Tackling the Par-5 Problem

BY Tony Cashmore

I’ve written before about the enigma a golf course architect has in devising par-5 holes today. The essential dilemma is this: if you make a par-5 long enough to seriously examine the good strong player who wants to, expects to adopt a 2-shot approach to reaching the green, you create a challenge to everyone else which risks being unpleasantly difficult, but may well be thoroughly boring anyway. Most club-standard men golfers cannot hope to reach even a 460 metre par-5 in two shots in still conditions, and anything longer than about 520 metres requires a reasonable iron shot third after successfully negotiating the golf hole’s strategic demands for the first two strokes. (For girls, think 360 metres, and 400 metres ).

But a 460 metre par-5 hole to many young and/or strong players may however be a drive and mid-iron examination at most, and I recently watched a group of 4 young visitors at Kew Golf Club hit metal wood drivers over 290 metres (two of them well over 300 metres) requiring 6-iron seconds and less into a 470 metre par-5. Hey, that’s pretty normal today, please face it. The strategic exigencies that golf hole experts over most members (trees narrowing the approach angles essentially) were utterly irrelevant to those brazen young golfers. Can you see the sort of design considerations made impotent by the present advances in golf technology and technique? That any frontal bunker at the green for example, which needs to be considered by most club players for their third shots, or the shallowness of the green in that context, is barely even noticed by a strong player hitting a skywards-seeking iron second to land softly onto some specific node within that green.

Well then let’s ask the question: does it matter that constructing a 3-shot examination for an increasingly large group of players is becoming inexorably more difficult in length of hole anyway? That rolling out 600 metre golf holes makes no sense at all, when most players can’t experience a decent, interesting challenge in tackling such monsters? Well, maybe not. Perhaps the approach one might adopt is to create/retain fine golf holes at 460 metres up to about maximum 500 metres, and call them all par-4’s! Most club players would receive strokes on all of them, so nobody suffers in competition.

But in the interests of fashioning an approach to creating decent, flexible par-5’s in today’s golfing climate, here’s one architect’s thinking about the enigma, and I would sure like to have comments and dialogue from those of you wonderful golf-wise contributors who remain at least unbiased towards my thinking and ideas.

Firstly, you may recall what I wrote about the 4th and 6th hole at Thirteenth Beach’s Beach Course. That I tried to exploit natural features in the terrain, in each case, to deliberately limit the drive length possibility down to about 245-250 metres: an inserting line of scrubby pine trees on Hole 4, narrowing the fairway to a mere sliver before the land fell down to a natural water hazard; and a natural incursion of that same wetlands virtually across the full fairway from the left, to a dunal hill on Hole 6. Here are diagrams of the two holes, before the owners of the course succumbed to pressure from good strong golfers and pulled the strategy to bits.

My intentions, it can be seen, was to limit the maximum drive distance, after which there was in each case options of how to proceed: to either directly attack a tightly guarded green from long range, or to tack around strategic problems in a further 2-shot approach to the green served by an immensely wide fairway extent. In each case, the length of the golf hole needed to be only about 490 metres in issuing options and challenges to everyone: the strong player, whilst essentially curtailed in his/her drive length, still then had the joy/challenge of clearly striking a long accurate approach (and even his/her drive had to be exact in length to best allow that approach) in order to beckon a birdie, or could, like the rest of the field play to at least two separate positions short of the green which then examined pitch or chipping techniques, or at most shot iron play.

Now I happen to think that sort of planning, occasionally on a par-5 hole today is simply interesting and valuable. (And by the way, those two examples, geared to absolutely natural terrain elements are the only such drive – limiting exercises I’ve ever attempted.)

Of course powerful golfers forced the demise of my strategic,’short-drive’ idea: the trees were removed, the landing platforms widened, flattened, a stupid hidden bunker inserted on Hole 6, wide out, as a ’gesture’ apparently to the original idea – I hate it – so that now the strong can crash drives as far as they like, making a mockery of the flexible treatment of the greens, their protection and approach lines. Such is life. Trent Jones Junior did the same sort of thing on Hole 14 of the Hyatt Coolum course-a stream across the par-5 fairway at about 260 metres from the tee; which still remain today.

So now, let me describe for you some ideas I’ve pursued on a couple of par-5 holes at the Henley Course at The Heritage here in Melbourne – a course not yet open, but two holes which some will undoubtedly pan when/if they ever confront the ’problems’ I’ve prepared.

