Latest / Designing Golf / Golf Architecture 101: Fairness

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Golf Architecture 101: Fairness · Designing Golf

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Should fairness be considered an important thing in golf course design.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: That's what I'm talking about today with PJ Clark in
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: this installment of our Golf Architecture one oh one series.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Garrett Morrison and this is designing golf all right, PJ,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: welcome back to the pod.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Thanks for having me. I'm excited.
• 0:26
  Speaker 3: I love getting into the hot button issues of today.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: The number one hot topic on the PGA Tour on
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: a weekly basis fairness and how do we achieve it.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: I'm ready to get listen. Some people say designing golf
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: is too controversial. I say, I want all the smoke.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I want this podcast to be on the forefront.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Finger on the pulse here. I mean, this is the
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: pulse of humanity today. Everything's got to be fair and
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: down the middle.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: So absolutely yeah. Well, to start off, would you consider
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: yourself a member of the fairness?
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: I think, like in a vacuum, probably like I.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: I I think I'm too.
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: My my logical brain wants to be rewarded for good
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: shots and penalized for bad shots. I I don't want
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: to say I disagree with a lot of what Scotty
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: commonly says. As I as I look up the ladder
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: to my chief of the fair police here. But I
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: I understand the the arguments against it, and that having
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: some aspect of luck in a game of chance is
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: h I mean, it's part of the game, right, That's
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: that's why it's not played on a simulator, even though
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: I guess now we do have a simulator Golf League.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: It seems like you already have pieces of the upcoming
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: lesson lodged in your brain, probably because you've sat in
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: on many discussions between Andy and Brendan on the shotgun
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: start about fairness and golf course design and Scotty Shuffler's
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: comments on it. You know, the number one player in
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: the world right now seems positively obsessed with the idea
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: of fairness, although he doesn't He's not like Terrel Hatton,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: you know, whereas Hatton gets extremely angry at unfair elements
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: in golf courses, even though he is a great player
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: at the old course, Terrel Hatton always baffles me. It's
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: like he's he's best at doing what he hates, which
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I guess is a sort of curse and and kind
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: of maybe explains his his you know, a touchy personality,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: but it's not.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: A major championship until Terrell Haddon throws a tag from
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: on a golf hole that he doesn't like. It's kind
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: of like a badge of honor these days.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a tradition at this point. But in
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: any case, fairness does commonly come up in discussions of
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: professional golf right now, and it's one of those areas
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: where I think golf are architecture nerds and people who
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: just follow the pro tours and that's it. It's one
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of those areas where they cross over and kind of
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: maybe end up in discussion with each other. And I
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: think there are very different perspectives on both sides of
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: that divide, which is why I think this topic is
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: really interesting. So why don't we start off with the
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: basic question here? What do you think it means for
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a golf course to be fair?
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: I think good shots should be rewarded with either, you know,
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: kicks down the fairway or short lies or good lies
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: or angles into the green. We've talked about angles plenty
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: on this series so far. But I also think missus
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: should be penalized. Now, I think where I'm going to
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: get myself into trouble is when you gave me this
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: prompt to think about. I think I kind of agree
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: with the Scotty line of thinking logically that it should
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: be based on how bad your miss is. It should
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: further misses should be further penalized than closer misses, if
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: that makes sense, the penalty, the penalty should be exponential
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: to how bad the shot is.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: This is something that a lot of pros believe and
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: that actually our colleague, Joseph Lamangna talks about a lot.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: Joseph gets frustrated by courses where wide misses are not
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: as penalized as or or you know, or just as
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: penalized as narrow misses. Right and Tory Pines often comes
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: up as an example of this kind of golf course
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: where it doesn't matter if you miss the fairway by
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: five yards or by fifty yards. It's going to be
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: a similar situation because what you have out there is
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: just a lot of green, irrigated rough, and once you're
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: off the fairway, it just doesn't really matter or that
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: much where you are in that rough. And that, in
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Joseph's mind, as someone who analyzes professional tournament courses, is
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: frustrating and an indication of ineffective tournament course design. I'm
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: gonna try to introduce some complexity to that idea in
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: this podcast maybe and bring up some challenges to it.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: But it certainly stands to reason, right, it seems like
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: a reasonable proposal that that should be how we go
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: about testing golfers.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: I just I I it doesn't make sense that if
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: you missed a fairway by five yards and you missed
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: a fairway by fifty yards that even I mean at
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: some of these courses. We were looking at it when
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: we were at Oakmont, Like if you blew it way
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: left on one into where the galleries were, you had
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: the trampled down rough that you could hit off of
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: pretty easily.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Like that, just that doesn't make sense that.
• 6:00
  Speaker 3: You should be quote unquote rewarded for a worst shot,
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: you know what I mean?
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: M Yeah, And it's an issue of fairness. This is
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: the essence of what we're talking about when we talk
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: about fairness and golf course design. And this kind of
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: stuff drives professionals especially crazy because their whole life is
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: geared toward executing golf shots well, hitting the ball well.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: They study and they bleed for their entire lives to
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: do that. Thing well, and when they show up at
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a golf course where that doesn't give them a significant advantage,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: or somebody who hasn't worked as hard and who doesn't
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: hit the ball as well is ending up in similar
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: or better positions than them, then that's going to be frustrating.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: This is something that Scotti Scheffler has talked about. It's
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: an understandable frustration because if that's if that's your life,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: then then you then you wanted to pay off and
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: and so that seems to be the basis from which
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of pro golfers criticize the unfairness of golf courses.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: It defies the very thing that they have worked hard
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: to do. So kind of understandable.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: I think it makes sense, right if you're if you're
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: aiming small to miss small, and you you do miss mall. Unfortunately,
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: obviously no one is just blatantly trying to blow it
• 7:33
  Speaker 3: in the rough. I mean, at some points I guess
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: you are, but that's a different discussion.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: I would probably say with the course set up.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: But if you're aiming small and miss mall and you
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: miss mall versus some guy that completely goes off the
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: radar and he ends up at a better spot than you.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I I I understand a level of frustration that would
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: come with that, that would that would piss me off
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: for sure.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, So a couple of related ideas to this would
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: be that fair golf courses are generally understood by the
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: fairness police primarily to be the golf courses where the
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: elements of randomness and luck are kept to a minimum.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: So it's not just golf courses are fair if they
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: reward good shots and penalize bad shots. They're they're fair
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: if there is a if if randomness is kind of
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: kept out of it, because randomness is one of those
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: things that can end up not rewarding good shots or
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: not punishing poor shots. Right, So randomness and luck are
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: kind of opposed to these ideas that we're talking about.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I think that's where you kind of lose me because
• 8:43
  Speaker 3: I again, like it's an outdoor sport. There are bumps,
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: there are there are bruises, there are.
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Mounds in the fair way.
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: You're gonna get a bad kick, Like this is not
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: it's an outdoor sport. Like That's that would be my
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: counter argument to that is that like, yeah, you can,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: you can draw it up correctly, and I do. I
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: would argue that the difference between five and fifty yards
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: off the fairway should be different in a vacuum, but
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: you can't.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: The randomness within.
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: That pocket five yards off the fairway, I think should
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: exist and is fair to exist, because again it's an
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: outdoor sport.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, then what about fairness in the middle of
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: a fairway?
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah? Right, I mean you can get a bad kick,
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: you can land in a divot like That's again, this
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: is like part of That's that to me is part
• 9:34
  Speaker 3: of the game more than this course is not set up. Well,
• 9:40
  Speaker 3: if that makes if that if that's a cohesive argument
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: to you, well.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: It's it's uh maybe exactly the definition of an uncohesive argument.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: There's a contradiction here, isn't there. I'm not saying that
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it's wrong, but there's a contradiction here saying we want
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: good shots to be rewarded and bad shots to be punished.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: But but some element of randomness and luck is okay. Well,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: if you accept some element of randomness and luck, I
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: guess the first question is how much of that? And
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the second question is, well, if we're accepting that, then
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: you have to accept that if somebody, if two players
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: hit the exact same drive, they might end up in
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: completely different positions, whether they're on the fairway or off
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: the fairway. Even if you limit the randomness and luck
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: to just off the fairway, say two players hit it
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: to exactly the same place, Well, if that area is
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: random and chancy, then they might end up in completely
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: different situations.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: I mean my counter argument to that would be, just
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: hit the fairway. That's what we're all trying to do, right,
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Like you could just that's kind of the get out
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: of jail free card here is like, oh, you don't
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: if you don't like the wiregrass at Pinehurst last year, Scott,
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: he just hit the fairways man like that. It's kind
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: of it's what we're all trying to do here at
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: the end of the day. But I think where I
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: understand the fair police argument is that it is not
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: the penalties I feel like sometimes are.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: Not proportional to a miss. But I think.
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: There is an element of randomness that in and outdoor
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: sport is completely agreeable. I mean, you look at it
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: at other sports like baseball. Every ballpark has different dimensions.
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: You hit a ball that's going to be out at
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: Yankee Stadium. That's a fly ball in somebody else's field.
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: Like that's normal, Like, that's part of sports. That's part
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: of the game. But I do think on a mis
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: hit or on a miss there should be greater penalties
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: based on how bad it actually is.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Baseball is a good example because the field in baseball
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: is to a degree very standardized, more so than a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: golf course. And baseball you have the same dimensions of
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: the diamond. But where the differences come in is that
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: outfield wall basically, and the side of the overall size
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: of the ballpark bounces off of the wall. Sometimes bounces
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: off of the wall at a at a baseball stadium
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: are are very chancy and introduce an element of luck
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: into the game that might not be there if the
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: fields were completely standardized and had all the same dimensions
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: and all the same you know, structures around them. But
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: so baseball does kind of welcome in that element of randomness,
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: and golf, I would argue, let's in more. Yeah, and
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: there's And so that is where the complexity and difficulty
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: of this discussion arrives, you know, because we have to
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: ask how much of this randomness are we willing to admit.
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: Well, even it's not even a it doesn't even have
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: to be a golf course. Then when you're thinking about
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: tournament golf, like in baseball, everybody is hitting in the
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: same two and a half to three hour window in
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: the same stadium. But in golf, you're playing, you know,
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: six hours after somebody. The wind could change, the weather
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: could change, it could be completely different. You're not playing
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: the same you're playing the same course on the ground,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: but you're not playing the same course as guys that
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: went out in the morning or in the afternoon based
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: on what wave you are, whereas in baseball even you're
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: more constrained, like everybody's playing at the same time in
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: that given matchup versus in a tournament, you are completely
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: at the whim of whatever time comes out of the
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: USGA's lottery ball machine.
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and golf is an individual sport, whereas baseball is,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: you know, one team against another. I think that in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: an individual sport, there's more room for those individuals to
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: claim unfairness or that they didn't get they didn't get
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a proper shake in the proceedings. And so yeah, golf,
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: golf definitely sets itself up to these these situations where
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: people might might perceive some unfairness, and that, to me,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: that's part of what makes the game so interesting. But
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: I want to touch on a couple other factors that
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I think sometimes lead people to say that a golf
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: course is unfair. One has to do with categories of
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: par because I get the sense that many players really
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: hate when a par three can't easily be reached in
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: one shot or a par four can't easily be reached
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: in two shots. They believe that a you know, some
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: kind of decent strike of the ball should reliably yield
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: chance at a two put par. And they object to
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: holes that push at the boundary of a higher par category.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: So they'll object to a par four that maybe kind
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: of is almost a par five, or object to a
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: par three that's almost a par four. Now moving in
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: the other direction, they don't tend to complain if there's
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: a par four that's almost a par three. And and
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: so I think that this complaint about golf courses tends
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: to be a little more easily dismissed. I don't think
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: this is a matter of fairness. I think it's a
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: matter of people's perception of par categories.
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, everybody wants the red numbers right, they don't.
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: They don't like it. They don't like it when you make.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: It seems to be more about ego than than actually
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: about the golf course, you know.
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: I think I think if every if it was just
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: you know, get a if the goal was which the
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: goal is, but if it was framed as get around
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: in as few shots as possible compared to everybody else,
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: I feel like people would have less problems with maybe
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: And then the last area where I think people sometimes
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: object to golf courses as unfair would be just when
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: they see unexpected things, like when they see elements of
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: a golf course that they're not used to seeing. So
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: this might be a bunker in the middle of a
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: fair way that's unfair, you know, or a blind shot
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: that's unfair. But the reason those things might be perceived
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: as unfair, I don't think is that they're inherently unfair.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: It's more that they're just unexpected and unusual.
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: So from that standpoint of like a center line bunker
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: or something crazy, you could even like, I mean, Andy
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: talked a lot about it at Oakmont with the setup
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: and the rough like where is the line to you,
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: golf courses are between gimmick and fair because like I
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: feel like, like you know, the Maya Cova Cave bunker,
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: like that's just a gimmick, right like that that's there,
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: everybody knows it's there. It's not really a matter of
• 17:07
  Speaker 3: fair or not. It's just like that's just I feel
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: like if it's there, there is a line that maybe
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: crosses it. Maybe the rough at Oakmont could arguably cross it.
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: Whereas like, it's not a question of fair anymore. This
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: is just like it's a joke, gimmick of a setup.
