Speaker 1: Should fairness be considered an important thing in golf course design.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about today with PJ Clark in
Speaker 1: this installment of our Golf Architecture one oh one series.
Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf all right, PJ,
Speaker 1: welcome back to the pod.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
Speaker 3: I love getting into the hot button issues of today.
Speaker 3: The number one hot topic on the PGA Tour on
Speaker 3: a weekly basis fairness and how do we achieve it.
Speaker 1: I'm ready to get listen. Some people say designing golf
Speaker 1: is too controversial. I say, I want all the smoke.
Speaker 1: I want this podcast to be on the forefront.
Speaker 3: Finger on the pulse here. I mean, this is the
Speaker 3: pulse of humanity today. Everything's got to be fair and
Speaker 3: down the middle.
Speaker 1: So absolutely yeah. Well, to start off, would you consider
Speaker 1: yourself a member of the fairness?
Speaker 3: I think, like in a vacuum, probably like I.
Speaker 2: I I think I'm too.
Speaker 3: My my logical brain wants to be rewarded for good
Speaker 3: shots and penalized for bad shots. I I don't want
Speaker 3: to say I disagree with a lot of what Scotty
Speaker 3: commonly says. As I as I look up the ladder
Speaker 3: to my chief of the fair police here. But I
Speaker 3: I understand the the arguments against it, and that having
Speaker 3: some aspect of luck in a game of chance is
Speaker 3: h I mean, it's part of the game, right, That's
Speaker 3: that's why it's not played on a simulator, even though
Speaker 3: I guess now we do have a simulator Golf League.
Speaker 1: It seems like you already have pieces of the upcoming
Speaker 1: lesson lodged in your brain, probably because you've sat in
Speaker 1: on many discussions between Andy and Brendan on the shotgun
Speaker 1: start about fairness and golf course design and Scotty Shuffler's
Speaker 1: comments on it. You know, the number one player in
Speaker 1: the world right now seems positively obsessed with the idea
Speaker 1: of fairness, although he doesn't He's not like Terrel Hatton,
Speaker 1: you know, whereas Hatton gets extremely angry at unfair elements
Speaker 1: in golf courses, even though he is a great player
Speaker 1: at the old course, Terrel Hatton always baffles me. It's
Speaker 1: like he's he's best at doing what he hates, which
Speaker 1: I guess is a sort of curse and and kind
Speaker 1: of maybe explains his his you know, a touchy personality,
Speaker 1: but it's not.
Speaker 3: A major championship until Terrell Haddon throws a tag from
Speaker 3: on a golf hole that he doesn't like. It's kind
Speaker 3: of like a badge of honor these days.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a tradition at this point. But in
Speaker 1: any case, fairness does commonly come up in discussions of
Speaker 1: professional golf right now, and it's one of those areas
Speaker 1: where I think golf are architecture nerds and people who
Speaker 1: just follow the pro tours and that's it. It's one
Speaker 1: of those areas where they cross over and kind of
Speaker 1: maybe end up in discussion with each other. And I
Speaker 1: think there are very different perspectives on both sides of
Speaker 1: that divide, which is why I think this topic is
Speaker 1: really interesting. So why don't we start off with the
Speaker 1: basic question here? What do you think it means for
Speaker 1: a golf course to be fair?
Speaker 3: I think good shots should be rewarded with either, you know,
Speaker 3: kicks down the fairway or short lies or good lies
Speaker 3: or angles into the green. We've talked about angles plenty
Speaker 3: on this series so far. But I also think missus
Speaker 3: should be penalized. Now, I think where I'm going to
Speaker 3: get myself into trouble is when you gave me this
Speaker 3: prompt to think about. I think I kind of agree
Speaker 3: with the Scotty line of thinking logically that it should
Speaker 3: be based on how bad your miss is. It should
Speaker 3: further misses should be further penalized than closer misses, if
Speaker 3: that makes sense, the penalty, the penalty should be exponential
Speaker 3: to how bad the shot is.
Speaker 1: This is something that a lot of pros believe and
Speaker 1: that actually our colleague, Joseph Lamangna talks about a lot.
Speaker 1: Joseph gets frustrated by courses where wide misses are not
Speaker 1: as penalized as or or you know, or just as
Speaker 1: penalized as narrow misses. Right and Tory Pines often comes
Speaker 1: up as an example of this kind of golf course
Speaker 1: where it doesn't matter if you miss the fairway by
Speaker 1: five yards or by fifty yards. It's going to be
Speaker 1: a similar situation because what you have out there is
Speaker 1: just a lot of green, irrigated rough, and once you're
Speaker 1: off the fairway, it just doesn't really matter or that
Speaker 1: much where you are in that rough. And that, in
Speaker 1: Joseph's mind, as someone who analyzes professional tournament courses, is
Speaker 1: frustrating and an indication of ineffective tournament course design. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna try to introduce some complexity to that idea in
Speaker 1: this podcast maybe and bring up some challenges to it.
Speaker 1: But it certainly stands to reason, right, it seems like
Speaker 1: a reasonable proposal that that should be how we go
Speaker 1: about testing golfers.
Speaker 3: I just I I it doesn't make sense that if
Speaker 3: you missed a fairway by five yards and you missed
Speaker 3: a fairway by fifty yards that even I mean at
Speaker 3: some of these courses. We were looking at it when
Speaker 3: we were at Oakmont, Like if you blew it way
Speaker 3: left on one into where the galleries were, you had
Speaker 3: the trampled down rough that you could hit off of
Speaker 3: pretty easily.
Speaker 2: Like that, just that doesn't make sense that.
Speaker 3: You should be quote unquote rewarded for a worst shot,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: M Yeah, And it's an issue of fairness. This is
Speaker 1: the essence of what we're talking about when we talk
Speaker 1: about fairness and golf course design. And this kind of
Speaker 1: stuff drives professionals especially crazy because their whole life is
Speaker 1: geared toward executing golf shots well, hitting the ball well.
Speaker 1: They study and they bleed for their entire lives to
Speaker 1: do that. Thing well, and when they show up at
Speaker 1: a golf course where that doesn't give them a significant advantage,
Speaker 1: or somebody who hasn't worked as hard and who doesn't
Speaker 1: hit the ball as well is ending up in similar
Speaker 1: or better positions than them, then that's going to be frustrating.
Speaker 1: This is something that Scotti Scheffler has talked about. It's
Speaker 1: an understandable frustration because if that's if that's your life,
Speaker 1: then then you then you wanted to pay off and
Speaker 1: and so that seems to be the basis from which
Speaker 1: a lot of pro golfers criticize the unfairness of golf courses.
Speaker 1: It defies the very thing that they have worked hard
Speaker 1: to do. So kind of understandable.
Speaker 3: I think it makes sense, right if you're if you're
Speaker 3: aiming small to miss small, and you you do miss mall. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: obviously no one is just blatantly trying to blow it
Speaker 3: in the rough. I mean, at some points I guess
Speaker 3: you are, but that's a different discussion.
Speaker 2: I would probably say with the course set up.
Speaker 3: But if you're aiming small and miss mall and you
Speaker 3: miss mall versus some guy that completely goes off the
Speaker 3: radar and he ends up at a better spot than you.
Speaker 3: I I I understand a level of frustration that would
Speaker 3: come with that, that would that would piss me off
Speaker 3: for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, So a couple of related ideas to this would
Speaker 1: be that fair golf courses are generally understood by the
Speaker 1: fairness police primarily to be the golf courses where the
Speaker 1: elements of randomness and luck are kept to a minimum.
Speaker 1: So it's not just golf courses are fair if they
Speaker 1: reward good shots and penalize bad shots. They're they're fair
Speaker 1: if there is a if if randomness is kind of
Speaker 1: kept out of it, because randomness is one of those
Speaker 1: things that can end up not rewarding good shots or
Speaker 1: not punishing poor shots. Right, So randomness and luck are
Speaker 1: kind of opposed to these ideas that we're talking about.
Speaker 3: I think that's where you kind of lose me because
Speaker 3: I again, like it's an outdoor sport. There are bumps,
Speaker 3: there are there are bruises, there are.
Speaker 2: Mounds in the fair way.
