On top of all the other things that make the Old Course at St. Andrews so special—the history, the strategies, the turf, the contours, the Road Hole, the finish in town, etc.—we should add how its configuration promotes a steady pace of play and consistent flow. Golfers taking a while to putt out on the sloping 11th green, extricate themselves from Hell/Road bunker, or stop for pictures on the Swilcan Bridge might add a few minutes to the time it takes to get around, but this might be a once-in-a-lifetime moment for many visitors, so we can allow it. And, for the most part, everyone’s holing out on the 18th green in good time—a little over four hours.
To some that may seem painfully slow, while others will wonder why everyone’s in such a hurry. For most golfers, though, and the Links Trust which seeks to maximize revenue while giving visitors the singular experience they’d hoped for, four hours or thereabouts works well.
In a 2007 Golf Club Atlas interview, Bill Yates, a former engineer who became the world’s foremost expert on the science of golf’s pace of play prior to his death in 2018, said that the Old Course had an ideal sequence of pars because the innate human dislike of waiting meant the short holes at the start and end of the original 22-hole course were combined to make longer par fours, resulting in a course of 18 holes that flowed better.
“The reason I feel the Old Course has an ideal routing is because its pattern of pars, and long sequences of par fours and only two par threes, means play tends to be smooth and uninterrupted,” Yates said. Of course, certain golfers/groups can play slower than others, he added, but on a course like the Old, they’ll be easily identified, and corrective steps can quickly be taken.
David McLay Kidd was able to benefit from Yates’s expertise when designing the Castle Course at St. Andrews before its opening in 2008. Yes, there are five par threes but, importantly, the round begins with two par fours that establish a good flow early on. “Bill was so knowledgeable and had some great insights,” says Kidd. “He used a wonderful phrase to describe a course where play moves smoothly. He called it ‘self-loading.’ Long par fives can usually accommodate three groups, and longer fours can handle two. But shorter holes—par threes and drivable par fours—can really only process one group at a time and, therefore, cause a build-up.”
Therein lies a dilemma for which science tries to formulate an ideal solution, but which can only ever end with a judgment call. The issue is that while convention says a course needs par threes and, ideally, a handful of stimulating “half-par” holes, these are typically the holes that slow play down. And, as course operators know only too well, slowing play down can cost you a lot of money.
Kidd says Yates’s advice certainly had an impact on the Castle Course’s sequence of pars, and adds that he fought Orrin Vincent, the founder of OB Sports Management which was later purchased by Troon, on the position and length of the 2nd hole at Gamble Sands in Washington State. “Orrin knew it was going to disrupt play very early in the round,” says Kidd, “so he wanted it to be a much longer par four or for us to change the routing entirely.” But what are you going to do? Changes would have lost the course one of its most exciting and beautiful holes. Thankfully, the hole won out over the potential financial impact because, as Kidd says, “I couldn’t not build it.” That’s surely something everyone who’s been there can agree on.
Like Kidd, veteran architect Forrest Richardson benefitted greatly from his association with Yates. The president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects (ASGCA) in 2020-21, Richardson learned much from the former Pebble Beach resident, enabling him to co-author the USGA’s Pace Rating System Manual in 1995. “Bill certainly acknowledged waiting for slow golfers could be frustrating,” Richardson says, “but he insisted the design of the course was crucial to establishing how long it would take to play.”
Importantly, that had little to do with the amount of sand and water the architect chose to use, Yates wrote when contributing to Richardson’s acclaimed book Routing the Golf Course, published in 2002. Hole sequencing, he added, was much more of a factor. (Many might say the opening sequence at the delightful Elie in Fife, Scotland—blind drive at the first with bunkers and out-of-bounds to the right; short par-four 2nd; par-three 3rd—isn’t the ideal way to begin a round, but the familiar periscope in the starter’s hut keeps play moving and golfers safe at the first. Plus, the game is said to have been played here since the 1400s when pace of play might not have been that big a deal. So, like the Swilcan Bridge photographers, it gets a pass.) “It’s amazing how much of an impact the sequencing of the holes has on the rhythm of a round,” Yates said. “While the course itself remains static, much of the movement of the players is determined by the design and routing of the course.”
Besides designing an appropriate sequence of pars and avoiding half-par holes early on, an architect can limit the number of kinks in a round by minimizing the number of long, uphill holes, and reducing blindness wherever possible—if a feature that creates a blind shot can’t be moved, the fairway beyond the obstacle should be wide and the rough either side of it sparse so wayward shots can easily be found.
Tee-time intervals implemented by a course’s management team also have a huge effect on flow and the enjoyment of your game, as do maintenance/course set-up decisions like height and thickness of rough. “Growing deep grass in the wrong places—the inside of a dogleg, near blind landing areas, or on the banks of water features—can have a terrible effect on pace of play,” said Yates. Maintaining sensible green speeds that allow players to hole out rather than yo-yo from one side of the cup to the other is another effective measure.
It’s easy for golfers to think of slow play and the time it takes them to get around as a largely cultural problem, dependent on the behavior of those that play the game. Yates saw it differently, however. “He detested blaming the golfer,” says Forrest Richardson. “He felt golf was among the only entertainment industries that was comfortable assigning blame to the customer. A course’s design has absolutely no impact on what we typically call ‘slow play,’ but it’s instrumental in determining how long a round of golf lasts.”
Pace of play has become the number one problem in golf. As a retiree I have the flexibility to play during the week and I avoid weekends because rounds at my home course are almost invariably five hours or more. I disagree with Mr. Yates, the casual golfer playing from the ‘back’ tees, standing over shots with a rangefinder, not being ready for their turn, plumb-bobbing their putt and slowly walking of the green is the bane of my existence.
I have been lucky enough to play The Old Course at St. Andrews twice. Both times the rounds were sub-four hour pace. It is the way golf should be played.