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: Right at Oakmont, the rough started to seem to some
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: people to be almost a gimmick, and I think it
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: probably was. But I was somewhat okay with it because
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: the history, like the deep history of that course is
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: very based on this idea that any shot off the
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: fairway should be very severely punished. That was baked in
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to the identity of the course from the beginning. And
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: so I don't think that justifies everything in a golf
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: course design. You can't just go crazy just because somebody
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty years ago I thought it was
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: a good idea. But if it does have some sort
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: of tradition and link to the identity of a golf course,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: then I tend to be more okay with it. I
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: tend to also be more okay with it if a
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: feature is based on some kind of natural, pre existing
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: land form, and so actually, the cave bunker at my Acoba,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I mean that's a natural land form, right, Yeah, I
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: don't know, I mean it's not. I think the cave
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: bunker at my Acoba is almost like a tourist attraction
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: as opposed to a real golf course feature, because it
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem to me to be all that much in play,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: even I might be wrong about that, but it just
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: seems to be there for people to take photos of it,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: and so that's I guess, a little bit silly. But
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: this is a great question, though, and I don't have
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: an easy answer to it. In fact, this is like
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: another episode of the podcast in and of itself what
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: constitutes a gimmick in golf course design, because I don't know,
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Like when when people first saw the island green at
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: TPC Sawgrass, it must have seemed kind of gimmicky because
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: it was so unusual and so obviously constructed, Like there's
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: no there's no way anybody could look at that and think, oh, well,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: Pete Die just found that there.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was just there.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But now we're so used to it that it
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't seem as gimmicky. So I think what we perceive
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: to be a gimmick. It goes back to this issue
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: of what I was talking about earlier, what we expect
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: to see on a golf course and what we don't
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: expect to see, And you know, architects have to work
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: with those perceptions a little bit. They you know, if
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: they introduced too many things that people would consider a gimmick,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: too many unexpected things into a golf course, then they
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: can't be surprised when people regard it as gimmicky. But
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: they can also challenge people, push against their expectations and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: occasionally introduce things that might be accused of gimme degree
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: but have a certain purpose and philosophy behind them, and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: then eventually, maybe down the line, years down the line,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: those features will be accepted as less gimmicky and more familiar.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf is brought to you by
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: the USGA Green Section. Now you've probably heard about the
• 20:28
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  Speaker 1: what the USGA Green Section is offering. A lot of
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  Speaker 1: great stuff. All right, let's get back to the episode so, uh,
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: let's go on to talking about a few specific features
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: that might be deemed unfair in certain players' minds. This
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: was the other part of the prompt that I gave
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: you yesterday. What are specific features that that you would
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: consider or that just people might consider unfair on a
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: golf course. Let's get specific.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: Well, number number one thing they've popped into my head.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: And not to sound like a lovely Twitter account known
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: as us golf Facts when I say this, but I
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: do think there is something to the idea of maybe
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: pin positioning or or even bunker positioning or penalty positioning,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: however you want to phrase it, that you're only impacting Uh,
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: you know a player of one handiness or a player
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: that only plays one type of shot. If you're putting
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: all of the penalty or bunkers or hazards in one
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: side of the course, I feel like having a disparity
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: relatively even placing of pins and everything is probably the
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: easiest way to get something fair. So if you have
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: a course where you don't have that many green locations
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: and every pin is tucked to the right side, are you,
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: you know, discourinated against somebody that plays a draw?
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Are you are you after Patrick and Justin Reid? Are
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: you should you be sued? Should should should the claiman
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: send you a season desist?
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: I don't want to go there, but ironically enough, it
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: was the first thing that I thought of that, like, yeah,
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: I could see how somebody could get really angry about
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: that if that was a repeated issue for them.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm, yeah, this is this is a good point.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: What rationale is there to put pins in different places
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: on a green? If not fairness and equity to all
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: golfers playing the course? Why would you do that if
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: it were not for this concept of fairness? So I
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: think that's that's a really good example, and let's let's
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: put that in, put that in the knapsack, and what
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: others do you have?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: Uh?
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Buckers was was my second one on more again, are
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: you putting them on the front of every green versus
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: the backside of every green? Like? Where where are the
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: bunkers placed? I feel like, is in my mind are
• 24:30
  Speaker 3: you giving this is maybe not a PGA Tour sentiment,
• 24:34
  Speaker 3: but for a normal player, are you giving them the
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: opportunity to use the ground and run it up to
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: a green? Versus is every green guarded in the front
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: by bunkers, so that you have to go in the
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: air and you're not playing the ball on the ground. Again,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: as we've gone over as was originally intended by this game,
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: some some would argue, so that was another one to me,
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: And then I kind of just thought maybe penalty areas
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: like the overdoing of water specifically, I feel like is
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: probably a good one to point out as somebody that
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: lives on Long Island, where there's a lot of water
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: on a lot of golf courses, I feel like this
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: is just it's kind of stupid.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: Listen, if you if you ever end up in Florida,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: and many many people who grow up in Long Island
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: do eventually end up in Florida, you'll you'll find even more.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Of that exactly.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: So I feel like the use of hazard's penalties, however
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: you want to say it, Are you overdoing it? Is
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: it not so much not random, but is it just
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: borderline unplayable? I mean, you look at some of the
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: holes that that we do undesigned disasters, where it's just like,
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: what is the point of any of this lost marsh
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: every fair way is a peninsula, Like this is just stupid.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: That's a that's a gimmick, but it's more just stupid
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: and I don't know if it's quote unquote unfair, but
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: it's certainly not. You're not identifying the the best golfer
• 26:01
  Speaker 3: in a tournament there when anybody could just end up
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: in the later at any given time.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, that would be where the idea of fairness would
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: come in. I suppose is that golf courses with so
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: much water on them create such a difference between just
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: being on the fairway and being off the fairway that
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: the difference between those positions is so stark in the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: case of water that you know, if you repeat it enough,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: it could certainly be said to become unfair. And I
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: would say that the same accusation has been made of
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: out of bounds too, because the disparity is so big
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: between just being right inside the out of bounds line
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and being outside of the out of bounds line. I
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: mean a huge, huge disparity there. Some players could say
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: that's that's unfair. Okay, So those are two good ones.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: I want to introduce a few that have been I
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: think really common in this discourse about fairness. One key
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: one is undulating fairways. This was a big bone of
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: contention among people who discussed golf architecture back at the
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: beginning of the twentieth century. This was one of the
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: main topics in this fairness discussion. Should fairways be heavily undulating?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And the reason I think that this was such a
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: big topic was that people were trying to figure out
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: how to build golf courses inland. And one thing about
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: inland golf course properties is that they didn't tend to
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: have the natural undulation constant undulation of links land properties
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: and links golf courses were, of course the first golf courses.
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: They were the examples that everybody discussed and compared new
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: golf courses too. And so when they started to build
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: golf courses inland, one of the big questions was, well,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: we don't have natural natural undulation here, should we build it?
