Director of Golf Operations

Jeff Hochman

Director of Golf Operations

Change is Good

The new forward tees on the Granite Falls South Course are important changes for all SCG golfers. Maybe for the first time, players can choose to play a course layout ideally suited to their physical abilities. With these new course layouts, what will change will be your enjoyment of the game of golf. However, we don’t want to promise too much. What about that nasty slice which occasionally put your ball in the desert or those bunker shots that didn’t land on the green? They probably won’t change just because you play from the new tees. The new modifications cannot replace lessons and practice. But we can give you a much better chance for success.

Our courses are designed to challenge your golfing skills. We offer fine fairways located in a desert setting, some with sloping areas and many bunkers and lakes, surrounded by a well maintained rough. Not one of these features has been altered by the course’s new tee modifications. So what is the change? You will now have more tee options with 11 layouts of different distances. The tee modifications are designed to allow you to play those same beautiful and challenging courses but from course layouts that are better suited to your evolving physical ability. This close match is important. For example, when you were six or seven years old you wanted to ride a bike. Your folks didn’t buy a racing bike for you because they knew you couldn’t reach the pedals. They gave you a bike with smaller wheels, just right for you. You rode and learned to balance, and you felt like one of the big kids. This smaller bike fit your physical abilities at that time.

Now you can understand golf’s ongoing dilemma, which has endured for over a century. “Grow the Game” has become a mantra for the golf industry. To stay relevant, attracting new golfers is right up there with retaining existing players. But golf courses have lacked enough course layouts to accommodate golfers’ widely diverse physical capabilities and evolving golf skills. So the USGA* and ASGCA** along with a few local golf professionals spent time thinking about how to make golf

New Tees for You

GRANITE FALLS SOUTH COURSE NEW LAYOUT DISTANCES

LAYOUT BY LAYOUT'S OPTIMAL TEE COLOR TOTAL DRIVING YARDS DISTANCE YARDS Black 6,839 236 Black/Blue* 6,642 229 Blue 6,401 221 Blue/White* 6,047 209 White 5,831 201 White/Gold* 5,532 191 Gold 5,214 180 Gold/Red* 4,916 170 Red 4,676 161 Red/Orange* 4,320 149 Orange 4,050 140

*Layout for Combo Tees

appropriate for varying physical abilities. A simple solution emerged. Make golf more inclusive. Create more choices where it starts—at the tee boxes. Add new tee distance options and even a combination of layouts, what we call “combo tees.” Check out the new scorecards for Granite Falls South to see the expanded course layouts. SCG is embarking on an exciting journey as we move to modify all four golf courses to meet new industry standards. Even nongolfers stand to benefit from the changes as our community evolves to match the times and maintain home values.

Which Tee is Right for You?

Each player has to determine the tee distance that suits their game and ability. The accepted method is to start by identifying an average driving distance for each regular and combo course layout. Pros like Jack Nicklaus and Chris Miles, who are also golf architects, found this relationship can be established by dividing the layout’s total length by a common factor for each layout. Nicklaus proposed a factor of 30 with Miles proposing 28. The resulting calculation identified an optimal driving distance in yards for any course layout. In order to apply such a factor for our new South Course, we decided to average those two factors resulting in a factor of 29. We named it the “Hochman Factor” in recognition of all the work that our Director of Golf, Jeff Hochman, has done to make our courses more playable. Simply dividing the number 29 into each of the total yardages for our 11 tee layouts defines the optimal driving distance for each layout. (See Table 1) By applying the Hochman Factor, you can match your average driving distance with the optimal driving distances to determine which course layout/tee color/ distance will provide the best golfing experience for you. Golf is a sport designed to challenge your ability to perform specific golfing skills. The newly-modified South Course will offer an appropriate and realistic challenge for your skills at this unique moment in your life. Your future game scores will probably fall within a range of between birdie to double bogey with the most frequent hole scores at par and bogey. And, you will enjoy the occasional achievement of excellence by meeting and surmounting the difficult challenges the course demands. Successfully meeting these challenges is the true purpose of golf—and it just makes the game more fun. * USGA – United States Golf Association ** ASGCA – American Society of Golf

Course Architects Contributed by the Move Forward Team