Tag: golfing Page 1 of 2

People are drawn to golf because of the challenging rules and stunning courses that add surprise and delight to this traditional sport. Geographic factors like the natural landscape and weather patterns also come into play.

Because golf provides such unique venues, the golfing experience can vary drastically. Thus, after designing 400 golf courses over his career, Donald Ross represents one of the chief architects of the American golfing experience.

Although Donald Ross passed away in 1948, he remains an architect of more than just golf’s many venues. He is the creator of countless memorable golfing moments for professionals, spectators, and the casual player.

Image result for old course st andrews

Scottish-Born Ross Follows His Destiny to America

Born in 1872 in Dornoch, Scotland, Don Ross was drawn to the game of golf from a young age. Eventually, he put his enthusiasm to work, undertaking an apprenticeship at St. Andrews Links under Old Tom Morris—a revered Scottish golf enthusiast. Ross absorbed a significant breadth of knowledge and inspiration from Morris, at least until he felt compelled to make his own mark on the game.

In 1899, Don Ross followed the waves of Europeans migrating to the U.S. He managed to secure a job at the Oakley Country Club in Massachusetts, in part due to the help of Harvard professor Robert Willson.

While this was the first stepping-stone in manifesting Don Ross’s blueprint for golf, it wasn’t until Ross earned the position of head professional at Pinehurst Resort that he got his big break and began designing golf courses for the first time.

Ross also managed a moderately fruitful golfing career. While his name is enshrined in the annals of golf for his work as an architect, he won a handful of tournaments and had top-10 finishes in two majors. He was no golf hobbyist.

Ross Starts Designing Courses

After working at Pinehurst Resort and designing four preliminary courses, Ross began focusing full-time on golf course design. When Ross launched summer offices in Rhode Island, Donald J. Ross and Associates was born.

Donald J. Ross and Associates designed and landscaped American golf courses until 1948, employing thousands of workers at the height of Ross’s design prowess. While Ross retained his standing in professional golf, his fame began to grow in relation to his architectural exploits.

Ross remains most well-known for designing some of golf’s preeminent venues: Pinehurst No. 2, Oakland Hills, Seminole Golf Club, Inverness Club, Hope Valley Country Club, and Oak Hill, to name a few. Several of these courses have such steep natural hills and sprawling fairways that utilizing a golf cart becomes a necessity.

Architectural Style

Ross subscribed to one cornerstone philosophy when approaching design. The function of a championship course was to test a golfer on all parts of his game and every type of shot.

While many architects tailored their designs to reward specific parts of the game—such as long holes with wider fairways, or short holes that require precision—Ross’s philosophy ultimately attempted to cultivate the complete, all-around golfer.

A renaissance man of golf himself, Ross hoped to foster a similar mentality of holistic dedication for those who played his courses. According to the legendary Golden Bear, Jack Nicklaus, “His stamp as an architect was naturalness.”

Ross is known for retaining the natural contours of the land, creating challenging holes while excavating little terrain. He drew inspiration from nature itself, rather than past architects, attempting to mold nature without making it blatantly artificial. The golf course was meant to be a thing of beauty, a game played while surveying the grandeur of the land.

Pinehurst No. 2

Ross routinely employed trademark features in his courses, including severe run-up shots with trouble at the back of the green. He also incorporated infamous “turtleback” or crowned greens—the notorious design utilized by Pinehurst No. 2.

The turtleback greens are highest in the center and fall away on the sides. It was on Pinehurst No. 2 that Ross revolutionized early greenkeeping practices, transitioning the greens from oiled sand to Bermuda grass in the 1930s.

Pinehurst No. 2 would go on to host more golf championships than any American venue, and the turtleback greens definitely added to the challenge of the course.

Death and Honorary Recognition

Ross eventually became a founding member of the American Society of Golf Course Architects, a society first established at the Pinehurst Resort in 1947. While Ross was the first president of this golf institution, he passed away only a year later, and golf lost one of its greatest visionaries.

In 1977, the global golfing community recognized Ross’s significant contributions to the game, admitting him to the World Golf Hall of Fame. This honor was rarely bestowed on anyone who is not a player, making this level of recognition a singular distinction.

tga pic 2 Over the years, many of the courses Ross created underwent renovations to help restore Ross’ original designs. This is a delicate process, however, one in which renovators often take the liberty of implementing subtle changes. For skilled Ross renovators, evaluating original photographs and blueprints represent merely the starting point. These individuals must begin to think like Ross to reimagine his courses. Anything short of complete attention to detail jeopardizes Ross’ many lasting works.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, Ross created the foundational backbone of golf’s many landmark courses. By designing hundreds of courses throughout his career, Ross facilitated unique playing experiences for millions.

