The Most Copied Hole In Golf l The Hole At l Golf Digest

The Most Copied Hole In Golf l The Hole At l Golf Digest

From the very beginnings of the game, architects have used militaristic terms to describe how they design golf courses. They fortify greens, camouflage hazards, and dig bunkers that must be vaulted or avoided. At its essence, golf is a game of offense and defense. It’s you versus the course. It makes sense then that some golf holds would take on the literal characteristics of military structures. One of the most famous golf holes in the world, the 15th of North Bareric in Scotland, actually bears the name of a defensive fortress, the Gradan. It’s a hole that’s thwarted offensive assaults for over 150 years, and the maddening orientations of its features make it probably the most copied and influential hole ever designed. Hi, I’m Derek Duncan, architecture editor at Golf Digest, and today we’re going to break down the architectural concepts behind the original paran at North Barrack. Before we talk about what makes the Redan setup at North Barrack so enduring and effective at defending incoming golf shots, we need to talk about what a redan actually is. Redans go back to at least the early 18th century. In military terms, Ardan is part of a defensive wall that protrudes out towards the enemy in an angled Vshape. It looks like this. It’s a simple formation that provides several tactical advantages. The first is elevation. Like most fortresses, it’s high and protected and enables artillery to shoot downward at the enemy from a covered position. The second is that it has this point at the front of the red. That’s called a salient and it’s difficult to attack head-on. Though it’s exposed, incoming fire like arrows, cannonballs, and bullets would rarely make a direct strike and will deflect off the angles of the wall. So, Radan has a very specific military definition. But what does that have to do with the 15th hole at North Bareric? We’ll get to that, but first, let’s get to know the hole as it sits today. The Redan 15th is a par 3 that ranges from 112 to 189 yards. It plays west to east across North Barrack’s characteristically rumbled lynx land that was formed long ago by the wind and ocean tides. Though the land is level overall, the setting of the tea and the dunes topography make the whole place slightly uphill. But what dominates the field of vision from the tea is a ridge that crosses the hole about 115 yards out with two large eyeball bunkers carved into its base. This ridge completely obscures the green, so the approach to the Redan is a blind shot. All you can see is the top of the flag stick and an aiming mark on the wall behind it. And in the distance, the town buildings and on a clear day, the top of Bass Rock looming out at sea. There’s a no man’s land between the ridge and the green that you also can’t see. It includes a low runup valley, a wide and deep hazard guarding the green’s left called the Lamb bunker, and three more depressed bunkers on the right. The long but relatively shallow green is the key to the Redan here at North Bareric. And at the majority of Red’s patterned after it, in every case, the green is angled away from the T- box. At North Bareric, the front right edge of the green is the highest point and the putting surface slopes away toward the back left corner. It also drifts away off the edge of the lamb bunker. This combination of a diagonal access and fadeaway slope over a frontal hazard is what makes a redan a red. Because of the valley in front, approach shots must carry all the way to the elevated plateau, landing on the front right or just short of the front right corner. If they do, a small shoulder on the right will guide balls onto the putting surface where the front to back slope can propel them forward. The lamb bunker in front of the green, named for a small island in the fth just off to the left, is no friend. An original version of it was even deeper in more penal lined with vertical railroad ties. But worse are the three pits haunting the right that pull golf balls into their hollows. From any of these three, you face a treacherous blind shot to a green that runs away from you. The hole location on Reddans can impact how you choose to play the shot. Braver, inexperienced golfers will often try to fire straight at the pin with a high spinner, but the slope of the green will usually kick shots away into the hazard or in some other unwanted place. And the farther the flag is left, the longer the carry becomes over the front bunker. So, Redans offer more tactical options than typical par 3s, but each of them are risky. At North Beric, it’s not advisable to try to challenge the hole directly in most wind conditions. Given the length of the shot, the firmness of the greens, and the steep tilt, the margin for error is just too narrow. Balls can easily slip into one of