Speaker 3: You're gonna get a bad kick, Like this is not
Speaker 3: it's an outdoor sport. Like That's that would be my
Speaker 3: counter argument to that is that like, yeah, you can,
Speaker 3: you can draw it up correctly, and I do. I
Speaker 3: would argue that the difference between five and fifty yards
Speaker 3: off the fairway should be different in a vacuum, but
Speaker 3: you can't.
Speaker 2: The randomness within.
Speaker 3: That pocket five yards off the fairway, I think should
Speaker 3: exist and is fair to exist, because again it's an
Speaker 3: outdoor sport.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, then what about fairness in the middle of
Speaker 1: a fairway?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Right, I mean you can get a bad kick,
Speaker 3: you can land in a divot like That's again, this
Speaker 3: is like part of That's that to me is part
Speaker 3: of the game more than this course is not set up. Well,
Speaker 3: if that makes if that if that's a cohesive argument
Speaker 3: to you, well.
Speaker 1: It's it's uh maybe exactly the definition of an uncohesive argument.
Speaker 1: There's a contradiction here, isn't there. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: it's wrong, but there's a contradiction here saying we want
Speaker 1: good shots to be rewarded and bad shots to be punished.
Speaker 1: But but some element of randomness and luck is okay. Well,
Speaker 1: if you accept some element of randomness and luck, I
Speaker 1: guess the first question is how much of that? And
Speaker 1: the second question is, well, if we're accepting that, then
Speaker 1: you have to accept that if somebody, if two players
Speaker 1: hit the exact same drive, they might end up in
Speaker 1: completely different positions, whether they're on the fairway or off
Speaker 1: the fairway. Even if you limit the randomness and luck
Speaker 1: to just off the fairway, say two players hit it
Speaker 1: to exactly the same place, Well, if that area is
Speaker 1: random and chancy, then they might end up in completely
Speaker 1: different situations.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean my counter argument to that would be, just
Speaker 3: hit the fairway. That's what we're all trying to do, right,
Speaker 3: Like you could just that's kind of the get out
Speaker 3: of jail free card here is like, oh, you don't
Speaker 3: if you don't like the wiregrass at Pinehurst last year, Scott,
Speaker 3: he just hit the fairways man like that. It's kind
Speaker 3: of it's what we're all trying to do here at
Speaker 3: the end of the day. But I think where I
Speaker 3: understand the fair police argument is that it is not
Speaker 3: the penalties I feel like sometimes are.
Speaker 2: Not proportional to a miss. But I think.
Speaker 3: There is an element of randomness that in and outdoor
Speaker 3: sport is completely agreeable. I mean, you look at it
Speaker 3: at other sports like baseball. Every ballpark has different dimensions.
Speaker 3: You hit a ball that's going to be out at
Speaker 3: Yankee Stadium. That's a fly ball in somebody else's field.
Speaker 3: Like that's normal, Like, that's part of sports. That's part
Speaker 3: of the game. But I do think on a mis
Speaker 3: hit or on a miss there should be greater penalties
Speaker 3: based on how bad it actually is.
Speaker 1: Baseball is a good example because the field in baseball
Speaker 1: is to a degree very standardized, more so than a
Speaker 1: golf course. And baseball you have the same dimensions of
Speaker 1: the diamond. But where the differences come in is that
Speaker 1: outfield wall basically, and the side of the overall size
Speaker 1: of the ballpark bounces off of the wall. Sometimes bounces
Speaker 1: off of the wall at a at a baseball stadium
Speaker 1: are are very chancy and introduce an element of luck
Speaker 1: into the game that might not be there if the
Speaker 1: fields were completely standardized and had all the same dimensions
Speaker 1: and all the same you know, structures around them. But
Speaker 1: so baseball does kind of welcome in that element of randomness,
Speaker 1: and golf, I would argue, let's in more. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's And so that is where the complexity and difficulty
Speaker 1: of this discussion arrives, you know, because we have to
Speaker 1: ask how much of this randomness are we willing to admit.
Speaker 3: Well, even it's not even a it doesn't even have
Speaker 3: to be a golf course. Then when you're thinking about
Speaker 3: tournament golf, like in baseball, everybody is hitting in the
Speaker 3: same two and a half to three hour window in
Speaker 3: the same stadium. But in golf, you're playing, you know,
Speaker 3: six hours after somebody. The wind could change, the weather
Speaker 3: could change, it could be completely different. You're not playing
Speaker 3: the same you're playing the same course on the ground,
Speaker 3: but you're not playing the same course as guys that
Speaker 3: went out in the morning or in the afternoon based
Speaker 3: on what wave you are, whereas in baseball even you're
Speaker 3: more constrained, like everybody's playing at the same time in
Speaker 3: that given matchup versus in a tournament, you are completely
Speaker 3: at the whim of whatever time comes out of the
Speaker 3: USGA's lottery ball machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and golf is an individual sport, whereas baseball is,
Speaker 1: you know, one team against another. I think that in
Speaker 1: an individual sport, there's more room for those individuals to
Speaker 1: claim unfairness or that they didn't get they didn't get
Speaker 1: a proper shake in the proceedings. And so yeah, golf,
Speaker 1: golf definitely sets itself up to these these situations where
Speaker 1: people might might perceive some unfairness, and that, to me,
Speaker 1: that's part of what makes the game so interesting. But
Speaker 1: I want to touch on a couple other factors that
Speaker 1: I think sometimes lead people to say that a golf
Speaker 1: course is unfair. One has to do with categories of
Speaker 1: par because I get the sense that many players really
Speaker 1: hate when a par three can't easily be reached in
Speaker 1: one shot or a par four can't easily be reached
Speaker 1: in two shots. They believe that a you know, some
Speaker 1: kind of decent strike of the ball should reliably yield
Speaker 1: chance at a two put par. And they object to
Speaker 1: holes that push at the boundary of a higher par category.
Speaker 1: So they'll object to a par four that maybe kind
Speaker 1: of is almost a par five, or object to a
Speaker 1: par three that's almost a par four. Now moving in
Speaker 1: the other direction, they don't tend to complain if there's
Speaker 1: a par four that's almost a par three. And and
Speaker 1: so I think that this complaint about golf courses tends
Speaker 1: to be a little more easily dismissed. I don't think
Speaker 1: this is a matter of fairness. I think it's a
Speaker 1: matter of people's perception of par categories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, everybody wants the red numbers right, they don't.
Speaker 2: They don't like it. They don't like it when you make.
Speaker 1: It seems to be more about ego than than actually
Speaker 1: about the golf course, you know.
Speaker 3: I think I think if every if it was just
Speaker 3: you know, get a if the goal was which the
Speaker 3: goal is, but if it was framed as get around
Speaker 3: in as few shots as possible compared to everybody else,
Speaker 3: I feel like people would have less problems with maybe
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And then the last area where I think people sometimes
Speaker 1: object to golf courses as unfair would be just when
Speaker 1: they see unexpected things, like when they see elements of
Speaker 1: a golf course that they're not used to seeing. So
Speaker 1: this might be a bunker in the middle of a
Speaker 1: fair way that's unfair, you know, or a blind shot
Speaker 1: that's unfair. But the reason those things might be perceived
Speaker 1: as unfair, I don't think is that they're inherently unfair.
Speaker 1: It's more that they're just unexpected and unusual.
Speaker 3: So from that standpoint of like a center line bunker
Speaker 3: or something crazy, you could even like, I mean, Andy
Speaker 3: talked a lot about it at Oakmont with the setup
Speaker 3: and the rough like where is the line to you,
Speaker 3: golf courses are between gimmick and fair because like I
Speaker 3: feel like, like you know, the Maya Cova Cave bunker,
Speaker 3: like that's just a gimmick, right like that that's there,
Speaker 3: everybody knows it's there. It's not really a matter of
Speaker 3: fair or not. It's just like that's just I feel
Speaker 3: like if it's there, there is a line that maybe
Speaker 3: crosses it. Maybe the rough at Oakmont could arguably cross it.
Speaker 3: Whereas like, it's not a question of fair anymore. This
Speaker 3: is just like it's a joke, gimmick of a setup.