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: Should we construct it? Is that an important part of
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: the game, And one side would argue, no, it's not
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: an important part of the game. In fact, it's a
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: less ideal part of the game because you can hit
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: it in the middle of the fairway on an undulating fairway.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Two players can hit the exact same shot and one
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: might end up with a weird uphill or side hill lie,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: and one might end up with a flat lie and
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: there's really no controlling that when you have undulations like
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: they have at the old course at Saint Andrews. And
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: so what we should do, in fact is intentionally, if
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: we're going to construct anything, we should construct flat fairways
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: so that players get approximately the same lies if they
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: hit the fairway. Then there was another faction that argued,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: that's ridiculous, that makes the game boring. A big part
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: of the charm of golf is exactly this lynxland undulation.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: We shouldn't be taking that out of golf courses. In fact,
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: in some cases we might want to introduce it to
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: golf courses. So this was a big issue of fairness
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: that people argued about back in this kind of key
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: period of golf architecture history around the turn of the
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: twentieth century. What do you make of that debate about
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: undulating fairways.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's just part of the game at
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: that point.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: Like I again, I could see the argument that if
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: you are artificially creating it and not going with the
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: land and not using what you've been given, some could
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: call it a gimmick. Maybe if you overuse it, I
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: get that aspect, So.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It seems it's like part of a part of what
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: a big part of what a gimmick might be is
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: that it's contrived or obviously constructed, that somebody went in
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: there and made it, as opposed to encountered it in
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: the landscape. And this is and if you think about that,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: this is so connected to our perception that golf is
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: a game played in a natural setting. If it's a
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: game played in a natural setting, we have a much
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: bigger acceptance of randomness and quirks that might lead to unfairness.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: If we consider it a purely manufactured setting, I think
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: our tolerance for those factors really goes down.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I feel like if you are just bulldozing
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: a bunch of trees and you decide to build a
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: giant hill for no reason, then like that and you
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: in theory people would be able to tell, like to
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: some extent that you just made this, Then like, yeah,
• 30:56
  Speaker 3: that's kind of stupid, and I would argue that it's unfair.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: But if that's just the way the cookie crumbled and
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: these glaciers moved however, many millions of years ago, then
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: again I would just go with it's an outdoor sport like, sorry,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: you'll get the next one. Like on the aggregate. Sure,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: there are people that are just blatantly unlucky, but at
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: the end of the day, I feel like everything's going
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: to relatively come out in the wash or be as
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: close to fifty to fifty good break bad break as possible.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: Maybe on a certain day you just get hosed, but
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: then you come back tomorrow and you get the good
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: breaks like outdoor sport man can't can't complain about that.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm with you on this one. And I think
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: moreover that if we're talking about fairness, if we're talking
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: about the test of skill, a golf course assessing a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: player's level of skill as part of the fairness of
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: the golf course overall, Because if a golf course is fair,
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: then that means probably it's testing the skill of players
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: above all. Yep. Then you can even argue that undulating
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: fairways make a golf course more fair or a better
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: test to skill in the sense that these courses require
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: players to hit shots off of uneven lies on occasion,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and it's unlikely that any given golfer over seventy two
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: holes or whatever length the tournament is is going to
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: get consistently worse lies than any other golfer. They tend
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: to get sort of the same approximately the same number
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of breaks, the same number of side hill uphill downhill lies.
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: If you listen a Brandle and he quotes his favorite
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: statistic of strokes gained good breaks, then then you don't
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: you have to pay attention. This is something you should
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: be tracking.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, what I'm saying might not be completely
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: I do think over seventy two holes, there's a lot
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: of room for variants, obviously, and some players do get
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: more lucky over the course of a tournament than others.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: So I'll give some credit to Brandle there, but I
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: think it tends to kind of come out in the wash.
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and who like it happens right, Like that's that's
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: the game that we're playing here. Like, sorry, you're gonna
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: get a good breaker, bad break. Eventually, you could hit
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: the wrong side of a hill on a green and
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: run all the way back down, like that happened at
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: the window a thousand times last week, Like it's it happens.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Like I don't know what to tell you. It's kind
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: of the game that we're all playing here. And obviously
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: there's a bigger microscope on it at the professional level,
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: but even it could happen to anybody. So like, yeah,
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: if you're building a giant hill for no reason, I
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: would I would, I don't know that. I'd call it unfair,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: I'd call it stupid, I'd call it a gimmick. But
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: if you are just on the side of a hill
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: because that's where the fairway is, and you got to
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: hit a shot that's below your feet, then like, that's
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: part of the game.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: It's it's you have to be able to hit that
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: shot at the.
• 33:51
  Speaker 3: End of the day.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me give you another potentially unfair element of
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: a golf course, and this one maybe will be better
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: received by you. I'm guessing it'll be better received as
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: as potentially unfair than undulating fair ways, and that is
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: greens that don't tend to receive approach shots of the
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: length required. So the simplest example of this would be
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: you have a two hundred and fifty yard par three
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: and the green is fronted by a bunker. You kind
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: of outlined a version of this scenario earlier. Say the
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: approach is blocked and the green is shallow, and you
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: have another hazard in the back and the green tilts
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: away from the player and the par three is two
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty yards. Is that unfair?
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in a way, like I feel like you have
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: to be especially in a part three, there has to
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: be a way to hit the green right.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Well, are you being devoted to par categories here? Though?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Why not just consider it a par four lay up
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: and then hit a pitch in to the green.
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: That's such a good point.
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: That's a good point.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: This is where it becomes tricky.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: I feel like if you are if you have that
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: green and you know where people are going to be
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: hitting it from, then you have to be able to
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: reasonably assume that somebody can hold it with metal at
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: that point, if you're not giving the opportunity to do that,
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: and the easiest way to do that for at least
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: ameters would probably be to run it up to some extent.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: And if you're not giving people the opportunity to do that,
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: then you're asking for big numbers. I would say it's
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: probably a pace of plate disaster at that point, which
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: is never what anybody wants.
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's probably just impractical to a degree, I.
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: Would call it.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: I would lean that's more unfair than maybe hitting off
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: the side of a hill in a fair way unless
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: you built that hill out of nothing.
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: Sure, Okay, I think a lot of people agree with you,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: and I think that green design and the ways that
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: greens can be receptive and unreceptive is the one area
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: in which a lot of architects and architecture nerds suddenly
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: become members of the fairness police. It's kind of funny
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: when you see this happen. It is accepted as a
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: principle of golf course design that greens should kind of
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: be built for the length of the whole that they
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: appear on. If you have a long par four, then
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: it's generally accepted that the green should accept a kind
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: of low running, longer shot, Whereas if you have a
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: short par four, it tends to be more accepted that
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: the green can be small and unreceptive if you have
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: a long par three and a short part three the
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: same thing. I mean. Consider the eighth green at Oakmont
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: versus the seventh green at Pebble Beach. One is very
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: small and surrounded by hazards and has no room to
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: run any shot up. That's the seventh hole at Pebble Beach,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: But everybody accepts that because it's one hundred yard shot.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: Whereas the eighth green at Oakmont, even though there are
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: still obviously some people who did not like that hole
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: and thought it was unfair, the green does does receive
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: longer shots. You can run the ball up. The green
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: is big, and so it's pretty receptive.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: So here's my thing on that.
