GOLF HOLE ORIENTATION - 360* DEGREES OF POSSIBILITIES

It is extremely rare to have the opportunity to lay out 18 holes of golf with no constraints, but if we were to have the freedom, it poses the question:-

1. What would be the ideal orientation for 18 holes of golf?

There is without doubt a science to orientating 18 holes of golf with as much variety as possible, using the natural elements to their limits.  In order to explore this question further and work out all the routing permutations, we would need 80000 words and a PhD research budget.  For the sake of this short article, we will simplify to 800 words and reduce the main factors down to the following:

• Length of the hole (its par)
• Topographical relief(the overall elevation change),
• Hole Strategy (design elements)
• Hole Orientation (direction, wind and sun).

With every project, the position of the entrance and the clubhouse dictate the start and finish points of the golf course which almost force the course in a certain direction.  As long as this is correctly located, then the course will start off in your preferred orientation.

The opening holes ideally should play away from the early morning sun to the East (E to SE) as most tee times are in the morning, and conversely, closing holes should never play West or South towards the midday or lower setting sun (S to W) as most rounds and tournaments are finishing at these times of the day.

An important consideration in today’s world of the practice culture is the range direction.  The range tees and outfield should not face south (SW to SE).  This particular orientation is never good for the user as golfers who practice will be staring into the sun all day whilst hitting shots.  Ideally your range should face in a Northerly direction (NW to NE) so that sun is to your back and glare is limited.

The orientation of your golf holes do impact upon the surfaces as well, especially the bunker faces and this is why they often struggle if they are not watered sufficiently.  In an ideal world, unless you have heads in your bunker faces try and limit the amount of bunkers that face south.

In theory, if we have 360 degrees to work with, we should work hard to lay out golf courses that can explore every angle of the compass.  The perfect balance of 18 golf holes would by calculation point in a new direction every 20 degrees.   This is clearly easier said than done as more often than not, we are constrained by boundaries, services, protected areas, public right of ways and tree belts.  If we agree that this is feasible on a site with no constraints, then we must then look at what constitutes an average golf course in terms of par.  18 holes is often divided into: x4-par 3‘s, x10-par 4’s and x4-par 5’s.  We would then assume that we are looking for the par 3’s and 5’s to play in 4 different directions on the compass and the x10 remaining par 4’s to slot into the remaining 10 angles (as shown). 

Depending on which side of the fence you sit on will determine whether you enjoy short and long par 4’s.  As most people do, we would like to include – 3.5 par (335) and 4.5 par (485) holes – into our routing as part of the ten par 4’s on offer to add even further variety.  The remaining 8 par 4’s should now be divided by 17m increments to give the perfect spacing of par 4 challenge across the course.

UK Prevailing wind theory takes routing science to another level (from the SW at 245 degrees).  This means that all holes playing in a SW direction are into-the-wind.  When laying out the ideal routing, we should keep one eye on the shorter holes playing into the wind and the longer holes playing downwind to keep the balance of the shot value as neutral as possible for all categories of player.

The following two diagrams show a direct comparison between an ideal orientation for 18 holes and a standard golf course.   We simply draw the holes in relation to the North point and place the tee for every hole to the centre of the diagram to scale which gives us our splay.  It is here that we can understand hole length in relation to their orientation and look towards remedying the holes that are too long and the holes that are too short for the prevailing wind.  Strategy and topography would also come into consideration when assessing the overall difficulty of the hole.

By analysing all the hole orientations in one diagram, you can see clearly how they are duplicated and by how many times.  The diagram highlights the wrong direction of the opening and closing holes yet a positive orientation for the par 3 holes that all play in different directions.

The Ideal balance of Orientation for 18 holes

A typical Golf Club Orientation