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The fried egg requires a different technique. What you need to do is actually square the face so it'll dig down underneath that bad lie and propel that ball right out onto the green.
Here's the take.
Saying out of a buried lion of bunker is completely different than playing out of a night and clean lion. A greenside bunker.
You'd need to be aggressive on any show. Weather it's sitting cleanly for its Friday Egg.
Well, we've all faithed it. The dreaded fried egg not to be cleared, though it's actually a pretty easy shot to hit. Welcome back to the School of golf architecture on the Frida Egg podcast and to the second part of my discussion with architect Jeff man Gay about golf course routing. I'm Garrett Morrison. Now i'd recommend that you go back and listen to part one if you haven't already.
That episode lays a lot of groundwork for what we discuss in this one, But just to recap, we defined routing as the way in which architects lay out golf holes on the land, or, in other words, the positions they choose for each team and each green. Jeff and I identified three main aspects of a routing that any golfer can see and understand while playing around. One, whether the walks between greens and teas make sense. Two, whether the holes use the best pre existing features of the property.
In Three, whether the routing has a sense of drama from beginning to middle to end. In this episode, Jeff and I apply these criteria to a few different well known routings. This is, first of all, a way of demonstrating how you can read the routing of any given golf course, but it's also an opportunity to explore the evolution of routing through history. How have methods of routing golf courses changed over time and does the future hold
any new possibilities. Starting with the Old Course, we've talked about some of the inherent flaws of the out and back routing in the sense that it doesn't provide much variety in the relationship of the holes to the wind. But what do you think are some of the merits of the out and back routing? You know, just what do you what do you think of that as as an example of how to rout a golf course.
Well, it's a bit of a coincidence that we can criticize the out and back routing of the Old course, mostly because of the lack of variety in terms of how how the course tacks into the.
Wind and away from the wind. But I'll tell you what. The best thing about that out and back routing is.
That it allows the golf course to pretty easily be played reversible, which is something that I can't believe hasn't gotten more traction in the last hundred years of golf architecture, you know, we I mean, the benefits of having one golf course that can play two ways are pretty obvious, right, huge benefits the ownership they get to basically get two
courses for the price of one. They also get two courses that can be maintained for the price of one, and the environmental benefits that come along with that as well. You know, you got thirty six holes basically being maintained as eighteen. It's a it's a it's a wonderful concept that again, I mean there's a few golf courses have been the loop. I think Frank Pont's done to at least one or two, and in Europe. It just the concept makes so much sense, yet it's been done so
few times to this point. It's it's it's puzzling to me. I mean, it takes a client that understands the concept. It takes the correct piece of ground too. You know, you're on a piece of ground that's hilly, it's going to be pretty difficult to find find a way to get it to play in reverse rele you know, comparatively, when you look at a piece of ground like Saint Andrew's,
it's it's it's basically flat and rumpled. Although I hear Sylvie's Ranch works pretty good and there's some pretty hilly, hilly spots there.
You were just there, right, yeah, I was just there.
Yeah.
And I'd love to talk about that one later as an example of along alongside the loop, as an example of what might be next in routing. But Sylvie's Valley Ranch certainly has a very clever approach to the reversible routing in that it has twenty seven greens and not all the greens are in play every day. But it makes the routing work on a very hilly piece of property,
which is which is quite an accomplishment. And you know, one of the things that makes the reversible routing at the Old Course work is that, you know, it's a rumpled piece of land, but it's not a hilly piece of land, right, you're not. You don't have to go back up a big hill that you've gone down the
day before. Now, Okay, So there's this wacky theory I have about about the Old Course routing as it relates to what we are discussing in the you know, the storytelling or the drama aspects of routing a golf course. You know, to me, that old course routing is very elemental and primal in a way. You start from the town basically, and you can just imagine the initial golfers there saying, okay, we start here because this is where
we are. This is where the town is, and where we're gonna head just straight out to uh to the river Eden, you know, that's where. That's where we're gonna head out to. We're gonna go out there, and then once we get there, we're going to kind of hang out there for a second. Right, that's the Shepherd's Crook part of the routing. We're gonna hang out in this nice little gathering spot because this seems like a nice
place to be. We've gotten here, we want to spend a little bit of time here, and then we're gonna go back. We're going to return home. There is a natural sense of drama to me about that routing. That's basically the plot of the Hobbit right there and back again. And and so I want, I wonder if it feels that way to you when when you're playing the Old Course. That there's a there's a sense that you're taking it a journey out to something, staying there for a bit and then coming back.
