I agree that Tiger's designs could use more "edge." I played Payne's Valley a couple years ago and just didn't find it interesting. Wide open fairways, mild traps, I have to admit that I was disappointed. And, with the premium prices being charged, no real desire to play it again. No comparison between PV and Ozarks National.

Just booked a round here in September - looking forward to it!

I think a lot of the mountain golf up here in Vermont fits here - lots of trees, rocks, random bounces that can cause a lot of random and lucky/unlucky bounces on what are relatively simple and short holes that are basic driver/wedge holes.

When I first thinking hard about this, it was about specific golf holes. The example of Low-Skill, High Luck I thought of was the Postage Stamp hole at Troon. It's just a wedge and two easy putts, and if it weren't for the wind off the Firth of Clyde, it would be trivial for the pros. But it's not trivial because the course design turns something straightforward into something absolutely bananas if you get a gust of wind at the wrong time. It's tough to stretch that concept into an entire course, but you could do it. So yea, I think you're right about Bandon Preserve when the wind is whipping. That's a good example. I think any short, Scottish links that has bunkers effectively randomly peppered around would also count. The idea would be that the course shouldn't be hard at all, and most people could almost always reach the green in two, but yea, no rough cut, and you should kind of randomly have your ball kick into a hazard, rather than that happening strategically. Again, it should be like Bingo, where it can be fun to play and even gamble on, but nobody would ever seriously treat that kind of course as a "test of golf," and would basically be the definition of "unfair" golf.

When I first thinking hard about this, it was about specific golf holes. The example of Low-Skill, High Luck I thought of was the Postage Stamp hole at Troon. It's just a wedge and two easy putts, and if it weren't for the wind off the Firth of Clyde, it would be trivial for the pros. But it's not trivial because course design turns something straightforward into something absolutely bananas if you get a gust of wind at the wrong time. It's tough to stretch that concept into an entire course, but you could do it. So yea, I think you're right about Bandon Preserve when the wind is whipping. That's a good example. I think any short, Scottish links that has bunkers effectively randomly peppered around would also count. The idea would be that the course shouldn't be hard at all, and most people could almost always reach the green in two, but yea, no rough cut, and you should kind of randomly have your ball kick into a hazard, rather than that happening strategically. Again, it should be like Bingo, where it can be fun to play and even gamble on, but nobody would ever seriously treat that kind of course as a "test of golf," and would basically be the definition of "unfair" golf.

When I was working on a blog post about this, I was thinking about specific golf holes. The example of Low-Skill, High Luck I thought of was The Postage Stamp hole. It's just a wedge and two easy putts, and if it weren't for the wind off the Firth of Clyde, it would be trivial for the pros. But it's not trivial because course design turns something straightforward into something absolutely bananas if you get a gust of wind at the wrong time. It's tough to stretch that concept into an entire course, but you could do it. So yea, I think you're right about Bandon Preserve when the wind is whipping. That's a good example. I think any short, Scottish links that has bunkers effectively randomly peppered around would also count. The idea would be that the course shouldn't be hard at all, and most people could almost always reach the green in two, but yea, no rough cut, and you should kind of randomly have your ball kick into a hazard, rather than that happening strategically. Again, it should be like Bingo, where it can be fun to play and even gamble on, but nobody would ever seriously treat that kind of course as a "test of golf." For Low-Luck, Low-Skill (like tic-tac-toe), you can just go to most small town pitch-and-putt courses.

Wow I love this Matt. I wonder if anyone can think of a Low-Skill High Luck course, that isn't a miniature golf course. Would that be something like Bandon Preserve where you could almost play with just a putter? Maybe some Scottish links courses? I genuinely don't know but I would be interested if I would enjoy this...

This is awesome, Matt! Really appreciate that. Totally on board with this line of thinking. Need to digest it a bit but I like this

This is one of my favorite topics. First, I must insist that everyone listen to this week's Designing Golf Podcast if you haven't. Garrett interviews George Waters about course footprints. It was exceptional! So, fairness. Yea, generally speaking, the "fairness debate" conflates luck and skill, as though they are opposites of each other. This is not the case. They are two different dimensions to game design. You can have low-luck, high-skiil games, like chess, or high-luck, high-skill games like poker, (even high-luck, low-skill games like bingo). When we're talking about "fair golf" we're usually operating from a framework where the game is about skill. When we talk about "unfair golf" we're usually talking about the parts of the game out of the player's control and randomness can creep in. However, different people come to games for different reasons and at different skill levels. Some people want to hone their skills, others just want to have fun. So, the amount of skill the course asks, and the amount of luck the course creates, can be tailored to different audiences to create a different experience. Chess is fun, poker is fun, and we can expect to have different course design profiles that are modeled after similar luck-skill profiles. Bethpage Black is a low-luck, high-skill course. The Old Course tends to be high-luck, high-skill course when the wind is up. Mammoth Dunes is a low-luck, low-skill course (at least from what I gather from Andy's review, ha!) . They're just different flavors, and we all have our favorites. Anyway, yea, I obviously really love game design theory. If your interested I'll add some lectures I've enjoyed on the topic: Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering creator): "Luck in Games" talk at IT University of Copenhagen: https://youtu.be/av5Hf7uOu-o Ben Brode (Marvel Snap creator) at the Game Developers Conference: https://youtu.be/HjhsY2Zuo-c

Living in Vermont where the default is mountain golf, I am used to crazy elevation change and lots of rocky outcroppings that can kick balls almost anywhere. Given that, I basically don't believe there is such a thing as an unfair golf course, just unfair green speeds. On recent trip I did play a Raynor course that had 30mph winds on top of fast greens where multiple balls hit into redan slope still ran the entire way down the green to bunker. This is only case I can think of 'unfairness' and really it was just greens too fast for abnormal wind.