Without the influence of this Scottish architect, who first migrated to the U.S. with only a minor apprenticeship under his belt, golf would not be what it is today. Moreover, the golfing community continues to celebrate Ross’s achievement with each round it plays at his courses.

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How Do You Use a Chipper?

By Sully

On January 25, 2018

In Golf Tips

The putter chipper or simply “the chipper” has enjoyed a long history with the game of golf but during the most recent era, its popularity has declined significantly. Regardless of this lack of popularity, the chipper is still very effective at doing its job around the green. But what exactly is that job and how do you even use a chipper? We’ll talk about all this in today’s segment of 6 Minutes With Sully.

What is a Chipper?

Before we can explain what a chipper does, we first have to figure out exactly what it is and how that design can make it useful. The chipper is a putter-like club that is usually between 32-37 degrees of loft, which is very similar to a 7 iron. While a chipper and a 6-7 iron might have a similar degree of loft, the weight and center of mass are much different in a chipper. This difference in weight distribution, along with the shallower swing plane used during the swing, allow the chipper to chop through greenside rough without getting caught the way a wedge might.

Using a Chipper

Proximity to the green and a lack of obstacles in front of the hole make this an ideal spot to use a chipper.

Now that we have a better idea of what a chipper is, we can look at how to use a chipper to score around the green. A shot using a chipper is very similar to another greenside shot, the hybrid chip, and produces a ball flight that is also similar (although slightly higher). While both of these chips produce similar ball flights, they are both based on the simple bump and run chip that most golfers are familiar with. The chipper is perfectly designed to perform this shot and excels at chipping the ball over short patches of rough or fringe around the green. You can see one example of this to the right.

While choosing when to use a chipper is slightly arbitrary, actually hitting the shot is the easiest part of the entire process. Unlike a flop shot or other types of chips, there is almost no difference between hitting a shot with a chipper and hitting a putt. To hit your chip simply address the ball how you would normally and strike the ball slightly softer than you would if you were putting from that distance. The difference in force that you put on the shot should cancel out the fact that the ball will face less resistance as it flies through the air than it would on the ground during a putt.

Other than this one small change, everything about hitting a putt and using a chipper is exactly the same, and that’s one of the reasons I think people like using a chipper; if you’re a good putter, there’s a great chance you’ll be a good chipper too.

So that’s all there is to it, one small adjustment and a whole lot less to worry about when you’re trying to score around the green. If you want to learn a little more about using a chipper check out the video below, otherwise, I wish you the best of luck as you start practicing with your new chipper!

Aerated Greens: Why Courses Do It and How to Survive Playing on Them

By Sully

On November 28, 2017

In Golf Science, Golf Tips

As the weather starts to get colder and golfing season in the north starts to wind down, golfers have to fight against even more obstacles than normal (as if the game wasn’t hard enough) during their rounds. While the wind, rain, and rough turf might seem like more than enough to worry about, playing on aerated greens is an almost sure-fire way to cost you a few strokes during your round. So why do courses do this to us, and what can we do to try and manage our scores on an aerated green?

Why Do Golf Courses Aerate Their Greens?

A normal green compared to a vented one.

Golf courses take a lot of wear and tear over the season, and the turf is no exception. In order to ensure that the grass is healthy and consistent, most courses opt into some form of aeration both during the playing season and towards the end of the year.

During the playing season, courses usually choose to do venting aeration which is basically placing a bunch of small needles into the ground in order to break up the turf. This process is done throughout the year and is usually does not affect ball roll or playing conditions at all after a couple days.

But what do you mean we don’t notice? What are all of these holes on the green?

Core aeration compared to a normal green.

Well, along with venting aeration, many courses may choose an aeration strategy that is much more aggressive once play dies down for the year. This is known as core aeration.

When you mention aerated greens, core aeration is what comes to the mind of most golfers because it almost always results in the horrible, potholed, greens we have grown to dread towards the end of the season. During core aeration, holes of almost half an inch are removed from the ground and then replaced with sand. This removal of dirt cores causes the unsightly marks on the greens that many northern golfers are accustomed to late in the season.

Obviously, all of these small holes change the roll of the greens and the appeal of the golf course, so why do golf courses do this? The answer really is simple; it’s because they have to.

Golf courses aerate their greens for four major reasons, all of which affect turf health. Aeration is usually performed in order to remove organic matter, decompress the soil, improve the drainage of the soil, and help promote root growth. Without aeration, organic matter (i.e. bacteria and other plants) build up on the surface of the turf. This increase in the concentration of plant matter can prevent water from draining into the soil and can reduce the amount of oxygen that reaches the roots, which ultimately limits growth. Aerating the soil can also relieve soil compression which not only helps grass grow better but ensures that the courses greens are firm and play fair, something that any golfer can appreciate.

How to Play on Aerated Greens

So great, we know that aeration is important, but how can we keep it from ruining our scores on the green? Aerated greens provide a unique challenge for golfers because they contrast the typically smooth and predictable motion of the ball. For example, if you dropped a ball straight down on a normal green you wouldn’t expect the ball to roll very far from where it landed. However, on an aerated green, if your ball lands on the side of a dirt core that has been removed it can travel in a completely different direction from the predicted ball flight.

So how do we make the best of aerated greens? The single most important piece of advice I can give you is to keep the ball low. As we mentioned above, having the ball land on the side of a removed core basically leaves the result of the shot to chance depending on the angle of impact the ball has with the hole. By keeping your ball flight low you have a higher chance of rolling the ball over each hole which will help keep your ball on a more predictable path towards the hole.

Besides keeping the ball low, hitting the ball slightly harder on chips and putts will help make up for the speed that is lost when the ball hits each bump. When I play personally, I usually plan on the ball rolling about 25% less than it would on a non-aerated green so you might have to add a little power to your putts and chips. This really depends on the number of holes on each green as well as their depth but that is something that is somewhat unique to each golf course.

While I’m sure all of us could agree that we would rather play on pristine greens all year, accomplishing this is no easy feat for the grounds crew of your favorite golf course. It can be frustrating to have your round derailed by a bad bounce on the green but hopefully, some of the tips we’ve talked about above will help keep your round and your sanity in check during these early winter rounds. So have some fun on the links before the snow starts to fly and have a great holiday season this year.

Why Do Shots Curve?

By Sully

On July 11, 2017

In Golf Science

We’ve all hit a draw or a slice before in our lives, right? But if I had to guess, you were probably more worried about the result of your shot than taking a second to think about why your ball did what it did during its flight. However, this question of why is exactly the little piece of golfing science that I want to cover today.

So why do my shots curve in the air? Well, the simple answer is, spin.

Unfortunately, that’s sort of where the simplicity of it stops…

What comes after this is a whole slew of physics that explain when, why, and how much the ball curves but, for the sake of this brief article, I’ll do my best to condense it. Basically, the curvature of your shot is due to a physical principle that’s also used in commercial airplanes and baseball called, the Magnus Effect.

Let’s start with an example, the slice. As we mentioned in our article How to Cure Your Slice, fading the ball is a result of a misalignment between your swing path and the club head. This misalignment actually causes the root of our problem by producing side spin on the ball.

This is where the physics comes in. Using exactly the same fundamental principle as a pitcher in baseball does with a curve ball, the spin your club imparts on your ball actually creates a small

Pitchers use the Magnus Effect every game in order to strike out batters with quick diving curveballs.

discrepancy in the air pressure next to the ball. As you might be able to see by looking at the picture to the right, due to the spin on a curveball, the air pressure below the ball in lower than the pressure above the ball. This, in turn, causes the ball to dip and gives baseball pitchers their famous curve ball.

For our slice (assuming you’re right handed), as the ball spins clockwise off the club face a pocket of low pressure is established to the right of the ball which leads to a left to right ball trajectory.

Our troubles don’t stop with slices. The Magnus Effect works on both sides of the ball so it turns out there’s no escaping your hook either.

Not all slices are created equal, however. As you might have guessed, the amount of side spin that your swing imparts on the ball will also affect how far the ball will curve. The more side spin you put on your shot, the greater the change in pressure, the faster and (ultimately further) your ball will curve to the side. Simple as that!

So the next time you’re out on the links and you slash a ball off into the trees you can thank Gustav Magnus and his Magnus Effect for ultimately show us why nobody we know can keep our tee shots in the short grass. Thanks for joining us in class today and we’ll see you all next time!

