The most regrettable day of my life in golf was the
one I was first forced to use a cart. Until my inaugural trip to America in the mid-1960s, I had never
even seen a golf cart. Now I was a guest at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, and my guide around the famed South
Course was Firestone’s genial PR chief, Scotty Brubaker. The cart’s beverage
cooler was loaded and I was hooked (against my better instincts).
What I quickly came to realize was how easily “cart
golf” can ruin a round. Cart paths are sometimes built too close to fairways and
greens (particularly if the architect was working on a limited budget), leading
to bad bounces and marring the course’s aesthetic value. Conversely, paths can
be set so far from the action that a golfer will wear himself out trudging from
cart to ball and back when that dreaded edict, “carts on path only,” has been
issued.
I can understand the paths-only rule if wet
fairways decree it the only sensible way to preserve the golf course. But from
an architectural standpoint, cart-paths-only prevents players from fully seeing
the course as the designer intended. A walking golfer—or even one allowed to
ride in the fairway—can see a hole unfold before him and plot his next move as
he goes from shot to shot. And a golfer on foot has the added advantage of
sensing the contours of the terrain—a subtle but important consideration that
could well affect how he elects to play the next shot.
Perhaps the cart’s most unfortunate effect on good
course design has been in the area of routing. So great are the distances
between greens and tees on courses today, there’s rarely any flow or continuity.
The golfer is unable to develop a sense of rhythm—of how the holes fit together,
and of how to manage his game.
It seems many of these path-oriented designs are
plotted for the purpose of driving revenue—both from carts on a smaller scale
and real estate sales on a larger one—rather than for the golfer’s enjoyment and
exercise. Confined to a cart, I don’t log nearly as much foot travel as I did in
my younger days. These four-wheeled contraptions have made me golf’s equivalent
of a couch potato!
To me, the greatest courses are the ones without
any cart paths at all. Those are found mostly in the British Isles, and not coincidentally, they’re among the
best examples of great architecture. St.
Andrews, Carnoustie, Turnberry, Sunningdale—the list could go on and
on. One of my favorite courses in the world, Bermuda’s Mid Ocean Club, has only very narrow cart paths
and is eminently more enjoyable when played on foot, allowing the golfer to
fully savor the classic C.B. Macdonald
design.
Last year I participated in the Nationwide Tour’s
BMW Charity Pro-Am at The Cliffs Communities in upstate South Carolina and western North Carolina. (I designed one of the courses
and regularly play most of them.) With Brandt Snedeker as my partner, we led the
tournament’s pro/celebrity division after our first round, played on The Cliffs’
easily walkable Valley Course. Then came the second round at Walnut Cove, a
lovely Jack Nicklaus design, but full of those confounded cart paths set far
from the field of play. And wouldn’t you know it—cart-paths-only was in effect
that day. We quickly disappeared from the leaderboard as I let down my poor
partner and finished nearly on my knees, beaten, battered and exhausted!
Recently I received notice
that my home course would require golfers to stay on paths throughout the coming
winter. Very well, I’ve decided—they won’t see me during those months. I’ll be a
real couch potato, resting my weary bones, and my psyche, for my next round of
cart golf.
