Golf by Design - Golf à la Robert Trent Jones Jr.
Placement is more important than length, position more important than distance. Just hitting the ball in the air isn’t enough – it must land in the right place. It is like chess – you have to establish a strategy for every shot or move, in order to be able to take advantage of your strengths.
The greater your mental preparation, combined with skilled hitting, the greater your chances of mastering the course. No other sport can provide such a combination of nature’s magnificence and sporting demands.
Golf is like chess – you have to establish a
strategy, according to Robert Trent Jones Jr.Robert Trent Jones doesn’t just design golf courses. He is the architect that orchestrates the hazards and the course’s special features to the mental and physical challenges of the game or, to put in another way, creates different holes.
He sees the course as a symphony to be composed with balance and rhythm. It’s not for nothing that he is called “the father of modern environmental golf course architecture”.
Just like those who come after him, he continually tries to entice us into taking unnecessary risks. A large golf course challenges and liberates the golfer’s senses.
Technology has changed the game
Jack Nicklaus was one of the professional players who always measured the course, creating a book with exact dimensions and notes for how to attack it. Few ordinary golfers would now play their first game on a course without using a course guide.
Improved balls, clubs and swing
techniques have, according to Robert
Trent Jones Jr., changed the game of
golf from a “ground campaign to an air raid"
r slowly but surely approached the hole. Technical development has resulted in improved balls, clubs and swing techniques, which is why the game – according to Trent Jones Jr. – has changed from being a ground campaign to an air raid.
On contemporary courses distances are marked on sprinkler heads and shots are taken using metal drivers the size of frying pans with graphite shafts, and you can correct a bad swing using forgiving irons with grooves and cavities. So that the courses don’t become too easy, bunkers are deeper, the holes longer and the greens more undulating.
The challenge lies more in the type of grass, the speed of the green, the rough’s height and character, and in being able to work out what type of course strategy is necessary.
The key is to hit the fairway
Each tee sets the tone for what awaits. This is where you have a perfect situation and stance; you can decide the best angle to your target and play from that. They key to a good score is to hit the fairway, because when you have left the tee you are at the mercy of the course. That’s why everyone should have the right to the perfect tee, women as well, something you will find at Bro Hof.
It is really only during the last 15 years that tees have developed into their own art form, in which raised areas, sizes and shapes are the key factors. It was actually Robert Trent Jones Sr., father of Jr., who made sure, after World War II, that golf architects did something about the previously meagre tees.
Smart players know their limits
Robert Trent Jones Jr.’s recommendation
is to see every golf hole as a series of
defined target areas.Trent Jones’s recommendation is to regard each hole as a series of defined target areas. For easier visualisation they should be divided into a series of par 3.
Each hole should always provide a route, often a little ahorter and always riskier, of reaching the greens in two on the par 5s.
No round is the same as another – the hazards on the course, whether visible or camouflaged, are compounded by the weather, wind and temporary difficulties.
On a links the strength of the wind can mean huge club differences are encountered. Admittedly, the winds at Bro Hof aren’t as strong, but they are tricky because the forests can cause them to swirl.
The fairways are long and sweeping with a lot of roll – meaning that the ball can end up in new difficulties…
“A lost ball means a lost score and lost self-confidence. It is always the player who determines the correct line of play. Smart players know their limits and avoid trouble.”
Read more on Robert Trent Jones II’s website.