1 Too wide? For the last 20 years or so, playability through width has been the dominant mantra in golf architecture. Without adequate width there can be no strategy: when a fairway is but 20-25 yards wide, the only question for the golfer is, ‘Can you hit it?’ There is no question of playing to one side or another to get a preferred angle into the pin. With strategy comes playability: greater width reduces the amount of time spent searching for balls in long grass. Width is good. But if width is good, does it automatically follow that more width is better? Or is there a point beyond which extra width just implies more maintenance and more cost, without a matching payback in increased playability? Recently there has been a small, but noticeable trend of ultra-wide golf courses making their debut. I shall not name them here: alert readers know which ones are meant, and there is no need to make this about particular architects. Tom Doak is one of the architects who helped to create the current love affair with width. But, in this issue’s lead feature on designing for bad golfers, Doak says he thinks the quest for width has gone too far, and that the effect of today’s extreme width is to encourage young male golfers to swing as hard as they can at the ball – with consequent effects on the distance they hit and the distance by which they sometimes miss their target! If courses were not so wide, Doak says, these players might be induced to throttle back a bit, with consequent benefits for courses that would not be required to maintain so much turf. In a world of more than 30,000 golf courses, it seems unlikely that a few ultrawide ones are having any effect on a significant number of players, but Doak’s point is well made. There must be a point where more width is a bad thing, otherwise it would make sense to build golf holes a mile wide. We do not want any sort of a return to bowling alley fairways, especially now that the philosophy of tree management seems to be gaining some critical mass. But, as with everything else in life, it is important to find a happy medium. WE LCOME
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