Yeah, that's it.
I'm not sure I've heard to describe exactly that way, but I agree, and I love that description. I also believe that that's got to be true, right, that the other thing that is piece of lynx Land, you know, it is a thin strip that, just as you just described, took off from town, stopped at the river and came back. And it'd be interesting, I mean, this is completely impossible, but it would certainly be interesting to go back in time and see who decided to put the quote unquote
greens where they went and where they are today. Right, somebody had to go out there and say, well, this is a reasonably flat spot here where we can cut the hole in the ground and putt So my suspicion and I should go back and read Scott McPherson's book on the on the evolution of.
The Old Course to see if this is right or wrong.
But twenty two holes existed at the Old Course way back when it first started. Somebody had to have gone out there and picked those, you know, eleven sites or whatever it was where they were going to try to get to, you know, to to finally arrive with those twenty two holes. A guy you from town out to the river back. That's golf architecture routing.
And you have to think that it was by committee and that it was gradual, you know, and that's maybe the best way to do it. You know, they've played over that little piece of land a bunch of times and eventually figured out where the best places were to cut the holes.
Yeah, I mean, I either haven't thought about it this way or haven't thought about it this way in a long time.
But essentially the evolution of the.
Old course definitely involved picking those sites that were the best green sites, which is what golf architecture.
Still begins with.
You get out on a raw piece of ground. I mean, the first thing we do as designers is start to look at where's the best places to put the greens, and the questions are.
Which are the most beautiful sites, Which sites will.
Allow you to connect them in a way that you're going to end up with the best variety of holes, both looks, distances, everything that lends to variety, But most of all, you're looking for places where you're going to relatively easily build a green.
You know, you don't want to build a green.
On a hills on a hillsite that's forty five degrees slope, it's just hard to build a green there, and it takes a lot of fill and it's more expensive. So again, looking for those sites that are naturally greens or require comparatively minimal work to create.
A green is what we're looking for.
And getting back to the old course, I'm sure that hundreds of years ago, that's exactly what they were doing. I mean, they didn't have much equipment out there to manipulate things, so they were looking at spots.
It literally made sense to be a putting green.
So now let's go to the next stage of the evolution of routing a golf course, which I think is represented well by Merefield, which feels a lot more intentional in the way that it's routed as opposed to kind of natural and by committee. It feels like the routing at Merefield was very expertly done. Did you talk about the Merefield routing a little bit and what makes it so kind of historically important, especially as compared to the out and back routings that we've been talking about.
Yeah, when Harry Gold showed up at Mierfield, there was a pretty rudimentary, I guess you'd say, in comparison, a rudimentary old Tom Morris course there. And like Saint Andrew's and a number of the early links, it had more of an out and back, not not at vary as varied a routing as you see at Mierfield today. And that's what the lesson that Mierfield taught in the early days of routing golf courses is how to lay out holes again with with that wind consideration in mind, where's
the prevailing wind? You know, what does it do a majority of the time, And how can we get these holes to confront that wind at varying angles, hole after hole after hole. The only two holes in Deerfield that run consecutive in the same direction on the compass are four and five. Otherwise you play each hole with the wind coming at.
You from a different angle.
And you know, over the years there's been a lot of a lot of discussion about that routing in golf architecture circles for that reason, and when where and when it's possible, you know, a good routing.
Is going to turn you in into different direction from hole to hole to hole.
So just to be clear about what the Mirfield routing is for those who are unfamiliar with it, the front nine goes around the perimeter of the property and the back nine basically is set within the front nine, and so you've got these these kind of you know, almost concentric circles. Though of course the holes, especially on the back nine, often reverse in order to fit in. But you can imagine it as as kind of you know,
outer and inner routing. And you know, we've seen architects basely adapt that routing to a number of different sites. I know that Ross did it a lot, and tilling Hast especially did it quite frequently. And it's and it's very clever because you've got those returning nines and you and you've got the different relationships to the wind, and you're constantly kind of revisiting sections of the property that you've seen before, but you're you're coming at them from
a different direction. How much better can routing get from there? Honestly, No, that's.
Still you know, that still ranks up there as one one of the ones you're trying to be inspired by for sure.
So let's talk a little bit about Cypress Point. What a lot of people are familiar with the basics of that routing, but what makes it special and how does it kind of fit into some of the principles of routing that we've been talking about.
