Designing Your First Course: Mistakes Made and Lessons Learned

[Jukeshoe]

I'm interested in hearing course designers share some of the mistakes that they made in their first design (or first several designs, for the slow learners out there ), the lessons learned from these mistakes, and the steps needed to avoid making the same mistakes on future designs.

How does this learning process differ (if at all) between installing a public course and private course?

To clarify, I'm looking for broad generalizations in regards to design elements, common pitfalls to avoid, et al. backed up by specific examples from people who have designed one or more courses.

I am NOT looking for the opinions of people who have not designed a course, so please keep that kind of chatter to a minimum.

Thanks in advance for sharing your time and thoughts. I figured this could be a good discussion for those interested in trying their hand at course design or those who have installed a course or two already, but are looking to "up" their knowledge.

 

[DavidSauls]

Here's from the co-designer of one private course:

We had the freedom to go slow, and not design all the holes at once. And the freedom to change things to improve them, or fix mistakes.

One of our mistakes has been to fall for something that looks cool. It looks like an awesome tee location, maybe an great basket location, or an alley of trees to shoot through. When done and played, though, it's just a bunch of 3s. Cool-looking hole, but all 3s.

We learned to design holes backwards, especially multi-throw, higher-par holes. You back up from the basket to the point that you say, "This is where I want to approach the basket from. Hence, this is where I want the preceding throw to land, if thrown well." And work on backwards, until you find a tee.

Other mistakes: Trees grow. Especially small trees. And they don't just grow taller, they grow wider. What seemed like a nice challenging gap becomes super-tight, or a constant maintenance issue.

Creeks make nice hazards, especially when shallow enough to easily cross. Then you find that on days with heavy rain, suddenly you can't get to the other wide without wading through a swollen gusher.

Watch for overhand routes. Especially if you're a thumber-hater like myself. More generally, watch for routes that you didn't anticipate, that defeat the design of the hole. These are easiest found by standing at the basket and looking back towards the tee, looking for gaps in the trees.

Look at "natural fairways" in both directions. Sometimes you fall in love with a route so much that you never notice that the same fairway, in the opposite direction, is even better. (We have a hole that we flipped several times before settling in its current, best direction).

*

Well, those are some of our mistakes and lessons learned that come to mind at the moment. Before we embarked on the design, I read a lot of stuff from John Houck, which came in very handy.

 

[DavidSauls]

One more, though easily corrected:

Our course is pretty challenging, including lots of O.B., and several places with mandatory drop zones for O.B. A couple of times we made drop zones that were too challenging, especially on windy days, so that players could blow up their round on a single hole. Not good.

*

Though I have not done both, it's obvious that one of the biggest differences between designing for a public course and a private course, is that changes are much more easily made on the private course.

 

[Jukeshoe]

Here's from the co-designer of one private course:

We had the freedom to go slow, and not design all the holes at once. And the freedom to change things to improve them, or fix mistakes.

One of our mistakes has been to fall for something that looks cool. It looks like an awesome tee location, maybe an great basket location, or an alley of trees to shoot through. When done and played, though, it's just a bunch of 3s. Cool-looking hole, but all 3s.

We learned to design holes backwards, especially multi-throw, higher-par holes. You back up from the basket to the point that you say, "This is where I want to approach the basket from. Hence, this is where I want the preceding throw to land, if thrown well." And work on backwards, until you find a tee.

Other mistakes: Trees grow. Especially small trees. And they don't just grow taller, they grow wider. What seemed like a nice challenging gap becomes super-tight, or a constant maintenance issue.

Creeks make nice hazards, especially when shallow enough to easily cross. Then you find that on days with heavy rain, suddenly you can't get to the other wide without wading through a swollen gusher.

Watch for overhand routes. Especially if you're a thumber-hater like myself. More generally, watch for routes that you didn't anticipate, that defeat the design of the hole. These are easiest found by standing at the basket and looking back towards the tee, looking for gaps in the trees.

Look at "natural fairways" in both directions. Sometimes you fall in love with a route so much that you never notice that the same fairway, in the opposite direction, is even better. (We have a hole that we flipped several times before settling in its current, best direction).

*

Well, those are some of our mistakes and lessons learned that come to mind at the moment. Before we embarked on the design, I read a lot of stuff from John Houck, which came in very handy.

Outstanding post, and exactly what I was looking for. :clap: :thmbup:

The "looking at holes backwards" is great advice, and something I hadn't really thought of too much. We're running into a bit of difficulty with tee placement on a heavily-wooded, multi-throw, 700+' hole. I will put this advice to the test tomorrow and report back in a couple of days.