Speaker 1: Right at Oakmont, the rough started to seem to some
Speaker 1: people to be almost a gimmick, and I think it
Speaker 1: probably was. But I was somewhat okay with it because
Speaker 1: the history, like the deep history of that course is
Speaker 1: very based on this idea that any shot off the
Speaker 1: fairway should be very severely punished. That was baked in
Speaker 1: to the identity of the course from the beginning. And
Speaker 1: so I don't think that justifies everything in a golf
Speaker 1: course design. You can't just go crazy just because somebody
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty years ago I thought it was
Speaker 1: a good idea. But if it does have some sort
Speaker 1: of tradition and link to the identity of a golf course,
Speaker 1: then I tend to be more okay with it. I
Speaker 1: tend to also be more okay with it if a
Speaker 1: feature is based on some kind of natural, pre existing
Speaker 1: land form, and so actually, the cave bunker at my Acoba,
Speaker 1: I mean that's a natural land form, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean it's not. I think the cave
Speaker 1: bunker at my Acoba is almost like a tourist attraction
Speaker 1: as opposed to a real golf course feature, because it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to me to be all that much in play,
Speaker 1: even I might be wrong about that, but it just
Speaker 1: seems to be there for people to take photos of it,
Speaker 1: and so that's I guess, a little bit silly. But
Speaker 1: this is a great question, though, and I don't have
Speaker 1: an easy answer to it. In fact, this is like
Speaker 1: another episode of the podcast in and of itself what
Speaker 1: constitutes a gimmick in golf course design, because I don't know,
Speaker 1: Like when when people first saw the island green at
Speaker 1: TPC Sawgrass, it must have seemed kind of gimmicky because
Speaker 1: it was so unusual and so obviously constructed, Like there's
Speaker 1: no there's no way anybody could look at that and think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Pete Die just found that there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was just there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But now we're so used to it that it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem as gimmicky. So I think what we perceive
Speaker 1: to be a gimmick. It goes back to this issue
Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier, what we expect
Speaker 1: to see on a golf course and what we don't
Speaker 1: expect to see, And you know, architects have to work
Speaker 1: with those perceptions a little bit. They you know, if
Speaker 1: they introduced too many things that people would consider a gimmick,
Speaker 1: too many unexpected things into a golf course, then they
Speaker 1: can't be surprised when people regard it as gimmicky. But
Speaker 1: they can also challenge people, push against their expectations and
Speaker 1: occasionally introduce things that might be accused of gimme degree
Speaker 1: but have a certain purpose and philosophy behind them, and
Speaker 1: then eventually, maybe down the line, years down the line,
Speaker 1: those features will be accepted as less gimmicky and more familiar.
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Speaker 1: great stuff. All right, let's get back to the episode so, uh,
Speaker 1: let's go on to talking about a few specific features
Speaker 1: that might be deemed unfair in certain players' minds. This
Speaker 1: was the other part of the prompt that I gave
Speaker 1: you yesterday. What are specific features that that you would
Speaker 1: consider or that just people might consider unfair on a
Speaker 1: golf course. Let's get specific.
Speaker 2: Well, number number one thing they've popped into my head.
Speaker 3: And not to sound like a lovely Twitter account known
Speaker 3: as us golf Facts when I say this, but I
Speaker 3: do think there is something to the idea of maybe
Speaker 3: pin positioning or or even bunker positioning or penalty positioning,
Speaker 3: however you want to phrase it, that you're only impacting Uh,
Speaker 3: you know a player of one handiness or a player
Speaker 3: that only plays one type of shot. If you're putting
Speaker 3: all of the penalty or bunkers or hazards in one
Speaker 3: side of the course, I feel like having a disparity
Speaker 3: relatively even placing of pins and everything is probably the
Speaker 3: easiest way to get something fair. So if you have
Speaker 3: a course where you don't have that many green locations
Speaker 3: and every pin is tucked to the right side, are you,
Speaker 3: you know, discourinated against somebody that plays a draw?
Speaker 1: Are you are you after Patrick and Justin Reid? Are
Speaker 1: you should you be sued? Should should should the claiman
Speaker 1: send you a season desist?
Speaker 3: I don't want to go there, but ironically enough, it
Speaker 3: was the first thing that I thought of that, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I could see how somebody could get really angry about
Speaker 3: that if that was a repeated issue for them.
Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, this is this is a good point.
Speaker 1: What rationale is there to put pins in different places
Speaker 1: on a green? If not fairness and equity to all
Speaker 1: golfers playing the course? Why would you do that if
Speaker 1: it were not for this concept of fairness? So I
Speaker 1: think that's that's a really good example, and let's let's
Speaker 1: put that in, put that in the knapsack, and what
Speaker 1: others do you have?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Buckers was was my second one on more again, are
Speaker 3: you putting them on the front of every green versus
Speaker 3: the backside of every green? Like? Where where are the
Speaker 3: bunkers placed? I feel like, is in my mind are
Speaker 3: you giving this is maybe not a PGA Tour sentiment,
Speaker 3: but for a normal player, are you giving them the
Speaker 3: opportunity to use the ground and run it up to
Speaker 3: a green? Versus is every green guarded in the front
Speaker 3: by bunkers, so that you have to go in the
Speaker 3: air and you're not playing the ball on the ground. Again,
Speaker 3: as we've gone over as was originally intended by this game,
Speaker 3: some some would argue, so that was another one to me,
Speaker 3: And then I kind of just thought maybe penalty areas
Speaker 3: like the overdoing of water specifically, I feel like is
Speaker 3: probably a good one to point out as somebody that
Speaker 3: lives on Long Island, where there's a lot of water
Speaker 3: on a lot of golf courses, I feel like this
Speaker 3: is just it's kind of stupid.
Speaker 1: Listen, if you if you ever end up in Florida,
Speaker 1: and many many people who grow up in Long Island
Speaker 1: do eventually end up in Florida, you'll you'll find even more.
Speaker 2: Of that exactly.
Speaker 3: So I feel like the use of hazard's penalties, however
Speaker 3: you want to say it, Are you overdoing it? Is
Speaker 3: it not so much not random, but is it just
Speaker 3: borderline unplayable? I mean, you look at some of the
Speaker 3: holes that that we do undesigned disasters, where it's just like,
Speaker 3: what is the point of any of this lost marsh
Speaker 3: every fair way is a peninsula, Like this is just stupid.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a gimmick, but it's more just stupid
Speaker 3: and I don't know if it's quote unquote unfair, but
Speaker 3: it's certainly not. You're not identifying the the best golfer
Speaker 3: in a tournament there when anybody could just end up
Speaker 3: in the later at any given time.
Speaker 1: Yes, that would be where the idea of fairness would
Speaker 1: come in. I suppose is that golf courses with so
Speaker 1: much water on them create such a difference between just
Speaker 1: being on the fairway and being off the fairway that
Speaker 1: the difference between those positions is so stark in the
Speaker 1: case of water that you know, if you repeat it enough,
Speaker 1: it could certainly be said to become unfair. And I
Speaker 1: would say that the same accusation has been made of
Speaker 1: out of bounds too, because the disparity is so big
Speaker 1: between just being right inside the out of bounds line
Speaker 1: and being outside of the out of bounds line. I
Speaker 1: mean a huge, huge disparity there. Some players could say
Speaker 1: that's that's unfair. Okay, So those are two good ones.
Speaker 1: I want to introduce a few that have been I
Speaker 1: think really common in this discourse about fairness. One key
Speaker 1: one is undulating fairways. This was a big bone of
Speaker 1: contention among people who discussed golf architecture back at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the twentieth century. This was one of the
Speaker 1: main topics in this fairness discussion. Should fairways be heavily undulating?
Speaker 1: And the reason I think that this was such a
Speaker 1: big topic was that people were trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to build golf courses inland. And one thing about
Speaker 1: inland golf course properties is that they didn't tend to
Speaker 1: have the natural undulation constant undulation of links land properties
Speaker 1: and links golf courses were, of course the first golf courses.
Speaker 1: They were the examples that everybody discussed and compared new
Speaker 1: golf courses too. And so when they started to build
Speaker 1: golf courses inland, one of the big questions was, well,
Speaker 1: we don't have natural natural undulation here, should we build it?