Well, I think the biggest thing with Cyprus Point is I really believe that that Alistair mackenzie was truly trying to celebrate that really one of a kind site.
You know, you're dealing with dunes.
Beautiful cypress for coastal bluffs. He does a wonderful job, starting the golf course in the dunes, taking into the forest, leaving the forest back into.
The dunes, one more trip to the forest, back into.
The dunes, and then eventually coming down thirteen and fourteen you see the Pacific Ocean. It's getting closer and closer. And then another one of those wonderful little walks and golf. You know, we talk about connectivity and golf courses, you wouldn't say that fourteen Green and fifteen Tea are very well connected. You get a long walk, you get across what might be one of the most you know, the
busiest roads in America these days, but the walker. Once you get across the road onto the ocean side, the little trail that takes you over to fifteen T and turn the corner and see that hole for the first time.
It's one of the most exhilarating experiences. And I'm sure that trail was cut purposefully to wait for that review, you know, as long as they could for you to turn the corner and get on fifteen T and then finally playing playing the coastal holes at Cypress as the big conclusion, I'm not sure it gets much better, and people have people complain about the eighteenth tool, you know.
I was reading about that the other day again. I came across it that someone had said that Cyprus points the best seventeen whole course in the world because eighteen turns you around from the ocean and takes you through the trees again back up to the clubhouse. I don't agree with that. I think eighteen is actually one of the most unique golf holes you'll ever see in your entire life. Again, as part celebrating that wonderful property, I think I think the doctor wanted to take you through
those beautiful cypress trees. I mean, these cypress trees at Cyprus Point are some of the most beautiful natural things you'll let's see anywhere, and I think his eighteenth hole there celebrates that.
Yeah, it definitely features those I mean, and there's so much to talk about here. For one thing, you know, I should mention that there is some doubt as to whether SETH Rayner or Alistair McKenzie is most responsible for the routing at Cypress Point. You know, obviously McKenzie is the architect of record, but there is an ongoing debate about who did the original routing and how much of that original routing made it into the to the final golf course. We don't need to get into that here.
That's that's a topic for podcasts by our friends over the Society of Golf Historians. I think that's more more a subject for Connor Lewis. But in any case, the routing of Cyprus Point is so rich and it represents all the things we've been talking about. You know, you've already talked about the variety of landscapes at Cyprus Point. You've got the woods, and you've got the dunes, and you've got the ocean, and it's hard to imagine a routing using those three places better or with more variety,
or you know, more different parts of the round. You've got the sense of drama, like you talked about going out to the ocean at the end and really coming to a culmination. There the great connectors between the fourteenth Green and the fifteenth Tee and between the fifteenth Green and the sixteenth t longish walks, but nobody would want
those not to be there. And then I think, you know, it's a perfect story in many ways because the eighteenth Hole, even though it's underrated, as you say, and has many things to recommend it, there is a sense of kind of calming down from the sixteenth and seventeenth holes. And that's how a lot of structure, great stories are structured. Where the climax isn't at the very end, The climax isn't the last paragraph. The climax comes a few pages earlier.
And then there's what English teachers will call a den umont. There's a there's a calming down and a sense of resolution and a sense that okay, now life is going on. And I think that the eighteenth Hole at Cyprus Point delivers that. One thing we haven't talked about is the gathering points at Cyprus Point, which are some of the I guess we touched on it briefly earlier, but some of the best anywhere, right, I mean, you know that there's a couple of really dramatic landforms at Cypress Point
and a lot of holes. Oh yeah, you're showing me right now. I have look at this. So what we're what? What? What? What Jeff and I are showing each other right now? Are are respective copies of the World Atlas of Golf, which we just happened to both have right next to us. And we've got the old green cover. We don't have that new abomination. We've got we've got the old edition of the World Atlas of Golf. So we both had that book next to us. It has a great map
of Cypress Point. Gathering points at Cypress Point are congregation points, I think is what you called them. Uh, tell me about some of those at Cypress Point and how they work.
Well. One of the really cool spots at Cyprus And it's a really great example of you know, using a single natural feature to work off of and into is a big duneline that bisects the property where three green twelve t or sorry, three green four T eleven green, twelve T nine green, ten T six green, and then one of the best part of threes ever seven plays
off of it and eight plays off of it. So you're talking about I wish I had a measurement here, but you're talking about a single dune ridge that cuts through the property.
I guess would be over on the east side of the property.
