A rendering of how “twin” par-3s may look.
Richardson Danner Golf Course Architects
Reversible courses. Twenty-one hole loops. Butterfly-shaped layouts with connected six-hole quadrants.
Look around. We’re residing in a Golden Age of unconventional golf design.
For the newest in out-of-the-box thinking, we level you to the outskirts of Allentown, Pa., where plans have been floated for an 18-hole course composed of two nines running alongside one another, a configuration that may give golfers a selection between two holes each time they took the tee all through the round.
The proposal, put forth by the design trio of Forrest Richardson, Jeff Danner and Mark Fine, is for a redo of Southmoore Golf Course, an 18-holer whose owner needs to redevelop a portion of his property in a move that would shrink the footprint of the course. Tasked with reimagining a new routing on a smaller plot, the three architects dreamed up a blueprint for a pair of sibling nines, set facet by side.
“We knew it would have to be fun and family-friendly, so we began with that premise,” Richardson says. “And as we began tossing round possibilities, we realized we had an opportunity to do something actually completely different.”
A brainchild in the truest sense, the concept, Richardson says, continues to be in its infancy. If and when it strikes ahead, elements will must be fine-tuned.
But the routing here gets at the gist:
How the design might look.
Richardson Danner Golf Course Architects
Each gap on the course would have a twin. Not an equivalent twin; the bunkering, contouring and other traits could be totally different on every. But the sibling holes would be related in size and orientation. They’d also have related time pars, meaning they’d be anticipated to be performed at an identical tempo.
Novelty apart, why would any of that matter?
For one factor, Richardson says, the side-by-side routings would enable for great selection. You may play lots of of rounds without repeating the same sequence of holes.
What’s extra, on busy days, the course may ship groups off each nines concurrently, with the group that finishes their opening gap first getting to determine on which of two holes they need to play next, and so on throughout the round.
The goal, Richardson says, is not to flip a round of golf into a race. But there can be a aggressive undercurrent that might encourage brisker tempo of play.
Not for nothing, the three architects have named their idea “Duel on the Hill,” a dash of phrase play that Richardson says is supposed to counsel “dual,” as in two, but also, nicely, “duel,” as in, first to putt out on the earlier green gets first dibs on the following tee.
The “left” and “right” nines.
Richardson Danner Golf Course Architects
Design concepts are one thing. Real programs are another. At this early stage, Richardson says that he and his colleagues haven’t but given exhaustive thought to course operations. He concedes that there could be problems that they haven’t thought of. Some sticky hypotheticals are not difficult to picture now. What happens, as an example, if two groups starting out on totally different nines finish their respective holes on the similar time? Which group would get to pick the next hole?
They may flip a coin. They might toss a tee. They may additionally get right into a brawl.
You would hope they wouldn’t. But golfers are people, and with people, you never know.
But we’re getting forward of ourselves. For now, the concept remains to be simply that. A lot nonetheless must occur for it to spring to life (among other things, Southmoore needs to get its redevelopment plans through an approval process). But even as an concept sketch on paper, it makes good fodder for dialogue.
“It’s been fascinating to see the response of my peers,” Richardson says. “A lot of instances, the response might be, ‘What have you ever been drinking?’ But on this case, I haven’t gotten plenty of that.”
