and as the players had gotten better. Suddenly Royal Saint George's wasn't that hard anymore, because all of a sudden players got good enough to consistently make those carries, and the course wasn't offering much else in the way of challenge. And this is when a group of thinkers, a group of architects started to theorize a different way of building golf courses. And they started to look at some of these courses that had been built in recent times and say, these don't seem to be that interesting or challenging anymore to good players. As players improve, they just kind of end up murdering these golf courses that were initially really hard. Why is that? And so they started to come up with different ideas about how a golf course could be broadly challenging not only for expert players, but interesting and fun for average players. And part of the solution to that problem was kind of the invention of strategic golf architecture. And that's what we're going to get into next. After we talk about Club TF for a moment, I want to talk about Club TF. PJ. What what's your favorite part of Club TF.

00:20:53
Speaker 2: I like the hangouts. I mean, the TGL one that we just did was incredible. I know, the big plans for the February hangout. I think the kind of community interaction is really cool, and how many people tune in and always comment on all the articles and are really kind of bought into Club TFE has been the kind of biggest revelation to me, I would say.

00:21:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, that community and Club TFE is really incredible. It's a bunch of avid golfers golf nuts, so we all have that in common right off the bat. The hangouts are part of it. We do a monthly virtual hangout where some of us get together and maybe with a couple of guests and just kind of have a casual chat about something or other. The last one was incredible where you guys played a golf course that was a virtual golf course that was designed by Club TFE members their version of a TGL course, and there were some truly incredible holes. The next one is actually going to be a wine themed hang out. I'm not sure if we've announced that yet, but I'm going to be involved in this and we'll give me an excuse to drink a little bit of wine with some wine knowledgeable people. So we do that kind of thing on a monthly basis to build this community and to keep in touch with people. We also have events, and CLUBTFE members are often at Club TFY only events or just at the public events that we hold. You get early access to those events if you're a Club tf member. And then this comment section this uh, these or multiple comment sections on different articles are a great place for people to discuss things and get to know each other, and lots of friendships have formed there. So that's one of the greatest parts of CLUBTFE Friday Golf's membership. Go to the Frida egg dot com slash membership to see what CLUBTFE is all about. All right, let's talk about strategic golf course design. Let's do it.

00:22:40
Speaker 2: I'm ready.

00:22:41
Speaker 1: This is an attempt to introduce some thought and tactical complexity back into the game.

00:22:48
Speaker 2: I like that, so design, I like the sound of that. At least we'll see.

00:22:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, so sounds like something you could do, right.

00:22:56
Speaker 2: I would like, yeah, I know what I would like to do. And then that it's the doing it part that's kind of hard for be on a golf course.

00:23:05
Speaker 1: Well, you've already identified one of the potential issues with the strategic school, but we'll get to that eventually. So the main intention of the strategic architect is to make sure that it's not just the player's ability to physically strike the ball that matters. It's also the player's ability to choose smart targets and to manage risk reward situations to analyze the golf course and come up with a good plan of action. Strategic architects want to test that aspect of a player's ability. They think that's important. Players are given options and forced to make decisions, and if they make good decisions, they will gain some sort of advantage. So let's go back to our four hundred yard straight away par four. We're going to take away all the bunkers and then we're going to do everything we need to do With two bunkers. We'll put one bunker at the front right portion of the green. Okay, so if you're on the right side of the fairway, you have to play over that bunker. If you're on the left side of the fairway, the bunker's not in your way. You have a clear path to the green. So it's right there, front right portion of the green. Now we're going to create our second bunker. This one will be a fairway bunker. Okay, so do you remember which side of the faraway is better.

00:24:30
Speaker 2: I want to be on the left so I don't have to play over the bunker.

00:24:33
Speaker 1: There you go. We're gonna put the bunker right there. Yeah, we're gonna put the fairway bunker right where you want to be. Okay, So now you have a choice. You can play away from that fairway bunker and be safe, but you're left with a tough approach over the green side bunker if you try to play closer to that faaraway bunker. If you take on that risk and you don't go in the bunker, you'll have an easier approach shot. That is strategic design at its most basic. There's a hazard right where you want to be, which creates this risk reward scenario. You have to make a choice on the tee about how how aggressive to be right, and that choice has subtle or delayed consequences, either positive or negative. These subtle penalties that happen are a big feature of strategic golf course design. You know, in penal architecture, it's kind of a or B. There's the there's the clear penalty for the wayward shot. You know what's happening to you in strategic architecture. Sometimes you're on the fairway and you think I'm okay, but then you get to your next shot and you're like, I'm actually not okay. Yeah, that's the subtle or delayed penalty. So what's your reaction? To that kind of golf hole in in contrast to the to the penal design.

