in playON COURSE

BY TOM FERRELL AND MARK FINE • PHOTO BY AIDAN BRADLEY

32 G O L F T I P S

Your swing has finally come alive. You’ve bombedanother drive down the pipe and are standing therewith a 9-iron in your hand, licking your chops. Youtake a mighty lash, and your ball lands next to thehole, takes a quick hop and then spins as if on astring. As you admire your own skill, the ball keepsdrawing back, past the hole and on, until your ad-miration turns to disgust as you watch it trickle back-ward over a tier in the green, picking up speed untilit comes to rest 30 feet or more from the flagstick.How could such a perfect shot have gone so awry?

The fact is it wasn’t a perfect shot at all. Whilebasking in the glow of your power and the action ofyour approach, you neglected to consider the sub-tleties of the green complex. In this case, you believedthat carrying the ball all the way to the top tier wasthe best way to get it close. Unfortunately, you neg-lected to think about the slope behind the hole thatwould send a well-struck short-iron shot rocketingbackward. Don’t feel bad. Nature and golf course ar-chitects have for centuries conspired to use green con-

tours and surrounds to baffle golfers who fail to payclose enough attention—and to reward those whotake the time to learn a little about their targets.

This is where a little knowledge of golf course ar-chitecture can go a long way. Most architects don’tdesign a hole with the intent of making it as hardas possible. The very best ones provide a numberof approach shot options, along with a few hints.Nowhere is it more important to be able to readthose architectural road signs than at the green. Thegreen contours and surrounds often hold keys that,if read properly, let the golfer use the land itself tohelp get the ball close to the hole. The design-conscious golfer recognizes the false fronts, the fall-offs, the multiple tiers and the feeding contours anduses them to great advantage. The clueless swingerends up wondering how a shot that felt so good offthe clubface turned out this way.

Watching the PGA Tour week after week, it’s easyto be lulled into believing that golf is all about thosehigh-flying aerial approaches, and certainly they have

the simple truth ABOUT GREEN COMPLEXES

their place. But when major champi-onship time comes around, when thevenues go from soft and inviting tofast and firm,the top players inevitablyrise to the top of the leaderboard.That’s because they understand howto read the golf course, taking ad-vantage of opportunity and avoidingthe sucker pins where the dreams oflesser players feed off into impossi-ble collection areas and hazards.

If you want to elevate your gameyou should begin to study green com-plexes and their influence on the strat-egy of the golf hole. Most golfers lookat a hole and immediately begin tak-ing inventory of hazards and otherobstacles between the tee and green.If this is your usual plan, you’ve al-ready rung the bell that makes golfcourse architects salivate. Instead, you

need to think like an architect—startyour strategy at the green complexand work backward.

Designers incorporate green con-tours and surrounding features tocreate problems, introduce deceptionand reward shot placement—in short,to make golf more interesting. Imag-ine playing every shot to a flat put-ting surface with nothing but a collarof fringe surrounding it! Design intothe ground some roll and slope, andall of sudden you’ve added a new di-mension of strategic complexity. In-tegrate a well-placed bunker, hillocksor hazards around the surface, andyou have a true shotmaking chal-lenge. Since the early days of golf,course architects expressed them-selves through their putting surfacesand surrounds.

A P R I L 2 0 0 6 33

After powering through nearly 600 yards offairway on the par-5 12th at Lahinch in Ireland,the real excitement begins, where steep green

contours dictate either birdie or bogey.

The most basic strategy architectscan use is to offset the angle of thegreen. In the 2003 Nissan Open at theRiviera Country Club in Pacific Pal-isades, Calif., Mike Weir illustratedhow position can ultimately defeatpower by taking advantage of golfcourse architecture. Weir faced long-hitting Charles Howell III in a play-off that began at the short par-4 10th.When famed Golden Age architectGeorge C. Thomas built the 10th, hedesigned a wide fairway, tempting ag-gressive players to blast it off the tee.To mitigate their power, however, heangled the green so that it runs fromfront left to back right. A power driveleaves a ticklish pitch to a shallow tar-get that falls away from the golfer.Howell took the bait. Weir, however,played a composed 5-iron to the leftside of the fairway, leaving himself aneasy wedge shot with the entire lengthof the green to work with. He thenexecuted perfectly, made birdie andwon the tournament. The moral ofthe story? Pay attention to the fairwayposition that provides the most fa-vorable angle of approach. Sometimesthat angle eliminates a front bunkeror other danger.

Slope is another feature that archi-tects often integrate into greensites.There’s more to slope than the com-mon back-to-front sloping green. Haveyou ever seen a Tour pro hit an ironshot toward a green and command itto spin in a certain direction? “Spinleft, now!”Before you throw your handsup in disgust at the precise ball con-trol such an order suggests, you shouldrealize that he’s most likely playing theslope of the putting surface, landingthe ball above the hole so that it willspin into position below it. The 10that Cherry Hills Country Club, the ven-erable William Flynn layout in Den-ver that hosted the 2005 U.S. Women’sOpen, is a perfect example. The en-tire length of the hole runs along ahillside that slopes from right to left.The green falls off sharply to the left.In order to leave an uphill putt, theapproach must land on the right sideof the green—avoiding a menacing

bunker short and right—and feeddown to the left. Flynn was a masterof integrating slopes into his green-sites. At Lehigh Country Club in Al-lentown, Penn., Flynn created one ofgolf ’s greatest “fall-away”greens at thepar-4 10th. The approach shot playsdownhill to a shallow green that ac-tually runs away from the golfer. At-tempting the “fly-and-stick” strategyis a sure way to bogey or worse.

Swales and humps are some of theoldest challenges in golf, and varia-tions of them remain in use today,though often in more subtle forms.C.B. Macdonald and his partner SethRaynor borrowed the “Biarritz” de-sign from France. Such a green fea-tures a deep swale dividing the greeninto front and back portions. The swaleis often five to six feet deep. You mayfind such a feature frustrating, but youwon’t find it boring. Then there’s thefamous but little-understood “Redan”design, which incorporates green angle,surrounds and slope. In a classic Redan,the green is set at a front-right to back-left angle, with a deep bunker frontingthe left side. The green runs up to aspine and then falls away so that thedesired shot is a draw that runs to the top of the spine and then feeds tothe hole. There are literally thousandsof Redan par-3s in golf simply becauseit’s so exciting to pull off the shot.

Architects will use the size of thegreen to affect the psychology of thegolfer. Sometimes they will place asmall green where the golfer wouldexpect a larger one. Study the sur-rounds and see if they have left an out,where an easy recovery is possible.Likewise, view a seemingly large greenwith caution. What are the featuresthat might lead to three-putts if youhit the “wrong” side of the green? Inthe end, there’s a lot more to a goodapproach than simply finding the put-ting surface.■ Tom Ferrell is an award-winninggolf writer based in Denver, Colo. MarkFine is president of Fine Golf Designin Allentown, Penn., and is a recog-nized speaker and scholar of classic golfcourse architecture.

34 G O L F T I P S

O N C O U R S E