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: After seeing it in person and seeing it played for
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: six days or whatever, I don't really get the unfair argument.
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: I didn't get the whole big blow up about aid
• 37:30
  Speaker 3: at Oakmont. I didn't really understand it at all. Honestly,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: if you're a professional player, it kind of seemed like
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: an easy hole. Just blow it up there, get up
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: and down, get.
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Out because of how the green was designed, right, Yeah.
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: Like, it honestly did not seem that bad, even if
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: you ended up in that bunker on the left, like,
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: get up and down and cool, you're good. Like it
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: honestly didn't seem like a problem at all.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: PJ. That was a great example of people not knowing
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: ball pre criticizing the eighth hole at Oakmont just because
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: it was going to play three hundred yards. I mean,
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: please get over yourselves. And of course, once the tournament started,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: all those complaints just kind of disappeared people.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: I feel like it was like probably one of the
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: more simple holes on the course. It's just like, ah,
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: I'm just gonna blast it up there. I'm gonna make
• 38:15
  Speaker 3: it three. Worst case scenario, I'll make a four and
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: that's it.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Like Jeff Ogilvie actually said this in our interview with him.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure if it appeared in the video or not,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: but he said something to the effect, well, the eighth
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: hole is kind of a breather, you know, even though
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: it's a three hundred yard part three, it's it's it's
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: a pretty simple hole, you know, and and success you're
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: not going to make a triple bogie there, and so
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: you're just not not that scared of it. Yeah, I
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: think that hole has lost some of its teeth. It's
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: become less of a good hole since players have become
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: more able to reliably carry the ball through the air.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: Now that players can, you know, you can pretty much
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: be assured that you're going to hit the ball a
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: certain length, especially if you're a professional. That whole is
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: the point of it is, is kind of lost a
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: little bit. So yeah, kind of a kind of a
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: side note on the eighth hold oak mind, I think
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: at one time that that was a really cool, nuanced
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: par three, but it's lost some of those complexities because
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: you can just carry everything now. You know, those bunkers
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: that kind of form a ring around the approach, those
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: aren't that big of a factor. Players just hit it
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: over them. Now. It used to be the case that
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: you kind of had to land near them and run
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: the ball up, And maybe for some amateur players that's
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: still the case, but it's just it's not the same
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: hole anymore.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: So what outside of you mentioned like several seven a
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: pebble beach, Like that's that's a wedge for everybody, Like
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: you don't have to run that up. But what I
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: was trying to say before, when you ask what might
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: be unfair, I feel like four maybe not Like a
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: webshot par three is the one example that like that.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I feel like it's commonly accepted. But I feel like,
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: if if.
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: You're on a normal golf course for amateurs, reasonable people,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: I feel like you have to give some level of
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: access to a green on the ground to it at
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: least at something right, Like I feel like if you
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: have to fly it on every green. That's a lot
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: And I don't know that i'd call it unfair, but
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: I definitely I call it mean.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and maybe joyless. Yeah, the golf course isn't as fun.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: This brings in the idea of playability, which is again
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: one of those words that's part of the word cloud here,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: the fairness word cloud playability. It's not exactly the same
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: as fairness. Playable and fair those are I think related
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: concepts in a lot of people's minds, but maybe not
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: exactly the same. And I would I would say the
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: same thing about the word equity. What you're talking about
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: giving players who hit lower trajectory shots and maybe have
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: less ability, giving those players the ability to run the
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: ball onto a green is yes, maybe a question of
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: fairness to those players. The whole is more fair to
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: them because they can use that route. But it also
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: overlaps with this concept of equity. Building an equitable golf
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: course that all players can play and enjoy, and I
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: think that the impulse to do that comes from a
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: slightly different place than the impulse to build a perfectly
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: fair golf course. If you're trying to build an equitable
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: or playable golf course for the broadest number of people possible. Yeah,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I do think that overlaps with the concept of fairness,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: but it's not exactly the same thing. Yeah, and so
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the ability to run the ball up is maybe more
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: part of that discussion than part of the fairness discussion.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: But again, these things are a little bit hard to differentiate.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: What I'd like to do now, though, is is go
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: back to this question of green receptiveness and apply it
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: to a few very famous holes that maybe don't have
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: very receptive greens and are maybe extremely exciting exactly because
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: they are not fair in this specific way. The first
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: one would have to be the road hole. There are
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: a number of ways in which the road hole might
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: be unfair. What are some of the ways in which
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: you from tee to green the road hole? What kinds
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: of elements does it have that might be might be
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: deemed unfair?
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: Well, there's a there's a building in the way, So
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: I feel like that that's the first one that stands
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: out in my head.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: Completely blind tea shot, and not even because there's a
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: hill in front of you, but because there's a hotel.
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I definitely thinking about how I how I play.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: I don't hit the ball very high. So I'm I'm
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: primarily worried about the building. That's that's any time that
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: I have to carry something that is above me off
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: the tee, I'm moderately worried that I'm just going to
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: hit a warm burner.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: And here you're a single You're a singles hitter, is
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: what you're saying.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, big Mark Leishman, just taking it, taking it to
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: the right field, going the other way, not not really worried.
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: About slapping it out there.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, now the prime prime eture not really worried about
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: the log ball these days.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: Uh So there's there's a building for sure.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: Uh.
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: Then then you have the road itself where if you're playing,
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: if you tend to hit a cut and you're playing
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: it down the right side of the fair way, you
• 43:39
  Speaker 3: are obviously, I guess that's more of a strategy decision
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: that it is a matter of fairness that if you
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: decide to get risky and play towards the road, that's
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: more of a U issue. But sure that is obviously
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: the idea of that is daunting.
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: Whether you're near it or not.
• 43:59
  Speaker 3: I guess I never been, but in my head I
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: would be scared because there's just a road right there anyway,
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: and then the green is kind of angled, so that
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: if you're not coming at it from the right angle,
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: it's got a giant bunker in front of it, and
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: you're kind of screwed that way.
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, an extremely putative bunker.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: Like talk about a hazard that seems out of proportion
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: with the size of the miss. The road bunker is
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: the ultimate example of that, and even the road might
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: be considered an example of that. So you have so
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: many elements of this whole that would anger members of
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: the fairness Police if those people were inclined to criticize
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: a course like the Old Course, which maybe they seem
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: a little bit less inclined to do because the Old
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Course has been with us for such a long time
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: and because it's so natural and it just kind of
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: uses what's there, even if what's there is a bunch
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: of man made stuff. So the road hole does have
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: so many elements of quote unquote unfairness about it, including
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: you know, you mentioned that the green is kind of angled.
