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Average Fairway Stroke Distance
How to determine the true length of a golf course.
© 2009 Jafolla
(The answer may surprise you.)
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As you know if you've read many of my reviews,
I am not a fan of all the new 7,000+ yard
golf courses and I don't like to use total
distance as a measure of the worth of a golf
course because using only length can be deceiving.
The most difficult hole on the great Boat of Garten golf course is a 470 yard par 5. That's
considered a rather short par 5 but it's
all uphill and the fairway is severely slanted.
The famous Merion East course outside of Philadelphia is another
example. When David Graham won the U.S. Open
at Merion in 1980 it measured "only"
6,400 yards. Yet Jack Nicklaus said of Merion,
"Acre for acre, it may be the best test
of golf in the world." Another example
is Gullane #1, a World Top 100 Scottish golf course which
measures 6,466 from the medal tees. So just
because a course is short doesn't mean it's an easy play or if it's long a hard play.
With some golf courses, distance is the only challenge. It can be the ultimate golf architect's
cop-out. But more than that, total distance
doesn't give you enough information. I would
rather use Average Fairway Stroke Distance
(AFSD), a formula I came up with that gives
you the real distance.
How AFSD works
Every golf course has a par but in calculating
every par on every golf course, fully 36
strokes are reserved for play on the green.
In other words, you are allowed two putts
per green. All courses calculate par the
same way: two putts per green. Obviously,
on an 18 hole course, if you deduct the allowed
number of putts (36) from the par you will
be left with the number of strokes allowed
to get to the green, i.e. from the tees and
fairways. So on a par 3 you are expected
to get on the green in 1 stroke. On a par
4 it's 2 strokes. And a par 5 allows you
3 strokes to reach the green. Okay, so far
so good.
It seems to me that to judge more fairly
the length of a course, you should take into
consideration not only the distance from
tee to green but the number of strokes needed
to negotiate that distance (in other words,
par minus putts).
This will help clear it up
Let's take the legendary Royal St.
George
golf course in Sandwich, England, home
of
the 2003 Open Championship. Before
the changes
made in preparation for the Open Championship,
it played to 6,560 with a par of 70.
Given
that 36 shots on this and every course
is
for putting,that leaves 34 shots that
you
are allowed in order to negotiate the
6,560
yards from tee to green (par 70 - 36
putts
= 34). Divide 34 into 6,560 and you
need
to average 193 yards for every stroke
on
the fairway. Now obviously there are
par
3s that don't call for this distance
but,
on average, your tee shots and fairway
need
to average 193 yards. I call this figure
the Average Fairway Stroke Distance or AFSD.
Let's apply this AFSD to Craigielaw, a newer course on Scotland's
Golf Coast (near Edinburgh) and one of my
favorites. Par is 71 and the distance off
the medal tees is 6,601 yards. Deducting
36 putts from par we are left with 35 strokes.
Divide this into 6,601 yards and the AFSD is 189.
What about the venerable Old Course at St.
Andrews? Measuring 6,566 yards from the medal
tees it plays to a par 72. If we divide 6,566
yards by 36 we get an AFSD of 182 yards. Again, that means you must
average 182 yards distance on every fairway
stroke. Note -- that's 11 yards per stroke
less than Royal St. George or about one club
less per shot.
And what about "The Monster"--Carnoustie?
At 6,692 yards off the tees normally played
and with a par of 72, this course has an
AFSD of 186 yards, only 4 yards per fairway shot
longer than Old Course at St. Andrews. The
Glen Golf Club, on Scotland's Golf Coast,
may seem short at only 6,243 yards, yet it
has a par of 70 and so has an AFSD of 184. What's so short about that? It's
actually 2 yards longer than The Old Course
at St. Andrews and only 2 yards shorter than
Carnoustie!
AFSD - a useful tool to determine the real distance of a course.
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