Fairway Width

[Critterbug]

We are building a course on my parents' land. It's mostly wooded, flat, around 10 acres. We've been roughing in the woods holes and I was curious how wide yall like to cut your fairways. We've been going about 8-10 feet wide, with some tighter spots. Is that a decent width?

 

[Pymm]

Just my two cents but if every fairway is 8-10 or tighter that's pretty punishing. I like a variety of fairway widths, some 15, some twenty, some 10, etc. You could also use low ceilings to mix it up. A 20 foot wide fairway with a low ceiling can still be challenging. It also depends on distance of the holes. If I am trying to throw 300 feet, pretty much my max distance, then a generous fairway is appreciated but I am pretty confident that I can park a putter on a 200 foot hole that's 15 feet wide. If it's 10 feet, not so much. 8 feet should be a gap to hit or a mando or something, not an entire fairway. Also, think of the line. I can hit a hyzer line or straight line with much more accuracy and confidence than I can a anhyzer/forehand line, so maybe widen the fairways on anny holes, tighten them on hyzer holes. I am certain that better disc golfers than me might feel differently and would want it as tight as you can make it. I am a pretty fair rec player, primarily due to my accuracy and putting not driving distance and I feel like what I just outlined describes a lot of courses in my area of NC. I'm sooo envious that you have some land to put a course on. Good luck with it!!

 

[ray1970]

I like my fairways somewhere in the 100-200 foot width. Mostly because that's what I'm used to.

 

[Critterbug]

We're all pretty terrible players, but enjoy building stuff. Once we get a governor housing for the tractor it's really on.

One odd dynamic is that half the family is left handed, so I've been careful to not favor shapes that are comfortable for me, a righty.

We don't have any hole longer than 250 yet and I've been able to par most of them even with our narrow fairways. I'd like them a little wider, but we've been holding off cutting any of the bigger trees until we're pleased with a route.

We've got to clear two more fairways and we'll have our prototype front 9. Once this COVID mess is done, we're getting the land surveyed so we can get into the back part of the property and know what we're working with.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

IMHO: A variety of widths would be optimal. Deciding how wide "the fairways" should be up front is likely to make things feel repetitive.

A few 8 to 10 foot fairways is fine, especially if you can find a way to make one for a hyzer line, one for an Annie or FH line, and one a straight low ceiling shot.

Keep in mind that hole length plays a big part in how tight a fairway "feels." Short, tight, shot-shaping holes are considered fun by many players, and many courses that feature them are rated pretty highly on DGCR.

I recommend avoiding tight fairways on too many of the longer holes. A few long, tight fairways is fine. You want some holes where scoring par isn't a foregone conclusion, and a par feels like an accomplishment. But too many long tight fairways begins to feel more like a beat down, and can kill some of the fun factor.

I also recommend looking for any naturally occurring paths and clearings where things seem a bit more open (i.e. fairways that basically present themselves to you). They look more natural and will probably be easier to maintain.

Ultimately, the property itself will dictate what you can do, and much of the course's personality. But I strongly urge you to avoid using the same concept on the majority of holes.

Also, to live with a hole for a couple of months worth of play, BEFORE you decide to cut any trees down.

 

[Riverdog]

Just make em as wide as they should be. [emoji106][emoji57]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Casey 1988]

We are building a course on my parents' land. It's mostly wooded, flat, around 10 acres. We've been roughing in the woods holes and I was curious how wide yall like to cut your fairways. We've been going about 8-10 feet wide, with some tighter spots. Is that a decent width?

Like others have said yes that is punishing, however it is not the best to have all at one width, make the short holes tighter with longer woods holes more width. Feel it out, if a spot is basically saying put the hole in that spot then do it. But if all you have a scrub trees with bushes and not doing anything will have a wall of stuff type throw or a almost no gap only top power players can throw though then you need to clear out underbrush paths.

This is the lowest basket I recommend for full time outdoor use or you will have a basket that becomes rusty over time due to paint peel and/or needing to either replace rusty chains or the like. Vary easy to add good Galvanized chains to the second row, lots do that later to private/home courses when they want to upgrade or cities/towns will do this to the baskets to have them for public course https://gottagogottathrow.com/colle...ucts/lightning-db-5-18-chain-disc-golf-basket

 

[Critterbug]

Like others have said yes that is punishing, however it is not the best to have all at one width, make the short holes tighter with longer woods holes more width. Feel it out, if a spot is basically saying put the hole in that spot then do it. But if all you have a scrub trees with bushes and not doing anything will have a wall of stuff type throw or a almost no gap only top power players can throw though then you need to clear out underbrush paths.

This is the lowest basket I recommend for full time outdoor use or you will have a basket that becomes rusty over time due to paint peel and/or needing to either replace rusty chains or the like. Vary easy to add good Galvanized chains to the second row, lots do that later to private/home courses when they want to upgrade or cities/towns will do this to the baskets to have them for public course https://gottagogottathrow.com/colle...ucts/lightning-db-5-18-chain-disc-golf-basket

We've had to remove some stuff like you mentioned. This land was logged 40 years ago, it's got mature trees but also a lot of scrubby stuff and holly trees. Our other goal is combined use of the fairways as golf cart trails for my Mom to cruise the grandkids around on.

We're using a mix of Black Hole Light baskets and tone poles made of recycled unistrut and empty refrigerant drums. We move the baskets with the golf cart and put them away in the garage when we're done. I love those DB5 baskets, one of our local courses uses them. That's what we'll likely go with if we go permanent.