the bunkers, and even solid strikes can jettison off and over the green and end up near the 16th T or even pinned against the rock wall beyond it. Of course, you won’t see where the ball ends up because the green is blind. But part of the fun, if you want to call it that, is climbing the facade of the fortress-like hole to see exactly what happened and where the shot ended up. The essence of the Redan is that you have all of this space available, but you’re really just trying to play to a very small area and hoping the ball reacts on the ground the way you expect it to. Most people eventually learn that the best point of attack, like any Redan military fortification, is usually not head-on. That’s why it’s called Redan, right? Not quite. Believe it or not, golf has been played at North Bareric going back to at least the early 1600s. In 1832, the golf club was officially founded with a six and later sevenhole course that occupied an area near the town going out as far as the burn that crosses the third and 16th hole. This is called the March Dyke. 36 years later, in 1868, the club acquired more land to the west and added three more holes, including the terrain that became the Redan. first played as the club’s new sixth hole. It didn’t become the 15th hole until after 1877 when North Beric expanded again out to here, the Eli Bird. That gave them enough space for 18 rather short holes built by then Greenkeeper David Strath of St. Andrews. The club’s property kept getting larger, and by 1895, it occupied the same general footprint as it has today with the course that measured just over 6,000 yd. It’s unclear exactly what the Roan looked like in 1868 when it was first built by prominent club members, but it’s believed it was a longer hole anywhere between 220 to over 260 yd. The green was initially smaller as well, located more toward the back of its current position. The front section wasn’t expanded forward until around 1890. Then, sometime before 1910, the yardage was reduced to approximately what it is today. The Redan kept evolving. Whoever created it or modified it over the course of these decades, it’s unlikely they’d ever seen a redan fortification or even heard of one. More than anything, the correlation is happen stance. The Holt sits on top links formations with the green perched on a natural bench. Most golf designers, even the early multitasking professionals who frequently served as green keepers, but especially someone like Strath, if it was him, so well acquainted with the large tabletop greens at St. Andrews would have recognized the spot as an obvious place to put or enhance a putting green. So, the Redan is really a product of its placement on the site rather than a hole intentionally designed to emulate specific military principles of offense and defense. The name Redan is believed to have come from a club member who was a veteran of the Crimean War. When he played the new version of it for the first time, he declared he’d rather attack the Redan and Sevastapole again than to have to keep playing this hole. In the age of hickories and gut perches, it simply seemed like an impenetrable design. The name stuck for being such a famous iconic golf hole. The Redan tends to confuse visitors when they first visit North Beric. The blindness and vagueness of the shot is initially disorienting. Even once you get to know the hole, there’s still a certain barren monochromatic lack of definition that only an old link or possibly only a resident of North Beric could love. Compared to many of the world’s equally famous par 3s, like the 15th and 16th at Cypress Point, the 12th at Augusta National, the 17th at Sand Hills, or even the 11th at St. Andrews with the Eden Estuary in the background, the Redan is rather homely. Were it not for Charles Blair Macdonald, the godfather of American golf design, it might have remained just another tough, quirky one-off that golfers stumbled upon in their travels through Scotland. But Macdonald wasn’t interested in the RedAan for its beauty. During the first decade of the 20th century, when he made his survey of the greatest holes in the UK to use as foundations for his new concept course, the National Golf Links of America, Macdonald recognized the Redan as a one-shot hole that had the perfect blend of difficulty, strategy, and flexibility, especially for the equipment of the era. He called it one of the four or five perfect kinds of golf holes, one whose principles could not be improved upon. He was particularly mesmerized by the tilt and orientation of the long putting surface and how it placed stress on incoming shots. When he and Seth Rener, his surveyor and course builder, were examining the site for the national near Southampton, Long Island, they quickly identified a perfect piece of naturally tilting tableland at the center of the property that would be the ideal location for