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: If you if you bail out to the left, then
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: then it's very much harder to hit. I think the
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: road green is probably hard to hit from pretty much
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: everywhere Yeah, it's definitely easier to hit if you've got
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: the right angle, if you if you manage to kind
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: of hug that out of bounds line. Hey, we have
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: out of bounds too. There's another there's another thing that
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: you might consider unfair. But if you if you manage
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: to end up on that right side of the fairway,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: you have an easier approach shot than you would if
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: you're on the left side. But it's still very, very
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: hard to hit a green of that size from that distance.
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: Because this is a long hole. The road hole is
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, it might not be very long
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: for Roy McElroy anymore, Yeah, but for the rest of us,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and for most of the history of golf, the road
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: hole is very long for a part four. Now, it
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: wasn't always considered a part four. It was considered a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: par five, and maybe that's part of the reason why
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the green is the way it is. But now we
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: consider it a par four. And so players are in
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: this situation where they feel like they have to hit
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: their second shot on the green, but it's so difficult
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: to pull off that shot that it almost seems unfair.
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: And if you miss, then you're in the freaking road
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: bunker or on the road itself in those penalty and
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: you're screwed. And so the hole is almost ridiculous, and
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: it definitely has many elements of unfairness about it. But
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: there's no hole that people look forward to players playing
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: more than this one, no holes that players look forward
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: to playing themselves more than the road Hole, and watching
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: in tournaments as well. And so maybe it is exactly
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: these elements of unfair, like it pushes at the bound
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: of our taste for unfairness and doesn't, for whatever reason,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't quite push us all the way over. And and
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: for that reason, it's a really great hole.
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: It's got the aura, it's got the gravitas, it's got you.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: Know, it's part of it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: It's the road hole, Like you can't get mad at
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: it kind of thing.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, some players still do.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: I mean, for sure, I'm sure if Tyrolhadden loves the
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: road road Home, I love to get his thoughts. But yeah,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: I mean, I I understand it from the highest level.
• 47:32
  Speaker 3: Why you might think this is out of proportion. I
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: mean a lot of the old courses out of proportion.
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: Now at the highest.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: Level, the open chair, the camp smith wanted like twenty
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: two under like, yeah, it's it's not it's not good.
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: But I I think for a normal player, you're more
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: captivated by the scene and the environment and the history
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: of the place to like, you know, yeah, it's not
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: good to be that bunker and it's not good to
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: be on that road. But I feel like I'm not
• 48:06
  Speaker 3: going to be ranting and raving about how this is
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: the most unfair thing I've ever seen. I would just
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: be mad that I made an eight on the road
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: hole more than anything else. I would attribute that to
• 48:16
  Speaker 3: user error more than I would course to.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: That You're not going to be in a critical frame
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: of mind, no, because the course has sort of wowed you, yeah,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: maybe even snowed you yeah to it, you know, created
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: a mist about itself where you can't quite see its
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: potential flaws. But I think because the old course puts
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: people in that frame of mind that they're willing to
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: maybe loosen up a little bit and have fun with
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: a whole like the road hole. And once once you're
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: in that state of mind, you realize how fun potentially
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: quote unquote unfair things can be. Yeah, the road Hole's exciting,
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: and I don't think it's just because of its aura.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: That's part of it. It has an aura. The old
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: course has an aura. But the road hole is also
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: exciting because of that potential for disaster. It is achievable,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: though it's not like this hole is completely ridiculous where
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: no player can play it. Well. We saw Lydiaco hit
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: an incredible fairway wood into this green that is just
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: not designed to accept fairway webshots. We wouldn't see that
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: on any other hole in the world except for maybe
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: maybe a couple of others that that we can mention briefly.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: But part of the reason that shot was so exciting
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: is that the green is not proportioned to receive it,
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: and and it has that that that little, that little
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: whiff of unfairness about it. And I think that's exactly
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: what what makes it fun.
• 49:52
  Speaker 3: So would would do you in the context of the
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: old course then the unfairness you have like a lot
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: of the undulating fairways.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: But I would say there's I feel like it's on
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: a hole.
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: I would argue it's probably even more fair than usual
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: because you don't have to play it necessarily a certain
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: way that you can do so many more different things.
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: There's not like a ton of rough out there so
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: you can kind of just blast it around and still
• 50:21
  Speaker 3: be like, I feel like that puts everybody on a
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: level playing field to the point where it's hard to
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: get mad about anything unfair. Maybe this is I don't
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: know a ton about links golf, but at least at
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: the Old Course where it's pretty open, that like, you know,
• 50:38
  Speaker 3: it is what it is at that point, even bad
• 50:41
  Speaker 3: shots are not taking you out of the whole per se,
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: and that on the whole makes it actually more fair,
• 50:48
  Speaker 3: even if the road hole is kind of maybe potentially
• 50:52
  Speaker 3: a gimmick.
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: This is where we might be redefining fair as equitable
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: or playable. Yeah, which I'm all in favor of. That
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: is not notably how professionals tend to define fairness. Equitable
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: and playability, those aren't Those aren't big factors in the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: way that the Scottie Schefflers of the world think about fairness.
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: They think about fairness as good shots being rewarded and
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: bad shots being punished. If you, though, think about fairness
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: instead as a as an extremely playable course that many
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: different people of different stripes can enjoy, then the Old
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Course might be the ultimate example of an equitable and
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: playable course. And that's a big part of why it
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: inspired the likes of Alistair McKenzie. You know that that's
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: the one of the big things that Alistair McKenzie loved
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: about that course. It created the greatest pleasure for the
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: greatest number because of this sense of kind of democracy
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: about it. That any different kind of player could be
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: successful there in their.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: Own way seems like a good thing to me. I
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: think that's how I can pro that. I understand why
• 52:01
  Speaker 3: if you're competing in an open championship maybe you would
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: not want that, but you know, that's fine.
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say in general, the old courses like that.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: The road Hole might be a bit of an exception
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to that, though. If you play it as a three
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: shot hole, if you lay up on your second shot,
• 52:16
  Speaker 1: you might beat a lot of players who who who
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: try to go for that green in two, which again,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: you know, goes back to this idea of equity.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: But that's kind I mean, I'm just trying to put
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: myself with a mentality. It's like, oh, I'm at the
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: road Hole, I'm not going to lay up like that's
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: that's not of course, I have to like.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: It's kind of like if you're if you're on the
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: sixteenth t at Cyprus. Point, Yeah, well that is it?
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Is it fair for there to be a two hundred
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: and thirty two hundred and forty yard part three where
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: you have to carry all ocean to get there? Is that?
