47 STRATEGY shot patterns, or their ‘dispersion’ in the code of the system; that is to say, by how far they might typically miss a target. Fawcett counsels that aiming at a point within your common range of dispersion from a hazard is a fool’s game. And it is this insight that has such massive implications for strategic design. No more ‘just slipping by’ a bunker to gain an optimal angle of approach. Keep away from the hazards. Architect Steve Smyers of Smyers Craig Coyne, himself a lifelong elite amateur golfer, has been thinking about this for a long time. “I built a golf course in the 1990s that got a lot of recognition,” he says. “In the early 2000s I played in a tournament there – it was a regional event, and there were a lot of good players, especially collegiate ones. I ended up winning the tournament! While I was driving home, full of myself, I thought about all the strategic design elements I had put in that I had ignored! And every time I took on a hazard, I had got into trouble. “My next assignment was to rebuild Isleworth. Tiger was based there, and my assignment was to make the course somewhere that he could use to prepare for championships. At the time, my son was a first-team AllAmerican, and he caddied for me at a US Senior Amateur qualifier. On one hole, he said to me, ‘Dad, just aim at the rough – there’s no trouble there.’ There was always trouble on one side and nothing on the other, so I found myself aiming at the rough on every hole. It made no sense to me, but I was free to swing. “Scott Fawcett was just coming up with his stuff, and I have been an avid student of his philosophy ever since. Scott told me, ‘All the college kids are doing this – it’s what they’re being taught to shoot the lowest scores.’ I remembered my very first college event at the University of Florida. There was a Cape hole, and our coach got us in for a team meeting and told us, ‘I don’t want to see any of you in that water’. Recently I played in a tournament with my son, and for the first two days, I was making really bad decisions every time I missed a fairway. On days three and four, I started making better ones. It was just a question of practice. “This isn’t new. I saw Bobby Jones interviewed one time and he said, ‘I always give myself the largest margin for error to stay away from trouble’. In Golf My Way, Jack Nicklaus was talking about how to play a golf hole. The hole had water on the right side, and Nicklaus aimed down the left side of the fairway. Even if he was in the rough, he could manage it OK. All the great players intuitively played that way.” Photo: Joel Marklund/ The Masters Water beside the green of Augusta’s par-four eleventh heavily influences players’ approach shots during the Masters
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