Design Notebook: The Difficulty of Designing a Par 3.5

Howdy and welcome back to Design Notebook, where we hope you enjoyed Andy and Garrett’s recent golf architecture mailbag on the FEG podcast. A few Club TFE members got shout-outs during the episode!

In this installment of DN, Garrett Morrison goes deep on the concept of the “par 3.5,” discussing three examples from Brian Schneider and Blake Conant’s work at Old Barnwell. He also touches on some news out of Arcadia Bluffs in Michigan and Westport Golf Links in Washington State.

Old Barnwell and the Precarious Balance of the Par 3.5

By Garrett Morrison

I’ve never liked the term “drivable par 4.” Drivable for whom, exactly? I’m also not a fan of “short par 4,”; it’s too vague, failing to differentiate between a very short par 4 that some players can reach from the tee and a moderately short one that calls for a drive and a pitch.

Now, “par 3.5” isn’t perfect—it implies a scoring expectation that most players won’t meet—but it at least captures the in-between-ness that defines the holes I want to discuss. These holes usually play between 270 and 330 yards from the back tee, too short to be considered pure two-shotters but too long and well-guarded to play as par 3s. They’re typically listed on scorecards as par 4s, though not always (see No. 16 at Cypress Point), and they’ve become fashionable in modern golf architecture—to the point that the PGA Tour ran roughshod over the wishes of Alice Dye to install one at TPC Sawgrass in 2017.

The mark of a well-designed par 3.5 is balanced optionality from the tee. One player will attempt to get as far up the hole as he can, another will lay up, and both will have valid arguments for their choices. A great par 3.5 lives in this strategic liminal zone, allowing golfers to decide for themselves whether they’ll treat the hole as a long par 3 or a short par 4.

As popular as par 3.5s are, they’re rarely executed well enough to occupy the intended space between par categories. On some, there is no reason to hit driver; on others, there is no reason not to do so. Designing a genuine par 3.5 requires a rigorous fine-tuning of width, angles, hazards, and contours. The green and its surrounds must be treacherous enough that players think twice about going for it, but not so treacherous that they always lay up. Similarly, the approach from the layup area must be challenging (otherwise laying up would become the default play) but not excessively so (or going for it would become the default play). Achieving these Goldilocks ratios is not an easy task for an architect.

But if I had to put my money on any up-and-coming design team doing the intellectual labor necessary to produce a strong par 3.5, I’d pick Brian Schneider and Blake Conant. Their work at Old Barnwell is, above all, remarkably well thought out. Every strategic possibility is accounted for, every loophole closed. This is especially apparent on the course’s trio of par 3.5s: Nos. 2, 9, and 14.

No. 2, 195-305 yards

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From the second tee, the three main potential landing zones are easy to identify: the safest is out to the left, short of a flashed-up bunker; the most dangerous is directly at the green, past a large bunker on the right; and the medium-risk option is a ledge between the two bunkers. There are various other places a tee shot can end up, but these are the primary targets that players will consider.

The green sits on a left-to-right, front-to-back slope, making approaches from the safest layup zone tricky. The farther left you are in the fairway, the more the putting surface runs away from you. When I talked to Conant last week, he told me that all he and Schneider did to this green was soften the grade by about 1% and create some subtle contours along the edges. They saw no need for further shaping. “It was doing exactly what we wanted it to do for the golf,” Conant said.

Trying to reach the green from the tee brings another set of dangers into play. Specifically, there’s a bunker about 10 yards from the right edge of the green that longer players have a good chance of finding if they miss right with a driver. Conant told me that he and Schneider positioned this bunker so that it would be a threat for misses from the tee but not from the fairway. “We’re trying to penalize the good player who’s going for it but not roger the player who’s coming in with a little 60-yard pitch,” Conant explained.

This is an example of the balancing act that goes into designing an effective par 3.5. If that bunker were hard against the green, the approach from the left side of the fairway would be more difficult, so there would be less—perhaps too little—incentive to lay up.

(Extra note: Conant told me that Jeff Warne, Old Barnwell’s winter pro, likes to lay up short of the right bunker. The approach is mostly blind from that spot, but the tilt of the green works in the player’s favor.)

No. 9, 260-315 yards

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The ninth hole is the least drivable of Old Barnwell’s three par 3.5s, mainly because its small, shallow, pushed-up green is extremely hard to hold with a driver or fairway wood. Still, stronger players can at least reach the vicinity of the green from the tee. The question is whether that’s a wise play.

To find the green or its surrounds, you have to challenge the left side of the hole, where a right-to-left slope may kick your ball into a bunker that runs from 40 yards short of the green to the front-left corner. Recoveries from the front portion of this bunker demand a level of short-game skill that most players don’t have. (I may be speaking from personal experience.)

There is, however, a great deal of room on the right side of the fairway, and, as Conant told me, “Playing way out to the right kind of works on this hole.” A center-line bunker defines various landing areas: short and right of it is safe, high ground; just over it is a fairly level platform about 75 to 95 yards from the green; and past that is a big trough (natural but, in Conant’s words, “emphasized” by some bulldozer work) where players will face a short but blind approach. Finally, there’s a tiny perch next to a chain of bunkers at the long-right edge of the fairway. This is probably the best place to be aside from the green itself, but getting there comes with an obvious risk. “We’re trying to make players get greedy and say, ‘Maybe I can get out to 230 or 240 [yards] this time,’” Conant said, “and end up in those bunkers on the right.”

For all five of the options I’ve just described, the risks and rewards are precisely balanced. This hole really works.

