THE CONSTRUCTION OF COURSES
Necessity for thought and ingenuity--The long-handicap man's
course--The scratch player's--How good courses are made--The
necessary land--A long nine-hole course better than a short
eighteen--The preliminary survey--A patient study of
possibilities--Stakes at the holes--Removal of natural
disadvantages--"Penny wise and pound foolish"--The selection of
teeing grounds--A few trial drives--The arrangement of long and
short holes--The best two-shot and three-shot holes--Bunkers and
where to place them--The class of player to cater for--The shots to
be punished--Bunkers down the sides--The best putting greens--Two
tees to each hole--Seaside courses.
Many as are the golf courses with which the coast, the country, and the
suburbs of the towns and cities of Great Britain are studded, they will
no doubt be still more numerous as time goes on, and it is earnestly to
be desired that in the laying out of links in the future, more thought
and ingenuity may be exercised than has been the case in far too many
instances during the past few years, when clubs have been formed and
links have been made in a hurry. Certainly some are excellent, and I
cast not the least disparagement upon them. I enjoy them. Frequently the
hand of the master architect of golf is visible where one observes how
shrewdly and exactly the hazards have been placed, and the peculiarities
of the conformation of the country turned to the utmost account when
useful, or cunningly dodged when it has been considered that they could
be no good to the golfer. Without a doubt, generally speaking, those
courses are the best which have been designed by good players, because
none know better than they what makes the best golf. A man whose
handicap is some distance removed from scratch, but who has played golf
for many years, and thinks with good reason that he knows a fine course
when he sees one, would nevertheless, in designing a new one, be led
unconsciously to make holes which would be more or less suited to his
own style of play. He might, indeed, in a most heroic spirit, place a
bunker at a point which he knew would be more than usually dangerous for
him, and he would feel a better and a braver man for this act; but a
hundred of its kind would not prevent the course from being the ideal of
the long-handicap man and not the ideal of the fine player. If plans
were prepared for a new links over a particular piece of territory by a
12-handicap man and a scratch player, it is highly probable that in the
most material matters they would differ greatly, and it is fairly
certain that a committee of the oldest and most experienced golfers
would unanimously pick out the scratch player's plans from all the
others as being the best and soundest, and that without knowing who had
prepared them. Time and the aggregate of pleasure given to golfers of
all degrees would justify the selection.
Therefore, when a new club is established and a new course is to be laid
out, I suggest that it is the wiser and the better plan to take time
over it and to secure the best advice. A good links is not made in a day
or a week. Perhaps the cleverest and most ingenious constructor could
not in a whole year make one which was in all respects the best that the
land could give. Almost every time that the course was played over
during the first hundred rounds, a new thought for its improvement in
some small detail would occur. The moving of a tee twenty yards to the
right, the addition of a couple of yards to the end of one of the
bunkers, the placing of a shallow pot bunker some eight or ten yards
across at some particular point--all these and many other matters of
equal significance will constantly suggest themselves. My experience
tells me that the perfection of a good course is slowly attained. Like
wine, it takes time for the richness of its qualities to mature.
Therefore, when the committee of a new club in the country sits in
conference with a plan of its newly-acquired land laid on the table, and
decides unanimously that a tee shall be placed at a point marked A, a
bunker along the line B, another bunker at C, and the hole at D, and so
forth, I protest that they are doing poor justice either to themselves
or to the game. But on many links made during the past few years--made
in a hurry--the results of such mechanical methods are only too
apparent. I hope that the few hints that I offer in this chapter may be
of service to old clubs with improvable courses and new ones with none
as yet, and to those fortunate individuals who contemplate laying out a
course in their private grounds for the use of themselves and their
friends. Private courses are increasing in number; and for my part,
though I must obviously be guilty of prejudice, I can conceive of no
more enjoyable acquisition to a country house than a nine-hole course,
and assuredly the possessor of it will be envied and his invitations to
week-ends much coveted.
