Design Notebook: The Evolution of the Pros’ Strategy at Riviera

Welcome back to Design Notebook, where we implore you to remember that George Thomas had likely been dead for several years before kikuyu grass was introduced to the fairways of Riviera Country Club. He designed those beautiful green surrounds to be used!

In this February 19 edition of DN, we discuss how the pros’ tactics at Riviera have changed over the past two decades, and why this shift matters. We also dig into a Coore & Crenshaw par 4 at Talking Stick that recalls an influential hole from the dawn of the Golden Age. Enjoy and… smash that subscribe button? I don’t know.

Riviera vs. the Modern Game

By Garrett Morrison

Riviera Country Club has long been revered as a test of strategy, a golf course where players need to make smart decisions in order to win. I think that’s still true at the PGA Tour level, but less so than it was 20 years ago. Let me explain why by digging into ShotLink data for two holes with well-established reputations for strategic complexity: Nos. 8 and 10.

The eighth hole is a double-fairway par 4—or has been since the right fairway was restored in the late 90s—and each fairway offers its own benefits and drawbacks. The famous 10th is a short par 4 with a green so small and viciously fortified that being close to it isn’t always better than having a good angle to that day’s pin. Over the years, both holes have elicited a variety of strategies from PGA Tour players. This variety is key: it indicates that multiple valid options are available, and that players are making actual choices. A hole that every competitor in a tournament plays in the same way isn’t functioning strategically, at least for that field.

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By this rubric, the eighth hole at Riviera underwent a positive evolution between 2004 (when ShotLink started recording shot locations on the PGA Tour) and the end of the decade. After the club brought back George Thomas’s original right fairway and moved the tee to the right, very few players chose the left-hand route, partly because several trees stood between the fairways. As soon as those trees got the ax in 2010, more players started going left, an aggressive line that offers more room for bombers and an advantageous angle to pins on the right edge of the green. The dangers on the left are the barranca and the bracketing bunkers, which together demand a carry of 300+ yards to reach a safe breadth of fairway. By 2014, most pros were still “laying up” to the right, but a fair number had begun to attempt the big carry, with the reward of perceptibly more birdies. Strategically, the restored eighth hole worked.

It still does, but I bet it soon won’t. At this year’s Genesis Invitational, a majority of the field played left. Yes, there were still plenty who opted for the right-hand route, but it’s obvious where the winds are blowing. On X, tour pro Michael Kim expressed mild disbelief that anyone goes right anymore. Dodo Molinari replied that ever since he started advising players on course management, he told them that “you should always go left on 8 unless you are really struggling with driver.” Players will listen. A few years from now, I doubt we’ll see many divots in the right fairway by the end of Genesis week.

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I’m confident in this prediction partly because of what has happened on the 10th hole. In 2004, most of the players laid up on this drivable par 4, preferring to leave themselves with a 70- to 100-yard wedge rather than risk a terrifying recovery from long of the green. By 2014, the layup/go-for-it ratio had nearly evened out. This year, just two guys laid up, Justin Thomas and Alex Smalley. Each did so once, in the first round, and Smalley’s shot might have been a semi-shank.

No. 10 is still fun to watch, of course. You never know what kinds of trouble players will get into. But the data indicates that the hole is no longer functioning as a strategic design for a PGA Tour field.

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Why is this happening? How is it possible that Riviera, of all courses, appears to be producing homogeneous play at the pro level? No doubt the rise of an analytics-driven approach to course management has had its effect. Players now know, in a solid, data-supported way that trumps memory and intuition, that a higher percentage of birdies are made from the left fairway on No. 8 and from the vicinity of the green on No. 10. The data revolution in golf is real.

But we shouldn’t discount the influence of modern driver technology. The aggressive lines on the eighth and 10th holes at Riviera require a commodity that’s cheaper now than it was 20 years ago: carry distance. To find the safe part of the left fairway on No. 8, you need approximately 305 yards of carry, 315 to be safe. A lot of PGA Tour pros meet that requirement now; not a lot did in 2004. As for the 10th hole, you don’t need as much firepower to get near the green—about 270 yards in the air—but players have traditionally hesitated to pull driver here because of the penalty for big misses. Now that 270 is a fairway-wood carry number for many pros, there is less reason for hesitation.

Make no mistake, I still look forward to the Genesis Invitational more than any other regular tour event. But the easier we make it for top players to circumvent Riviera’s strategic questions with raw power, the less interesting the event will become.

The Woking Template

By Garrett Morrison

Strategic golf courses existed before John Low and Stuart Paton redesigned the fourth hole at Woking Golf Club in 1901. I believe, however, that Low and Paton’s changes represented the beginning of strategic golf course design as an intentional, explicitly theorized practice. (For the definitive account of this innovation, read Club TFE member Bob Crosby’s article in the September 2009 edition of Through the Green—for my money, one of the best things ever written about the history of golf architecture.)