Speaker 1: Should we construct it? Is that an important part of
Speaker 1: the game, And one side would argue, no, it's not
Speaker 1: an important part of the game. In fact, it's a
Speaker 1: less ideal part of the game because you can hit
Speaker 1: it in the middle of the fairway on an undulating fairway.
Speaker 1: Two players can hit the exact same shot and one
Speaker 1: might end up with a weird uphill or side hill lie,
Speaker 1: and one might end up with a flat lie and
Speaker 1: there's really no controlling that when you have undulations like
Speaker 1: they have at the old course at Saint Andrews. And
Speaker 1: so what we should do, in fact is intentionally, if
Speaker 1: we're going to construct anything, we should construct flat fairways
Speaker 1: so that players get approximately the same lies if they
Speaker 1: hit the fairway. Then there was another faction that argued,
Speaker 1: that's ridiculous, that makes the game boring. A big part
Speaker 1: of the charm of golf is exactly this lynxland undulation.
Speaker 1: We shouldn't be taking that out of golf courses. In fact,
Speaker 1: in some cases we might want to introduce it to
Speaker 1: golf courses. So this was a big issue of fairness
Speaker 1: that people argued about back in this kind of key
Speaker 1: period of golf architecture history around the turn of the
Speaker 1: twentieth century. What do you make of that debate about
Speaker 1: undulating fairways.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's just part of the game at
Speaker 2: that point.
Speaker 3: Like I again, I could see the argument that if
Speaker 3: you are artificially creating it and not going with the
Speaker 3: land and not using what you've been given, some could
Speaker 3: call it a gimmick. Maybe if you overuse it, I
Speaker 3: get that aspect, So.
Speaker 1: It seems it's like part of a part of what
Speaker 1: a big part of what a gimmick might be is
Speaker 1: that it's contrived or obviously constructed, that somebody went in
Speaker 1: there and made it, as opposed to encountered it in
Speaker 1: the landscape. And this is and if you think about that,
Speaker 1: this is so connected to our perception that golf is
Speaker 1: a game played in a natural setting. If it's a
Speaker 1: game played in a natural setting, we have a much
Speaker 1: bigger acceptance of randomness and quirks that might lead to unfairness.
Speaker 1: If we consider it a purely manufactured setting, I think
Speaker 1: our tolerance for those factors really goes down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I feel like if you are just bulldozing
Speaker 3: a bunch of trees and you decide to build a
Speaker 3: giant hill for no reason, then like that and you
Speaker 3: in theory people would be able to tell, like to
Speaker 3: some extent that you just made this, Then like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's kind of stupid, and I would argue that it's unfair.
Speaker 3: But if that's just the way the cookie crumbled and
Speaker 3: these glaciers moved however, many millions of years ago, then
Speaker 3: again I would just go with it's an outdoor sport like, sorry,
Speaker 3: you'll get the next one. Like on the aggregate. Sure,
Speaker 3: there are people that are just blatantly unlucky, but at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I feel like everything's going
Speaker 3: to relatively come out in the wash or be as
Speaker 3: close to fifty to fifty good break bad break as possible.
Speaker 3: Maybe on a certain day you just get hosed, but
Speaker 3: then you come back tomorrow and you get the good
Speaker 3: breaks like outdoor sport man can't can't complain about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you on this one. And I think
Speaker 1: moreover that if we're talking about fairness, if we're talking
Speaker 1: about the test of skill, a golf course assessing a
Speaker 1: player's level of skill as part of the fairness of
Speaker 1: the golf course overall, Because if a golf course is fair,
Speaker 1: then that means probably it's testing the skill of players
Speaker 1: above all. Yep. Then you can even argue that undulating
Speaker 1: fairways make a golf course more fair or a better
Speaker 1: test to skill in the sense that these courses require
Speaker 1: players to hit shots off of uneven lies on occasion,
Speaker 1: and it's unlikely that any given golfer over seventy two
Speaker 1: holes or whatever length the tournament is is going to
Speaker 1: get consistently worse lies than any other golfer. They tend
Speaker 1: to get sort of the same approximately the same number
Speaker 1: of breaks, the same number of side hill uphill downhill lies.
Speaker 3: If you listen a Brandle and he quotes his favorite
Speaker 3: statistic of strokes gained good breaks, then then you don't
Speaker 3: you have to pay attention. This is something you should
Speaker 3: be tracking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, what I'm saying might not be completely
Speaker 1: I do think over seventy two holes, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of room for variants, obviously, and some players do get
Speaker 1: more lucky over the course of a tournament than others.
Speaker 1: So I'll give some credit to Brandle there, but I
Speaker 1: think it tends to kind of come out in the wash.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and who like it happens right, Like that's that's
Speaker 3: the game that we're playing here. Like, sorry, you're gonna
Speaker 3: get a good breaker, bad break. Eventually, you could hit
Speaker 3: the wrong side of a hill on a green and
Speaker 3: run all the way back down, like that happened at
Speaker 3: the window a thousand times last week, Like it's it happens.
Speaker 3: Like I don't know what to tell you. It's kind
Speaker 3: of the game that we're all playing here. And obviously
Speaker 3: there's a bigger microscope on it at the professional level,
Speaker 3: but even it could happen to anybody. So like, yeah,
Speaker 3: if you're building a giant hill for no reason, I
Speaker 3: would I would, I don't know that. I'd call it unfair,
Speaker 3: I'd call it stupid, I'd call it a gimmick. But
Speaker 3: if you are just on the side of a hill
Speaker 3: because that's where the fairway is, and you got to
Speaker 3: hit a shot that's below your feet, then like, that's
Speaker 3: part of the game.
Speaker 2: It's it's you have to be able to hit that
Speaker 2: shot at the.
Speaker 3: End of the day.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me give you another potentially unfair element of
Speaker 1: a golf course, and this one maybe will be better
Speaker 1: received by you. I'm guessing it'll be better received as
Speaker 1: as potentially unfair than undulating fair ways, and that is
Speaker 1: greens that don't tend to receive approach shots of the
Speaker 1: length required. So the simplest example of this would be
Speaker 1: you have a two hundred and fifty yard par three
Speaker 1: and the green is fronted by a bunker. You kind
Speaker 1: of outlined a version of this scenario earlier. Say the
Speaker 1: approach is blocked and the green is shallow, and you
Speaker 1: have another hazard in the back and the green tilts
Speaker 1: away from the player and the par three is two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards. Is that unfair?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in a way, like I feel like you have
Speaker 3: to be especially in a part three, there has to
Speaker 3: be a way to hit the green right.
Speaker 1: Well, are you being devoted to par categories here? Though?
Speaker 1: Why not just consider it a par four lay up
Speaker 1: and then hit a pitch in to the green.
Speaker 3: That's such a good point.
Speaker 2: That's a good point.
Speaker 1: This is where it becomes tricky.
Speaker 3: I feel like if you are if you have that
Speaker 3: green and you know where people are going to be
Speaker 3: hitting it from, then you have to be able to
Speaker 3: reasonably assume that somebody can hold it with metal at
Speaker 3: that point, if you're not giving the opportunity to do that,
Speaker 3: and the easiest way to do that for at least
Speaker 3: ameters would probably be to run it up to some extent.
Speaker 3: And if you're not giving people the opportunity to do that,
Speaker 3: then you're asking for big numbers. I would say it's
Speaker 3: probably a pace of plate disaster at that point, which
Speaker 3: is never what anybody wants.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably just impractical to a degree, I.
Speaker 2: Would call it.
Speaker 3: I would lean that's more unfair than maybe hitting off
Speaker 3: the side of a hill in a fair way unless
Speaker 3: you built that hill out of nothing.
Speaker 1: Sure, Okay, I think a lot of people agree with you,
Speaker 1: and I think that green design and the ways that
Speaker 1: greens can be receptive and unreceptive is the one area
Speaker 1: in which a lot of architects and architecture nerds suddenly
Speaker 1: become members of the fairness police. It's kind of funny
Speaker 1: when you see this happen. It is accepted as a
Speaker 1: principle of golf course design that greens should kind of
Speaker 1: be built for the length of the whole that they
Speaker 1: appear on. If you have a long par four, then
Speaker 1: it's generally accepted that the green should accept a kind
Speaker 1: of low running, longer shot, Whereas if you have a
Speaker 1: short par four, it tends to be more accepted that
Speaker 1: the green can be small and unreceptive if you have
Speaker 1: a long par three and a short part three the
Speaker 1: same thing. I mean. Consider the eighth green at Oakmont
Speaker 1: versus the seventh green at Pebble Beach. One is very
Speaker 1: small and surrounded by hazards and has no room to
Speaker 1: run any shot up. That's the seventh hole at Pebble Beach,
Speaker 1: But everybody accepts that because it's one hundred yard shot.
