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Post by sandsaver01 on Oct 26, 2019 14:35:47 GMT -5
Since I was curious about what is a "good" green size on a golf course, especially in view of the foofaraw (sp) during the recent Rookie Design challenge, I decided to investigate.
This is certainly not scientifically rigorous, but the experimental design is as follows:
1> Take Golf Week's 2019 list of the top 200 U.S. courses and limit to the top 15 Classic and top 15 Modern courses.
2> Take five from each list, trying to pick five different designers.
3> Measure depth and width of two par threes, two par fives, and three par fours on each of the courses.
4> Find the median depth and width for the holes on the classic and modern list, as well as the standard deviation from the mean for those measurements.
The courses used for Classic were:
1. Pine Valley GC, Crump & Colt 2. Shinnecock Hills, Toomey & flynn 3. Prairie Dunes, Maxwell & Maxwell 4. Fisher's Island Club, Raynor 5. Seminole GC, Ross
For Modern:
1. Sand Hills, Coore & Crenshaw 2. Ballyneal, Doak 3. Whistling Straits, Dye 4. Alotian Club, Fazio 5. Muirfield Village, Nicklaus
The results:
Classic> par 3 is 32yds deep x 23w par 4 is 36d x 25w par 5 is 34.5d x 23 w
Modern> par 3 is 38.5d x 22w par 4 is 37d x 24w par 5 is 34.5d x 19.5 w The std dev for all of these is around 10 - 20%.
What I glean from this is that the green size difference between the best of classic and modern courses is not that much. I thought that the modern ones would be much larger.
I hope this is food for thought, it certainly is for me. Take what will from the information.
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Post by ohheycat on Oct 26, 2019 15:08:57 GMT -5
This is good info, thanks for sharing
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Post by gforce41 on Oct 26, 2019 16:20:08 GMT -5
That is interesting and close to what I thought. Since most real greens I play seem about 30yds or so in depth, what I do when designing a hole is measure out 15 yds in each direction from the center waypoint. That just gives me some semblance of depth perception and I go from there. Some of my earlier greens were waaay too big....
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Post by TannerBronson on Nov 13, 2019 11:52:02 GMT -5
This is really helpful! Thanks for this and I definitely believe the measurements it’s crazy though how small greens can get on modern courses. Again, thank you.
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Post by tpetro on Jan 12, 2020 23:49:36 GMT -5
Don't know what brought me back to this thread 2 months later but the inclusion of Nicklaus - specifically his penal death trap at Muirfield Vil. - drags the modern one way down. Throw Hanse in there and you have wildly different numbers, but I guess that just points to the general subjectiveness of architecture
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Post by joegolferg on Jan 13, 2020 8:00:11 GMT -5
One very important factor you've missed is that a huge majority of the older courses have all had their greens cut smaller from their original size. Plus many of these older course have unfortunately had their holes remodeled by modern designers. It's a tough question to answer in reality.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 13, 2020 13:13:10 GMT -5
Add that a lot of older courses had squared off green shapes (many of them from indiscriminate mowing had been rounded off or made smaller unintentionally) and perhaps old courses did have slightly larger greens...but it's close enough that it doesn't really matter.
Just go what fits the style of course, type of hole, and the contours you want to include in said green complex.
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Post by grovey31 on Jan 20, 2020 21:37:06 GMT -5
This is a very cool topic and one I think about on every hole I create. I was reading Tom Doak's book 'Anatomy of Golf Course' this weekend and there's a chapter about green complexes where he talks about green sizes. He says that the size of the green should not necessarily be dictated by the length of the approach to the green. Here is the excerpt:
"the relationship which matters most is not the size of the green versus the length of the approach, but the size of the hazard-free area around the hole versus the difficulty level of the approach"
He talks a lot about creating the maximum interest level on approach shots for the most amount of players. He sites the 'road hole' at The Old Course. It has a super small green for such a long approach to it. It works perfectly though because it creates an extremely interesting and challenging approach shot for the best players while also creating an interesting and challenging third shot for shorter or higher handicap players who can't get to the green in two. I just thought it was a really cool concept and one I haven't really thought about before. Not sure if this can necessarily apply to this game or not but it is a different way to approach approach shots so to say haha
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Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2020 0:31:08 GMT -5
I was reading Tom Doak's book 'Anatomy of Golf Course' this weekend Just had to pull this and say...to anyone who has not read this book before, I urge you to pick up or borrow a copy of it. 100% worth the read.
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pkr
Caddy
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Post by pkr on Jan 27, 2020 12:30:36 GMT -5
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Post by cephyn on Jan 27, 2020 12:40:03 GMT -5
IRL green sizes are also constrained by maintenance concerns - we have no such concerns in-game.
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Post by warhawk137 on Jan 28, 2020 16:16:07 GMT -5
IRL green sizes are also constrained by maintenance concerns - we have no such concerns in-game. Coincidentally in-game courses are also much larger in terms of acreage than real courses - because we don't have to buy the land. Back when I built Gotham Municipal, I laid out the plot first and constrained the course itself to a smaller area in the center, with the city all around it. When I first posted it I got a few people skeptical that I could fit a course in such a tiny plot. Thing is, I measured it out, it was 200 acres, and the average 18-hole course is around 150. More often than not the courses we build are 2 or 3 times larger than real-world courses.
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