Low and Paton’s design was a combination of three elements: an out-of-bounds fence running down the right side of the hole, a pair of bunkers in the middle of the wide fairway, and a green bunkered at its front-left corner. This is strategic golf architecture at its most basic and clear. If you hit your tee shot safely to the left of the bunkers, you will face an approach over the green-side bunkers with OB lurking behind. If, however, you walk the tightrope between the fairway bunkers and the fence, you will have an unobstructed shot into the green.

Tom Simpson's illustration of No. 4 at Woking

Considering this concept’s simplicity and effectiveness, not to mention its historical importance, I’ve always wondered why it hasn’t been replicated or adapted at more courses. Why has it not become, to use the well-worn term, a “template”?

I’m not sure. Perhaps because many modern golfers dislike both center-line hazards and the incorporation of property boundaries into a course.

Fortunately, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw don’t share those aversions. While walking and photographing their work at Talking Stick Resort in Scottsdale two weeks ago, I was delighted to discover that the fourth hole at the Piipaash Course is a clear-as-day tribute to No. 4 at Woking. The OB fence, the center-line hazard, the orientation of the green—all are nearly an exact match for Low and Paton’s design.

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But Coore & Crenshaw, as they tend to do, diverged from their source material in a couple of intriguing ways.

First, instead of protecting the front-left corner of the green with pot bunkers, they did so with a large mound that eats several feet into the putting surface. I love this edit. From the safe, left side of the fairway, you need to hit a very precise approach in order to give yourself a birdie opportunity. If you come up short, you’ll be left with a tough chip over the mound. If your ball comes in too hot, it may rocket off of the downslope on the other side of the hump and ride the general left-to-right tilt of the green to the run-offs back and right. It’s a dynamic hazard—and much more difficult to negotiate than it first appears.

I’m more ambivalent about Coore & Crenshaw’s second revision to Low and Paton’s template. Instead of leaving an open route to the green from the riskiest portion of the fairway, they placed (or allowed to remain standing) a few trees short right of the green. These can be carried with a short iron or wedge, but they’re certainly a factor, even if just a mental one.

I could go two ways about this aspect of C&C’s design. On the one hand, the trees reduce the player’s incentive to challenge the boundary, lowering the overall stakes of the hole. On the other, the trees don’t eliminate the aggressive line; they just shift it to the left. The ideal angle into the green is now the narrow window between the bunker and the trees. This makes the bunker, not the fence, the primary hazard off the tee for most players. Out-of-bounds is a consequence chiefly reserved for long hitters who attempt to drive the green and miss right.

I might have just talked myself into the trees? In any case, if you know of another hole inspired by No. 4 at Woking, tell me about it in the comments section below.

Chocolate Drops

By Garrett Morrison

Georgia Rose. The Rose, a new private golf club, has hired architect Tripp Davis to design an 18-hole course on a 588-acre property outside of Athens, Georgia. Most of the U.S. new builds on Davis’s résumé—including Grand Elk Ranch and Club in Colorado, the Tribute Golf Club in Texas, Belmar Golf Club in Oklahoma, and Coldwater Golf Links in Iowa—opened in the early 2000s, toward the beginning of Davis’s career. Since the industry slowdown in the late aughts, Davis has kept busy mainly with renovations, such as his historically informed projects at Augusta Country Club and Engineers Country Club. I’m curious what he’ll do with a reportedly strong property at The Rose, but since the club describes itself as both “exclusive” and “invitation-only” in its press release, I don’t know how many people will get to see it.

A facebook for greens. I love this insight from Mike Cocking into his design process:

I’ve always liked reflecting on sets of greens as we work through a project. Good chance to check the balance, variety and not too late to make a change if we want to. This is a super quick study of our latest project in the US @OCMGolf pic.twitter.com/NYubqQzfhA

— Mike Cocking (@MikeCocking) February 18, 2024

A Course We Photographed Recently

Talking Stick (O’odham Course)—designed by Coore & Crenshaw in 1998, initially called the “North Course”

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Quotable

“The more exacting the test, the more skillful will be the golfers developed; but a really fine test for a long player is likely to make the second shot too penalizing for the short man, especially on short two shotters.

“A partial answer to this problem is found by the 300 yard new No. 10 at Los Angeles Athletic Club course [Riviera], where the green is narrow, yet opens in the line of the short player, but is raised several feet above the adjacent fairway, and with no traps near it. This makes it very difficult for the short man to hold the green; yet he is not punished by traps close by, while the long man must produce a fine second to hold the putting surface unless his drive is an exceptionally long ball.” –George Thomas

On the left, Thomas's original design for the 10th hole at Riviera