Speaker 1: Whereas the eighth green at Oakmont, even though there are
Speaker 1: still obviously some people who did not like that hole
Speaker 1: and thought it was unfair, the green does does receive
Speaker 1: longer shots. You can run the ball up. The green
Speaker 1: is big, and so it's pretty receptive.
Speaker 2: So here's my thing on that.
Speaker 3: After seeing it in person and seeing it played for
Speaker 3: six days or whatever, I don't really get the unfair argument.
Speaker 3: I didn't get the whole big blow up about aid
Speaker 3: at Oakmont. I didn't really understand it at all. Honestly,
Speaker 3: if you're a professional player, it kind of seemed like
Speaker 3: an easy hole. Just blow it up there, get up
Speaker 3: and down, get.
Speaker 1: Out because of how the green was designed, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Like, it honestly did not seem that bad, even if
Speaker 3: you ended up in that bunker on the left, like,
Speaker 3: get up and down and cool, you're good. Like it
Speaker 3: honestly didn't seem like a problem at all.
Speaker 1: PJ. That was a great example of people not knowing
Speaker 1: ball pre criticizing the eighth hole at Oakmont just because
Speaker 1: it was going to play three hundred yards. I mean,
Speaker 1: please get over yourselves. And of course, once the tournament started,
Speaker 1: all those complaints just kind of disappeared people.
Speaker 3: I feel like it was like probably one of the
Speaker 3: more simple holes on the course. It's just like, ah,
Speaker 3: I'm just gonna blast it up there. I'm gonna make
Speaker 3: it three. Worst case scenario, I'll make a four and
Speaker 3: that's it.
Speaker 1: Like Jeff Ogilvie actually said this in our interview with him.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it appeared in the video or not,
Speaker 1: but he said something to the effect, well, the eighth
Speaker 1: hole is kind of a breather, you know, even though
Speaker 1: it's a three hundred yard part three, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: a pretty simple hole, you know, and and success you're
Speaker 1: not going to make a triple bogie there, and so
Speaker 1: you're just not not that scared of it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that hole has lost some of its teeth. It's
Speaker 1: become less of a good hole since players have become
Speaker 1: more able to reliably carry the ball through the air.
Speaker 1: Now that players can, you know, you can pretty much
Speaker 1: be assured that you're going to hit the ball a
Speaker 1: certain length, especially if you're a professional. That whole is
Speaker 1: the point of it is, is kind of lost a
Speaker 1: little bit. So yeah, kind of a kind of a
Speaker 1: side note on the eighth hold oak mind, I think
Speaker 1: at one time that that was a really cool, nuanced
Speaker 1: par three, but it's lost some of those complexities because
Speaker 1: you can just carry everything now. You know, those bunkers
Speaker 1: that kind of form a ring around the approach, those
Speaker 1: aren't that big of a factor. Players just hit it
Speaker 1: over them. Now. It used to be the case that
Speaker 1: you kind of had to land near them and run
Speaker 1: the ball up, And maybe for some amateur players that's
Speaker 1: still the case, but it's just it's not the same
Speaker 1: hole anymore.
Speaker 3: So what outside of you mentioned like several seven a
Speaker 3: pebble beach, Like that's that's a wedge for everybody, Like
Speaker 3: you don't have to run that up. But what I
Speaker 3: was trying to say before, when you ask what might
Speaker 3: be unfair, I feel like four maybe not Like a
Speaker 3: webshot par three is the one example that like that.
Speaker 2: I feel like it's commonly accepted. But I feel like,
Speaker 2: if if.
Speaker 3: You're on a normal golf course for amateurs, reasonable people,
Speaker 3: I feel like you have to give some level of
Speaker 3: access to a green on the ground to it at
Speaker 3: least at something right, Like I feel like if you
Speaker 3: have to fly it on every green. That's a lot
Speaker 3: And I don't know that i'd call it unfair, but
Speaker 3: I definitely I call it mean.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe joyless. Yeah, the golf course isn't as fun.
Speaker 1: This brings in the idea of playability, which is again
Speaker 1: one of those words that's part of the word cloud here,
Speaker 1: the fairness word cloud playability. It's not exactly the same
Speaker 1: as fairness. Playable and fair those are I think related
Speaker 1: concepts in a lot of people's minds, but maybe not
Speaker 1: exactly the same. And I would I would say the
Speaker 1: same thing about the word equity. What you're talking about
Speaker 1: giving players who hit lower trajectory shots and maybe have
Speaker 1: less ability, giving those players the ability to run the
Speaker 1: ball onto a green is yes, maybe a question of
Speaker 1: fairness to those players. The whole is more fair to
Speaker 1: them because they can use that route. But it also
Speaker 1: overlaps with this concept of equity. Building an equitable golf
Speaker 1: course that all players can play and enjoy, and I
Speaker 1: think that the impulse to do that comes from a
Speaker 1: slightly different place than the impulse to build a perfectly
Speaker 1: fair golf course. If you're trying to build an equitable
Speaker 1: or playable golf course for the broadest number of people possible. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I do think that overlaps with the concept of fairness,
Speaker 1: but it's not exactly the same thing. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: the ability to run the ball up is maybe more
Speaker 1: part of that discussion than part of the fairness discussion.
Speaker 1: But again, these things are a little bit hard to differentiate.
Speaker 1: What I'd like to do now, though, is is go
Speaker 1: back to this question of green receptiveness and apply it
Speaker 1: to a few very famous holes that maybe don't have
Speaker 1: very receptive greens and are maybe extremely exciting exactly because
Speaker 1: they are not fair in this specific way. The first
Speaker 1: one would have to be the road hole. There are
Speaker 1: a number of ways in which the road hole might
Speaker 1: be unfair. What are some of the ways in which
Speaker 1: you from tee to green the road hole? What kinds
Speaker 1: of elements does it have that might be might be
Speaker 1: deemed unfair?
Speaker 3: Well, there's a there's a building in the way, So
Speaker 3: I feel like that that's the first one that stands
Speaker 3: out in my head.
Speaker 1: Completely blind tea shot, and not even because there's a
Speaker 1: hill in front of you, but because there's a hotel.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely thinking about how I how I play.
Speaker 3: I don't hit the ball very high. So I'm I'm
Speaker 3: primarily worried about the building. That's that's any time that
Speaker 3: I have to carry something that is above me off
Speaker 3: the tee, I'm moderately worried that I'm just going to
Speaker 3: hit a warm burner.
Speaker 1: And here you're a single You're a singles hitter, is
Speaker 1: what you're saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, big Mark Leishman, just taking it, taking it to
Speaker 3: the right field, going the other way, not not really worried.
Speaker 1: About slapping it out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now the prime prime eture not really worried about
Speaker 3: the log ball these days.
Speaker 2: Uh So there's there's a building for sure.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Then then you have the road itself where if you're playing,
Speaker 3: if you tend to hit a cut and you're playing
Speaker 3: it down the right side of the fair way, you
Speaker 3: are obviously, I guess that's more of a strategy decision
Speaker 3: that it is a matter of fairness that if you
Speaker 3: decide to get risky and play towards the road, that's
Speaker 3: more of a U issue. But sure that is obviously
Speaker 3: the idea of that is daunting.
Speaker 2: Whether you're near it or not.