The question of the amount of land that shall be called into service for
the fulfilment of a scheme for a new links is one that is usually
outside the control of those who project it. They have to cut according
to their cloth. I need only say here, therefore, that in a general way
some thirty or forty acres of land are necessary to make such a
nine-hole course as shall possess a satisfactory amount of variety, and
not less than seventy acres for a full-sized eighteen-hole course, this
as a matter of fact being the acreage of the South Herts Club's course
at Totteridge, with which I am at present associated. By great economy
of space and the exercise of unlimited ingenuity, courses might be made
from a trifle less land, but they are better when they are made from
more. Two or three hundred acres are sometimes utilised for a good
links. Where land is very scarce, and there is no possibility of
obtaining more of it, I earnestly advise private owners and committees
to content themselves with a nine-hole course which will have plenty of
length and good sporting quality about it, rather than sacrifice the
good golf that is thus within their reach in a desire to possess a
regulation eighteen-hole links that could only give complete
satisfaction to ladies and children. Too many courses, with scarcely a
brassy shot upon them, have been ruined by this greed for holes.
When the land has been allotted to the purpose, a very thorough and
careful survey should be made of all its features. This is not to be
done in one morning. The land, no doubt, is very rough, and at the first
glance it looks ill-adapted to the golfer's purpose. Many times I have
had the task of making a course from materials which at first seemed so
unpromising as to be hopeless. There should be no hurry at this time.
Let those who are designing the links walk slowly and meditatively over
nearly every square yard of the land at least two or three times before
coming to any final decision as to where to place a single tee, bunker,
or hole. An open mind is the best to begin with. After one or two of
these preliminary surveys, some general idea of the possible formation
of the links will begin to shape itself in the mind, and this having
been done, it will be practically impossible for an intelligent person
to make additional journeys over the land without being struck with an
idea for a great improvement at one or other of the holes which he has
fashioned in his mind. If it is possible, take two or three weeks over
this slow process of creation of the links. They may be altered
afterwards to some extent, but for good or ill their main features will
probably remain as at the beginning, and may endure for centuries.
Having secured to the mind this general and somewhat vague idea of the
plan of the links, it is a good thing to plant a stake at each spot
where it is proposed to make a hole; and when the land is all staked out
in this manner, there is, as it were, a solid foundation upon which to
build up the links. The location of the stakes can be inspected from a
distance and from different points of view, and it will constantly
happen on these occasions that for the improvement of one or other of
the holes its removal to a different place will be suggested. Continue
your walks, examining the stakes from north, south, east, and west, and
moving them here and there until you begin to feel a trifle weary of the
business, and confident that you have planned the best possible holes
out of the country that you have to deal with. Then you may proceed with
perhaps the more interesting but certainly the harder part of your task.
It is useless to think about fashioning the links from the plan which
will now have been formed, until those natural disadvantages of the
land, which cannot be allowed to remain, have been removed. Gorse and
rocks may have to be cleared, and it is essential that at this stage an
effort should be made to rid the course of rabbits and other undesirable
vermin if any should infest it. Rabbits help to keep the grass nice and
short; but they make too many holes in the course, and there is no
alternative but to regard them as the enemies of golf, and to make out
the death warrants of them all accordingly. The quickest and surest way
of getting rid of them is to search for every hole, apply the ferrets,
stop up the holes afterwards, and to keep a watch for any that return.
If only one or two are left here and there, they will play much havoc
with the course in the future. From this point the way in which the work
is proceeded with will naturally depend to a large extent on the length
of the schemers' purse, and on their optimism or otherwise as to their
future prospects; but I am sure that it is best to employ as many men as
can be afforded at the outset, and so grapple with the execution of the
plans in a thorough and determined manner. In the making of a golf
course it is very easy to be "penny wise and pound foolish."