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Is that fair? Well? Guess what you can lay up
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: to the left if you want. Go ahead, man, just
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: try to Yeah, have have your buddies stand behind you
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: with the phone filming. You kidding in irons?
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: How do you explain that to people? Oh? I went
• 53:04
  Speaker 2: I went eight iron, I went eight iron pitching bunch.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I mean par man, I got up and down.
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: Come on.
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: That's when you lead with people, is I've made par
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: in sixteen at Cyprus.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Don't ask me how I got there.
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: That's a that that that if if a friend says
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: that to you, then you know that you need to
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: move away from that friend. Potentially that's it's probably not
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: a fun person. But uh, in any case, Uh, you're
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: right that the road hole kind of uh you know,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: you know, bates you into doing the not smart thing.
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: I would say there are a lot of examples of
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: holes like the road hole that have big elements of
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: unfairness about them, and those are exactly the elements that
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: make them super exciting to watch. The postage stamp hole
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: at Royal Troon is a good example. There's there's so
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: much chance there because it's so windy that part of
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: the course. You know, it's an elevated tea, you're up,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: you're vulnerable to the wind. And that green is so small,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: so severe, with such penalizing hazards around it, that two
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: players can hit pretty good web shots into there and
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: one might end up in the coffin bunker and one
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: might end up five feet from the pin.
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: So I was going to bring up the coffin bunker before,
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: like exactly that example, Like would would you? I don't
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: want to call a coffin bunker's a gimmick because it's
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: been there for however many years, that hundreds of years,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: But I feel like it's kind of maybe unfair to
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: some extent.
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it absolutely is. And that entire hole,
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: I mean that the size of the green, the way
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: the tea is situated, how much the wind affects you
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: in that and that little shot. I don't think that
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: hole is a is purely a test of skill. Now
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: it might be a test of metal and psychological.
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: Strength at the end of the day.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean you could say it's a test
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: of skill in that way, certainly, but there's such a
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: big element of randomness there and the you know, the
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: the line between success and absolute dire failure is so
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: thin that it's hard to call any any part of
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: that hole fare. But what does everybody want to do
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: when they go to Royal Truon. What does everybody want
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: to watch when they go to an Open championship at
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: Royal trun They want to go to that hole and
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: see what happens. I would say the same thing of
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: the fifteenth hole at Augusta National. Is that green built
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: to receive any kind of shot? At this point, now
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: this might enter into a discussion of green speeds and
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: how you match a green's severity of slope with the
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: speed of the green, But putting that aside for a second,
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: the fifteenth hole at Augusta National is almost ridiculous because
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: of how severe the green is. But what is the
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: most Where have we seen the most exciting shots in
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: recent Masters tournaments? It's at the fifteenth hole at Augusta
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: National exactly because we know how unreceptive that green is.
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: It's achievable. Rory, can you know, bend a seven iron
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: around the trees and hold the green, But you have
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: to hit an extremely exceptional shot and you have to
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: get a little bit lucky. Probably.
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: I feel like the landing area on fifteen is so
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: small that you can reasonably no matter where the pin is, Like,
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: you have to be on that upper tier and if
• 56:31
  Speaker 3: but if you're above it, as we saw with Rory,
• 56:34
  Speaker 3: you're screwed at that point then too, because it's impossible
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: you can't ship it coming back the same way. Yeah,
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: So I feel like that, I don't know, like when
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: you're picking out these iconic holes, I feel like it's hard.
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: It's hard to criticize them because they provide these these
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: moments in time that are etched in everybody's memories.
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: But like for a normal player, I guess.
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: Maybe my my my theory of fairness, as you kind
• 57:03
  Speaker 3: of just said, has evolved throughout this last hour or
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: whatever we've been going on here, is for the professionals.
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: I agree with Scotty. I agree with Joseph is that
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: you know, wayward drives should be penalized more than decent drives,
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: then good drives should not be screwed with it all.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: It's frustrating for a lot of people, fans included. If
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that's not the case, we it's frustrating to watch a
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: player blow it way. I mean, like Wyndham Clark did
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: on the on the Deal at LACC a couple of
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: years ago. People are still really pissed about that. Now.
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: I have I have my notes about why that's that
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: shot isn't isn't what people thought it was. But but
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: it is clearly an example of people being frustrated by
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: a lack of penalty for what was perceived to be
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: a poor shot.
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'm with that professionally, but I think at
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: the di amateur level, I feel like it's I would
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: be more about playability and equitability and making sure that
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: everybody has path too.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: You don't have to be good, but everybody is a
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: path to finishing the hole.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Whereas like some of these like if I get stuck
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: in the coffin bunker, I'm sorry, Like I'm I'll hit
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: like two shots. I'm not gonna be able to get out. Sorry,
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: I'm going home.
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: Like that's it. It's not it's not gonna be You're not.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: Going home though you're gonna You're gonna finish, finish the course,
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: and then you'll have a nice story for your buddies
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: about what happened to you on the poster stamp.
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: Exactly like but that that, I feel like there should
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: be a path for everybody of varying skill levels.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: Maybe I'm just saying.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: That the Old Course is greatest place in the world,
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: which might not be my worst take.
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: I've had worse takes than that.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would would accept that,
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: both past and present. Yeah, I think that's a really
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: good nuanced view of the situation, that the that the
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: requirements or the goals of professional tournament courses are and
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: should be different from those of courses meant to appeal
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: to tow amateurs. Of course, this becomes a little tricky
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: when you have courses that are meant to do both
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: and and some courses do that better than others. You know,
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Pinehurst Number two and the Old Course are probably the
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: best examples of courses that can do both well.
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: There's not a lot of rough and you can bunt
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: it up on every green like. I feel like that
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: opens that opens you up to a lot as a
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: bad player, that you you can still challenge the professionals
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: with the kind of roulette wheel of what what is
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: your you know why look like?
