nifty1
Amateur Golfer
Letting me loose on the designer is like giving a gun to a monkey!!
Posts: 206
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Post by nifty1 on May 5, 2021 16:52:30 GMT -5
Hi all
I’m working on a parkland course at the moment, which is a first for me, and the plot I’m using came from a local course that I mapped in lidar.
When I’ve played this course before in real life the fairways used to feel so wide. Not that I used to hit them very often of course!! 😁 Now I have it in the game they feel a bit narrow.
I was going to change them a little and probably widen them but the more I plant it the more I actually like the narrow fairways. Although the holes invite driver off most of the tee’s it’s not often the best way to go. In fact the website for the real course it’s based on actually says just that ...driver is invited off most of the tee’s.
The difficulty of the course I’m ending up building comes from the accuracy required off the tee, mixed with a few strategically placed trees. I like that it makes you think to take a lesser club off the tee.
In reality I certainly can’t hit a ball 300 yards anyway so my second shot is always longer than a pitch with a wedge....I actually wish the game didn’t allow us to hit so far too but that’s a moan for a different day. 😁
The width of the fairways is consistent throughout the course.
What are your thoughts on narrow fairways?
Cheers gents
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Post by shotstone on May 5, 2021 21:17:20 GMT -5
20 seems awfully narrow for every hole... I try to target a little wider than that... Just my two cents
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Post by HoneyBadgerHacker on May 5, 2021 21:21:30 GMT -5
I certainly don’t want to sound like I am speaking for everyone but based on my history over the past few months reading and participating in posts I would say not very many would be happy playing with 20 yard fairways. A good target would be 30 yards. 20-25 on some pinched fairways perhaps but don’t think it would be fun playing anything less than that.
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Post by rob4590 on May 6, 2021 1:52:20 GMT -5
Harbour Town says hi
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nifty1
Amateur Golfer
Letting me loose on the designer is like giving a gun to a monkey!!
Posts: 206
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Post by nifty1 on May 6, 2021 2:15:12 GMT -5
Thanks for the thoughts gents
I actually thought I had mapped the course incorrectly on OSM but checking it again using the measure tool on Google earth it seems everything is correct.
The conversation I’m having in my head is “what if I was doing this as a proper lidar course?” Then I would have lo leave the fairways as they are as it would have to be correct to the real course.
I’m not actually going to do this as a lidar so I likely will make the fairways wider for the game but I thought this would be an interesting discussion topic.
Cheers
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Post by HoneyBadgerHacker on May 6, 2021 8:58:22 GMT -5
If you are going to submit it as a “lidar “ course then you definitely need to make sure it’s an accurate reflection on the course even if it’s 20 yard wide fairways. What you might think about doing as others have probably done is in your write up for the description let it be known this is a “restoration” idea of a real life course but don’t submit it as a lidar unless the reviewers say it’s okay to do so.
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nifty1
Amateur Golfer
Letting me loose on the designer is like giving a gun to a monkey!!
Posts: 206
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Post by nifty1 on May 6, 2021 11:56:33 GMT -5
If you are going to submit it as a “lidar “ course then you definitely need to make sure it’s an accurate reflection on the course even if it’s 20 yard wide fairways. What you might think about doing as others have probably done is in your write up for the description let it be known this is a “restoration” idea of a real life course but don’t submit it as a lidar unless the reviewers say it’s okay to do so. Thanks Honeybadger I didn’t intend submitting it as a lidar as the data resolution is not fine enough to make the course accurate, I don’t think. The course has come out really ...and I mean really flat. 😊 The real course is built on a river floodplain and spends a lot of time underwater in a bad winter, so it is pretty flat but I was going to change it up a little in the game to make it play a bit more interesting. 👍
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Post by Violinguy69 on May 9, 2021 20:22:40 GMT -5
In this game, 40-50 yard fairways are quite common. IRL, the most narrow fairways are normally 25-30. I am a firm believer that smaller things make a golf course more difficult. Smaller FWs and greens particularly. Yes larger greens offer more hole locations, and wide FWs offer a player choices of angles, but there's a reason the best players in the world skip Harbortown every year. It's really hard, even at 6900 yards. As for designing for PGA2K, 20 yard FWs are a little narrow. Maybe one or two holes could have that as an option from the tee, but for every hole it seems a little excessive. There are quite a few excellent courses that have narrow fairways, and a lot of courses that have enormous fairways that are top notch. I usually stick to 30 yards for my FWs. Sometimes wider, sometimes narrower. 30 yards seems a fair, if a little narrow (for this game) number.
Edit: I realize that the other reason they skip Harbortown is because it's right after the Masters, but still...
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nifty1
Amateur Golfer
Letting me loose on the designer is like giving a gun to a monkey!!
Posts: 206
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Post by nifty1 on May 10, 2021 6:41:31 GMT -5
Thanks Violinguy
I think I underestimated the fairways, I’ve been round the course with the measure tool and most are in fact 25 but I’m widening some of them anyway just to make it more playable.
I’m making the shorter club range wider still to give the option of an easier shot off the tee if desired. I still want it to look like a real parkland course so I’ll do what I can with my limited designer skills to see if I can make it a challenge but not frustrating.
Thanks for the feedback. Cheers 👍
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jayraygun
Weekend Golfer
Don't worry, that unintentional blindness was intentional.
Posts: 137
TGCT Name: JayRayGun
Tour: Challenge Circuit
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Post by jayraygun on Jun 1, 2021 0:39:42 GMT -5
From what I've read on some golf architecture forums, they say scratch and better golfers need fairways 25-35 yards wide while the average Joe golfer needs fairways 30-45 yards wide. In this game, narrow fairways can often look much narrower than they might in real life due to things like the first cut of rough being a much different color and the look "narrows" the fairway to the eye. Straight or near straight fairways that are the same width all the way through also look much narrower as does planting tall trees close in to the fairways.
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nifty1
Amateur Golfer
Letting me loose on the designer is like giving a gun to a monkey!!
Posts: 206
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Post by nifty1 on Jun 1, 2021 13:19:17 GMT -5
I’ve widened them all to 30+ yards as they did just look to narrow in the game. Whether this course makes the light of day or not is yet to be seen.
The holes are mostly just straight-aways so mnerrr I’m not sure.
I’m using it as a planting exercise, trying to make it feel like as real a course as possible.
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Post by PicnicGuy / BobalooNOLA on Jun 2, 2021 7:45:05 GMT -5
Narrow's not bad on a course with wide 'playing areas' void of vertical obstacles, imo. A 20 yard target is tough, but acceptable, as long as my miss of 5 yards doesn't block my next shot entirely. A lot of older tree-lined courses you see as narrow now were not that way when first planted.
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Post by InThisStyle on Jun 11, 2021 12:57:42 GMT -5
Did some research on this as well, and the interwebs tells us that:
(+) Typical PGA Course: 30-32 yards wide (on average)
(+) PGA Majors: 25-28 yards wide (on average)
(+) Non-PGA Courses: 35-45 yards wide (on average)
(+) Scratch golfers will hit a 32-yard-wide fairway about two-thirds of the time, while 20-handicap golfers require a 40-yard-wide fairway to achieve a 66 percent success rate.
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