Bad course design!

[Fourputt]

The course I play at regularly has one bunker that bugs the hell out of me. The hole is a 520ish yard par 5 from the blue tees. There's a bunker about 50 yards from the green and to the left of the fairway. The bad thing about it is there's a huge pine tree directly between the bunker and the green. Why double penalize the player? You're already in the bunker. The lip is too high to hit it low out of the bunker and the limbs are too low to hit under the tree. The absolute only thing to do is pitch out sideways. I hate it. I've been in that bunker a couple times and that tree pisses me off every time.

The answer.... don't hit into the bunker.

j/k My opinion is that you play the course as you find it. If I don't like the way I find a course, then I don't play it more than I have to. Some courses are great fun, others are a pain in the ass. I don't usually go back to a course if I don't like it, and that has little to do with overall difficulty. I don't like holes where you have to hit blind layup shots... carry one hazard and stay short of the next one, but you can't see either of them from the drive landing area. It creates unnecessary problems which have nothing to do with making a good stroke.

[bwdial]

Par 4s with no fairway.

The ninth hole at the University of Alabama course was a crappy afterthought. It was a shade under 300 yards, but there really wasn't a fairway to hit into. The cart path ran along the side of the hill from the tee box to the green. The green was humpbacked so that it would repel pretty much any shot, and it was oriented away from the tee box. Between the tee box and the green was a giant oak tree. The original design apparently called for a tee box along the edge of a lake and an uphill shot, but they moved the tee box about 80 degrees to the right onto a hill. There really wasn't a way to play the hole because any tee shot left of the oak tree would run all the way to the bottom of a hill and collect near the lake. A 280 yard drive was rewarded by a 120 yard shot to a humpbacked green that was 40 or 50 feet about you. They closed the course when they built Ol' Colony, so now it's just a cross country running course.

I can't remember the hole number (I think it was number 6) of the other culprit, but folks from Tampa might remember the old Hall of Fame Golf Course that used to be where the International Plaza is now. From the white tees, it was a short, dinky little 115 yard par 3, but from the blues it was a 270 or so dogleg left par 4. This was before the internet, so only pros could drive it over the trees on the mound between the green and the tee box. Anyway, if you played it as a par 4, there literally was no fairway. There was a thick patch of clover where a fairway should have been, so a well placed tee shot was actually penalized severely, if you were lucky, or completely lost if you weren't. The real shame was that the course had a lot of length, and could have been a really nice layout. Now, it's a mall... because we need more malls... right down the street from other malls.
Seriously.

[MSchumacher]

Par 4 400 yard dogleg left with the 12th hole on the left. They put OB stakes in between the two holes. How can you put in an invisible line that you can't even see from the tee box? Horrible design IMO

[Dad-2-3]

Par 4 400 yard dogleg left with the 12th hole on the left. They put OB stakes in between the two holes. How can you put in an invisible line that you can't even see from the tee box? Horrible design IMO

Interior OB is stupid IMO.

[Fourputt]

Interior OB is stupid IMO.

But sometimes necessary for player safety when stupid players insist on playing the wrong fairway to cut the dogleg. My home course had such a condition temporarily, with OB between the 9th and 18th which was only OB from the 18th. It was only there as long as it took for a new row of trees to grow tall enough so that playing the 9th fairway was no longer an attractive option.

[Dad-2-3]

But sometimes necessary for player safety when stupid players insist on playing the wrong fairway to cut the dogleg. My home course had such a condition temporarily, with OB between the 9th and 18th which was only OB from the 18th. It was only there as long as it took for a new row of trees to grow tall enough so that playing the 9th fairway was no longer an attractive option.

Yes, and after rereading MSchumacher's post it sounds like that is exactly the case in his situation. Thanks for pointing it out.

[melchior]

Which course is this? Sounds like one that I played when I was a kid in Southern MN.

Brightwood Hills Golf Course in New Brighton. I think it's technically an Executive (the first hole is a 180 par 4 if I remember correctly. It was last year and all I remember is hitting an iron off the first teebox.

[double_j]

Bad course design for me = holes with no fair shots off the tee (and no way to 'play it safe') and (often overlooked) greens that are not set up to accomodate the typical approach.

The only course I've ever identified with really poor course design is one of our munis. It's an older course and they've been updating it piece by piece so many of the hole layouts deviate from the original design. That said, since none of the changes have been done in concert, many of the holes tend to have a disjointed feel about them and don't really make sense.

For example - 550 yard par 5, dogleg left, fairway severely sloped from left to right and bordered by trees the entire length. Unless you pull hook your drive into trees on the left, even a perfectly placed tee shot will run down the entire slope to the waste area below and there is no way to 'lay up' to avoid the slope.

Unless you want to risk the slope again and/or leave yourself with a 180+ yard approach, your second shot has to be a 30 degree draw off that severe left to right slope (and keep in mind that there there is a tight tree line to contend with on both sides of the fairway).

Your third shot plays to a smallish green that runs from front to back. Two high bunkers in front and an entrance about 10 yards wide. The only way to keep it on the green is to land a high approach in that entrance. If you land 5 yards closer to the middle, you will run off the back. It's almost impossible to stick one from longer than 110 or so, meaning that anybody who chooses not to hit that monster draw off an opposite slope on their second shot stands no chance of getting a GIR.