The situation of the greens having been decided upon, the question as
to the length of the holes, as to which some general impression will
already have been formed, comes up for decision. A proposed teeing
ground should be selected for each hole, the lengths of the holes then
examined and compared, and the tees moved nearer or further back as
seems desirable for the improvement of individual holes or the increase
of variety. If at this stage there is any chance of finding a ball
afterwards, it is a good thing to drive a few from each tee and play
them with the brassy, cleek, irons, or mashie up to the green. If you
drive half a dozen from each tee and play them through the green to the
place where the holes will be, there will surely be one or two that have
turned out excellently if you are a player of any skill whatever, and a
study of the strokes which have been applied to these one or two, the
point of pitching, and the final lie, will reveal the entire character
of the hole you are making, and tell you plainly how it must be
bunkered. In a nine-hole course I think there should be seven medium or
long holes, and two short ones to break the monotony and test the golfer
at all points. The situation of these short holes in the round will
naturally be decided to a large extent by the land and other
circumstances, but when the power of selection is left to the designer,
I incline to the belief that Nos. 3 and 7 are the best for these
dainties. I like a short hole to come early in the round, as at No. 3,
because then a golfer who has made a bad start is given a chance of
recovering before he is hopelessly out of the hunt. He has a better
prospect of making such a recovery (or thinks he has, which is much the
same thing) at a short hole than at a long one, and, being put in a good
temper again, he will very likely go on very well for the next two or
three, when he will be favoured with another short one. The plight of
the player who has discovered at the beginning of a medal round that he
is off his drive and brassy, and that six or seven holes have to be
played before a little one is reached, is certainly not pleasant. I call
a good short hole one that can be reached by good play at any time with
an iron club, because it fails to be a short hole when it is necessary
to take wood upon the tee in order to get to the green. In an
eighteen-hole course you might have three or four short holes--I think
three are sufficient--and it would be well to vary their length so as to
test the capacity of the golfer with different clubs, and to bring out
all his qualities of resource. For a fourth hole on the short side
plenty of sporting chance would constantly be afforded by one of 200
yards length. This could not be called a short hole, because under
ordinary circumstances and on most days it would be too far for even a
good driver to reach from the tee, but he would often be tempted to
nerve himself to a superior effort, and an occasional strain of this
kind is advantageous in the long run. Besides, when the wind was at his
back he would frequently be successful, and on such occasions he would
experience more pleasure and satisfaction from this particular tee shot
than from any other of the whole round.
The remainder of the course should be made up of a variety of two-shot
and three-shot holes. The lengths should be varied as much as possible,
and with limits of 370 yards, and, say, 530 to work between, it should
surely not be so difficult as it appears to have been in so many cases
of inland links to get fourteen or fifteen quite different holes. Those
of from 230 to 330 yards, with which so many courses abound, are not
good holes in my opinion, because they give an almost equal chance to
the man who has driven well and the man who has driven badly. Take a
common sort of hole, 280 yards in length. A player misses his drive, and
his ball travels only for, say, 100 or 120 yards. He may still reach the
green with his brassy, and should be able to do so. Now the man who
drove well at this hole would need to make a second stroke with an iron
club to reach the green, and would thus gain nothing from his better
play. This is unfair, and what is unfair is bad. The good two-shot hole
is one of the nicest and best holes on a course when it is really good.
Its length is about 370 to 380 yards. Thus it will be perceived that a
first-class drive from the tee must be followed up by a fine second, as
straight as it is long, if the green is to be reached. The good player
who has done all that he ought is thus rewarded by the clear gain of a
stroke and the capture of a hole in 4, whilst the man who is a trifle
weak with either his drive or his second, or has faltered to the
slightest extent at either stroke, has for a certainty to use his mashie
before he can call for the putter. When a two-shot hole is to be
adjusted to this nicety of perfection, there is plainly not much margin
for the variation of its length; but it is not necessary, nor is it even
desirable, to demand continually such unerring skill from the golfer. My
idea of a good three-shot hole is one that stretches for 500 to 530
yards, three fine shots being wanted. For holes of much greater length
than this I have no fancy. Perhaps no serious objection can be laid
against an occasional hole of 550 yards length, but what is really
gained by such long journeys? Certainly the true skill of the golfer is
not being more severely tested. When we come to such monstrosities as
holes of 600 yards in length, it is time to call out "Enough!" for by
this time we have descended to slogging pure and simple, and the hard
field work at which an agricultural labourer would have the right to
grumble. So I repeat that the best hole for golfing is that good
two-shotter which takes the ball from the tee to the green in two
well-played strokes without any actual pressing. As for total length, it
should be borne in mind that a links over 6000 yards long is considered
a long one, and that there are championship greens, Prestwick and
Muirfield, which are (or were until quite recently; there is a tendency
to stretch everywhere since the rubber-cored ball became predominant)
shorter than 6000 yards.
