Do We Make Too Many Golfing Judgements Based Purely On Numbers?

Too often in life there's a tendency to reduce judgement simply to a numerical basis. Something with a bigger number must be better than something with a smaller number, runs the logic.

But we golfers wouldn’t be so silly would we? Would we? Or perhaps more relevantly, would those involved in the provision of golf be so daft?

Well…

Course lengths

If you know nothing about two courses other than one was 5,000 yards and t’other was 6,000 which would you choose to play? The 6,000 yarder would be most established golfers’ choice.

So, goes a theory, add another thousand yards and that is even better, right? So let’s create a 7,000-yard course. Indeed, why not go higher? There is a course in China which is over 8,500 yards and has par 5 of over 700 yards.

The world now has several courses over 8,000 yards, including some by some of the biggest names in golf design. Why?

Is this what the club golfer wants? Layouts with reduced variety, unrelenting tests of length off the tee; par 3s where you need a telescope to see the green from the tee; higher fees to fund the vast acreage that needs buying, building and maintaining; longer rounds, and all the rest of it.

Talking to some course designers, they don’t necessarily like these layouts either. But those who commission them often stipulate the total length must exceed a certain figure. Often the requirement is to be the longest course in the area, as the owners perceive this will make their course the most prestigious.

Eighteen-hole courses versus nine-hole ones

How many golfers automatically presume a nine-hole course to be inferior to an 18-hole one? For instance, as a former member of Reigate Heath, I can attest that it is a far superior course than a great many of the 18-hole courses I have played around the world.

In fact, it is better than the majority of them. I could also say the same about Royal Worlington and Newmarket, another nine-holer.

One of the courses we played in my youth was a nine holer of about 2,600 yards. It was not a top track but a decent and enjoyable game could be had here. It had a pleasing variety to its designs and there were a couple of memorable holes, including a par 3 over a valley.

We returned several years later. By then it had been turned into an 18-hole course by cramming in nine more holes on an unexciting tract of land: five par 3s as well as four par 4s of between 235 and 330 yards. What had been a decent nine-hole course became a we-won’t-bother-to-come-back-again 18-holer.

But 18-holers are more attractive to golfers, ran the owner’s commercial logic. Maybe they were right on this. But their course was worse.

Par 72

A club redesigned one of its par 4 holes so as to be a par 5. It didn’t make the hole better, and certainly not safer as now that hole involves a drive perilously near to the previous green. The reason given for the redesign is that it meant the course became a par-72 one, which was thought to be the ‘proper’ par for a ‘championship’ course.

The top course in the Golf Monthly Top 100, Royal County Down, is a par 71. The majority of the courses in the top 10 are either par 70 or 71.

Speed of greens

In the days before the internet, I phoned the pro shop at a golf hotel where I was thinking of staying. I knew nothing about the course, so asked if they could tell me something about it. The first thing they said was: “We have the fastest greens in the county”.

No-one likes really slow greens, granted. But do people really want to play on really slick greens? Modern agronomy means greens can be quicker than they used to be. But is the equation simply the quicker the green, the better the green?

The greens at older courses were designed for the slower green speeds of their era. So making these greens faster now either changes the designer’s intended challenge, or just negates it. Some pin placements become no longer possible or sensible.

Quick greens require more maintenance and are harder to protect. Typically, faster green speeds are achieved through either lower cut heights, which impairs photosynthesis and weakens the grass, or through frequent rolling, which can also stress the turf.

Moreover, a study by the University of Minnesota for the United States Golf Association in 2018 found that the greater the green speed, the slower the round.

The study looked at nearly 40,000 green times from more than 2,200 golfers at “seven facilities across the United States” selected to represent a variety of course types. During a three-week period, green speeds were adjusted by 1 foot each week to provide stimpmeter readings of 8, 9 and 10 feet.

The conclusion? For every 1-foot increase in green speed, the average pace-of-play increased by more than a seven minutes time for a foursome.

However The USGA went on to state that: “Perhaps the most impactful finding of the study is that a 1-foot increase in green speed led to a significant decrease in golfer enjoyment based on survey results following their round.”

By the way, I decided not to stay at that golf hotel. But you had probably guessed that.