Many ‘fine’ courses are not predictable and fair: a bit like life.

FineGolf  is the most enjoyable type of golf and is played on courses that have a variety of well drained, poor soil terrains, usually linksland or heathland, moorland or downland. They all have predominantly fine grasses and give a high “joy to be alive” feeling.

Skill:

They require judgement, improvisation and vision as the indicators of skill, described as three-dimensional golf, rather than relying on brute strength and the length of hitting the ball through the air, as in target-golf and the two dimensional game.

Fairways:

Their fairways are firm, composed of fine, wiry grasses and present a ball sitting down that needs to be squeezed to gain back-spin, rather than scooped from a high grass lie. They are dry, bouncy and running, and brown off in a dry summer.

Speed of play and greens:

FineGolf is played at a good pace. For recreational golf, the greens’ putting speed ideally is around 9′ and for the elite game around 10′.  Faster putting speeds slow the game down through worrying about the six footer coming back! On average for every foot faster than 9′ the recreational four ball better ball game takes longer by fifteen minutes for eighteen holes.

Course Design:

Fine course design is the most varied, and requires shots to be negotiated within the natural movement of the land. Strategic design is favoured rather than penal design. Shot making is required – with the yardage chart of less use, particularly in the wind – and where often shots are more successful the closer they are played to the ground like the bump and run.

Courses with soft turf allow the hazards to be taken out of play around the greens by firing a high ball over them and stopping it quickly by the pin. This is two dimensional golf based on just length and direction.

Challenging:

FineGolf is more of a challenge to skill and brain than to brawn and the fairways being running and the hazards being where the scratch golfer wants to hit his ball, requires clever placement of the ball rather than just length. Because the turf is firm and running judgement is needed not to run-out into the rough, whereas with target-golf on soft fairways the ball can be flown high and long and stopped quickly.  The style of bunkering is usually small, deep and gathering-in, rather than huge, flat, and surrounded with a fringe of semi-rough.

Conservationist, (low inputs, lower costs):

‘Fine’ courses  produce the most enjoyable playing surfaces, are lower cost to build and maintain, help conserve the environment and encourage natural flora and fauna. They provide what golfers are looking for in terms of greens’ performance of being firm, true and conservationist (low inputs of water, fertilisers and pesticides, and require lower costs).

Courses for all abilities:

‘Fine’ courses become more delightful the more they are studied and played. They offer problems to golfers of all abilities. They are never hopelessly insurmountable for the high handicapper nor fail to challenge and interest the expert.

Well behaved dogs are quite often seen on ‘fine’ courses.

Character:

Come off the 18th on a ‘Fine’ course and you can remember each hole whereas, with the bull-dozered sameness of many of the big new lush target courses, one hole is often similar to another in the memory.

Traditional greenkeeping methods:

‘Fine’ courses use conservation greenkeeping methods with lots of regular aeration, without the use of much fertiliser or pesticides and only enough water to just keep the grass alive in a drought.

A typical FineGolf shot with creativity:

..was when Greg Norman, playing in The Open at Royal Birkdale in 2008, took a 5 iron to hit his ball only 120 yards into the wind.

It flew no higher than 8 feet off the ground to a plateau green surrounded by bunkers. With a crispness in the strike, he imparted backspin that stopped the ball pin high after two bounces and some roll-out.

The shot excluded the problem of his ball being blown off-line when flying high. It required creativity and unusual skill to overcome a challenge that was giving problems to many of the other professionals who are more used to predictable target golf.  An example being Michelson’s famous six-iron shot from the pine needles with no back-spin, at the Augusta Masters, that stopped the ball by its pitch-mark near the pin just over Rae’s Creek. It was a skillful shot but reliant on the target green being soft and receptive.

The key aspect:

There are many aspects that differentiate ‘Fine running-golf ‘ from ‘Lush target-golf ‘ but the fundamental and most important is that ‘Fine running-golf ‘ is played on fine turf predominantly perennial browntop bents and fescue grasses (slow-growing, deep-rooting, drought-resistant, disease-resistant, conservationist – low inputs, lower costs),  whereas ‘lush target-golf ‘ cultivates annual meadow grass (Poa annua) – (fast-growing, shallow-rooting, thirsty, disease-susceptical, unsustainable – high inputs, higher costs).

The epitome of the ‘Finest running-golf ‘ courses is the style of those on which “The Open Championship” is played.

When “The Open” bandwagon moves on, we are left with an improved, renovated, course that is in the best healthy condition because The R&A pursue a long-term policy of encouraging austere, conservationist, traditional greenkeeping, tested and proven over time and exercised through common sense, that takes into account the needs of the ordinary golfer who wants to play all the year round.

The epitome of ‘Lush target-golf ‘ is the style on which the “Augusta Masters” and now the Ryder Cup is played.

In the spring, we all enjoy watching the TV golf extravaganza that is the US Masters, particularly the back-nine holes and the same pin placements that we all know so well. Augusta is an expensively and artificially managed course, set-up just for that one week, with greens of shaved, soft turf. The course is closed for five months to recover.

The quest, often by low-handicap golfers, for ‘shaved’ high speed greens is an infectious disease that has become known as ‘Augusta Syndrome Disease’