I definitely have run into the whole "cool looking but otherwise bland hole" situation. Luckily it's also a private course where there's time to playtest, tweak, re-playtest, and tweak some more. A couple of tee locations have been pushed back or set at a slightly different angle in an attempt to avoid cool-looking but less-than-stellar holes.

And of course all your points on rising water levels and future tree growth/maintenance are spot on as well. :thmbup:

 

[DavidSauls]

Thanks. Another lesson is to not cut down a tree until you're sure.

Numerous times we've looked at a tree and decided, It probably needs to come out....but let's wait. In some cases, we waited a year or two. In some cases, after a while we decided the hole was better with the tree, and were glad we didn't cut it down in the original installation. We've kept two trees, trying to decide which one to cut down, and ended up keeping both.

Only a few times have we removed a tree and regretted it---because we've been cautious with the chainsaw in the first place.

 

[JeremyKShort]

The main thing that has helped us is being able to slowly develop the course. We add a few holes here and there, but mainly get the ones we have playable first. A number of them have had to be reconfigured.

The two biggest things we've run into are:

Players taking weird lines we never even thought as possibilities. And players taking these a lot. And most players that take them ending up in places we don't want them to. We're talking way out in the rough, or way OB or something like that. We had to move a couple of tees to stop some of those lines.

We also failed to take wind into account on one hole. The big power lines run across the fairway, and there is a big swash cut through the trees. The wind running down these power lines is crazy, and made the hole extremely difficult being that there was almost always wind running down it, especially with the OB's we have. We found a new place for the tee that shortened the hole, and it plays a lot better now.

We rearranged a few holes to keep people from throwing off the property, or at the very least to minimize it. Our neighbors never go to the back of their property, but they're also kinda insane, so we really don't want people hopping that fence much.

The main advice I have is develop the course slowly, and give yourself a good chance the work out the issues with your layout before you make it too permanent.

 

[JeremyKShort]

As far as maintenance, we have a few holes that need insane amount of mowing. We also have one tunnel shot that has to be trimmed most every month (at least during spring/summer). We didn't anticipate the amount of work involved on those.

 

[Shuie]

well, juke i think you should stay away from anything that Mike says!!!!

 

[Dave242]

I am not a seasoned designer, but have designed one course (early on when I first started paying attention to course design) and I have made several proposals since.

Two things I learned from "oh wow holy cow" moments are:
Do not under-estimate how far and high top throwers can throw
Do not under-estimate how poorly many players throw (discs land in places you might not imagine)

 

[_MTL_]

Don't put concerte tees and signs in until the course has had some play. Most courses are in such a rush to get the course in so a tournament can be held that they are then stuck with a bad or unsafe hole.

Let the course get some play, see how it works and flows and then make changes, if needed. If you then like the course, put your tees and signs in. Great way to get a good course and save some moeny.

 

[kenjiac]

Start with an object targets instead of cementing in baskets. This allow you to play the course for a few months and decide on basket location. We used 6' 4x4 with a 5 gallon bucket on top 2' in the ground and 4' out. Very minimal cost. This allows yo to have a fluid target location that can be easily tweaked and not worrying about your basket walking off because they are not secured.

 

[sidewinder22]

We're still honing in basket and tee positions 1.5+ years after we started looking at our private course. I don't know if the tweaking will ever stop. We had five portable baskets between us for the first 6-8 months and kept setting them up and moving them, it was a pain. I said we need to make some tone poles or something so we can actually set up a course and see how it plays. After figuring the cost and time to make the tone poles, the instep baskets were just a few bucks more, so we just went ahead and ordered 16 to add to the two db-14s we had. So we had 18 baskets that can be moved easily and used flags for tees. I videoed us playing every hole and looked at different routes and basket/tee positions. I used google maps to just draw holes in different directions and locations to see how the course can flow. There's so many cool holes we can have, but a lot of times it conflicts with course flow or plays too close other holes, so we nixed them for official or tournament play, but still play them safari when nobody is in danger. We also had stipulations that we can't cut any trees larger than 4" diameter, cut certain flora, play too close to other property, so we had to consider that as well. Know your property lines, wetlands, protected areas/flora, poison, and prevailing wind direction. Just walking around the property and looking at different lines, I've also videoed just walking around for when I'm looking at the map to see what's what.