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: And this tough perfectly stated, and I agree. Now I
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: do want to finish, though, on a brief monologue in
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: support of cultivating little bits of unfairness in golf course design.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: If you had a perfectly fair golf course, in whether
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: we're talking about fair in the professional sense or fair
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: in the amateur sense that you've outlined, it would be
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: I think boring and charmless. It would become predictable. But
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: equally true is that a perfectly unfair golf course would
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: be ridiculous. So we need a combination that If we
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: accept that a perfectly fair golf course and a perfectly
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: unfair golf course would be both unacceptable, then we have
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: to live somewhere between those polls. Yes, so we do
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: want a course to give an advantage to skilled players,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: but that's not all that we want a golf course
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: to do. So I think, you know, a well designed
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: golf course will strike some sort of balance between fairness
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and unfairness, between randomness and order, between skill and luck. Right,
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: there to be some kind of balancing act between all
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: of those dichotomies in a golf course that's going to
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: stand the test of time and be exciting to play
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: and also test skill in a way that we find
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: fair and acceptable. So I guess what this means is
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: that if you're an architect, you have to figure out
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: ways to cultivate a little bit of randomness or luck
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: or even unfairness on your golf courses without going overboard
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and falling into something that's unreasonable, unplayable, or absurd. Because
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: you know, insisting on fairness at all times is not
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 1: a good recipe for design, and the most fair golf courses,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: the rigorously fair golf courses that have been built over
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: the history of golf architecture, have tended to fall out
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: of favor, not stand the test of time very well,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: and have tended to be redesigned to reintroduce some more
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: quirk and eccentricity and unexpectedness into them. So at the
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: same time, you know, we can say that insisting on
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: fairness is not a good recipe for design, neither is
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: disregarding the concept of fairness entirely. And so ultimately, I
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: do think we have to live between these extremes in
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: some way or another, and different golf courses might have
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: more of some more of an element of unfairness than others,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: but all golf courses need to find their particular blend
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: of that. I guess that would be my argument. How
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: do you feel about that?
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: I think there has to be some level of randomness
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: if you want to call randomness unfair. Like to me,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: I don't know that those are the same thing. We're
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: talking about the gray area between playability and fairness and
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: all of that to be. Randomness and unfair are not
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: necessarily the same thing.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a difference between an architect saying I'm gonna
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: try to make this a little random somehow versus I'm
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: gonna create a feature that just screws the player over. Yes,
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: those are maybe two different things.
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 3: I think those are not necessarily the same definition. So
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: I would be pro randomness, as again, this is an
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: outdoor sport. You need to have some level of Yeah,
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 3: it's you know, player versus player, it's player versus self mentality,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: but it's also a player versus nature and you're trying
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: to beat the course, and the course can.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 2: Fight back a little bit.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: But I feel like when you start to get into
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: the unfairness of I wouldn't go so far as like
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 3: the rewarding bad shots is not necessarily the right term,
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: but not penalizing them, or not penalizing them enough. That's
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: where I think you start to lean into the little
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: too much randomness, not enough fairness for at least in
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 3: a professional setting.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe so. And we all have our different levels
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: of tolerance for what constitutes something that is outright unfair
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: as opposed to, you know, charmingly random or natural seeming
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: or whatever you want to say. My position on this
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: issue is probably always going to be in favor of
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: promoting more unfairness than people are comfortable with. And part
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: of the reason for that is that I think over
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: the past two hundred years or so, golfers have become very,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: very much less accustomed to unfairness. If we were to
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: be transported back one hundred and fifty years to the
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: links course of the eighteen hundreds, we would find those
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: courses so extraordinarily unfair that we would hardly want to
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: play them. Possibly. I mean, I think I would still
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: want to be I would be fascinated by them, but
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: you'd hit the ball in the middle of the fair
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: way and get terrible lies all the time because of
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: the state of agronomy at the time. You know, the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: hazards are not going to that bunkers are not going
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: to be raked. There would be all sorts of things
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: about those very natural golf courses that would strike us
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: as unfair. And I think the story of golf and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: golf architecture to a great degree has been to introduce
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: gradually more and more fairness into the game through architecture
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: and agronomy, to the point where players have gotten very
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: used to certain things that just weren't there in the
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 1: original game. And so my position is always going to
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: be I'm going to promote some more unfair I'm going
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: to add Kate for that, But also, just to be
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: intellectually honest, I have to acknowledge that fairness is an
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: important thing to think about in design. You can't have
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: a completely unfair golf course. You just can't. It would
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: be stupid and it would not be fun. And so
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: there's a yeah, I have to take a balanced position
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: while at the same time being an advocate for one
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: side of it. Does that kind of make sense?
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that totally makes sense.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: I think you made a great point there about even
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: like as far as like agronomy, where you have the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 3: perfect lies in the fair way and you're you know,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 3: you're not running into some weeds or grass or anything.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: Like how far things have come, Like everything is so
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 3: optimized even for normal people at this point, Like I.
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: Mean, municipal golf courses that I play in Portland are
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: are so much more consistently maintained exactly and anything anybody
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: would have played even fifty years ago.
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: I think, like that's a great point that I hadn't
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 3: even considered that, Like, yeah, the development of turf at
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 3: even just a municipal level like that has gotten to
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: the point where that's taking out so many dice rolls
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: that would have been there fifty years ago. That yeah,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: I again, I think any use of the elements, I
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 3: feel like I'm gonna end up being pro that.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: I think that's cool.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: Again, Like I'm not here to have every shot go
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: perfectly if I hit it well, I don't think that.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: I don't think that is fair, even though it is
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 3: quote unquote the perfectly fair, I don't think it's reasonable
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: to expect that to be true. Like bad bounces are
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: part of the game. We're doing this outside. Uh, you know,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: the wind could adjust anything like. All of that to
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: me is part of what you sign up for. But
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: the unfair at the municipal level, I would say, would
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: be unplayable to a wide to the full population.
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: You have to give everybody or just like way more
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: playable for one type of player than another.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, give everybody a chance.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 3: But at the professional level, I think it's it's the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: goal should be to identify the guy who played the
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: best that week in the tournament. And I feel like
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: a lot of times we don't necessarily get that.
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, and and we we don't get that, not
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: necessarily because of well maybe because of unfairness to a degree,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: but not because of interesting unfairness. Usually it's usually just
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: because the course is kind of too too easy, too soft. Yeah,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: and so yeah, so that's that. That is kind of
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: u that is a separate issue. But yeah, very very
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: interesting distinction that you've made between kind of the what
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: we expect of a tournament course versus what we expect
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: from a course that we all play on a daily basis.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that's a very valid thing for a
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: golf course designer to think about, and for a golfer
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: to think about when they're assessing a golf course, like
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: try to figure out what the purpose of the golf
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: course is and does it succeed in that in that objective?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: And I think that's totally okay to think of courses
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: in that way.
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean once, once we're all playing the new
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 3: double dot that has made Cameron Young the greatest golfer
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: of all time, I think all of this will get
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: changed anyway we're all be on the same level playing field.
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, equity will no longer be an issue because
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: we're all we're all we're all hitting it like like
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: young Cam. All right, PJ, it's been a pleasure as always.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you for coming on this episode of Golf Architecture
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: one on one. I hope it was fun.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Oh, this is great.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: Great to get get a little lesson about what Sheriff
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 3: Scotty's teaching to his comrades out there.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: This episode of Designing Golf was produced by Will Balsam.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: Thank you Will. If you're in jo designing golf, then
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: I can guarantee that you would love what we're doing
• 1:10:05
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• 1:10:08
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• 1:10:12
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• 1:10:15
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• 1:10:20
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• 1:10:23
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• 1:10:28
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• 1:10:37
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• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: for listening, and we'll be back again soon with another episode.