(Extra note: The transition from 8 green to 9 tee is the only significant walk between holes at Old Barnwell. It’s not great in an isolated sense, but it allowed Brian and Blake to keep the superb site for the eighth green, make the ninth hole long enough to play as a par 3.5, and generally maximize the section of the property comprising Nos. 9-14. The bridge crossing the valley between the ninth tee and fairway is critical to making the sequence feel fun rather than arduous.)

No. 14, 235-285 yards

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This is the closest thing at Old Barnwell to an actual “drivable par 4.” On a calm day, most players will be able to reach the green with a solid strike. So a two-putt birdie is feasible—but because the hazards around the green are so fierce, the potential for a double bogey looms as well. “Good short par 4s have a wide delta of variance,” Conant told me, citing conversations he has had with University of Georgia professor Kevin Moore about analytics. The 14th hole at Old Barnwell certainly succeeds on that count.

The dominant feature of the hole is a big earthen wall cutting diagonally across the player’s line from short right to long left. Almost everything on the other side—the multi-pronged fairway, the fallaway green, the array of deep bunkers—cannot be seen from the tee, but the top of the flagstick, just visible over the wall, offers an aiming reference.

Reaching the green requires not only carrying the most distant part of the wall but also finding a 30-yard-wide ramp between drop-offs to bunkers both left and right. The green itself, however, is quite large. If your ball lands somewhere in the 30-by-75-yard rectangle between the top of the wall and the back of the green, you’re likely to end up in a decent spot. “Just for golf purposes,” Conant said, “you need to give people enough room so that it’s worth going for it, and enough room so that you don’t just end up off the back.”

You can also aim for the wide expanse of fairway on the right, a lower-risk play that leaves a wedge approach over a nest of bunkers. But I’d argue that the attractiveness of this option depends on the position of the tee. There are two distinct teeing areas here—one just off the back-right corner of the 13th green, and the other about 50 yards to the left. The left tee, as I understand it, is more frequently used. From there, the ramp to the green lies straight ahead, playing to its full width, while the layup zone sits awkwardly out to the right. The inverse is true from the right tee. So, barring unusual wind conditions, I doubt I would ever lay up from the left, and I doubt I would ever go for it from the right.

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In this way, No. 14 at Old Barnwell—an excellent hole on its own terms, though perhaps not an ideal one according to the arcane rules of this essay—represents the difficulty of designing a true par 3.5. Change one variable, and the balance tips.

Chocolate Drops

By Garrett Morrison

Arcadia Bluffs jumps on the shorty bandwagon. Last week, Arcadia Bluffs, a well-known 36-hole public facility on the western coast of Michigan, announced that it plans to add a 12-hole short course, appropriately—somewhat dully?—called “The Dozen.” The club provided a basic routing plan and an opening year (2025) but no details about which, if any, architecture firm has been hired to handle the project. Arcadia Bluffs’ first course was designed by Warren Henderson and Rick Smith in the late 1990s, and its second course, a MacRaynor pastiche that opened 2018, was the work of Dana Fry and Jason Straka.

Plan for The Dozen at Arcadia Bluffs

More trouble for Westport. The effort to build Westport Golf Links, a public golf facility designed by David McLay Kidd on seaside duneland in a Washington state park, met the latest in a series of legal hurdles last week. Two environmental groups, Friends of Grays Harbor and Grays Harbor Audubon Society, sued the state, claiming that the Washington State Parks Commission is ignoring past agreements that limit wetland development on the site. Putting aside this particular case (which, who knows, may have its merits), I continue to be struck by how difficult and expensive it is to build anything, much less a golf course, in places with well-intentioned but strict environmental regulations. Meanwhile, developers in Texas, South Carolina, and Florida forge ahead, seemingly unrestricted.

Another kind of dozen. Over the weekend, a few Club TFE members posted questions for my and Andy’s golf architecture mailbag. Thank you! We didn’t get to all of them during the episode, but I did find someone more authoritative than myself to answer Brent Accurso’s query about the viability of the 12-hole model for municipal courses. Bill Potter, who works for the First Tee – Greater Richmond, told me in an email how the 12-hole experiment is going at Belmont Golf Course:

“Moving to 12 holes has allowed the facility to open itself up to more people and allowed for the property to do more for everyone. Between the 12-hole course, Little Bell (the six-hole par-3 course), and The Ringer (the 18-hole putting course), there is something for everyone, in addition to practice facilities which previously did not exist.

“Since it is operated under the First Tee – Greater Richmond umbrella, all participants can play for free, and we partner with Youth on Course as well (last year, we were the leading YOC facility in the state), which enables us to further our mission of being an entry point for everyone.

“Generally, the response from the community has been positive, especially after seeing how the property was reimagined.

“As far as challenges go, I think we fight perceptions about a 12-hole course as being ‘too short’ or ‘too easy.’ (I’d argue the green complexes mitigate both.) Also, some will never accept taking an 18-hole Tillinghast down to 12, regardless of the added amenities (and ignoring the restoration of those holes).”

A Course We Photographed Recently

Palmetto Golf Club (Aiken, SC)—initial 18-hole course completed by Herbert Leeds and James Mackrell in 1895, greens renovation by Alister MacKenzie in 1932, restoration by Tom Doak in 2005, continuing work by Gil Hanse

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Quotable

“Pete has never believed in drivable par 4s. If a player is supposed to reach the green from the tee and you’re always allowed two putts, well, that’s a par 3.” –Alice Dye