00:25:55
Speaker 2: It has me thinking like a similar thing of The only thing I would even consider on the penal hole would be like is it worth taking less the driver just to try to keep it on the planet in a worst case scenario. Now I would be thinking if I take less than driver and I come up like short of that bunker to the left, but then I have a longer, quote unquote easier shot into the green, it adds maybe you know, two or three times more wrinkles of club usage, or you know, how aggressive do I want? Am I okay? Going to the right further with a driver and then having you know, a wedge or a low iron in my hand and trying to like, can I do I feel more comfortable going over a bunker with that versus the longer iron anything like that. That would That's what would be going through my head at that point.

00:26:58
Speaker 1: Very nice. I mean, basically, two bunkers. We haven't done really anything else to our straight away part four, Right, Yeah, two bunkers, and all of a sudden you're thinking through all those scenarios, not just do I challenge the bunker or do I don't do I not challenge the bunker, But do I do I hit a shorter shot that might be straighter that will get me to that side of the fairway? Or do I hit a longer shot that's out in the safe part of the fairway and take that shorter shot that might not be from as good of an angle. You're already thinking through all these possible situations that could happen, and that is what strategic architecture is supposed to do. It's supposed to engage the mind.

00:27:38
Speaker 2: So this this might be a maybe not a one oh one question. It could be a two oh one, It might be a one oh two. I don't know. I'll see where this goes. This could be a really stupid question too. You guys talk about angles all the time, like do angles matter?

00:27:53
Speaker 1: Arguably too much?

00:27:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, like at what everybody always talks about do the crux of do angles matter? Or should we should? The PGA tour approaches do it right and everybody bombs it wherever they want. I guess that would be my main question. For normal people. Golf angles probably matter a little bit more. I would assume.

00:28:16
Speaker 1: Maybe that's a controversial issue. This is something that people get surprisingly worked up about.

00:28:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that I've gathered that.

00:28:29
Speaker 1: It's a little bit odd, to be honest, how angry people sometimes get about this stuff. I think we forget that we're talking about golf. But but yeah, I mean that that analysis that you just indicated is a really legitimate one and a critique of strategic architecture that could be made. And that is this in the scenario that I just laid out, what somebody would who is giving good advice about course management would tell you is that your priority shouldn't be to chase an angle. It should be too avoid that fairway bunker. And then once you avoid that fairway bunker, then you just take what you get. You take the bad angle, You try to get as far down the fairway as you can while avoiding hazards, and take what you get from there. And the reason for that, they will say, is that the potential penalty of being in that fairway bunker is a lot greater than the potential advantage you would get from playing close to the fairway bunker and not going in it. And so simple math would tell you my first priority should be to avoid the fairway bunker, and I shouldn't worry about those angles. But what I would say to that, I mean, there are a number of responses to this. There are different things you can do in the design of a hole that we'll talk about that might tempt you to get a little bit closer to that fairway bunker than you should. But my basic response to that would be, you have the option. And that's the point. If you're saying, I'm going to play away from all fairway bunkers on your strategic golf course, that's what I'm gonna do. That's great, that's your choice. What the golf course is allowing you to do is to make that informed choice. Not everybody's going to make that choice, and that's part of the beauty of it. Now, another point to keep in mind is that none of us is really as accurate as we think we are. And this is a point that course management experts often emphasize. You shouldn't be trying to like skirt a fairway bunker by four yards, because your dispersion pattern off the tea is not four yards. Yeah right. You should be looking at the middle of the fairway most often and just considering out from there, like your likely misses and trying to avoid the places that those misses might take you. So that that is something to bear in mind as well. But again, the course is the course. It's going to tempt you to do some things that you maybe you shouldn't do. Not everybody is math driven and the way they think their way around a course, and so the golf course architect's job is not to prevent the data driven player from just avoiding hazards all over the golf course. It's to make an interesting playing field for everybody to engage with and think about. And I think having those different options is part of what allows the game to be fun, even in an age when everybody is saying you should play a golf course the same way. Does that make sense as as a response to what you were wondering.

00:31:38
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I mean that that totally does make sense. It's the ability to do whatever you want is I guess the the emphasis here, and then however you want to money bullet your way from there is kind of of up to you at that point.

00:31:55
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that is the art argument that a strategic architect would me. And you've probably noticed that I have a bias here that I like strategic golf course design, and I should admit that bias as our guide through this subject. But some people might say that the way that expert players play courses now where they moneyball, it should change the way architects approach designing golf courses for that population of players. I'm not sure that I agree with that, but I think that there's something to be explored there, and maybe there's a new school of architecture that will emerge from that. I think that would be pretty interesting and exciting. But we are talking about a philosophy of architecture that was kind of theorized for the first time one hundred and twenty five years ago. The game was very different back then. Players played their ball a lot closer to the ground than they do now, and so these angles that I'm talking about, you know, having that bunker on the front right portion of the green, if you're on the right side of the fairway, that's not good. Well to a player in nineteen ohero one, that bunker is really not good because what you're looking to do is run your ball into the green because you can't get your ball up that high.

