Dylan Bronson's 50 Yards of Tips -Green Contours-
Jul 27, 2020 18:54:21 GMT -5
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Post by TannerBronson on Jul 27, 2020 18:54:21 GMT -5
Before You Read
"Golf is a game, and talk and discussion is all to the interests of the game. Anything that keeps the game alive and prevents us being bored with it is an advantage. Anything that makes us think about it, talk about it, and dream about it is all to the good and prevents the game becoming dead."
~ Dr. Alister MacKenzie
(Designer of Augusta National, Cypress Point, and many more.)
Designing a golf course makes you think about so many things. Strategy, visuals, and themes. I look at designing a course like taking the player on a journey. Some of the journey will have hills to climb. Some steep cliffs and challenges to get over. It's a story written on land instead of paper. This is one of very few sports that you can make a player have a different experience each time playing. Tennis is a back and forth game on a court. Football, basketball too. Baseball is always on a similar shaped field. Golf is always different and there is always something new. So when you think about designing a course, make that “new” experience.
Now I'm not writing this thinking I'm a genius myself, but If there was something I could do to help the community of architects, I will. There is so much to cover in design and besides some really nice tutorials, there isn't one spot that has a concentrated amount of helpful tips. I thought writing this could be really useful to some people and I hope you all can take stuff from this.
I will try to section off this writing as best as I can and will work from more easy tips to harder and more confusing tips if that makes sense. I hope you all enjoy and keep designing!
Before I get really stater ill explain why these post are called the "50 Yards of Tips". I will be posting 50 overall tips on my thoughts behind designing a golf course. Hope you all enjoy and if you have any questions let me know in this thread.
Greens Contours
The First Yard
This section might seem like the hardest to some people but is probably the most important part of course design when it comes to strategy and playability. Greens never should be (in my opinion) close to flat or one huge slope. Character in greens always will bring out character in shot making skills and playability.
I won’t get into different styles of greens for this section but some general points should be made. Green characteristics are always a big signature part to a designer. A.W. Tillinghast had “coffin” shaped greens with ridges and humps. Ross has squarish greens with shelves and runoffs. Dr. MacKenzie had bowls and shapes like no other. Some people’s style of design just fits certain characteristics, and that’s fine.
Greens should mostly be about playability and that’s what I’ll start off with. I always work with a shape of a green before I even design the rest of the hole. The shape of the green is really important. If you want a hole to play strategically, you can use the orientation of the green to dictate where the player should play his or her shot off the tee. Merion’s 10th hole is a great example of this. The greens orientation is angled left, the farther the tee shot is down the fairway. More of the green is revealed and there is less bunker to carry. Here is a photo.
![](https://i.imgur.com/quNti80.jpg)
Using this design feature is a great way to test course management skills and deliver more variety to course setup. I used this technique multiple times on my own fantasy design of Quincy Downs. The 14th hole is the best way to show this.
![](https://i.imgur.com/EyPI5ws.jpg)
Angling greens from the line of play might be super effective but adding lumps, ridges, and shelves can vary the playability of an entire hole.
Lumps in the center of the greens is probably most effective when it comes to maximizing playability on a hole. You can have the hole cut anywhere around a lump and have it play really well. Use it as a backstop. Bank it left or right into a pin. Or have it trickle down and towards. There are so many ways to use this feature.
Ridges are the hardest to make but still effective for playability out of the three main features that can be used to contour a green. You can use ridges to have a player think about club selection. Let’s say the pin is in the front of the ridge and you over hit your ball over the ridge. You have to negotiate with the ridge. Another consequence for missing around a ridge is that if you are off target the farther left or right you go, the more break you will have to deal with if you were putting over it to get it in. Ridges can become a way to make a hole location easier. If the pin was in front of a ridge, you can use the ridge as a backstop. This again is a really easy way to make greens interesting and play interesting. Visually, ridges are a great way to “support” the sides of your greens. If there is a higher part of a bunker lip on the side. You can use that ridge to connect the surrounding contours to the green for a more natural look. Not only does it guide the eye towards the center of the green. It also makes the green look higher than it actually is. Giving it more of a “grand” look.
Shelves are the most used in the golf course architecture world. Making random shelves is the worst thing you can do to your green.
This feature can be a great way to show off a certain part of the putting surface if you use it correctly. The stereotypical shelf is the back to front shelf that decides a green into two parts. Yes, this is mildly effective when making a player think about club selection but there are much more effective ways to use this great feature. Donald Ross mastered the feature by using smaller shelves on the very back and on the sides of putting surfaces. Having shelves put to the edges and sides of greens can introduce angles of approach and more ideas playability wise.
General green contours like this are always great for playability and visuals if used correctly. Later in this writing, there will be more of a descriptive way to sculpt greens and ways to do it.