No par? No tee boxes? Up to 19 holes? The short course that is a model for the future of golf

BOWLING GREEN, Fla. – If golf has a superpower, it’s the ability to fill the cracks in your mind and soothe your fears. Jitters at the first tee. Contemplating a putt. New players are anxiously trying to figure out where to stand, where to go, what to do. Experienced players became irritated by every mistake and saw the score they hoped to score slip away. All the worrying about playing too slow or waiting too long.

Then there’s the scoring. A random number, determined by someone you’ve never met. You thought you played that hole well, but this card says you took a bogey. The word was born from a Scottish term for devil. So now your terrible game is an incarnation of a fallen angel, expelled from heaven, who abuses free will with his evil. Beelzebul continues playing.

But now imagine being given a scorecard with no criterion. Some tees at 50 and 56 yards. Others at 101 and 111. And 164. And 218. And even up to 293. One hole that can be played from 89 or 187. And on this card a glaring omission. No par. Just play. Play a match against a friend. Grab a few clubs, a few drinks and go. The winner of each hole decides where to tee off on the next hole. You can play a six-hole loop that goes around a beautiful oak forest. Or play a 13-hole loop. Or play all 19. Who cares?

“You know,” Ben Crenshaw, the legendary golfer turned course architect, said recently, “this game could be played differently.”

Why don’t we do that more often?

A new course opening in central Florida is once again making the question hard to ignore. The Chain, a “short course” created by Crenshaw and longtime design partner Bill Coore, opens this month at Streamsong Golf Resort. Guests can currently play a total of 13 holes as a taster. The hope is to open the full 19 of the track on December 1, as long as the country allows.

Streamsong is already known for its eclectic three traditional 18-hole courses, built by the current holy triumvirate of design firms: the Red (also a Coore/Crenshaw), the Blue (Tom Doak) and the Black (Gil Hanse/Jim Wagner). . The property, a converted phosphate mine, was considered high risk when construction of the first two courses began in 2012. Bowling Green, Florida, is located one hour southeast of Tampa and almost two hours southwest of Orlando. Even though that sounds far off, it’s still an undersell. In a state with more than 1,200 golf courses, who would go all the way here to play golf? The project progressed, however, because the goal was bigger than building a golf resort: it was the commercial development of reclaimed land that had little other use. It worked because Streamsong’s three courses are so good and so different that it carved out a place among the next generation of golf resorts like Bandon Dunes in Oregon, The Prairie Club in the Sand Hills of Nebraska and Cabot Links in Nova Scotia.

Like The Cradle at Pinehurst and others, each of these resorts features a funky short course. This also applies to Streamsong. This feature has become a prerequisite for resort life. For guests, playing (especially walking) 36 holes over several consecutive days is easier said than done. It’s much more fun to play 18 and then hit a loop on the short course. For the resorts, a short course is a draw, an additional amenity to the portfolio, taking up little land and, most importantly, encouraging extra nights of stay and play.

The Chain is a portrait of why this works. Guests at Streamsong walk from the hotel across a walkway, stop at a new 2-acre putting course (The Bucket), grab a tote bag to lug a few clubs and play a 3,000-yard course of holes available – here is key – good enough to match the quality of the property’s three core courses. Like any good short track, the character comes from the green complexes. Some wild and huge. Others are small-scale and delicate. There is a certain personality in greenery, born from architectural freedom.

“You can take more liberties, or risks, so to speak, by doing greens and surrounds that you might not be able to do on a regular course, where you’re trying to adapt to people of such different levels or strengths. as a skill. ” said Coore.

Highlights include a bunker in the middle of the 6th green, reminiscent of Riviera’s famous sixth, and the long 11th, a hole that can stretch almost 200 yards over a lake and opens into a giant punchbowl green .

