Tespelduyn Hole 9: Design Concept by Golf Course Architect Frank Pont

For some time now I have been working with Tespelduyn with the goal of making the course even more fun, beautiful and better. In a nutshell, the philosophy that we apply from my company Infinite Variety Golf Design to these types of projects is to make as many holes as possible strategic. The biggest advantage of a strategic hole is that it gets you, the player, thinking about how to play the hole in the best way possible. It is also true that a well-designed hole is difficult for good players and forgiving for other players.

How do you strategize a hole?

One of the most important aspects is defending a green asymmetrically. This means that you do not defend a green with a bunker left and right, but rather by placing a bunker only on one side of the green. This bunker placement creates an optimal place on the fairway to play the green; for example, if the green bunker is on the right, then the optimal place for a shot to the green is on the left side of the fairway. Often another fairway bunker is then placed there to make it more difficult to place the ball in the optimal spot. This method makes it harder for good players to score while giving the average player more opportunities to avoid the bunkers.

How do we apply this principle at hole 9?

This hole is actually more difficult for lesser players than for good players at the moment, which is not ideal. This is caused on the one hand mainly by the symmetrical bunker defense of the green, but on the other mainly by the placement of the water hazard right on the length where an average player's drive lands. In short, the bunkers and the water feature are both not in the optimal locations.

We are going to move the water closer to the tee so that all players can basically play over it easily. In addition, we are going to move the greenbunker on the right closer to the green and the left bunker slightly in front of the green will be eliminated. There will be two new fairway bunkers in a diagonal towards the right green bunker.

The new situation makes the average player have an easier tee shot. He or she just has to prevent the tee shot from going into a bunker. The more the player aims right, the safer it is, but the more difficult the shot to the green becomes. For the good player, there are choices to be made about how much risk he or she is willing to take to reach the optimal location for the approach shot to the green, which is somewhere to the left between the two fairway bunkers.

Finally, we will close the bunker behind the green and replace it with short mowed grass pits like you find on top Dutch courses like the Pan and the Haagsche. That means you have to be very careful that your shot to the green is not too far to avoid the ball going into the water.