A good golf course is like good music or good anything else; it is not necessarily a course which appeals the first time one plays over it, but one which grows on the player the more frequently he visits it.
St. Andrews is a standing example of the possibility of making a course which is pleasurable to all classes of golfers, not only to the thirty handicap players, but to the plus fourteen man, if there ever was or will be such a person.
It is an interesting fact that few hazards are of any interest which are out of what is known among medical men as the direct field of vision. This does not extend much farther than ten to twenty yards on either side of the direct line to the hole. Hazards placed outside this limit are usually of little interest, but simply act as a source of irritation.
Hazards should be placed with an object, and none should be made which has not some influence on the line of play to the hole.
On many courses there are far too many bunkers: the sides of the fairways are riddled with them, and many of these courses would be equally interesting if half of the bunkers were turfed over as grassy hollows.
It is often possible to make a hole sufficiently interesting with one or two bunkers at the most. For example:
It is obvious from the diagram that the green-guarding bunker B has a considerable influence on the line of play to the hole.
The longer the carry a player achieves over the stream the easier his second shot becomes.
If it were not for this bunker not only the approach but the tee shot would be uninteresting, as there would be no object in essaying the long carry over the stream.
[Illustration: DIAGRAM OF HOLE OF 370 YARDS, ILLUSTRATING THE VALUE OF ONE BUNKER, B. Any additional bunker for the tee shot or across the approach to the green would materially lessen the interest of the hole. The moral is “Few bunkers placed in interesting positions!”]
Many poor golf courses are made in a futile attempt to eliminate the element of luck. You can no more eliminate luck in golf than in cricket, and in neither case is it possible to punish every bad shot. If you succeeded you would only make both games uninteresting.
There are many points of resemblance between cricket and golf: the fielders in cricket correspond to the hazards at golf. The fielders are placed in the positions where the majority of shots go, and it should obviously be easier with a stationary ball to avoid the hazards than to avoid the fielders at cricket.