You know, far away from the ocean. But to work what one, two, three, four, five, six, seventy eight nine holes off of a single dune ridge, you know. And again, most people who play Cyprus Point, they're enjoying the holes, they're not thinking about the fact that McKenzie used that one ridge to work that much of the golf course off of and onto in such a dramatic fashion.
And all of those holes are they couldn't be more different.
And they all use that single natural features as as the main feature of the hole.
Incredible, It's genius and it works practically too, right, You're not at no point, you know, when you when you jam that many holes around one feature, often you create safety problems, you create routing problems where you're you know, where there might be weird walks or connectivity issues. But there's none of that in these holes. Somehow they all work even though they're all congregated around this one place.
Yeah, it's it's incredible And another great example of that, what did we determine congregational routing?
So you know, there's so many other routings that that we could talk about. You know, so far we've talked about the old Course, Miarfield, Cyprus Point. These are really well known ones. One that I think people aren't as familiar with but you are, and that I'm not familiar with because I have not into this course, but Highland's Lynx and and to me, that's a fascinating sounding routing.
You've you've touched on a few aspects of it already, but could you tell me about that one and what you think makes it distinctive?
Yeah, what makes.
Island's links most distinctive, again similar to Cypress Point, is that is that the golf course traverses three or four very distinctive environments and it's actually an out and back routing. You know, one leaves the little protop, plays down the peninsula, starts out of the ocean, takes you to the forest and by the time you get to nine Green, you know, you're ten kilometers from where you began. The tenth is
still out in the in the river valley. Thirteen takes you back to the ocean again, just traversing beautifully distinctive landscapes. But Stanley Thompson did the same thing that Aliston McKenzie did at Cypress Point too. Sure he was celebrating these these distinct environments and these beautifulties, but he didn't forget about the golf either, And Highland's Links, like Cyper's Point, is relentless in terms of the.
Quality of the holes from the first.
Tee to the eighteenth green, very distinctive, as beautiful as you can get in terms of a natural environment for golf, and a very simplistic layout where he really truly did utilize, you know, the inherent landscape in the best way possible for golf. Set you up to enjoy views of the ocean, enjoy views of distant mountains, to play down the fifteenth hole with an old church in the foreground and the
ocean beyond. You know, real heavy stuff in terms of again focusing on building really really good golf holes, but then tying all that other stuff into it as well.
You know, so that people can enjoy nature. And again that involves some views that are directly attributable to the routing.
It involves walks that that one between twelve and thirteen along the Clybourne River. So again find find in a variety of holes and making them interesting as one thing, but then to take it to that to that next level with celebrating nature and creating a bigger experience than just hitting the golf ball is what those guys were able to do so so brilliantly at Highland's Lengths in Cyprus Point.
And I think it's interesting that it's an out and back routing, you know, because uh, there's there's i think a false sense out there that the out and back model is antiquated or that that we moved beyond it. But Highland's Lengths does have roughly an out and back routing. But I'm wondering, I'm curious, when you're playing that course, does it feel like it's an out and back routing or do you kind of lose sight of that as you're going along.
That's a great question, because you know what, I've played Highland's Links enough to confidently say that it does not feel like an out and back rounding at all at all, And I'm not sure I've ever thought about it that way. I mean, you know, I've studied the routing map so much, and I've looked at aerials in the golf course.
I can see it plain as day.
But yeah, when I'm out on the golf course playing there, you feel like there's enough change in direction. You're getting a huge variety of views, so you don't actually, you know, at Saint Andrew's, especially when you're coming in, you kind of know you're coming in on a direct line because
the town's there and you're getting closer and closer. You don't have any consistent views at Highlands Links because you're in valleys and then up and looking at the ocean and looking at mountains, and that detracts from the fact that it essentially is an out and back routing. Stanley Thompson used out and back routing at baff as well.
You know, in the old days at Bamp Springs they've changed the sequence of play, unfortunately since Thompson's day, But in the old days you're teed off in the shadow that that beautiful old hotel and really played out through the river valley turned around, came back.
You know, I'd like Saint Andrews.
There's a couple of little crooks here and there, but you're you're effectively out and back at theaf too, which is a great experience in terms of leaving the hotel and returning. I often wonder, if you know, if I could ask Stanley Thompson Saint Andrew's crossed his mind. I'd love to hear what his answer is, because when I think of baff I, I always think of Saint Andrews leaving town, leaving the hotel and coming back to town and coming back.
To the hotel.
