Golf for Women on Purgatory Golf Club
What
Makes a Women's Course?
Tired
of having to carry 100-yard hazards on par 3s and go on safari to find a
ladies' room? So are we. As one mid-handicapper explains (okay, vents), what
makes a good course for women begins with the right yardage and ends with,
well, a big smile.
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A
winning design: Futures Tour player Gaelle Truet hits her
approach on the 5th hole of GFW's No. 1-ranked course, The
Boulders' South in Carefree, Ariz.
Photo: Dylan Coulter
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By Betty Cuniberti
Golf For Women
July 2005
A
decade or two ago, toting years of anticipation, I arrived all atwitter on
the first tee of venerable Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, perennially
ranked as one of the top courses in America. I'd read about it. I'd seen it
on TV. I'd dreamed about it. But after some 130 strokes and 5,831 yards of
bruising length from the forward tees, I felt I'd been taken for a ride and
mugged. The testy, crowned greens, rolling terrain and yawning sand bunkers
would be reasonably challenging if not tagged to a layout that was just too
damned long.
This
is the kind of information women need before spending precious vacation
time, not to mention money, on a course's big reputation. Not all courses
men adore are designed with the kind of thought, skill and care it takes to
replicate the transcendent golf experience from the back tees for women
playing from the forward set.
Which
is why we at Golf For Women continue to come up with our own course
rankings. Never mind that women make up about a quarter of all golfers, and
more than 40 percent of new ones. Believe it or not, at a golf course you
are entitled to find more than a well-stocked women's locker room, socks in
the pro shop and your tee freshly mowed. Every now and then, you should be
able to hit off the forward tees and have your ball land in the area the
designer intended, not get caught in a literal no-man's land, where clearing
a stream or making a dogleg turn on the next shot is next to impossible. We
should be able to swing a fairway wood and reach a green in regulation. Not
once in a lifetime--a few times a round. It's that thing they call
"golf" that we've heard so much about, but don't find often
enough--even with rankings in one hand and a global positioning device in
the other.
Mothballing
our Miss Congeniality crowns for just a moment, most course designs and
rankings should make us mad as hell and not willing to take it any more. To
us, it seems that courses are not only designed almost entirely by
low-handicap men for low-handicap men, they're also rated by
low-handicap men. From tee to green, the average man plays a different game
than the average woman. They hit the ball higher and farther, and they can
put more spin and control on a ball coming into a green.
Men
may be stronger, but we're smarter--we have to be if we're going to traverse
their Louisiana Purchase layouts and get home before dark. Women are so used
to coping with Mars' dimensions on Venus that if we actually blunder onto a
golf course where we need a 5-iron instead of a 5-wood on our second shot,
we're not sure we have one in the bag. Oh, here it is--the clean one! In
shock, we snicker that the course is dumbed down. Too easy! At some clubs,
when the subject of moving the forward tees up is debated, it is women who
often oppose it most fiercely. Even I have felt guilty if I post a terrific
score on a course that didn't bear a striking resemblance to the Lewis and
Clark trail.
We
have weighed many factors when putting together this list, but design is the
most critical. This is why we assign the most importance to design fairness,
from multiple forward tees that give the shorter hitter a second shot
comparable to that of golfers playing from farther back.
Length
is not the only issue, but it's the key one. The National Golf Foundation
has calculated that the average woman player hits her drive 140 yards and
her fairway wood 120 yards--75 percent of the average man's distance. Based
on that, a course that measures 6,300 yards from the white tees--a very
common yardage--should be around 4,725 for the average woman. In other
words, playable.
But
many courses don't have a forward set shorter than 5,500. That's the
equivalent of more than 7,300 yards for men--hairy even for the Tigers and
Vijays of the world. A 5,900-yard course for women would equal an almost
8,000-yard monster for men. Impossible. Yet there are still courses in the
U.S. that are designed that way. You won't find them on our list. Our top
pick, The Boulders' South Course in Scottsdale, measures 4,684 yards from
the forward tees and 5,119 yards from the second set of markers. Pretty
ideal.