Speaker 3: I guess I never been, but in my head I
Speaker 3: would be scared because there's just a road right there anyway,
Speaker 3: and then the green is kind of angled, so that
Speaker 3: if you're not coming at it from the right angle,
Speaker 3: it's got a giant bunker in front of it, and
Speaker 3: you're kind of screwed that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an extremely putative bunker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like talk about a hazard that seems out of proportion
Speaker 1: with the size of the miss. The road bunker is
Speaker 1: the ultimate example of that, and even the road might
Speaker 1: be considered an example of that. So you have so
Speaker 1: many elements of this whole that would anger members of
Speaker 1: the fairness Police if those people were inclined to criticize
Speaker 1: a course like the Old Course, which maybe they seem
Speaker 1: a little bit less inclined to do because the Old
Speaker 1: Course has been with us for such a long time
Speaker 1: and because it's so natural and it just kind of
Speaker 1: uses what's there, even if what's there is a bunch
Speaker 1: of man made stuff. So the road hole does have
Speaker 1: so many elements of quote unquote unfairness about it, including
Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned that the green is kind of angled.
Speaker 1: If you if you bail out to the left, then
Speaker 1: then it's very much harder to hit. I think the
Speaker 1: road green is probably hard to hit from pretty much
Speaker 1: everywhere Yeah, it's definitely easier to hit if you've got
Speaker 1: the right angle, if you if you manage to kind
Speaker 1: of hug that out of bounds line. Hey, we have
Speaker 1: out of bounds too. There's another there's another thing that
Speaker 1: you might consider unfair. But if you if you manage
Speaker 1: to end up on that right side of the fairway,
Speaker 1: you have an easier approach shot than you would if
Speaker 1: you're on the left side. But it's still very, very
Speaker 1: hard to hit a green of that size from that distance.
Speaker 1: Because this is a long hole. The road hole is
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, it might not be very long
Speaker 1: for Roy McElroy anymore, Yeah, but for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: and for most of the history of golf, the road
Speaker 1: hole is very long for a part four. Now, it
Speaker 1: wasn't always considered a part four. It was considered a
Speaker 1: par five, and maybe that's part of the reason why
Speaker 1: the green is the way it is. But now we
Speaker 1: consider it a par four. And so players are in
Speaker 1: this situation where they feel like they have to hit
Speaker 1: their second shot on the green, but it's so difficult
Speaker 1: to pull off that shot that it almost seems unfair.
Speaker 1: And if you miss, then you're in the freaking road
Speaker 1: bunker or on the road itself in those penalty and
Speaker 1: you're screwed. And so the hole is almost ridiculous, and
Speaker 1: it definitely has many elements of unfairness about it. But
Speaker 1: there's no hole that people look forward to players playing
Speaker 1: more than this one, no holes that players look forward
Speaker 1: to playing themselves more than the road Hole, and watching
Speaker 1: in tournaments as well. And so maybe it is exactly
Speaker 1: these elements of unfair, like it pushes at the bound
Speaker 1: of our taste for unfairness and doesn't, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: doesn't quite push us all the way over. And and
Speaker 1: for that reason, it's a really great hole.
Speaker 2: It's got the aura, it's got the gravitas, it's got you.
Speaker 1: Know, it's part of it.
Speaker 3: It's the road hole, Like you can't get mad at
Speaker 3: it kind of thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some players still do.
Speaker 3: I mean, for sure, I'm sure if Tyrolhadden loves the
Speaker 3: road road Home, I love to get his thoughts. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, I I understand it from the highest level.
Speaker 3: Why you might think this is out of proportion. I
Speaker 3: mean a lot of the old courses out of proportion.
Speaker 2: Now at the highest.
Speaker 3: Level, the open chair, the camp smith wanted like twenty
Speaker 3: two under like, yeah, it's it's not it's not good.
Speaker 3: But I I think for a normal player, you're more
Speaker 3: captivated by the scene and the environment and the history
Speaker 3: of the place to like, you know, yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: good to be that bunker and it's not good to
Speaker 3: be on that road. But I feel like I'm not
Speaker 3: going to be ranting and raving about how this is
Speaker 3: the most unfair thing I've ever seen. I would just
Speaker 3: be mad that I made an eight on the road
Speaker 3: hole more than anything else. I would attribute that to
Speaker 3: user error more than I would course to.
Speaker 1: That You're not going to be in a critical frame
Speaker 1: of mind, no, because the course has sort of wowed you, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe even snowed you yeah to it, you know, created
Speaker 1: a mist about itself where you can't quite see its
Speaker 1: potential flaws. But I think because the old course puts
Speaker 1: people in that frame of mind that they're willing to
Speaker 1: maybe loosen up a little bit and have fun with
Speaker 1: a whole like the road hole. And once once you're
Speaker 1: in that state of mind, you realize how fun potentially
Speaker 1: quote unquote unfair things can be. Yeah, the road Hole's exciting,
Speaker 1: and I don't think it's just because of its aura.
Speaker 1: That's part of it. It has an aura. The old
Speaker 1: course has an aura. But the road hole is also
Speaker 1: exciting because of that potential for disaster. It is achievable,
Speaker 1: though it's not like this hole is completely ridiculous where
Speaker 1: no player can play it. Well. We saw Lydiaco hit
Speaker 1: an incredible fairway wood into this green that is just
Speaker 1: not designed to accept fairway webshots. We wouldn't see that
Speaker 1: on any other hole in the world except for maybe
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of others that that we can mention briefly.
Speaker 1: But part of the reason that shot was so exciting
Speaker 1: is that the green is not proportioned to receive it,
Speaker 1: and and it has that that that little, that little
Speaker 1: whiff of unfairness about it. And I think that's exactly
Speaker 1: what what makes it fun.
Speaker 3: So would would do you in the context of the
Speaker 3: old course then the unfairness you have like a lot
Speaker 3: of the undulating fairways.
Speaker 2: But I would say there's I feel like it's on
Speaker 2: a hole.
Speaker 3: I would argue it's probably even more fair than usual
Speaker 3: because you don't have to play it necessarily a certain
Speaker 3: way that you can do so many more different things.
Speaker 3: There's not like a ton of rough out there so
Speaker 3: you can kind of just blast it around and still
Speaker 3: be like, I feel like that puts everybody on a
Speaker 3: level playing field to the point where it's hard to
Speaker 3: get mad about anything unfair. Maybe this is I don't
Speaker 3: know a ton about links golf, but at least at
Speaker 3: the Old Course where it's pretty open, that like, you know,
Speaker 3: it is what it is at that point, even bad
Speaker 3: shots are not taking you out of the whole per se,
Speaker 3: and that on the whole makes it actually more fair,
Speaker 3: even if the road hole is kind of maybe potentially
Speaker 3: a gimmick.
Speaker 1: This is where we might be redefining fair as equitable
Speaker 1: or playable. Yeah, which I'm all in favor of. That
Speaker 1: is not notably how professionals tend to define fairness. Equitable
Speaker 1: and playability, those aren't Those aren't big factors in the
Speaker 1: way that the Scottie Schefflers of the world think about fairness.
Speaker 1: They think about fairness as good shots being rewarded and
Speaker 1: bad shots being punished. If you, though, think about fairness
Speaker 1: instead as a as an extremely playable course that many
Speaker 1: different people of different stripes can enjoy, then the Old
Speaker 1: Course might be the ultimate example of an equitable and
Speaker 1: playable course. And that's a big part of why it
Speaker 1: inspired the likes of Alistair McKenzie. You know that that's
Speaker 1: the one of the big things that Alistair McKenzie loved
Speaker 1: about that course. It created the greatest pleasure for the
Speaker 1: greatest number because of this sense of kind of democracy
Speaker 1: about it. That any different kind of player could be
Speaker 1: successful there in their.
Speaker 3: Own way seems like a good thing to me. I
Speaker 3: think that's how I can pro that. I understand why
Speaker 3: if you're competing in an open championship maybe you would
Speaker 3: not want that, but you know, that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say in general, the old courses like that.
Speaker 1: The road Hole might be a bit of an exception
Speaker 1: to that, though. If you play it as a three
Speaker 1: shot hole, if you lay up on your second shot,
Speaker 1: you might beat a lot of players who who who
Speaker 1: try to go for that green in two, which again,
Speaker 1: you know, goes back to this idea of equity.
Speaker 3: But that's kind I mean, I'm just trying to put
Speaker 3: myself with a mentality. It's like, oh, I'm at the
Speaker 3: road Hole, I'm not going to lay up like that's
Speaker 3: that's not of course, I have to like.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you're if you're on the
Speaker 1: sixteenth t at Cyprus. Point, Yeah, well that is it?