Yeah, and that again. You know, I've said this before, but it but it strikes me again that that that model of routing. You know, you can you can do it in different ways. Obviously, you can do it in ways that, as we've been saying, don't feel necessarily like a repetitive out and back routing. But there is a natural sense of going on a journey, reaching a point, and then returning home. And all of those things have
an emotional pull. There's the mystery of the journey, there's the there's the yearning to get out to that point, that distant point, and then once you get out there, once you've spent your time there and seeing what you need to see, then there's an equal emotional poll that's drawing you back home right homeward bound. I think these are things that tug at us in a in a really primal way, and and these routings, when well done, can do that.
I agree, And in Saint Andrews and Banff for even the way I was just enthusiastically talking about both, it is an experience that does that you remember. I mean, it's it's a you're never going to forget those two experiences for sure, for those for that very reason, and it's again directly attributable to the to the routing.
The other interesting thing.
About that journey at Saint Andrews, which which I again I think for sure, that's how how golf developed there.
You know, let's keep playing, play and playing, we can't go any further. We got to go back.
Is how many holes does it take to get out there and come back on the available piece of ground? You know, for for guys like us who simply love to play golf, do I really care if I'm playing fifteen holes to get out there and come back they played twenty two holes originally and went out and came back. Now it's eighteen. Another interesting question, you know, in terms of routing, what fits best? You know, on any particular
piece of ground, there's there's not always eighteen holes. Sometimes there's more than eighteen holes.
But being able to go.
Out there and find the best routing is, you know, the ultimate dream without having.
To worry about anything, really just go find the best holes. Here's how many holes.
We were able to fit on the available property, and let's play golf.
I'd like to know how many holes Bryson to Shambeau would need to get out to the river at St. Andrews. Maybe maybe three out and three backs something like that.
Not as many as me, I know that.
So the last thing I'd like to talk about, and this is less about a particular course or a specific example, and more about kind of what's next in routing, or whether there are some unexplored or less explored concepts in routing golf courses that we can begin to get into as golf architecture I hope continues to develop. And I'm thinking of the Loop, I'm thinking of Sylvie's Valley Ranch. I'm thinking of Uhopie Match Club. But there are probably
a bunch of other examples. But I'm just I'm just curious about what you think we as routers of golf courses, whether are architects as routers of golf courses? What what things they haven't explored enough? What habits we might need to break or re examine, and how we can then break into new territory in routing. What do you think is there?
Well, i'll tell you what I when I heard that the loop was happening, that's suppose as excited. Actually, you know, the other thing the most excited I probably ever was is what high point opened when I was the kid after reading about what Tom was doing there?
Tom delk of course.
And the next most exciting thing I think I heard was that Tom was doing a reversible course in Michigan. So I followed its development and I've played it now both ways and walked it, and I'll tell you what. It just strikes me, as I said earlier, that the concept of reversible course or a course that functions multifactly?
Has it? Is that a word.
Multi multi multifacetedly? Yeah? Why not?
You know?
But of course that functions in more ways than one, I guess is the way to describe it. I'm just shocked at that concept hasn't been pursued more diligently over the past even half century. You know, again, the benefits of having two courses in one like the old course shows us. And now what the loop's doing is there's
so many benefits to it. And when you talk about a whoopie, similarly, it's not a reversible golf course, but they've got some extra holes there so you can play alternate routings, alternate sequence of play, which reminds me of another great routing at Los Angeles Country Club, the North Course there the George Thomas laid out in the mid twenties. He famously came up with a concept that he called courses within a course. How do you build or I should use, I should say route? How do you route
a golf course? Route eighteen holes that could function in multiple ways, not just as a traditional eighteen whole golf course. And again, I just think that golf has been lacking in terms of that type of creativity until recently. Because it's so exciting to hear, you know, the loops done. You know, I've heard other guys including Frank Pont in
Europe and Dan Hickson out at Sylvie's Ranch. You know, let's figure out how these golf courses can be played in reverse, how we can set these holes up so that they're completely different.
From one day to the next.
And I'll never forget what Tom Doak said, you know, he said, if we're going to build a reversible golf.
Course, it better be good both ways.
You can't have one course, you know, be significantly better than the other course, because then people would just come and play the good course and not not the other way. And sadly, I think that's what happened in the old course over the years. Not not that the reverse course is necessarily any worse than the course we know, but after a number of British Opens we played there and not much history was made there. If you know, people from around the world are coming to Saint Andrew's to play.
They want to play the open course, they want to see the they don't want to be there the day that you.
Can't play the road all the way that we know it and see it on television.