In making the plan of the course, a point of interest and importance to
decide upon is the direction in which the holes shall be played. Some
golfers prefer that the first and succeeding holes shall lie to the
right of the starting-point, while others like best to go out on the
left-hand side, that is, to play round the course in the same direction
as that pursued by the hands of a clock. It is largely a matter of
fancy, but personally my choice is for going out to the left because I
think in this case the holes are generally more difficult, and the
boundary usually being near to the left, constant precautions must be
taken against pulling. Another matter particularly to be remembered is
that the first tee and the last green should be close together, and
neither of them more distant from the club-house than is necessary. A
wide separation of these points always seems to be contrary to the
proper order of things.
And now we come to the perplexing problem of bunkers and where to place
them, and in this connection I would remark that it would be well not to
regard the lengths of the holes, as so far arranged, as final and
irrevocable, and not to establish permanent teeing grounds accordingly,
for it must necessarily happen, as the bunkers come to be formed on the
course, and more trial rounds are played, that one's ideas will undergo
considerable change, and it is easier to lengthen a hole at this stage
of the proceedings, by simply placing the tee further back, than it will
be afterwards.
It has been a great question with some committees of newly-established
clubs or of older ones in search of new courses, as to whether, in
laying out their greens and settling upon the location of all their nice
new bunkers, they should keep more particularly in mind the excellences
of the scratch player or the trials and troubles of the 12 to 18
handicap men. On the one hand, the scratch player is the experienced
golfer, the man who plays the true game as it should be played, and who
finds no real enjoyment in so-called golf wherein he is never called
upon to do more than tap the ball over an obstacle ninety or a hundred
yards in front. Such links never put up a fight against him, and he
finishes his listless round with something as near to the sense of
weariness as it is possible for the golfer ever to experience. But these
scratch players, in common with the men with all handicaps up to 5 or 6,
are in a very heavy and hopeless minority in most clubs to-day. The bulk
of the membership is made up of players of from 6 to 24, with a
concentration of forces between 12 and 18. These men say, or at all
events think, that as they run the club they have a right to be
considered, and in their hearts the committee believe that they are
justified. These men with long handicaps--some of whom have not even a
desire to reduce them to any considerable extent, deriving the utmost
pleasure in playing the game in their own way--can find no fun in being
always and inevitably in the same bunkers, and regard driving from a
tee, when they are either obliged to play short deliberately with an
iron or be bunkered for a certainty with their driver, as the most
dismal occupation with which a Saturday or Sunday sportsman could ever
be afflicted. Therefore they cry loudly for shorter carries. They say
the others are not fair, and from their particular point of view the
remark is possibly justified. Even the young golfer who is determined to
be a scratch man some day, though he is eighteen strokes from that
pinnacle of excellence as yet, becomes rather tired in the long run of
finding constant punishment waiting upon his valiant attempts to drive
his longest ball, and thinks the committee should be reminded that there
are others in the world besides the immediately coming champions. Amidst
these conflicting desires, committees and course designers appear
frequently to have attempted a compromise with no particular
satisfaction to anybody. It is impossible to lay out a course to suit
all the different players in a club, and my own most decided opinion is
that the bunkers and other hazards should always be placed to test the
game of the scratch player, and not that of the handicap man. A course
that is laid out for the latter very often inflicts severe punishment
on the scratch player, and it is surely hard that the man who has spent
many years in the most patient and painstaking practice should be
deliberately treated in this manner when the comparative novice is
allowed to go scot free. Moreover, when a bunker is so placed that a
long carry is needed from the tee, the handicap man will find his game
much improved by playing on the course. At first he finds he cannot
carry the hazard, and for a little while contents himself with playing
short. But he soon tires of this timidity, takes more pains with his
strokes, braces himself up to bigger efforts, and at last the day comes
when his ball goes sailing over the obstruction. Afterwards the
performance is repeated quite easily, and the views of one man as to the
unfairness of that particular carry have undergone a radical change. It
is better for the beginner that he should have a hard course to play
over than an easy one, and, much as he may grumble at the beginning, he
will in the end be thankful to those who imposed a severe experience
upon him in his early days as a golfer.
