Why is the 17th hole on most golf courses a 3 par?
Tradition?
I’m familiar with only two courses, both of them near where my parents live in the Southern Highlands of NSW. At Bowral the 17th hole is a par 4 and at Moss Vale the 17th hole is a par 5.
I never thought that it was. On average there are four par threes on a par 72 course, so one would expect one course in 4.5 would be configured this way just by random chance.
My course has 16 as a par three, 17 a five, and 18 a four. Augusta goes 3,4,4. Pebble Beach goes 4,3,5. St. Andrews is 4,4,4. Cherry Hills is 4,5,5.
I am not saying that you are wrong, just that I haven’t seen this in my experience.
Hmmm…interesting question.
It may have something to do with standard course design rules of thumb. I know that the 10th is never supposed to be a par 3, since it slows down play at the turn (or the start; the 1st shouldn’t be a par 3 either). The finishing hole shouldn’t be one either, which leaves 6 holes for the 2 par 3s that are supposed to be per 9. Since they shouldn’t be close to each other, the 12th or 13th and the 17th are the only real options.
I suspect that the fact that most of the more famous courses have the 17th as a 3 adds to it as well. Kind of a self-fulfulling notion.
Errr…
Make that leaves 7 holes for the par 3s
Last three on my home course go 3,4,5. But I have no idea what % of courses have a 3 on the 17.
Damn, I can’t wait to golf again!
At the White Deer GC in Pennsylvania, where I worked as a teenager, both 18-hole courses had a par-3 as #17. The second 18-hole course was built during the time I worked there, and even us lackeys got to hear about the design decisions involved.
Most 18-hole courses are going to have 12 par-4’s, 4 par-5’s, and 4 par-3’s, adding up to a par-72 course all together. (The reason so few “tour” courses are par-71 or lower is that one or more of the shorter par-5’s are turned into par-4’s for the big hitters.) These days most golf course designers like to vary the course, so that there aren’t a lot of par-4’s in a row. So, it would be rare on your newer courses that the 18th hole would not be a par-4, simply because the designers would rather have that par-3 or par-5 to break up the monotony of par-4 holes in the middle.
I think jk1245 is on to something. When our course at White Deer was designed, one of the biggest concern was “speed of play.” Like all public courses, slow play was and is a problem at White Deer. Par-3’s are the biggest bottleneck on any course, because the golfers on the tee have to wait for the group in front of them to putt out before they can start the hole. Take a look at how White Deer’s designers tackled this problem. The par-3’s are late on in both of the nines–#6 and #8 on the front, #14 and #17 on the back. The hope was that, by the time each group reached those nines, there would be sufficient separation between them, so that the effect of the bottleneck was lessened.
Thus, if #18 is an unfashionable choice for a par-3, and a golf-course designer wants to have the par-3 holes nearer the end of the course, #17 is a good choice.