Although there are others like it at this course, this has to be the worst hole I've ever played. There's no way to 'play it safe' nor is it possible to play it aggressively. You might as well just take your double and skip it. While I try as much as possible to remember that its usually the golfer with the problems and not the course, this is one example where I have to blame the layout.

[chriskzoo]

There is very little that bothers me about most courses as far as the design - every course is unique and should be played to the design. That being said, the two things that bother me most are:

Split fairways - I'm not talking about left/right options, I'm talking about designs where the fairway will go out 240 yards, be interrupted by 30-40 yards of rough, and then pick up again. It's asinine. You're forced to either lay back and have a long iron into the green or just risk it and how you don't get a bad lie.

Blind tee shots - I don't mind one here or there as long as the ideal line is marked in some way, but I played a course recently which literally had 8 blind tee shots. Even though they were marked, every shot was like "How was that?" "I don't know, let's go up and find out."

[ghalfaire]

My criterion is pretty simple. Good course design make you think your way around. Each (at least most) of the holes give you choices for shots with varying risk/reward characteristics. Poorly designed coursed don't do this including those that are designed just to have a slopes of 135+ and attract tourists who will pay $150+ to play once. If you play a course and you hit driver on all the par 4 and par 5 holes and no real character to the par 3 holes it is a bad design in my opinion. I can usually remember every hole on what I think is a well designed course and seldom can remember even one hole on poorly designed courses.

[msd3075]

Instead of saying what makes a bad course deisgn, here's a list of what to me makes a good course design:

1) Options - I dislike courses that force you to play only one shot, whether it be a 90* dogleg par 4 that forces an iron shot off the tee to hit to the corner or a par 3 that makes you hit one spot on the green. There should always be a "safe area" that you can hit to along with a choice to hit low-percentage shot to give you an advantage.

2) Good shots are rewarded - Yo ushouldn't have to hit a perfect shot to be in a good position. To me, a good course design rewards good (not just perfect) shots and penalizes bad shots. You shouldn't have a bad lie if you hit a drive up the middle of the fairway, and you shouldn't have a horrible lie off the back of the green when your ball was played only a few feet off of the perfect landing spot on the green (think Steve Elkington on 17 during the final round of the PGA). In the end, your score should reflect how well you played, not how lucky you were.

3) Smart placement of hazards - This point has two parts; that hazards shouldn't just be put on the course to make it beautiful and need to be in the part of the course normally played, but hazards shouldn't force you to make a perfect swing on a low-percentage shot everytime. They hsould be there to penalize your mishits but not make the course so difficult that it verges on gimmicky.

4) Caters to everyone's strengths/weaknesses - I'm long off the tee (290+ yards), and to me the length of so many newer courses is getting out of hand. I can understand a few holes that are long, but having a ton of near-500 yard par 4 holes doesn't really bring anything to the course. A good course design has the long holes but also has the shorter, tighter holes that give the shorter, more accurate golfer a chance to survive. My home course back in Houston is a great example. People complain that it's long, but only a handful of holes are actually longer than what I'd consider the norm for most courses. It has two 450+ yard par 4's, but it also has two very tight 350ish par 4's.

[golfro]

i dont mind some tricky, difficult courses even if it is a bit of a stretch. what I don't like however are just flat out BORING holes.

There's a local course here that I played once (last time ever) and literally the first 4 holes are par 4's that are EXACTLY the same. all flat, bunker near the green, wide fairway...they run parallel to eachother with some trees in between.

hole #5 is a par 5 that echos the exact same layouts as the previous par 4's, just a little longer.

snore fest.

[armandoartist]

Instead of saying what makes a bad course deisgn, here's a list of what to me makes a good course design:

Very well said.

[Chilli Dipper]

Here is an example of poor design, at least in my opinion. Now, who can explain what qualities this hole has that (at least in my point of view) makes it a poor hole? For the record, the hole is a par 4, listed at 333 yards in length.

[boogielicious]

Looks like the moved the green. The bunkers are in an odd place. A long tee shot will end the the hazard even if you are staying right.

[walk18]

Here is an example

Hmm, the fact that if you go for it and don't hit that perfect draw you could end up in someone's kitchen window??

I agree with much of what has been said in that bad design = flat, boring holes of the same length running parallel to each other. I also don't like houses, especially right up on the course as well as sloped tees.

[golfro]

Here is an example

i wouldnt consider it a bad design..but not a good one either...pretty standard short par 4's that i see around here. I personally don't mind it. The bunker keeps me from hitting a driver so I'll have to either tee off with an iron or try to bomb the drive and draw it, or bomb the drive over the tree line.

a lot of holes here that look just like that.

[bwdial]

Here is an example

I wouldn't call it "bad design" per se. It's a hole that gives you options. You can bomb it over/draw it around the trees with driver and find short grass or the green if you do it right, and eliminate the bunkers from play. If you play it safe, and hit an iron down the right side, you bring the bunkers into play on your second shot. I know that they aren't really "in play" unless you chunk your wedge, but they're in play from an architect's standpoint because they are visually intimidating. I can't tell from above, but I'm assuming that from your eye level, the far bunker appears to be greenside. From the fairway with a wedge in your hand, the architect is making you think that you have far less room than you actually have.