Speaker 1: Is it fair for there to be a two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty two hundred and forty yard part three where
Speaker 1: you have to carry all ocean to get there? Is that?
Speaker 1: Is that fair? Well? Guess what you can lay up
Speaker 1: to the left if you want. Go ahead, man, just
Speaker 1: try to Yeah, have have your buddies stand behind you
Speaker 1: with the phone filming. You kidding in irons?
Speaker 2: How do you explain that to people? Oh? I went
Speaker 2: I went eight iron, I went eight iron pitching bunch.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I mean par man, I got up and down.
Speaker 1: Come on.
Speaker 3: That's when you lead with people, is I've made par
Speaker 3: in sixteen at Cyprus.
Speaker 2: Don't ask me how I got there.
Speaker 1: That's a that that that if if a friend says
Speaker 1: that to you, then you know that you need to
Speaker 1: move away from that friend. Potentially that's it's probably not
Speaker 1: a fun person. But uh, in any case, Uh, you're
Speaker 1: right that the road hole kind of uh you know,
Speaker 1: you know, bates you into doing the not smart thing.
Speaker 1: I would say there are a lot of examples of
Speaker 1: holes like the road hole that have big elements of
Speaker 1: unfairness about them, and those are exactly the elements that
Speaker 1: make them super exciting to watch. The postage stamp hole
Speaker 1: at Royal Troon is a good example. There's there's so
Speaker 1: much chance there because it's so windy that part of
Speaker 1: the course. You know, it's an elevated tea, you're up,
Speaker 1: you're vulnerable to the wind. And that green is so small,
Speaker 1: so severe, with such penalizing hazards around it, that two
Speaker 1: players can hit pretty good web shots into there and
Speaker 1: one might end up in the coffin bunker and one
Speaker 1: might end up five feet from the pin.
Speaker 3: So I was going to bring up the coffin bunker before,
Speaker 3: like exactly that example, Like would would you? I don't
Speaker 3: want to call a coffin bunker's a gimmick because it's
Speaker 3: been there for however many years, that hundreds of years,
Speaker 3: But I feel like it's kind of maybe unfair to
Speaker 3: some extent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it absolutely is. And that entire hole,
Speaker 1: I mean that the size of the green, the way
Speaker 1: the tea is situated, how much the wind affects you
Speaker 1: in that and that little shot. I don't think that
Speaker 1: hole is a is purely a test of skill. Now
Speaker 1: it might be a test of metal and psychological.
Speaker 2: Strength at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean you could say it's a test
Speaker 1: of skill in that way, certainly, but there's such a
Speaker 1: big element of randomness there and the you know, the
Speaker 1: the line between success and absolute dire failure is so
Speaker 1: thin that it's hard to call any any part of
Speaker 1: that hole fare. But what does everybody want to do
Speaker 1: when they go to Royal Truon. What does everybody want
Speaker 1: to watch when they go to an Open championship at
Speaker 1: Royal trun They want to go to that hole and
Speaker 1: see what happens. I would say the same thing of
Speaker 1: the fifteenth hole at Augusta National. Is that green built
Speaker 1: to receive any kind of shot? At this point, now
Speaker 1: this might enter into a discussion of green speeds and
Speaker 1: how you match a green's severity of slope with the
Speaker 1: speed of the green, But putting that aside for a second,
Speaker 1: the fifteenth hole at Augusta National is almost ridiculous because
Speaker 1: of how severe the green is. But what is the
Speaker 1: most Where have we seen the most exciting shots in
Speaker 1: recent Masters tournaments? It's at the fifteenth hole at Augusta
Speaker 1: National exactly because we know how unreceptive that green is.
Speaker 1: It's achievable. Rory, can you know, bend a seven iron
Speaker 1: around the trees and hold the green, But you have
Speaker 1: to hit an extremely exceptional shot and you have to
Speaker 1: get a little bit lucky. Probably.
Speaker 3: I feel like the landing area on fifteen is so
Speaker 3: small that you can reasonably no matter where the pin is, Like,
Speaker 3: you have to be on that upper tier and if
Speaker 3: but if you're above it, as we saw with Rory,
Speaker 3: you're screwed at that point then too, because it's impossible
Speaker 3: you can't ship it coming back the same way. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So I feel like that, I don't know, like when
Speaker 3: you're picking out these iconic holes, I feel like it's hard.
Speaker 3: It's hard to criticize them because they provide these these
Speaker 3: moments in time that are etched in everybody's memories.
Speaker 2: But like for a normal player, I guess.
Speaker 3: Maybe my my my theory of fairness, as you kind
Speaker 3: of just said, has evolved throughout this last hour or
Speaker 3: whatever we've been going on here, is for the professionals.
Speaker 3: I agree with Scotty. I agree with Joseph is that
Speaker 3: you know, wayward drives should be penalized more than decent drives,
Speaker 3: then good drives should not be screwed with it all.
Speaker 1: It's frustrating for a lot of people, fans included. If
Speaker 1: that's not the case, we it's frustrating to watch a
Speaker 1: player blow it way. I mean, like Wyndham Clark did
Speaker 1: on the on the Deal at LACC a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. People are still really pissed about that. Now.
Speaker 1: I have I have my notes about why that's that
Speaker 1: shot isn't isn't what people thought it was. But but
Speaker 1: it is clearly an example of people being frustrated by
Speaker 1: a lack of penalty for what was perceived to be
Speaker 1: a poor shot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm with that professionally, but I think at
Speaker 3: the di amateur level, I feel like it's I would
Speaker 3: be more about playability and equitability and making sure that
Speaker 3: everybody has path too.
Speaker 2: You don't have to be good, but everybody is a
Speaker 2: path to finishing the hole.
Speaker 3: Whereas like some of these like if I get stuck
Speaker 3: in the coffin bunker, I'm sorry, Like I'm I'll hit
Speaker 3: like two shots. I'm not gonna be able to get out. Sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm going home.
Speaker 2: Like that's it. It's not it's not gonna be You're not.
Speaker 1: Going home though you're gonna You're gonna finish, finish the course,
Speaker 1: and then you'll have a nice story for your buddies
Speaker 1: about what happened to you on the poster stamp.
Speaker 3: Exactly like but that that, I feel like there should
Speaker 3: be a path for everybody of varying skill levels.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just saying.
Speaker 3: That the Old Course is greatest place in the world,
Speaker 3: which might not be my worst take.
Speaker 2: I've had worse takes than that.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would would accept that,
Speaker 1: both past and present. Yeah, I think that's a really
Speaker 1: good nuanced view of the situation, that the that the
Speaker 1: requirements or the goals of professional tournament courses are and
Speaker 1: should be different from those of courses meant to appeal
Speaker 1: to tow amateurs. Of course, this becomes a little tricky
Speaker 1: when you have courses that are meant to do both
Speaker 1: and and some courses do that better than others. You know,
Speaker 1: Pinehurst Number two and the Old Course are probably the
Speaker 1: best examples of courses that can do both well.
Speaker 3: There's not a lot of rough and you can bunt
Speaker 3: it up on every green like. I feel like that
Speaker 3: opens that opens you up to a lot as a
Speaker 3: bad player, that you you can still challenge the professionals
Speaker 3: with the kind of roulette wheel of what what is
Speaker 3: your you know why look like?
Speaker 1: And this tough perfectly stated, and I agree. Now I
Speaker 1: do want to finish, though, on a brief monologue in
Speaker 1: support of cultivating little bits of unfairness in golf course design.