 

[InnocentCrook]

....Our other goal is combined use of the fairways as golf cart trails for my Mom to cruise the grandkids around on.

As far as having a course on our property, this might be the biggest perk. My family and I go out for walks/hikes darn near every day, sometimes more than once. (Especially with the current "stay at home" orders.) As my kids are getting older they're starting to take discs as we walk to throw at the different baskets.

 

[curmudgeonDwindle]

Yes, width 'variety' is more interesting, however width, tee through green is also important, certainly as holes get longer.

Or, how might 'situational' width of a hole accentuate the play/strategic value of the hole overall? Common examples would be 'gates' or 'pinch points'.

The width factor, in holes overall, and strategically is an often overlooked factor in developing a course's 'character', assuming of course that one wishes a work of Art - not a McDonald's hamburger...whatever.

 

[BogeyNoMore]

Or, how might 'situational' width of a hole accentuate the play/strategic value of the hole overall? Common examples would be 'gates' or 'pinch points'.

I know what you mean. When I'm about to tee off, I think in terms of the "window(s)" I need to hit.

Something else I meant to say earlier about removing trees. If after many times through, you feel you need to open up a fairway or pinch point, sometimes simply removing a few branches may accomplish the goal, rather than cutting down an entire tree or two. Might even be easier, to boot.

 

[Casey 1988]

We've had to remove some stuff like you mentioned. This land was logged 40 years ago, it's got mature trees but also a lot of scrubby stuff and holly trees. Our other goal is combined use of the fairways as golf cart trails for my Mom to cruise the grandkids around on.

We're using a mix of Black Hole Light baskets and tone poles made of recycled unistrut and empty refrigerant drums. We move the baskets with the golf cart and put them away in the garage when we're done. I love those DB5 baskets, one of our local courses uses them. That's what we'll likely go with if we go permanent.

Yep a local course finished fully in 2007 uses the Lighting DB-5 too that survived a flood on the Missouri river in 2011 in water for 2 months the tops were replaced in 2015 by the better shape Mach III tops of the old course in Oahe Downstream State Park/Rec as they got Mach III in blue that the local club paid for the extra money to have them blue. Local club as well as got funds for a Practice basket, a modern Mach II and small teepad they use for a tournaments as a small temp extra hole and for things like ace race. in honor of a Dead Disc Golf player I knew from High school that if it were not for finding Disc Golf he would have killed himself the way his brother did in a drunk driving accident at age 21.

However the top chains did not survive the flood in 2011 on the Lighting DB-5 as a few years later in 2014 they were rusty, both sets not just the inner set put on 6 months later that was only Zinc Coated and the top was starting to get rust due to that flood and being underwater for 2 months but the rest is today still in good shape considering all the baskets are from 2006-2007. Yeah we used big squares of Concrete to put the baskets stand into as at the time they were going to try to make the baskets into portable in one section where they needed to remove them due to a festival that happens all but most likely 2020 but since the flood they replaced the bottom bolts with ones that were sheet metal screws and they have not been able to remove the baskets so they cover those ones

 

[DavidSauls]

Two somewhat contradictory thoughts:

(1) There is no one answer---there should be a variety of fairway widths through the course. Otherwise, it just gets redundant. So some very tight to thread with precision, some wide enough to allow a full-power throw, and some in between for players to ponder the risk.

(2) However wide you like them. You are your main clientele. If you enjoy throwing down fairways barely wide enough to walk through, go with that.

 

[curmudgeonDwindle]

Some historical precedent to this question is in the history of Ball Golf.

There was a minor school of design, pejoratively referred to as the 'Runway' school, where the primary differences between holes was length. All courses in this school had a very uniform look and feel - no doubt created in part to serve the Pro desire to 'eliminate variables'. I find that many disc golf courses in the western part of the US exhibit echoes of this style...

Golfers quickly learned how little character these courses had and how boring they quickly became. Designers adapted pretty quickly and this school faded away, but lesson learned, and hopefully going forward we may avoid the errors of the past...fwiw

 

[BryanC]

I would struggle on 200+ foot holes with a single line that is 8-10' wide. If there are multiple lines on the same hole with 8-10' gaps between the trees, that is a different story.

 

[Uno Mas Tiempo]

As John Houck has said, the thickness (overall difficulty) of the rough adjacent to the fairway is also a primary factor in determining the width of any "fairway"... vs " good way" or "not fairway". Thick rough with wider fairway vs sparse rough with more restrictive, narrower fairways.

 

[joecoin]

Width alone does not a "fair way" make. Unless it is board flat and dry.

Elevation, water hazards, rough and frequency/force of wind need to be taken into account.

 

[Cgkdisc]

My rule of thumb is players of a skill level a route is designed for should be able to make it through that gap/route more than 2/3 of the time on average. If it's less than that, then the route becomes a coin flip (50/50) and not a reasonable route for that skill level, although it may be okay for a higher player skill level. So if you can't widen or reshape that fairway, then moving the tee shorter or at a shallower angle would be ways to reach the 2/3 minimum for that skill level.

 

[Critterbug]

We haven't played or worked on our course since it got hot, but Dad and I both bought bigger saws and he bought a 4x4 utility vehicle with dump bed and winch. As soon as it cools off a little more the course is fixing to get a lot bigger.

We've played the existing 9 holes enough to know which trees need to go. We've also collected enough empty refrigerant drums to make another five or six targets. The first and ninth greens have logs stacked between trees by the previous owner that make for really fun obstacles.

 

[Casey 1988]

Also the slope is another factor within determining fairway width on a wood hole. As is does the fairway bend at all.