00:33:08
Speaker 2: Modern equipment hits more consequential for you yeah, than just trying to hit an eight iron over a bunker. Sure, that's right.

00:33:15
Speaker 1: Modern equipment and the way that that players play the game today, especially pro players but also some amateurs, we hit the ball way higher, you know, and it stops way quicker than it used to, and that changes a lot of a lot of these dynamics that we're talking about. At the same time, there's plenty that a strategically minded architect can do to intensify some of these scenarios that the architect is presenting to the player. Okay, a couple of things that we could do to our part four. One of the most underdiscussed ways to intensify a strategic hole design like this would be to use slope. So far, we've just used bunkers. What if we you know, we have that bunker on the front right portion of the green. What if on the back left portion of the green we had a little runoff at the back of the green. Then if you're on the right side of the fairway, that safe side of the fairway, not only do you have to worry about that bunker, but you have to stop your ball really quickly to avoid having it go down that runoff. Whereas if you're on the left side of the fairway, then you have more kind of room to land your ball. So slope can influence strategy. Maybe the entire green slopes from high right to low left, so that again, if you're on that right side of the fairway, you're kind of hitting down the slope of the green. From that angle, your ball is going to kind of land on a downslope, Whereas if you're on the left side of the fairway, you're hitting more into the slope. So the slope of the green, the general tilt of the green can influence which positions in the fairway are advantageous or disadvantageous. Maybe, in order to just clarify the choice between the right and left sides of the fairway, maybe you put a bunker in the middle of the fairway, and either you have to really take a risk by threading the needle between the bunker and the middle of the fairway and the bunker on the left side of the fairway, or you have to really bail out by going way right to avoid that bunker. You can't just kind of go down the middle and split the difference. You have to make a choice. What do you think about bunkers in the middle of a fairway. Do you like that? Do you dislike that?

00:35:30
Speaker 2: I think I like the theory behind it. I think I like the idea of it. It is always as a person who does not hit the ball straight. If I hit the ball straight and end up in a bunker, I'm going to be kind of, you know, mad. I'm not mad, but frustrated because you know, I only get so many of those on a good day, and I would, you know, try to My thinking would be, I can't hit the ball straight anyway, so I'll just aim right at it, and then if I actually hit it, well, I'm screwed. So I think I like the theory of it, and it definitely makes the going left on this hypothetical hole much harder threading the needle. But then my question, my follow up would be, so you thread that needle that is considerably harder than the other side, Now, is it enough of a reward? Like me, thinking about this strategically, I think I would still rather have the bailout right. And I'm trying to land a wedge or a nine iron whatever over this bunker that I'm really not terribly worried about. Versus like, is it easy enough to even bother going left here? Hypothetically?

00:36:49
Speaker 1: Really good point, really good analysis. This exactly what architects have to balance and consider when they're designing a hole. Strategically, when you intensify one part of the hole, you also kind of have to intensify the other part of the hole. So if we put that bunker in the middle of the fair we make going left way harder, way more dangerous, and the reward for going left is not good enough for that, We've thrown the hole out of balance. Everybody's going to go right. Well, what if instead of putting a bunker front right, we have a tree overhanging the front right portion of the green, and if you're over on the right side of the fairway, that tree blocks you out. I'm not saying I like that as a as a golf course, des, I mean it's a little yeah, it's a little gimmicky. I mean it's a little silly. But that intensification of the choice between right and left and the pathways to the green is kind of what you have to do in response to the problem that you're talking about when a hole gets thrown out of balance. Strategically, you have to intensify different parts of it in order to keep the risk reward balance where it should be.

00:38:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that makes sense. And then that gives me the normal idiot and opportunity to act like I'm Jordan Speith and like act like I'm going to just hit like this low runner underneath the tree, which for the one time of every thousand that I pull it off, I'm going to feel like I could go win the US Open. So I appreciate that from my standpoint as well.

00:38:23
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of other things that you can do with a strategic hole that we haven't talked about yet, like ways to use slopes and fair ways, other kinds of hazards, creaks, out of bounds lines. All of these have like different characteristics, different effects on the risk reward balance. But I think we have basically covered the fundamentals here, so quickly want to touch on what the heroic school is and then we can we can close this one out. The heroic school often referred to as as the third school of golf course design. If we wanted to turn that four hundred yard Part four into a heroic hole, we would just require a big carry over water maybe to get to the advantageous position in the fairway. It's kind of like the Strategic School on steroids, right. Instead of these kind of subtle distinctions between different positions in the fairway, there's a really obvious, in your face choice that you need to make, and the aggressive option usually involves a big carry over a scary hazard. Good example of this might be the sixth hole at Bayhill. Do you remember Bryson de Shambau hitting it over the lake at bay Hill a few years ago?