Like David said I've reversed holes a few times, I loved the way it played in the winter, come spring the tee was unusable and underwater. I reversed the hole back, and then back again once I found an even better tee. I actually like the way it plays now better though and added a new hole and even made the course flow better. Clearing fairways of thorns and brush is much easier in the winter, although you can't really tell where poison and some other things grow in the summer. My co-designer loves to throw tomahawks and always tries to find a cheater route, so I'm always looking for ways to combat that mentality. Short holes (-350')that turn hard are hard to make cheater proof without mandos or very bad rough/thick woods, longer holes that turn aren't as bad. I thought I made some cheater proof, but then he looks at it once and throws a tomahawk right to the basket. I then self-implode like an acme rocket on the wiley e coyote, and have to go back to the drawing board. Having a decent arm BH/FH/OH helps and having played with the top players and bad player on the course helps. Also having a small tourney or two to get stats on holes before making them permanent.

 

[DavidSauls]

Do not under-estimate how poorly many players throw (discs land in places you might not imagine)

To paraphrase Harold Duvall, on the subject of course design: "Imagine the worst possible shot. Then imagine one even worse."

 

[DavidSauls]

Clearing fairways of thorns and brush is much easier in the winter, although you can't really tell where poison and some other things grow in the summer.

Good reminder that not just the work, but the design is easier in the winter. You can see 4 times as much. If you're working in woods with both tall trees and underbrush/saplings, look up; you can see the routes between the tall trees, without being obscured by all the small stuff you'll be taking out.

And another I got from Harold (I think) and then experienced on my own: if you're designing a hole to be cut through the woods, distances are deceiving. You'll fight your way through the woods on what seems like a 350' hole; you'll clear it and measure it and it's only 210'.

 

[DavidSauls]

Also from our bulging Mistakes & Lessons file:

Water flows downhill.

This may come as a surprise, especially if you spend your design time in beautiful weather. But if you place a teepad where water will run down on it, and especially if that water is collecting mud as it runs down the hill, you'll get some hilariously slick teepads. And if you put a basket near low spots that collect water in heavy rains, you'll have interesting putting situations down the road.

 

[Dave242]

Yes - get to know the land after a huge rain as well as after the spring melt (northern climates of course) before the ground dries. In a proposal I was working on I scouted the land from Aug - May before submitting a proposal......and was blown away (and disappointed) by large areas that were rendered a useless muddy mess during these time periods. Part of my proposal was that the course got pulled from March-May.

 

[Jukeshoe]

All great stuff, gentlemen! :thmbup:

Thank you for taking the time to respond.

The main lessons I've learned (so far) are as follows (and I realize some of this rehashes stuff posted above):
1. When cutting fairways through woodland, remove dead/sick trees first. Often, that will give a much clearer idea of which living trees to cut down in order to make the hole work. This ties in closely with the whole "you can cut stuff down later if you need to but it's difficult to put a tree back up after the fact" thing.
2. Holes seem lengthy when you're fighting for every inch gained in heavy woods. Taking a step back and regaining perspective on the true length of the hole helps immensely in avoiding "tweener" holes.
3. The property I'm working on at the moment has a small pond that rises and falls through the seasons. Being cognizant of the water line marks on the forest floor will help avoid nasty surprises after a rainy month or come springtime. Keep an eye out for areas surrounding water that look dry now but have a different appearance to land that is dry 100% of the time. It will give a good estimation of how high the water WILL eventually rise to.

 

[Steve West]

Overall, I'd say the biggest mistake is the designer thinking he has somehow earned some kind of "right" to create "his" design and jealously protecting "his" design against all suggestions.

I don't mean to say the designer shouldn't have the authority to reject any and all suggestions (other than those from the client – usually the landowner – who has final say), but that the designer's job is to create a design that serves others, not his own dreams.

Here are some other hallmarks of a "first" design.

Baskets too close to unforgiving trouble. Tucked into tiny pockets of cedar trees, hanging over OB, etc.

Fairways parallel to out of bounds areas, like a road or fence.

Tees too close to previous targets.

Inappropriate forced carries over water – usually about 20 feet shorter than the designer and his buddies can throw (during the dry season).

All holes the same length.

Baskets or tees set on a perfectly flat area. (Whether high or low, it's going to get worn down and become a muddy circle.)

 

[Jukeshoe]

As far as maintenance, we have a few holes that need insane amount of mowing. We also have one tunnel shot that has to be trimmed most every month (at least during spring/summer). We didn't anticipate the amount of work involved on those.

I'm curious: what kind of tree(s) comprise the tunnel shot? Is it hanging growth or new growth shooting out vertically?

If you could go back to when you designed this hole knowing what you do now regarding its upkeep, how would you change it (if at all)?

 

[Jukeshoe]

Baskets or tees set on a perfectly flat area. (Whether high or low, it's going to get worn down and become a muddy circle.)

I'm a little confused by this statement. Are you saying to avoid placing baskets on flat land if possible? Or just that it will lead to a worn circle?

What can be done to alleviate this issue (especially in areas where much of the land is flat)?