Tuesday, January 15, 2008

What Might an Ian Andrew Course Have? – Fairway Width with Bunkering inside the fairway lines



The bunkering is brought into the fairway to develop the strategy - the fairways remain wide for playability







This is a natural progression from yesterday’s blog. As I mentioned in yesterdays my goal is to make players think. A second goal I have stated quite a few times is to ensure enjoyment and playability for the average player. Most would suggest that there is an obvious contradiction, but in fact that is not the case. You can have your cake and eat it to with a couple of very carefully selected methods. One is the extensive use of short grass around greens and the other is wide fairways with interior bunkering.

Immediately you will question how I can employ fairway width and maintain the challenge and this is where the interior bunkering is crucial to my design strategy. Modern architecture tends to keep everything out to the sides whether to flank a target or create carry angles. As players got better, fairways have been narrowed and the bunkering has continued to pinch the landing areas. The improvement in the skills of the elite has not been matched by the average player, yet we’ve toughened up the courses with the evolution of modern design. This is a well and good if you are a skilled player, but where is the playability for the average guy – the majority of players I might add – when they can’t hit these narrow targets.

Throw in the situation of bad weather or high winds and the course can become close to impossible for the average player. Yet the answer is so obvious – give the average player back their width and draw the bunkering into the fairways. The target areas for a strong player remain between the bunkering. The playing area for the average player remains the width of the landing with them either playing away from the interior bunker or playing intentionally short. Although the reality is often they just swing away because they have no true idea of direction but they know intuitively that the odds of actually finding one of the bunkers is slim.

The interior bunker tightens the landing area without taking away the total playing width. It provides all the essential strategies and decisions for a good player, all while leaving the average player lots of room and confidence that they can get around and likely never lose a ball on that hole – which matters a great deal to their psychology and enjoyment of the game.

Since I believe in width, particularly when public play is involved, the use of interior bunkering will ensure that I can have both challenge and playability.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ian,

Wide fairways, lateral mouvement, short grass around greens, deep bunkers with steep faces....

How does that fit in with making golf affordable, when you consider the extra maintenance of the steep faces and the extra irrigation heads this requires...?

I agree with most of the things you would like to implement in your designs, and also find that they seem to lack in many courses, but all of this takes room and some special attention. I've been confronted with this before, and the design ended up being a little more simple than I anticipated at first.

Any thoughts you could share with your readers, and fellow architects out there? (You can also e-mail me if you want....)

YP

Anonymous said...

YP brings up a good point, except that bunker maintenance can be limited by the # of bunkers employed on a course. As for the cost of maintaining short grass vs. rough - is there a substantial difference (I'm asking, 'cause I don't know)? Seems to me the roughs on most modern designs are seeded and managed almost as much as fairways.

One last point on "interior" bunkers. They tend to be more exciting because they are more in play. Often, when a bunker is surrounded by rough the ball will get caught up in the rough and stay just out of a bunker. When they're located within the fairway you can play with the shaping to suck balls in - much more diabolical in my opinion.

Ian Andrew said...

Yannick,

I will answer your question in detail on Thursday's blog.

With this seies I'm presenting ideas - it doesn't mean they will be used every time. Golf course architecture is far too site specific for that simple an answer.

Anonymous said...

Ian, I guess we can all blame RTJ and Oakland Hills for the hour-glass appearance of many fairways. Unfortunately, bunkers that he "pinched" forty years ago only to affect the long hitter now affect most everybody due to advances in equipment. I have seen more interior hazards(not just bunkers) in post-modern courses. But these do tend to take up more room. I, personally prefer what I call "intruding" hazards. By this I mean that they push into the fairway and cause it to meander (zig-zag) through. This allows for much the same strategies but allows the fairways with to be kept down in size. Also, it allows for more variety. And when coupled with the use of interior hazards, they don't feel so forced. By the way, I built my first interior bunker in 1984. Unfortunately the tees couldn't be moved back and it became no longer relevent from a strategic stand point (although it still looks great).

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