00:39:31
Speaker 2: Yep?

00:39:32
Speaker 1: All right, So that hole that just kind of bends around the lake. That's a heroic design, I would say, because in order to get the advantage, in order to have a chance of going for the green to two, or in Bryson's case, reaching the green in one shot, you have to make a big carry over this lake. That's kind of thrilling. And you saw the effect of the architecture in the crowd's reaction to Deshamba's shot. That was a heroic shot that he pulled off, and that was brought out by the heroic arc pitecture of the whole. I'm that's not an endorsement of that whole necessarily. I think there are other problems with it, but that is the essence of heroic architecture. I think it's basically strategic architecture, but just intensified in a different way. This idea, that heroic idea was popularized by by Robert Trent Jones, who is the most popular golf architect of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. He was an incredible self promoter. He wanted to distinguish himself from the golf architects of the pre World War II period and insists that he represented a new wave or a new school of golf architecture. But I don't think there's quite enough of a distinction between strategic and heroic to call heroic a new school. And so that's that's as much as I want to say about heroic. Why don't we wrap up there? PJ Takeaways. What is the thing that you're thinking about at this point in our in our golf course architecture one oh one curriculum is what is the big kind of question on your mind or or you know, synthesis or epiphany that you're having right now.

00:41:07
Speaker 2: I am I am, I am very like analytically mathematically driven with my sports and you know, like going for and on fourth down cool.

00:41:18
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, you're familiar with the analytics debate through football and other sports.

00:41:23
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, Like going for it on fourth down is good. I would never kick field goals. You should go for it and go for two point conversions all of that. Like anything the math tells me to do, I get there and I'm full wholeheartedly behind. So I am. You know, mentally, I think if I have an opportunity to hit driver, it is better for me to just get down there and try to get as close as possible and as few shots as possible and take take my chances with that. But I'm also like, I don't know my rational brain is tied with my math brain in that way. But at the same time, like I just wanted to be fair, Like I think I should be rewarded for a good shot that goes far versus you know, a poor shot that doesn't go as far, or like how I I like the thought process behind the strategic but I think I'm more concerned with just the binary I should be rewarded for the very few shots that I personally hit well versus if I hit a good shot and I still end up not rewarded. I'm going to be angry about it.

00:42:42
Speaker 1: That is a mindset that is going to make exploring strategic golf architecture very interesting. And so I'm so glad that you're bringing that to this And I think that that's I mean, it's a side of this argument about golf course does that maybe doesn't get heard enough.

00:43:03
Speaker 2: I'm a good process person, Like, even if you don't get it on fourth and two, I will just go down yelling good process, good process, process right, and I will be mad at the results not being a you know, indicative of my good process to get there, you know what I mean?

00:43:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, And I think that that mindset is really good for a player trying to figure out how to tackle a golf course. But there are two different issues here that sometimes are hard to separate but probably should be separated. One issue is how should you, as a player negotiate a golf course. The second issue is how should an architect design a golf course to make it optimally interesting and enjoyable for the highest number of players. Those two issues maybe are interrelated because the architect needs to respond to what players are doing in order to make it interesting for them. For sure, but they are two separate issues, and sometimes there's friction between an architect and a player and that can be interesting too. Sometimes the architect's job is to bother or annoy the player, and that's part of this game as well. So I think this relationship between you know, what you're thinking about as a player, about how to get better and how to approach a golf course tactically, and what an architect is doing to try to make that endeavor as interesting as possible is to me a fascinating issue in golf course design and definitely something that we're gonna we're gonna investigate further as we as we go along. Thanks for doing this, PJ.

00:44:50
Speaker 2: This has been awesome. I've had I've had absolutely a blast. I'm I'm I'm ready to figure out what what never punting in golf possibly be for me, because i am I'm really I'm really excited to find that out.

00:45:05
Speaker 1: Never chase an angle is the answer there. This episode of Designing Golf was produced by PJ Clark, with a special thanks to Cameron Hurdis. Make sure to check out Club TFE Thefrida egg dot com slash membership. Lots of fun stuff going on in there. Thank you for listening. We'll be back again with an episode very soon. The next episode is an interview with Jeff Ogilvie and that's going to be in your feeds right now. After the Jeff ogilvy episode will go to a an every two week cadence for designing golf. So that's that's what we've got laid out for you there, all right, We'll be back again in the next episode.