a redan inspired green. That hole, the fourth at National Golf Links, was the first copy of North Barracks Redan outside the UK. Macdonald and especially Rainer would go on to build dozens of Redan holes across the US over the next 15 years. Their variations retained the essential principles of the hole amid the long iron shot played over a bunker to a diagonal green that runs away from the line of play. But they also tinkered with the setups and in doing so they introduced a uniquely American take on the Redan. The first variation was the elimination of the ridge that blocks the view of the green. In almost every instance, McDonald and Rainers or Dans offer partial or whole views of the putting surface, so you can see the ball release and tell if it’s feeding down or across the slope. The second McDonald Rainer variation is the orientation of the green. It looks something like this. So at North Barrack, you have the T here. The line of play is straight through and the green is oriented approximately like this. So this angle, the axis is approximately 30°. Now the farther the hole is placed on the left, the farther the shot into it. But because of the angle is only 30°, you have a little bit more runway to come into the green and you have more area on the front right to miss. McDonald Rainer versions are a little different. This is the line of play. They set these greens more on a 45° axis. [Music] Rotating the green slightly makes the landing area shallower and increases the need to use the contours to feed shots to the back hole locations since the path that the ball needs to travel is more lateral. In fact, the redan that Golf Digest panelists voted as their favorite is the second hole at Somerset Hills in New Jersey. This ran considered one of the best examples with the wide fluid green that sweeps away to the left was created by AW Tillingast prior to 1920. The fourth hole at Riviera in Los Angeles is a longer version designed by George Thomas that tilts off the canyon wall. The redan that I consider the most difficult to play outside the north barrack original is the seventh at Shinikok Hills from William Flynn. Factoring in the typical winds, green speeds, and ominous right side bunker, it can be a demonic hole. The safest way to approach it might be to try to hit it past and through the green off the left and then chip back up from behind. That’s actually not a bad strategy for many USans. Over the last 25 years, a wide variety of designers have taken a shot at designing newerans. The good news is that many of them are available for public play. You don’t need to fly to Scotland or be a member of an old private club to see one. These include the 16th hole at the Leo at Sand Valley in Wisconsin. There are two Redans at Bandon Dunes, including the 17th at Pacific Dunes by Tom Do where you can see the entire putting surface. When you play any good Ran, you recognize right away the genius behind the concept and the versatility of its form. The simple combination of an angled green with a fallway slope behind a troublesome bunker has proven to be timeless and virtually foolproof in its defenses. CB McDonald put his finger on what makes the Redan so challenging. At the ordinary hole of 180 yards, it’s a very bad shot that does not stay on the green, he wrote. At the Redan, it takes an exceedingly good shot to stay anywhere on the green. And to get a putt for two is something to brag about for a week. That assessment hasn’t changed much, especially at the original Redan, the 15th of North Beric. There may be others more beautiful, more visible, more knowable, but there’s only one original that gave the premise to all the others. In its own way, the first Rodan’s mysteries and mystique remain impenetrable. Thanks for watching. If there are other famous holes you’d like to see us break down, please let us know in the comments below.

Welcome to ‘THE Hole At’, where Golf Digest’s Derek Duncan (our go-to for all things golf course architecture) breaks down the hidden histories behind the most famous holes in golf. In this episode, Derek dives into the most copied hole design in golf, the Redan 15th at North Berwick Golf Club. From its original impenetrable design, to early American copies, to becoming one of the most daunting and duplicated holes in the world, Derek explores the fascinating history behind one of the game’s most iconic golf holes.

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Host: Derek Duncan
Producer: Ben Walton
Editor: John Hudson
Audio: Tony Leonardo
Research Producer: Jamie Kennedy
Executive Producer: Christian Iooss

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Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:55 What Is A Redan?
1:48 The Hole Today
3:55 How To Play A Redan
5:13 North Berwick’s Expansion
6:35 The Real Reason It’s Called A “Redan”
8:15 American Copies
12:20 Verdict