What's more important to you?

[Springveldt]

Condition for me every time. To be honest I very rarely notice a bad design, maybe I haven't played enough courses.

Doesn't matter how good people think a layout or design of a course is if I've just walked off complaining about teeboxes/greens/bunkers etc. For me that is everything.

I'm quite a literal person though. Things like architecture, art etc have never interested me. I find it hard to understand how anyone can sit and look at a painting for minutes/hours saying how great it is when I'll look for about 5 seconds and go "nice painting but I've seen it now".

 

[patricks148]

A bit of both tbh.

 

[oleinone]

Design every time.My course may not be immaculate but no two holes are the same. The local options are the golf equivalent of Groundhog Day - the hole number is different but nothing else is. Their members always boast about the condition as they yawn their way around.

 

[Deleted member 1740]

Primarily the design. It's got to be pleasing on the eye and enjoyable.

With the right team of greenkeepers the condition can always improve in a relatively short space of time.

 

[sunshine]

I currently have
Design - 7
Condition - 3
Scenery - 10
Our club has the space and location to be a serious Top 100 contender, but it would take some extremely serious cash and ambition.
I'm currently looking around. Other local courses score highly on design and condition, but I don't know if I'm willing to double my yearly subscription for a Braid course that's next to a motorway service station and 2 miles from the end of the runway of the UK's 3rd and Europe's 10th busiest airport.

Near Gatwick? There are some nice courses in Sussex and Surrey that are affected. Walton Heath has the M25 at the far end, and I always look out for Wentworth when taking off from Heathrow.

I think you’d get used to the aircraft, the motorway less so if it’s right next door.

 

[sunshine]

throwing a different question at you then.

you have 20 points to spend.

Condition 1-10 (10 being Augusta National during Masters week and 1 being a council goat track during a heavy winter)
Design 1-10 (10 being the best Colt/Braid etc however you personally enjoy a course, 1 being 350 yard par 4 straight, flat greens etc for 18 holes)
Scenery 1-10 (10 being breath taking views and vistas and 1 being you can't see anything but the golf course)

for me I would have
Design - 9
Condition - 6
Scenery - 5

Good question but easy answer for me. I would go with:

Design 10
Condition 10
Scenery 0

I’ll take Augusta national with no views every day of the week.
Nice views are for my holidays.

 

[Voyager EMH]

Design - 9
Condition - 10
Scenery - 1

 

[RichA]

Near Gatwick? There are some nice courses in Sussex and Surrey that are affected. Walton Heath has the M25 at the far end, and I always look out for Wentworth when taking off from Heathrow.

I think you’d get used to the aircraft, the motorway less so if it’s right next door.

Stansted.

 

[KenL]

For me on the scoring system...
Design 6
Condition 8
Scenery 6.
For me, the environment is really important especially on my home course. Yes, Augusta would be awesome to play but I doubt I would want to play there every week.

 

[Bobthesock]

Normally I would say presentation but played boat of garten today and whilst far from immaculate it was plenty good enough. Scruffy bone dry fairways and the greens were good not great.
But what a course! Would take that over a pristine parkland anyday!

 

[Backache]

Normally I would say presentation but played boat of garten today and whilst far from immaculate it was plenty good enough. Scruffy bone dry fairways and the greens were good not great.
But what a course! Would take that over a pristine parkland anyday!

Love Boat of Garten, cracking course with great views.
But I've never seen it in what I think of as poor condition.
Things like waterlogged fairways, shaggy fairways slow bumpy greens are what I consider poor condition.
If the course doesn't look like something out of Chelsea flower show it bothers me not a jot but things like loosing your ball on the fairway because it's shaggy and then if you find it you can't get a decent strike is even more depressing than poor design in my view.

 

[Newnsy]

Great question, and if you can't choose a bit of both I think I would go for condition over design.

My reasoning is I played Monte Rai (Apparently the best course in Portugal) all of my friends told me how great the course was and I was really looking forward to it. When I played it the condition was so bad, I don't remember any of the holes or the design I just remember how bad it was.
Comparing that to Quinta South or Victoria (played on the same trip) which were in perfect condition, I remember all the holes even though they are probably not as memorable, and I had a much more enjoyable time

 

[rksquire]

Playing with a lot of grumpy old men (and occasionally less grumpy women), the design only gets commented on when the course is in good condition. If the course is in poor condition, it gets commented on endlessly.