Therefore, if it is decided that there must be a bunker in the centre of
the course in the line of the drive, I suggest that it should be placed
at a distance of about 130 to 145 yards from the tee. The second bunker,
if there is to be another stretching across the course with a view to
imposing difficulties on second shots or guarding the green, should be
rather less than this distance from the first, so that the man who has
topped his drive and is short of the first hazard should still have a
chance of clearing the next one with his second shot. Recovery ought
never to be impossible. But really I am no believer at all in bunkers
placed across the course. Certainly let there be one in front of the tee
to catch the bad drive, and another to guard the green; but, generally
speaking, the merely short ball carries its own punishment with it in
the distance that has been lost and has to be made good again. The
straight driver is not the man to be punished. It is the player who
slices and pulls and has obviously little command over his club and the
ball, and who has taken no pains to master the intricate technique of
the drive, for whose careless shots traps should be laid. As often as
not the bunker in the centre of the course lets off the ball with a bad
slice or pull on it. So I say that bunkers should be placed down both
sides of the course, and they may be as numerous and as difficult as the
controlling authority likes to make them. But hazards of any description
should be amongst the last features to be added to a newly-made golf
links. Not until the course has been played over many times under
different conditions, and particularly in different winds, can anyone
properly determine which is the true place for a hazard to be made. At
the beginning it may have been placed elsewhere in a hurry, and it may
have seemed on a few trials to answer its purpose admirably, but another
day under different conditions it may be made clear that it is in the
very place where it will catch a thoroughly good shot and allow only a
bad one to escape. I would not have insisted so much on this need for
deliberation and patience, if it did not so often happen that as the
result of placing the hazards on a new course in too much haste, they
are found afterwards to be altogether wrong and have to be moved, with
the waste of much time and money.
There is little to the point that I can say about the making of the
putting greens, as so much depends upon the natural conditions and
opportunities. Sometimes there is nothing to do but to cut the grass
short and pass the roller over it a few times and the green is made, and
a first-class green too. At other times there is need for much digging,
and the turf with which the carpet is to be relaid may have to be
carried to the spot from a considerable distance. Particularly when so
much trouble is being taken over the laying of the greens, do I beg the
makers of courses to see that they are not made dead level and as much
like a billiard table as possible, which often seems to be the chief
desire. To say that a putting green is like a billiard table is one of
the worst compliments that you can pay to it. By all means let it be
true in the sense of being smooth and even, and presenting no lumps or
inequalities of surface that are not plainly visible to the eye, and the
effect of which cannot be accurately gauged by the golfer who has taught
himself how to make allowances. But on far too many greens the man with
the putter has nothing to do but gauge the strength of his stroke and
aim dead straight at the hole. He derives infinitely less satisfaction
from getting down a fifteen-yards putt of this sort than does the man
who has holed out at ten feet, and has estimated the rise and fall and
the sideway slope of an intervening hillock to begin with and a winding
valley to follow, his ball first of all running far away to the right,
then trickling across to the left, and finally wheeling round again and
rolling into the tin. Only when there is so much calculation to be done
and it is so precisely accomplished does the golfer practise the real
art of putting, and taste the delights of this delicate part of the
game. The other is dull and insipid in comparison. There is the less
excuse for making the flat and level greens, inasmuch as even the
beginners can appreciate the sporting quality of the others and enjoy
practice upon them from the first day of their play. Let there be plenty
of undulations, and then with the changing positions of the hole a
player can practically never come to any particular green upon which he
may have putted hundreds of times without having a problem set him
entirely different from any that he has had to work out before. Greens,
of course, are of all sizes, from fifteen to fifty yards square, and I
beg leave to remark that large size is a fault in them, inasmuch as the
bigger they are the less is the skill required in the approach shot.
It is perhaps unnecessary for me to point out as a final word, that when
tees have to be specially prepared and turfed, it is a decided
improvement to a course to have two at different points for each hole,
one nearer and more to one side than the other. Not only do these
alternative tees enable each of them to be given a periodical rest for
recovery from wear and tear, but they afford an interesting variation of
the play, make it possible to impose a more severe test than usual upon
the players when it is felt desirable to do so, as on competition days,
and also in some measure to counteract the effects of winds. Of course
when tees have not to be specially made there is endless variety open.
It is obvious that the greater part of the foregoing remarks applies
chiefly to the construction of inland courses. Seaside links laid over
the dunes are made by Nature herself, and generally as regards their
chief features they must be taken or left as the golfer decides. A new
hazard may be thrown up here and there, but usually the part of the
constructor of a seaside course is to make proper use of those that are
there ready made for him, and which are frequently better than any that
could be designed by man.