A superintendent reveals the fascinating strategy this top-200 course takes to cutting hole locations
David Cannon
How do courses decide where to put the hole locations on any given day? It might seem like a straightforward question with a simple answer, but it’s something most golf course superintendents invest more time in than you might realize. To learn more about this process, we caught up with Chad Blank, who recently transitioned from assistant superintendent at Hazeltine National in Chaska, Minn., to working for a turfgrass management company. Blank is an eight-year member of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America.
Chad, how would your team decide where to cut hole locations?
Blank: Frankly, it starts with enjoyment. You're not trying to make it too difficult. You want to market to your clientele, right? If it's PGA Tour golf, it's a little bit different. Generally speaking, the faster the green, the less slope you want. Within those slopes, there are pinnable areas. There are companies that come and scan your greens, but there's also a little common sense to it.
I think variety is the coolest thing. That’s what we hone in on. If we’ve got a hole location on the back left, close to a penalty area and the next hole lines up similar to that, we want to alternate that. We also want to spread out front, middle and back so it's usually about the same length of yardage over the whole course.
You’ve also got to factor in the wind. You’ve got to factor in the green speed. You got to factor in who's playing that day. I come from a public course background. My parents own and operate a facility, and when the Minnesota PGA section does the Junior PGA, they put the pins in the middle of the green just to let everyone have fun and let the pace of play proceed at a good pace.
That’s something we sometimes did for our invitationals at Hazeltine, when the players didn’t want it to be uber competitive. Even then, certainly over 18 holes, we’ll put a tester or two in there that makes players think which part of the green they need to hit it to to be safe.
It’s entirely about your clientele.
Courtesy of PGA of America, Gary Kellner
Some supers talk about having six easy pins, six of medium difficulty and six hard. What do you think about that?
Blank: In terms of difficulty, we don’t subscribe to proportion. But in terms of front, middle and back, we do. My personal philosophy is especially if you're catering to a broad market, you want two pins that might be a little more tricky and could scratch that itch for a scratch golfer. But there's a fine line.
If you're cutting pins every day, you have to have that variety of location. You want to be rotating around so that you're not in the same area for golfers if they're playing every day. On a day-to-day basis, we're looking at the wind direction, wind speed and who's playing.
To simplify things, do you have four or five pins on each hole that you rotate through?
Not quite. We view it as though there are 30 pins on a green. We don't have a set schedule that we rotate through specific locations. But we split the green into quadrants and decide which is right for that day’s play. Within all those quadrants, you can get closer to slope or to a more to a level area. We try to plan ahead because you’ve got to give it at least two-ish weeks until you can get back in that same area, assuming you’re not using the same pin. That’s a private club thing, as you don’t want a hole ring from an old hole a few inches away from the new cup.
The first thing you're asking yourself is will this cause a backlog? There are spots that are just no-go zones. As far as pace of play goes, there’s a competition we did at Hazeltine called The Blue Tee and we would put 18 of the hardest holes out there and play from two paces off the back of the back tee box, so it’s 7,800 yards. Length alone dictates a faster round or a slower round, but if you're lining up your putts when you're constantly being challenged a lot by the hole locations, you're going to play slow.
Stephen Szurlej
Courtesy of PGA of America, Gary Kellner
Stephen Szurlej
Courtesy of Gary Kellner
Courtesy of PGA of America, Gary Kellner
Courtesy of PGA of America, Gary Kellner