So, condition is more important.

 

[Patster1969]

Funnily enough, we were talking about this during the round on Saturday. It was the monthly medal and the four par 3's had been set up with little or no imagination -
- the first one was off the back with the hole at the back, playing 225
- the 2nd one was off the back with the hole at the back, playing 185
- the 3rd one was almost off the back with the hole at the back, playing 205
- the last one was almost off the back with the hole at the front, playing 165

The first three all have forward tees 50-70 yards closer and the last one has a forward tee at 20 yards and another at a slightly different angle a further 10 yards closer.
Felt a bit sorry for the senior that I was playing with, as he had to hit driver, 3 wood, driver, 5 wood respectively and was short on each one.
Surely they could set it up with one long, one short, one long, etc to make it a bit more interesting - a bit of thought would have been good imo. They could have quite easily pushed back some of the tees on the par 4's & 5's, as the course is running fast at the moment anyhow and they had set up the whites not that far from the black tees on most of these anyhow.

As many have already said, it's a combination of playability, condition & design - as long as it's interesting & not a goat track, I'm happy (although I don't like it when it's long for the sake of it - I can't hit it like Rory)

 

[KenL]

A monthly medal cannot be set up like a pro comp as the rules for the course length is quite strict to stay within the requirements of the course rating for handicaps.
Putting all the par 3 pins at the back is a little dull.
Although, apart from the length, pins middle to back are generally easier to get near than front ones.

 

[LincolnShep]

I'm often surprised by complaints about the condition of a golf course that I've just finished playing. Maybe I walk around with my eyes shut to the small things and just see the big pictures. With that in mind, I guess design is more important to me.

 

[Sats]

Honestly I'd say condition over layout, however, that margin is very slim, near microscopic. In essence you need both really.

 

[Patster1969]

A monthly medal cannot be set up like a pro comp as the rules for the course length is quite strict to stay within the requirements of the course rating for handicaps.
Putting all the par 3 pins at the back is a little dull.
Although, apart from the length, pins middle to back are generally easier to get near than front ones.

That's fair enough - I assumed that the overall length would come into it. They just had several opportunities to increase the length of some of the par 4's & 5's (especially with the run there is at the moment) to then make the par 3's a bit more interesting but maybe it's more scentific than that.
That is true though re being easier to get to - at the moment, you just need to decide to fly it all the way & hope it stops or hit it short & run it up but hope you calculate the right amount of run. I didn't manage either on Saturday

 

[evemccc]

Thread Bump…

Was thinking again about this recently esp with the ‘golf expense’ thread…Conditioning vs Strategy vs Scenery

I think Conditioning has to be right up there in terms of importance. Especially with regard to greens and their surrounds…I think Scenery is also under-appreciated

I came to this realisation when I wondered what specifically made certain Par 3s ‘good’ — it’s only their level of difficulty and scenery that denote whether a Par 3 is considered ‘good’.
Everyone should be able, physically, to reach the green in 1 on a Par 3. There’s obvs a carry, and danger…no strategic element really. There are some incredibly hard Par 3s and there are some beautifully set par 3s in good scenery

Strategy is the ‘cool’ answer - we all like to think we like strategic courses but a lot of classic course design, asking players to come in from a certain angle etc, is now negated by modern golf balls and the ability to fly it and stop it over hazards..
As far as I’m aware, courses like Ganton and Lytham which are very strategic are rare. Most courses are fairly obvious how to play them.

IMO it’s the impeccable conditioning and scenery and difficulty with run-offs, swales etc and interesting greens that make the best courses worth spending the money on

Some of the very best courses…Dornoch, Turnberry, North Berwick, and Dunbar - if they didn’t the have superb views they do, they would be undermined for sure

 

[Jason.H]

I’d take great design ,layout over condition. It can easily be improved whereas poor design would need major works to improve.