Speaker 1: If you had a perfectly fair golf course, in whether
Speaker 1: we're talking about fair in the professional sense or fair
Speaker 1: in the amateur sense that you've outlined, it would be
Speaker 1: I think boring and charmless. It would become predictable. But
Speaker 1: equally true is that a perfectly unfair golf course would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. So we need a combination that If we
Speaker 1: accept that a perfectly fair golf course and a perfectly
Speaker 1: unfair golf course would be both unacceptable, then we have
Speaker 1: to live somewhere between those polls. Yes, so we do
Speaker 1: want a course to give an advantage to skilled players,
Speaker 1: but that's not all that we want a golf course
Speaker 1: to do. So I think, you know, a well designed
Speaker 1: golf course will strike some sort of balance between fairness
Speaker 1: and unfairness, between randomness and order, between skill and luck. Right,
Speaker 1: there to be some kind of balancing act between all
Speaker 1: of those dichotomies in a golf course that's going to
Speaker 1: stand the test of time and be exciting to play
Speaker 1: and also test skill in a way that we find
Speaker 1: fair and acceptable. So I guess what this means is
Speaker 1: that if you're an architect, you have to figure out
Speaker 1: ways to cultivate a little bit of randomness or luck
Speaker 1: or even unfairness on your golf courses without going overboard
Speaker 1: and falling into something that's unreasonable, unplayable, or absurd. Because
Speaker 1: you know, insisting on fairness at all times is not
Speaker 1: a good recipe for design, and the most fair golf courses,
Speaker 1: the rigorously fair golf courses that have been built over
Speaker 1: the history of golf architecture, have tended to fall out
Speaker 1: of favor, not stand the test of time very well,
Speaker 1: and have tended to be redesigned to reintroduce some more
Speaker 1: quirk and eccentricity and unexpectedness into them. So at the
Speaker 1: same time, you know, we can say that insisting on
Speaker 1: fairness is not a good recipe for design, neither is
Speaker 1: disregarding the concept of fairness entirely. And so ultimately, I
Speaker 1: do think we have to live between these extremes in
Speaker 1: some way or another, and different golf courses might have
Speaker 1: more of some more of an element of unfairness than others,
Speaker 1: but all golf courses need to find their particular blend
Speaker 1: of that. I guess that would be my argument. How
Speaker 1: do you feel about that?
Speaker 3: I think there has to be some level of randomness
Speaker 3: if you want to call randomness unfair. Like to me,
Speaker 3: I don't know that those are the same thing. We're
Speaker 3: talking about the gray area between playability and fairness and
Speaker 3: all of that to be. Randomness and unfair are not
Speaker 3: necessarily the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a difference between an architect saying I'm gonna
Speaker 1: try to make this a little random somehow versus I'm
Speaker 1: gonna create a feature that just screws the player over. Yes,
Speaker 1: those are maybe two different things.
Speaker 3: I think those are not necessarily the same definition. So
Speaker 3: I would be pro randomness, as again, this is an
Speaker 3: outdoor sport. You need to have some level of Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's you know, player versus player, it's player versus self mentality,
Speaker 3: but it's also a player versus nature and you're trying
Speaker 3: to beat the course, and the course can.
Speaker 2: Fight back a little bit.
Speaker 3: But I feel like when you start to get into
Speaker 3: the unfairness of I wouldn't go so far as like
Speaker 3: the rewarding bad shots is not necessarily the right term,
Speaker 3: but not penalizing them, or not penalizing them enough. That's
Speaker 3: where I think you start to lean into the little
Speaker 3: too much randomness, not enough fairness for at least in
Speaker 3: a professional setting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so. And we all have our different levels
Speaker 1: of tolerance for what constitutes something that is outright unfair
Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, charmingly random or natural seeming
Speaker 1: or whatever you want to say. My position on this
Speaker 1: issue is probably always going to be in favor of
Speaker 1: promoting more unfairness than people are comfortable with. And part
Speaker 1: of the reason for that is that I think over
Speaker 1: the past two hundred years or so, golfers have become very,
Speaker 1: very much less accustomed to unfairness. If we were to
Speaker 1: be transported back one hundred and fifty years to the
Speaker 1: links course of the eighteen hundreds, we would find those
Speaker 1: courses so extraordinarily unfair that we would hardly want to
Speaker 1: play them. Possibly. I mean, I think I would still
Speaker 1: want to be I would be fascinated by them, but
Speaker 1: you'd hit the ball in the middle of the fair
Speaker 1: way and get terrible lies all the time because of
Speaker 1: the state of agronomy at the time. You know, the
Speaker 1: hazards are not going to that bunkers are not going
Speaker 1: to be raked. There would be all sorts of things
Speaker 1: about those very natural golf courses that would strike us
Speaker 1: as unfair. And I think the story of golf and
Speaker 1: golf architecture to a great degree has been to introduce
Speaker 1: gradually more and more fairness into the game through architecture
Speaker 1: and agronomy, to the point where players have gotten very
Speaker 1: used to certain things that just weren't there in the
Speaker 1: original game. And so my position is always going to
Speaker 1: be I'm going to promote some more unfair I'm going
Speaker 1: to add Kate for that, But also, just to be
Speaker 1: intellectually honest, I have to acknowledge that fairness is an
Speaker 1: important thing to think about in design. You can't have
Speaker 1: a completely unfair golf course. You just can't. It would
Speaker 1: be stupid and it would not be fun. And so
Speaker 1: there's a yeah, I have to take a balanced position
Speaker 1: while at the same time being an advocate for one
Speaker 1: side of it. Does that kind of make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that totally makes sense.
Speaker 3: I think you made a great point there about even
Speaker 3: like as far as like agronomy, where you have the
Speaker 3: perfect lies in the fair way and you're you know,
Speaker 3: you're not running into some weeds or grass or anything.
Speaker 3: Like how far things have come, Like everything is so
Speaker 3: optimized even for normal people at this point, Like I.
Speaker 1: Mean, municipal golf courses that I play in Portland are
Speaker 1: are so much more consistently maintained exactly and anything anybody
Speaker 1: would have played even fifty years ago.
Speaker 3: I think, like that's a great point that I hadn't
Speaker 3: even considered that, Like, yeah, the development of turf at
Speaker 3: even just a municipal level like that has gotten to
Speaker 3: the point where that's taking out so many dice rolls
Speaker 3: that would have been there fifty years ago. That yeah,
Speaker 3: I again, I think any use of the elements, I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm gonna end up being pro that.
Speaker 2: I think that's cool.
Speaker 3: Again, Like I'm not here to have every shot go
Speaker 3: perfectly if I hit it well, I don't think that.
Speaker 3: I don't think that is fair, even though it is
Speaker 3: quote unquote the perfectly fair, I don't think it's reasonable
Speaker 3: to expect that to be true. Like bad bounces are
Speaker 3: part of the game. We're doing this outside. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the wind could adjust anything like. All of that to
Speaker 3: me is part of what you sign up for. But
Speaker 3: the unfair at the municipal level, I would say, would
Speaker 3: be unplayable to a wide to the full population.
Speaker 1: You have to give everybody or just like way more
Speaker 1: playable for one type of player than another.
Speaker 2: Yeah, give everybody a chance.
Speaker 3: But at the professional level, I think it's it's the
Speaker 3: goal should be to identify the guy who played the
Speaker 3: best that week in the tournament. And I feel like
Speaker 3: a lot of times we don't necessarily get that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and and we we don't get that, not
Speaker 1: necessarily because of well maybe because of unfairness to a degree,
Speaker 1: but not because of interesting unfairness. Usually it's usually just
Speaker 1: because the course is kind of too too easy, too soft. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, so that's that. That is kind of
Speaker 1: u that is a separate issue. But yeah, very very
Speaker 1: interesting distinction that you've made between kind of the what
Speaker 1: we expect of a tournament course versus what we expect
Speaker 1: from a course that we all play on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a very valid thing for a
Speaker 1: golf course designer to think about, and for a golfer
Speaker 1: to think about when they're assessing a golf course, like
Speaker 1: try to figure out what the purpose of the golf
Speaker 1: course is and does it succeed in that in that objective?
Speaker 1: And I think that's totally okay to think of courses
Speaker 1: in that way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean once, once we're all playing the new
Speaker 3: double dot that has made Cameron Young the greatest golfer
Speaker 3: of all time, I think all of this will get
Speaker 3: changed anyway we're all be on the same level playing field.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, equity will no longer be an issue because
Speaker 1: we're all we're all we're all hitting it like like
Speaker 1: young Cam. All right, PJ, it's been a pleasure as always.
Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on this episode of Golf Architecture
Speaker 1: one on one. I hope it was fun.
Speaker 2: Oh, this is great.
Speaker 3: Great to get get a little lesson about what Sheriff
Speaker 3: Scotty's teaching to his comrades out there.
Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
Speaker 1: Thank you Will. If you're in jo designing golf, then
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