Hole 6 is maximum 500 metres long, playing into the south-west. Here’s a diagram and a couple of photos.

There are several tees for flexibility. The golf hole runs along the base of a significant steep hill, and is skirted along its entire left flank by water. The fairway is generally very wide -sometimes 70-90 metres wide, but is somewhat convoluted, and slopes, sometimes quite strongly, from high right to low left. There will be adequate’stopping’ rough along the water edge to inhibit the softly-running ball.

Note the very tall, dead tree some 100 metres in front of the back tee, which essentially is positioned one third across the driveline from the left. (It only really affects play from the extreme back tee, because the teeing ground then scribes out to the right, from where, increasingly, drives automatically are played over the broad right alignment of the fairway.)

Now that tree no doubt has some habitat values but it may be able to be removed, and it will be kept at this time, as presenting a dilemma for all golfers playing off the elevated back, (medal) tee. You see, there’s a fairway bunker right side 250 metres out. So the strong player, wishing to reach the green in two strokes, must decide at that tee whether to hit a power fade drive out over the water, left of the tree, and bring it back (there’s a knoll and downslope after 240 metres, left side, which will kick the ball forward substantially if that brave line is successfully achieved) or, hit a long but careful draw shot right of the tree (too strong a hook and the ball’s wet) or play just short of the bunker, from where it’s virtually impossible to take on the green. Playing over the tree is just possible, but a tough ask, even with modern equipment.

Lesser players can more easily slice drives left of the tree, or hit essentially straight drives right of it – they will not reach the bunker – they are not anyway trying to get to the green in two shots, but their strategic options all along the golf hole are interesting.

People in my office are already urging me to remove the tree because of the perception that it could unfairly punish a golfer. But I won’t just at present. So what if those with a ’runway’ mentality cannot or will not contemplate the quirky except with scorn and venom? So be it. Without the tree, the hole, like nearly all par-5 examinations asks little except to belt the ball, unencumbered, as far down the fairway as possible. I’m asking for a decision, from only the very back tee, mind, as to shaping the drive and successfully achieving the decision, in a terrain which is stern to failure.

Hole 17 is completely different in its strategic demands, but is hopefully another apotheosis of how a modern par-5 can de designed to stimulate and examine everyone.

From the back of it plays 529 metres into the south, essentially straightaway. Here’s a diagram and a few photos.

The hole strongly rewards a long drive played right side as close as possible to the bunkers. A down slope slot beyond 240 metres kicks the ball forward there a lot. The bunkers there are penal however, and if you miss the slot, the land turns the ball left into a large stopping hollow. That’s where most golfers will be after drives. From there one can see the incursion of water from the left, but not its full extent, which is concealed by two broad-bosomed hills. So the short second landing zones are really not viable unless you climb a little one way or another. But the full majesty of the elevated green and its bifurcated approaches (two fairways separated by a cavernous bunker) are quite clearly seen, as is the entry line beyond the cart path on the (preferred) left fairway approach. There are simply four or five quite different ways to play second shots on this vast golf hole depending on the quality of the drive: short right, followed by a longish iron up over a second waterbody into a good green alignment; long right, carrying the rough tongue and fairway bunker to the ’elysian fields’ from where an approach pitch up the green essentially avoids the front-of-green ’quarry’ bunker; long left, over the cart path beyond the water, from where a good long chip or pitch is assisted by the land slope entry into the shallow green; or to long fly the ball directly over the ’quarry’ bunker or along its left flank into the green. Candidly, there are a couple of other options as well, and the members will work them out.

Again, the created terrain and the hole’s defences are severe, and (deliberately) some of the visuals in the golfscape are tantalisingly unclear. This hole may not find favour with the unthinking and the macho – the green is shallow, and the hole carefully designed and created to prefer a 3-shot attitude, in no matter what guise; it will take two exceptional blows to find and keep the green. Blame me please – I love the hole, I hope you do too and I think it points to the future.

There’s another par-5 ’approach’ I’ve adopted on one hole at Henley – the short (460 metres) 2nd. I’ve asked the question here (see the diagram) whether the strong player on the tee prefers to have a longer second from flattish lies to a green protected left by deep bunkers and right by water, or to have a shorter approach into that green from strongly sloping uphill, downhill or sideway lies? I think that’s an interesting way of defining strategic options in an otherwise unencumbered slice of golf land. Tell me what you think, because even if I’m wrong, I’m at least trying to suggest ways of solving the enigma of reasonable length par-5 hole in modern play.