The Hermitage Par 3 Experience

The Hermitage Par 3 Experience

Most agree that variety (variety in the look and feel of a course; variety in the shots required; and variety in the type of challenges faced) helps to make our time on the golf course more challenging and more fun – and more rewarding as we gain success in tackling those challenges (including, driving and other tee shots, iron play, chipping, putting, etc.).

Not surprisingly, then, variety is routinely noted as among the most critical components of good golf course design. In validating the importance of variety in a golf course, a recent commentator wrote: “Think of what it’s like when you play two holes in a row of roughly the same length. Or three holes in a row that require right-to-left shots off the tee. Or a course where you hit the same club on all of the par 3s. You sort of lose interest, right? This is why variety is so key in golf course design. The greatest courses hold the player’s interest by continually changing things up . . . .” There are numerous examples, but consider a course like Cypress Point where its par 72, 6,534-yard course has par 3 distances from its back tees of 156, 170, 135, and 233.

There has been plenty of golfer input and constructive criticism about the lack of variety on our courses concerning the par 3 holes where creating that variety did not appear to require significant time or cost. The input simply was, “too often, we hit the same (or substantially same) club from 3 of the 4 (and sometimes all) of the par 3 holes on both courses. . . . I think we can enhance the playing experience - fun, variety, challenge, and thinking by closer attention to setting tee distances on our par 3's.” We agreed with the comments and undertook a process, with member input, to see how we could improve the members playing experience. The basic objective then was to enhance variety on our par 3 holes. The more specific objective was to create a 28-day schedule of tee setting sand hole locations that would carry out the basic objective.

The surprising news – our starting point – is that as designed, the courses’ scorecards almost “mandate” the level of monotony that gave rise to the criticism. (For instance, the White Tees on the 2 courses are 148, 161, 159, 136,  132, 150, 150, and 140.)  The good news is that the Manakin and the Sabot generally have adequate or generous teeing grounds that made movement of the tees (in coordination with front, center & back hole locations). The reality is that, despite the length of our teeing grounds, there certain limitations. (Consider the lack of room for many changes on Sabot #11.)

After considerable time looking at hole locations and teeing areas, we have developed a plan where players will experience a different challenge almost everyday at every par 3. To date, the plan addresses the Blue, White and Silver tees. (We have not made changes to the general approach to the Green or Gold tees, but we are open to expand this project if there is an expressed interest by our women or super-senior golfers.)

What should you expect?

Whether you typically play the Silver, White or Blue tees, you will find that sometimes you are moving back and forward to play a “longer” or “shorter” tee pad. You will daily have (typically) a longer iron or rescue/hybrid into a par 3, but also have a wedge or short iron each day into one of the par 3's, etc. Care was taken to assure that the total yards being played on any given day does not change materially regardless of which tees you are playing. The VSGA has reviewed our new par 3 distances and have confirmed that they are well within acceptable limits of our course and slope ratings.

We would like to thank Bruce Matson for putting a significant amount of time in to this project. While on the surface it may seem simple to “mix up the yardages” but as Bruce found out, the matrix of making yardages and pin locations work together, while adding in hole to hole variety, gets complicated quickly. We are always looking for ways to enhance your experience at Hermitage and we hope this project falls in line with that goal!

Sample of the matrix for 4 Manakin: