How to defend courses against the longest bombers? This architect has ideas
The par-4 13th hole on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.
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It’s a central question in the modern game: how to defend against long-bombing assaults?
In tournament play, the standard response has been to draw back tees, firm up greens, tuck hole locations and pinch fairways with rough.
The architect Kyle Franz has a different idea that does not involve course setup. It is rooted in design. Franz believes the best way to stand up to the big-hitting present is to pull a page from architecture’s past.
Take the Old Course at St. Andrews, for instance. Still wildly entertaining after 600 years, but also still a worthy major championship test. How has it managed to walk that line?
For one thing, it’s wide. Wide is fun, Franz says. But there also comes a point when wide becomes so wide that the course loses interest. When you can hit it almost anywhere without proper consequences, “it numbs the shot values,” Franz says.
The Old Course balances its width with strategically placed hazards that are fierce enough to give the best players pause.
“While most of the world looks at the road hole at St. Andrews as the first truly great hole — and I wholeheartedly agree with that — I think the 13th at St. Andrews should be in that grouping as well,” Franz says.
For those unfamiliar with it, the 13th is a 465-yard par-4 with a fairway pocked by aptly named “coffin” bunkers and a green fronted by a lion’s mouth of sand.
“It gives you two clear, specific routes you can take with that lion’s mouth in the center,” Franz says. “And off the tee, it really works well in this day and age where it’s bomb and gouge, bomb and gouge. [Big hitters] aren’t worried about trying to hit sides of fairways. But by putting problems smack dab in the middle, it forces them to think, rather than just saying ‘I’m just going to pound this out there.’”
There are other examples, Franz says, like the hog’s back on the 5th hole at National Golf Links — a spine in the central landing area that repels shots to either side — and the 15th at Seminole, with its split-winged fairway.
Franz could go on. And he does on that and many other subjects in the Destination Golf podcast. In a wide-ranging interview, recorded earlier this year at the grand opening of Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida, Franz laid out the details of his life in golf from the cold-call to Tom Doak that got him his first gig to his restoration efforts on Donald Ross courses and his original work, including the newly opened Karoo Course at Citrus Farms. Franz’s design interests aren’t limited to golf, either. He’s also keen on sports stadiums, and he told us his four favorites, none of which — shockingly — was Fenway Park. You can listen to the entire episode here.
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