GREEN ACRES

IN moments of trial--when a sliced drive carries out of bounds or a topped iron shot skitters into the rough--golfers are apt to explode into club-throwing wrath and curse the fiends who laid out so careless a maze.

Nothing could be more unfair. Nearly all the nation's 5,000 golf courses, with their green acres of barbered landscape, are carefully planned tests of skill. Artful purpose goes into the spotting of the bunkers and traps, the contours and creeks and greens of well-planned holes such as those pictured on the next four pages.

In the U.S., no man has been more successful in the science of designing golf courses than Robert Trent Jones, 48. A onetime tournament player (until ulcers forced him to relax) and something of an expert in surveying, hydraulics, horticulture and agronomy, Landscape Architect Jones has quietly masterminded a revolution in the design of golf courses. Before he came on the scene, most American courses were built on the "penal principle." Hazards were everywhere, to punish any player whose shots strayed from the straight & narrow.

Jones believes that golfers should be given strategic alternatives. He sets sand traps, trims rough and crooks fairways so that high-handicap players can fire a safe, conservative route to the green. But he always puts in a challenge for the expert, a long carry over trees or water to a good approach position, a reward for accuracy and daring. He lays out rolling, contoured greens where pins can be placed in the open or tightened up behind protecting bunkers.

In a sense, the last 25 years have been a continuing duel between golfers and golf-course architects. As the golfers kept scoring lower and lower--thanks, in part, to improved equipment--the architects had to think up new ways to keep the courses from getting too easy. With balanced, steel-shafted clubs and hopped-up golf balls, good players were going out on established courses and easily smacking their tee shots past once-dangerous hazards. Duffers and mediocre golfers were running into all the trouble. Architect Jones has been forced to drain swampland, dam creeks and rearrange sand dunes in his continuing effort to lay out holes with both character (i.e., a combination of problems and pleasure) and beauty. He always tries for the balance that will satisfy the average amateur and try the skill of the professional.

When he was remodeling the 4th at Baltusrol (top, opposite page), Jones put so much new character into the hole that club members objected. Now the hole was far too tough, they said. Politely, Jones disagreed. Next time he played a round with the chairman of the construction committee and the club pro, Jones stepped to the 4th tee, walloped an iron shot to the green, and watched it drop into the cup on the first bounce.

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