Chapter Four Greens

Tom Doak’s green complexes are interesting to analyse, because most of them have some features in common that could help the understanding of his way of thinking about design.

From the beginning of golf architecture, slopes on greens have tent to reduce because the enhancement in mowing equipment has brought an increasing in the speed of the ball on the surface; moreover the desire of amateur to have the same green condition of professionals’ tournaments on their home course, forced architect to decrease greens’ movement, in order to design playable surfaces.
Tom Doak is one of the first person in today’s golf architecture, that tried to invert this trend, he many time exaggerates slopes, forcing green keepers to have on their greens cutting heights comparable with those used in the 1930s.