Ben Crenshaw, left, and Bill Coore walk the grounds of The Chain and the adjacent putting course, The Bucket, during a visit to Streamsong. (Courtesy of Tacy Briggs/Troncoso)

But the real highlight is what The Chain, like so many of these quirky short courses, gives the players. It is different. In a sport so heavy on the individual pursuit, you and a few friends instead run together, talk together, drink together. In a sport so obsessed with numbers, there isn’t really any scoring. With a sport that is so time-consuming, you can be done within an hour. In a sport so dictated by strength and height, the skill gaps are closed.

In many ways it is a much more fun version of golf.

So why isn’t this version more widely available? Why aren’t publicly accessible copies of these courses appearing in metropolitan areas? Why can’t golf change?

There’s a chance we’ll get there.

“I think it’s only a matter of time now,” says Andy Johnson, golf architecture writer and founder of The Fried Egg. “Resorts are innovators in golf because they have the most incentive to create. Municipalities and public facilities have more restrictions and rules, which means there is less willingness to adapt. But we often see a lot of golf course trends that originate in the private space and the resort space ultimately translate into the public space. Public golf, and community golf in particular, is a very docile industry. So I think the short course boom will also come to public golf.”

Short courses make incredible sense in urban areas stuck with hyper-exclusive courses and limited public options. They just have to be built there. Chicago, Washington DC, Boston, Philadelphia: cities that require an hour’s drive to the track, a five-and-a-half hour lap on a busy track and an hour’s drive home. You can imagine that such players are thirsty for such an option. The most densely populated areas have the most potential golfers. There’s a reason why Callaway paid $2.66 billion for Top Golf in 2021: large numbers of people go because hitting golf balls is fun. However, anyone looking to make the transition from Driving Range-style Top Golf to learning the game on the course must tackle the thrill of playing with 14 clubs on a busy, intimidating 18-hole course, taking all the worries must be overcome. and shame at golf’s excessive rules and customs. Imagine if new players could instead relax and understand how golf courses can be experienced.

Based on Johnson’s explanation of the top-down composition of golf course architecture, perhaps we’ll see the success of courses like The Chain finally prompt local municipalities and private developers to renovate pre-existing, nondescript public courses into alternative short courses.

This in turn could create a whole new entry point into the game. Yes, par-3 courses already exist, but these short, resort-style courses designed by top architects are nothing like what the average novice has seen – short doesn’t have to mean easy. It’s a completely different experience. One that children and newcomers will probably want to visit much more often.

“You’re showing the most fun version of golf,” Johnson said. “Bold design features. Cool vegetables. People see the ball rolling and moving.”

This is not unbelievable. Short Resources for Designers require only small plots of real estate and can be built anywhere: flat land, rolling land, rougher land. All you need is a spot for a tee and a spot for a green.

Golfers on The Chain’s 11th hole can play a shot over water to a punchbowl green, with Streamsong’s hotel in the shade. (Courtesy of Matt Hahn)

Some early examples are worth keeping an eye on. The Loop at Chaska, just outside Minneapolis and designed by Artisan Golf Design’s lead architect Benjamin Warren, will open in 2024 as a 1,200-yard, nine-holer with eight par 3s, one par-4 and is the first in its kind of expressly configured for adaptive golfers. The Park in West Palm Beach, Florida is a Hanse/Wagner designed course that is a public-private partnership between the City of West Palm Beach and the West Palm Golf Park Trust, which has revived a closed municipal course. In addition to an 18-hole course, there is a nine-hole par-3, floodlit for evening play.

There are others.

There should be more.

But golf, as it often does, moves slowly. The best chance for change is for the math to eventually add up and create an inevitable shift. If renovating an entire public course can range from $5 to $15 million, renovating or building a high-quality par-3 course can likely be done for less than a few million dollars. What makes more sense for that community?

“It’s a more palatable expense for a parks department or a municipality, and they would be creating something that will bring in revenue,” Johnson said. “These things make a lot of sense. There just needs to be more momentum and more examples of it.”

Then perhaps we will see what so many are hoping for.

A different way of playing.

(Illustration: Sean Reilly / The Athletics; Photos: Courtesy of Streamsong Resort, Matt Hahn)