Course difficulty and strategy

So far I've been painting fairly broad strokes in regard to the resort/complex, but now it's time to get down to some details.

I wanted the course to be, first and foremost, fun to play.
Now to some people, fun is shooting -18 or some such score but I would call them gameplayers rather than people looking for a golf simulation. A fun course needs to be challenging for the most part so there is a sense of achievement if you can shoot under par.
I play pro click most of the time, dabbling with champ click and other swing types now and again. Now I'm not a great Links player by any stretch of the imagination, in fact I'm probably about average when it comes to standard of play. If I play well on a normal course I can shoot down to about -5 or -6 but at other times just breaking par is a struggle.
I wanted to build a course that from the very back tees and playing to the 'difficult' pin positions, would play 4 to 5 shots harder than that. I've never believed that easy courses are much fun to play, the brain goes to sleep and there's little to keep the player interested. On the other hand I didn't want the course to be so difficult that it felt like a constant battle to keep the score 'respectable'. This is a tightrope that designers have to walk both in real design and in Links.

For those of you who are familiar with some of my previous designs, you may have found out (to the detriment of your average score stat), that from time to time I may have overstepped the mark in trying to make my courses challenging. I've heard stories that some people are still wandering around Burn's Old Links in a daze trying to find their way off! Well I didn't want my newest creation to be so hard that it could be considered 'unfair' so there would have to be lots of playtesting and tweaking until the course played as intended.

You can make a course testing and interesting in a few different ways. You can make it 'penal' which basically means that the hazards are laid out before you and you simply have to thread the ball between and over them. Alternatively you can go for a more strategic approach where you pretty much always have a safe option off the tee to get the ball in play but you will find that by skirting close to a hazard or other obstacle you will find your approach shot a much more pleasant proposition. I prefer strategic design rather than penal but there can be a place for both.

The vast majority of players in Links play with their club distanced maxed out. This means that almost every player has the ability to crush the ball 275-285 through the air with their driver and flight iron shots so high that they cause problems for low flying aircraft! Unfortunately this has the effect that on a shorter course, no amount of strategy will make much difference as players can stop the ball so quickly with their iron approach shots, that from the tee, hitting almost anywhere on the fairway will do.

So as a designer, how can I combat this 'problem' without falling into the abyss of trickery that quickly becomes a 'pure fantasy' creation, a course that could never be built on God's green earth? Well, if we're subtle about it, we can ramp up the difficulty and strategy without being unreasonable. Most greens on real courses are generally higher at the rear than at the front, this helps to make the green more visible and makes it easier for the average golfer to stop the ball more quickly. This is the first 'rule' we can throw out when designing a course for Links.
Having a green that slopes away from the line of approach even by just a small amount, makes it much more difficult for a player to just fly the ball over obstacles and stop it quickly next to the flag.
Now the player is going to have to look for another method to get the ball close. He may have to search for a better angle from the tee so he no longer has to fly over a guarding hazard, he may pay more attention to the areas on the fairway that may give him a level or uphill lie so he can flight his iron shot a little bit higher. He may have to look at curving his approach shot by either fading or drawing the ball into a flag that has been 'tucked' away.
So you see, straight away we have much more strategic play without having to resort to outlandish and unrealistic schemes.

At this point I want to talk briefly about the Links 1.7 patch, if you don't have it yet, go and get it - you won't be able to play my course at all without it. You can find it at Apcd-Courses.com and LinksCorner.org Look for the forum sections about the Links patch 1.07 or Links mod etc.

With the introduction of this patch, you now have the option to choose custom tees and so you can manually setup a selection of longer and shorter tees for your round. As a designer, this enables the very back tees to be extended slightly without spoiling the overall course. On many well know tournament venues, the course length from the very, very back tees is of titanic proportions. They rarely play every hole from the longest tees though. Augusta National G.C. springs to mind, the home of the Masters tournament.

In the next blog I'll talk more of how we can bring strategy to the fore in apcd designs.