Golf is reliant on and inextricably linked with water for so many reasons. Obviously, the playing surfaces and all other flora and fauna associated with our courses couldn’t exist without it. But crucially, in its many guises, then to a lesser or greater degree it is a feature of the design and strategy of the majority of golf courses all over the world.
Few courses of note don’t have some form of water-related feature that the golfer must consider at some point in the round, whether it’s an innocuous-looking burn or drainage ditch, or an in-your-face lake that could fit a pod of blue whales. Our oldest and most revered links nestle by the sea, and while the water itself may come and go, the coastal margins are still a source both of wonder and anguish for most of us.
Why Have Water On A Course?
An irrigation system is key at most if not all golf courses
(Image credit: Getty Images)
Given that playing a golf ball out of water successfully is nigh on impossible, why is water such an important and regular feature in course design? The answer falls into three overlapping categories; strategic, visual, and psychological. With regard to the first, courses need obstacles to challenge the golfer. The most obvious is everyone’s favourite (not!), the bunker. Aside from that you have rough, trees and other foliage, and of course, water. Water is ultimately the trickiest of the lot as an unsuccessful encounter will not only lose you a shot, but usually also your ball.
The fifteenth and eighteenth greens on the Albatros Course at Golf National
(Image credit: Rob Smith)
However, particularly on sites lacking trees, water is an obvious and relatively low-maintenance strategic challenge which can often define the ethos and feel of the place such as the Albatros Course at Golf National near Paris, host of the 2018 Ryder Cup. Moving on to visual, and there is no doubt that judicious use of lakes and ponds can help to turn a pig’s ear into a silk purse. Rather than a succession of sand-protected holes that can look very similar, water features can be as subtle, soothing, scary, or as over-the-top as the architect desires and the budget allows.
In its early days, the Brabazon Course at The Belfry, which has hosted more Ryder Cups than anywhere else, had a reputation as being a bit, how can I put it, farmer’s-fieldy? Dave Thomas made substantial changes in the late 90s with the water a prime beneficiary, and it has looked so much better since….
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