How To Cure Your Slice

By Sully

On July 10, 2017

In Golf Tips

The slice, a bane of many golfers existence when it comes to hitting the ball off the tee. You lose your distance, you lose your accuracy, and ultimately, you waste strokes every time you smack your tee shot off into the trees.

I got to personally see the damage a slice can do to someone’s game when I would step out onto the course with my father. Not to throw him under the bus, but his game off the tee used to be less than stellar, and it was mostly due to his “power fade” as he likes to call it; for the rest of us though, we’ll just call it his slice. Now he’s not the only one to fall victim to this pit fall off the tee but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a problem that shouldn’t be fixed. That’s something that we’re going to talk about a little today.

So why do we slice the ball and what can you do to fix this without having to hire a professional golf coach?

Well, let’s first look at the why…

Now while there are a number or reasons a golfer might hit a slice, most of these reasons boil down to three basic things:

Your stance
Your club face alignment
And your swing plane

Let’s talk about your stance and alignment first…

The solid yellow line above shows a stereotypical stance for a “slicer”. This open stance accompanied with a square club face alignment is always going to result in a fade or slice.

When it comes to your stance, setting up square to your target or even slightly closed builds the foundation for good ball contact and straighter ball trajectory.

A great, quick test to see if you’re aligned properly is as follows; setup as you normally would and then lay a club across your two feet (or along the solid yellow line in the picture). If the club handle is pointed towards your target then your stance is square, if not adjust your feet accordingly. Easy as that!

Now that our stance is settled let’s talk about the alignment of our club face. Similarly to wanting a square stance to start off with, we also want our club face to be square with the target. Luckily for us though, most us do this naturally simply by having the leading edge of the club perpendicular to the flight we want the ball to travel. While this might seem like a no-brainier, many golfers that suffer from inaccurate tee shots try to compensate for their hooks or slices by changing how the club face interacts with the ball, something we don’t want to do!

Finally, the last part of our slicing checklist is fixing the path our club takes during our swing, or, simply called our swing plane. Unlike the first two bullet points however, this part of the slice isn’t quite as easy to fix, mainly because you don’t actually get a great chance to analyse your swing plane before your shot (and during your shot you likely have other things on your mind). Now although you might not be able to analyse your swing before you make it, we can break down the basic idea we want to capture like this; whatever plane you follow during your backswing, you need to follow on your foreswing.

This graphic highlights one of the most common mistakes in golf. On the right, the golfer attacks the ball on a different swing plane than his backswing. By coming “over-the-top” he is only encouraging his slice.

What goes up must go down, what goes right must go left, and what is taken away at a 59.6 degree angle must be returned to contact at that same angle if you want to make solid, consistent contact on your drives. Now, while there isn’t a perfect angle your swing should follow (for example I have a slightly flatter swing) the important thing is that you’re consistent with whatever swing plane you do choose to take. The most common mistake slicers make is what’s called “coming over the top” which essentially is a swing plane problem where your foreswing follows a steeper angle than your backswing. This results in an outside-to-inside swing path as the club strikes the ball, and ultimately, leads to a slice.

To correct this there really isn’t any magic trick you can try, you simply have to practice hitting your drives a little bit. One important thing you can do however, and this is what ultimately helped my father fix his slice, is have a friend videotape your swing a few times. Nothing convinces someone more that their swing plane isn’t consistent than watching a video of themselves swooping over-the-top swipe at their last couple shots on the range.

So there you have it, the three main reasons you can’t shake your slice: your stance, alignment, and swing plane. Now, of course, there could be other reasons also, but this brief guide somewhat assumes you’re doing all of the other small things right in your golf swing (something like rotating as your weight comes through instead of sliding your hips), which may or may not be the case with all of us…

So while I wouldn’t call this the complete guide to curing a slice, I would wager that 80%-90% of all the slices out there fall into one of these three categories and, if you do manage to fly through our short checklist without any problems, you should feel confident that fixing your slice is already closer to happening than you might have thought! So grab a buddy, hit the range, and let’s straighten out some slices!

Golf tips, instruction, and commentary for any golfer looking to improve.

Tag: golfing Page 1 of 2

The Art of Don Ross – Discovering the Architect Behind Legendary Golf Courses

How Do You Use a Chipper?

What is a Chipper?

Using a Chipper

Aerated Greens: Why Courses Do It and How to Survive Playing on Them

Why Do Golf Courses Aerate Their Greens?

How to Play on Aerated Greens

Why Do Shots Curve?

How To Cure Your Slice