Or the Edenhole or I mean or the fourteenth there are Yeah, those holes have become utterly iconic people would be in aged if they showed up and they're one day there. They didn't get to play those right.
So if the black course that the Loupe had more iconic goals in the red course, the business.
Model that they built it on wouldn't work as well.
Yeah, you got to want to play them all. And here I want to shout out Dan Hickson, who I think might be the most underrated architect in the United States. You know, he's done most of his work in the Pacific Northwest. But Sylvie's Valley Ranch is a brilliant concept. It's a reversible routing, but it has twenty seven greens, and the ways that it's made to work on that hilly piece of property are so complex and varied, you know. And there's one section of the course where basically the
fairways kind of form a series of triangles. You know, you play one hole and the next hole kind of goes off in the opposite direction, except at a kind of forty five degree angle, and then the next hole does the same thing. So what you're left with, if you look at it from above, is a kind of zigzag, and you can play the zigzag in both It really does work as a reversible routing. And you know, I looked at it both ways, and there are really good
holes on both courses. There are really good arguments for playing one course over the other, or really playing both courses, and it just works. And I think that, you know, one of the things that made that happen was not being too wedded to the idea that I've got to have a pure reversible course. There's got to be eighteen greens, just realizing that there are many ways to do it. There are so many ways to rout a golf course.
There are so many ways that you can configure holes on a golf course and make it do different things, And for whatever reason, we just haven't explored those. You know, the LACC you know Thomas's concepts there are fascinating. Have you seen that anywhere? And I just wonder why we aren't doing these things? It does it have to do with rankings, Does it have to do with just golf's kind of tentativeness to try something new? You know? What is it that's holding us back?
Here?
I find And this is more prevalent at private clubs obviously than resort courses and public courses, But I find that golfers are are just married to their handicaps, which is something that is always just made me shake my head. I mean, I just want to play interesting golf. And there's always a way to raid a course, you know, even if even if you said it, if you're able to set it up as varied as lacc North, there's a way to rate a golf course on which a
part three is a part four the next day. We just got to think outside of the box and be a little bit more innovative about how we're doing things.
But most golfers, they want the tea's in the same spot and the pin in the same spot every day because they think that little marker is where the course was raided from, and that's going to maintain my handicaps so that when I play my friend, you know, they're not thinking about interesting golf holes as they as much as they are their own score and the bets have going on that day, which are depending on consistency, you know, and and really the last thing we want is consistency.
You know.
You go you go to forest Dune to stay out, play the black Horse, sleep, you know, go to sleep at night and then play the red course the next day. That's not consistent, but it's super fun, you know. And same at L A C C. When number six is a long part three and then you show up one day and then you show up the next day and it's playing as a short part four. I mean, those are the types of things in routing I think that
we need to golf. Golf really needs, you know, I think I think these short courses, these reversible course ideas, it's it's sort.
Of spark more interesting golf course architecture.
I think it's made a lot of people think differently about, you know, where they want to play and how the game is played, and.
How the game is played in the most fun way possible.
One of my favorite things about golf is that the playing fields are not standardized. A course can have thirteen par threes like Pan and Preserve or five long holes like the original leaf Links in Scotland. There's no rule saying those routings don't qualify as real golf courses. But as Jeff and I discussed towards the end of our conversation, modern courses just haven't taken the invitation to be whatever
they want to be. Instead, they've become more and more wetted to the championship model of eighteen holes in a par between seventy and seventy two. I think that's gotten in the way of the best practices of golf course routing. An architect should just be focusing on how to get the most out of a piece of land, not on achieving a certain number of holes or a certain par Those are just arbitrary restrictions that we've put on ourselves.
So I wonder, and this is where I want to hear from you, what's it going to take for weird golf course routings to go mainstream? And I'm not talking about it fancy clubs or resorts, but at your local union. What's preventing it from having seven cool holes and like
a souped up driving range or something. Maybe developers are too tentative, maybe architects are, but really I think it has to start with our own habits and attitudes as golfers, with realizing that not every score needs to count toward our handicaps, and that no matter what the routing is, no matter how many holes it has or what part it is, we can simply enjoy trying to hit good shots, or maybe trying to win a match against a friend.
If you want to dig deeper into the topic of golf course routing, I've put together a post for this episode on the Frida egg dot com. You can also find us on Twitter at the Friday Egg with underscores between each word, and Jeff at Jeff Underscore Mingay, let's keep the conversation going.