The
distance difference trickles down to all the clubs, even those nasty little
ones. Where a man is lifting a soft wedge to the green, a woman might be
muscling a low 5-iron. And nothing explodes an average woman's score like
large ponds, canyons or bunkers parked directly in front of a green,
requiring a sky-high 120-yard shot to land softly as a butterfly and take a
butterfly step backward. As Curtis Cup co-donor and three-time Amateur
Champion Margaret Curtis wrote about the strength difference in a 1949
article in the USGA's Golf Journal, "The crux of this problem isn't the
drive but the shot to the green and the trajectory (isn't it a grand word)
of the ball. What club should be used and what club is used by the Good
Women for that shot?" Meaning we should be hitting a 7-iron but we're
grasping a 5-wood. One hole demanding a long, soft carry to a green is
tolerable. Several are a day-wrecker.
Rather
than just work from numbers on paper, for the first time this year, we
enlisted the aid of certifiably sane, low- to mid-handicap women golfers to
help us refine our list. Our course-raters, all of whom play more golf in a
year than we could hope to play in a decade, gave us their thoughts on the
courses that were nominated for this list, and we listened.
Our
Top 50 Courses raters, including Mary Ellen Hegarty, a 16.9-index from
Annapolis, Md., are aware of what to look for. "As a child,"
Hegarty told us, "I was raised on a course where women were not (and
are still not) permitted to play before 1 p.m. on Friday, Saturday and
Sunday, and where the women's tee is on the same box as the men's. As an
adult, I have enjoyed some of the most beautiful courses in the world, most
of which have been extremely hospitable and welcoming toward all women. The
difference has not been lost on me. As the number of women enjoying this
fabulous game increases, it will be imperative for those willing to try new
courses to have information on which to base their decisions."
Another
of our course-raters, Lisa Hutchins, a 12-handicap from Blakeslee, Pa.,
believes golf course design has hampered the growth of women's participation
in the game when it should, in fact, promote it. Jean Hudgins, an
11-handicap from Henderson, Nev., agrees.
"The
game no longer becomes fun," she says, "if a woman is required to
hit a 220-yard, all-carry shot over a gorge to reach a 420-yard par 4. Golf
is much more fun when the course has a design that challenges the better
golfer without totally frustrating the 25-handicapper."
It's
a widely accepted generalization that women hit the ball short and straight,
while men hit it far but have much more trouble keeping it in the fairway.
This is a trade-off that makes the length of a course's rough more important
to women (we have slower swing speeds, so it's tougher for us to hit the
ball out from the tall grass) than how far it comes in to narrow the
fairway, which men fear because of their accuracy issues.
When
evaluating a course for our Top 50 list, we also consider the environment
for women. Are there at least two sets of tees rated for women? Are the
forward tees as well tended as the others? Are they level? Are there ball
washers on all the tees? If your glove has worn out, can you buy a new one
that will fit you in the pro shop? Are there enough bathrooms on the course?
Are there women on the teaching and pro-shop staffs? Are you treated as an
equal, or does the marshal seem to stalk you (and only you) to make sure
you're not holding up the half-drunken men behind you, all earnestly
plumb-bobbing putts they'll miss by 10 feet?
We
look at other things, too, such as memorability and conditioning. Is the
course a visual treat? Does it offer up a varied, intriguing playing
experience? Are there flowers? Do they pull the weeds? Do they pick up the
trash and cigarette butts that can be spotted off to the sides?
The
good news, as you'll learn from reading our list, is that there are plenty
of courses that treat forward-tee players as first-class citizens. Even an
older course can become a wiser one. At Pinehurst No. 2, the course that
defeated me two decades ago, the former red tees were painted green in 2001
and have become "senior" tees, and the reds were moved forward,
shortening the course by nearly 800 yards and relieving the layout of two
par 5s.
May
they rest in peace.
And
may you avail yourself early and often of our effort to find the glorious
spots where it all comes together for all players, women and men.
>
the average 18-hole score for women is 114
> GFW readers played an average of
52
rounds
in 2004
> the first universal course-rating system was created in 1893
by a
woman, Issette Pearson, of the U.K.
> the average woman's drive is 140
yards
> 64%
of
women golfers have handicaps over 28
> California has the most GFW Top 50 Courses with 8,
followed by Florida with 6
and
Arizona with 4 |
Travel, What makes a Womans Course?, GFW Top 50 Courses for Women, Golf
for Women, July 2005.
