Method Of Dealing With Inland Courses

Having once settled the question of the inferiority of all inland courses, we may proceed to the discussion of the means toward producing the best results with the material at hand.

Choice Of Property

Begin by selecting the best soil that is available. Light, sandy soil is the best for the purpose, because it dries easily after rain, and yet does not bake to the consistency of iron in hot weather. A clay soil is strongly to be avoided. If you cannot get sand, search for rich loam, which is not so desirable either in drought or in rain, but yet affords a fine deep sod. If possible get a piece of property devoid of trees. One of the constant incumbrances upon American courses is to be found in the shape of woodland. The desire to obtain picturesque surroundings has generally overruled more utilitarian motives, and so a budding golf club often invests in real estate which is quite unfit for the exercise of the game without an enormous expenditure of capital.

Removal Of Obstacles

When you have bought your land, which should be as undulating as possible, without being mountainous, proceed to lay out the best course that the lie of the ground permits, irrespective of a building site for your club house or the picturesque grouping of woods. Then go to work ruthlessly and root out every tree which interferes in the most remote degree with your course. Remember that the course should be nearly seventy-five yards wide at all points, and that there should not be a single tree of any description upon it. You will have to come to this state of thing's sooner or later; so you may just as well harden your heart at the beginning. You will probably encounter a good deal of antagonism from artistic souls, and will have to enjoy the reputation of utter vandalism; but that need not trouble you greatly. Your reward will come when the course is in a finished state, and in the meantime any one who desires to indulge in amateur forestry can retire to some region which not been devoted to the ends of golf.

The Location Of Holes

In laying out your holes do not be bound down by any cast iron rule. The distances on the best courses abroad have not been decided by regulation, but by the natural fitness of things. Of course, if your property consists simply of an expanse of more or less level pasture - and that is, perhaps, the most promising material to work upon - you can arrange the length of your holes to suit yourself. But in most cases there will be one or two special features which should be utilized in order to make picturesque holes, such as may differentiate your course from any other. It is not a bad plan to select your short hole first. The most perfect kind of short hole is one which requires an iron shot on to a green where the flag is full in view, with a yawning hazard which stretches from the tee right up to the edge of the putting green. You will probably find such a hazard, or the opportunity for one, somewhere on your property, and you should choose that for one at least of your short holes. And then as a general rule look out for high spots and locate your putting greens there. A links is made particularly interesting where you have the flag plainly visible from the teeing ground. There should be few, if any, blind holes upon a good course. Moreover, one advantage of having putting greens upon the high places is the fact that some of your teeing grounds will also of necessity be on eminences commanding a view of the entire ground over which you have to play. There is nothing prettier in golf than the play from a teeing ground on the top of a hill, with a large bunker immediately in front. If, therefore, your property possesses any special features of this kind, do not fail to make use of them even if you have on that account to depart from the actual distances sanctioned by custom. Wherever your putting greens are not clearly determined for you by nature, you should have the ideal course.

The Distances. 20! constantly in view, and although you may show a certain individuality in striving after it, its services as a rough basis are invaluable.

The Distances

The nearest approach to perfection in the matter of distances was made by the original founders of the St. Andrews links in Scotland. A plan of the course, with the correct distances, will be found at the end of this chapter; there are also diagrams of Prestwick and North Berwick, with the distances as nearly correct as is possible, in view of the fact that the teeing grounds vary considerably. Study St. Andrews carefully, and you will discover that the holes are so distributed as to demand skill in every conceivable kind of stroke, and also to do away as far as possible with the element of luck.

St. Andrews

First of all, there are two short holes which vary, according to weather, between a full cleek shot and a half iron. Secondly, there are two holes, the ninth and the tenth, where the drive need only be followed by a very short approach. More than two such holes on an eighteenhole course must be avoided, because they allow the player to miss his drive very badly without any punishment whatsoever. It is rather a mistake to have holes of such a distance that a missed drive may be redeemed by a fine brassey shot; but it is a great deal worse when the difference beween a good and a bad drive only entails the difference between a long iron approach and a short one. Still, two holes of the objectionable length - from two hundred to three hundred yards - are perfectly admissible in a full eighteen-hole course, provided that the other distances are good. Now, at St. Andrews there are two five-hundred-yard holes, two of four hundred, and ten between four hundred and three hundred. The long holes require two long drives and an approach, or three fair drives, the two of four hundred call for two very long shots with a wooden club, and the rest may be reached in two shots which vary between two full drives and a drive followed by a half iron shot. In every case, with the exception of the ninth and tenth holes already alluded to, the tee shot must be clean hit - not because there is a bunker to be negotiated, but because even a slight error will make it very hard, if not impossible, to reach the putting green with the second shot. It requires no extended argument to show that this is one of the most important points to bear in mind when laying out a new course; for it creates at once a wide distinction between the first-class and the second-class player. Do not imagine, however, that your holes must really be of such a uniform character as this description might seem at first sight to imply. Although there are fourteen holes at St. Andrews which under ordinary circumstances may be reached in two strokes, and cannot be reached in less, the second stroke is probably a different one in every case. It may either be a very long shot with a wooden club or a full cleek shot, or a full iron or a half shot. There are other ways, moreover, of varying the monotony by the arrangement of bunkers, and the situation of the putting greens. The second shot may have to be of the high or lofted variety so as to carry a bunker close to the hole, or it may be more advisable to play a running shot when there is no obstacle in the direct line, and the putting green is of such a nature as to make a lofted shot almost impossible. Such is the case very often at North Berwick, where the hole is situated upon a hard plateau so that a ball pitched right on to the green is certain to run past the hole.