Mike Clayton and conflict of interest.

By now you can tell that I don’t think much of many of the changes Mike Clayton made at Peninsula Country Golf Club. A great number of the changes seem rather pointless to me other than serving as change for change’s sake.

It would be really nice to think that the changes Mike Clayton made were truly for the benefit of the club, and that my disagreeing with them is simply a case of an inferior golfing knowledge on my part (or at least a different point of view). However, the sad thing is that a purely self-interest motivation on Mike Clayton’s part cannot be ruled out.

Mike Clayton, through his Golf Design company was acting as both consultant and contractor to the club. This is a clear conflict of interest.

If you want convincing, consider 4^th and 5^th South as just one example. If Mike Clayton had nothing to gain by changing a short par 5 followed by a long par 4 into a long par 4 followed by a short par 5, then his recommendation to make such a change would be above reproach. However, Mike Clayton the consultant, making this suggestion and convincing the club to proceed resulted in Mike Clayton the contractor making a motza on the actual construction work. Nice work if you can get it!

I find it distressing that the Committee either didn’t see this as a conflict of interest, or chose to ignore it. And from what I’ve seen of how the club runs, I’d bet my own motza that their actions in so doing were overwhelmingly influenced by Gary Richardson, Mike Clayton’s good mate.

Mike Clayton - Conclusion

I will finish up my views on Mike Clayton’s changes with a bit of an overall summary. There’s three points I’d like to make.

First of all, there are too many (one would be too many) cases of tees being too close to the preceding green. Examples of this are 6, 7, 12 South and 3, 8, 9, 14, 17 North.

Sooner or later someone standing on a tee is going to get bonked on the head by someone playing to the adjacent green. I hope the club has good insurance.

Secondly, golf is after all a game, and the purpose of a game is to be enjoyed. After Mike Clayton’s handiwork, there are far too many instances of the course handing the player bad breaks, thereby diminishing the enjoyment of the game. I’m thinking of all the times a well-hit shot can catch a slope and run into trouble.

For example, the tee shot and approach shot on 1 South, the domed shaped green on 2 South with slopes into the bunkers on either side, the runoffs into bunkers on either side of 3 South, and so on. You get my drift.

I’ll finish with a couple quotes from Dr Alister MacKenzie (who designed Augusta National and Royal Melbourne golf courses, just to name two).

“Remember that golf is a game and no player ever gets any fun in searching for lost balls.”

- the thick rough very close to the fairways on both our courses leads to far too much searching for balls.

“Most courses have too many bunkers. They should be constructed from a strategic and not from a penal point of view.”

- way too many penal bunkers, ones that catch good hits.

Finally, I want to discuss what I believe constitutes a conflict of interest for Mike Clayton – stay tuned!

Mike Clayton (11)

15 North.

A very poorly designed hole. With the tee shot, the player needs to avoid the bunker on the LHS of the fairway while avoiding the water hazard on the RHS. The tee shot landing area for the average golfer slopes steeply from left to right into the water hazard. Many a well-struck drive will end up in the hazard if they are just a couple of degrees right of where they are aimed.

This is bad enough, but there is an additional problem. The rise in the fairway prevents the golfer from observing the final resting place of the drive. A tee shot that is well-struck but heading towards the RHS of the fairway will therefore not be observable towards the end of its journey.

I have seen many players who have not found their ball, make the assumption that it must be in the water hazard and take a drop near the hazard. This is incorrect procedure. The Rules of Golf state that in order to take such relief, “it must be known or virtually certain that the ball is in the hazard”.

There is a Decision on what constitutes “known or virtually certain” which you can read for yourself, but it basically says that you need to either have physically seen the ball go into the hazard, or alternatively, there is no place the ball could physically be other than in the hazard.

Neither of these applies to this hole. You can’t see the ball go into the hazard, and it is always possible for the ball to be hidden in the long grass and bushes adjacent to the hazard. Therefore, if you’re a stickler for the rules, the correct procedure is to treat the ball as lost and take a stroke and distance penalty.

This is far too great a penalty for a good drive that was hit only slightly to the right of the required line.

18 North.

Yet another badly designed fairway. I have seen a number of strong drivers hit drives well to the right of the fairway bunker, only to have the ball catch the slope and dribble back down as much as 15m into the bunker. Once again, a good shot is punished by the course.

Mike Clayton (10)

13 North.

Of course, a par 4 as short as this one needs to have some protection and generally speaking, a small tough green is a valid option. However, I have heard it said that even Mike Clayton reckons he made this green too small (when you consider the edges of the green cannot be held with an approach shot). Again, I’ve often seen people putt off the green.

What I’ve heard is that Mike Clayton says if he had his time again, he would have enlarged the green by about a metre or so around the edges. Well, if he reckons he got it wrong, then if he had any integrity at all, he would fix the problem at this own expense. Or at least, not take the fee he was paid for this hole. After all, the club is paying him as a consultant to get these things right, not to stuff things up.

14 North.

Yet another hole which is as much a test of luck as it is a test of golf. Particularly if the pin is located in the RH half of the green, in order for the tee shot to hold the green, it must be hit within a metre of two of the correct distance. Otherwise, if short it will roll down the false front, or if slightly too long, roll down the slope at the back and off the green.

Course Maintenance (3)

Anybody playing at Peninsula in recent weeks will not have failed to notice the disgraceful condition of the greens and bunkers. Is this really the best we can do? Yes, we have had adverse weather conditions recently, but other nearby courses present themselves in much better condition.

The condition of the greens and bunkers would not be up to local public course standard, let alone one of the “leading private golf Clubs in Australia” (I quote from the President’s September letter). To add insult to injury, a number of greens show signs of machinery damage. Workmen on their machines are damaging the greens! Fantastic.

In that letter, Doug Provis, El Presidente of Peninsula asks how we can increase membership. Well, improving the condition of the courses would be a darn good place to start, Doug!

And who takes responsibility for the poor condition of the course? We have a number of people making excuses, but no one taking actual responsibility. Where does the buck stop? The superintendent, the general manager, the committee? It’s got to stop somewhere. All I’ve seen so far is people ducking responsibility.

Mike Clayton (9)

I was very pleased to read that 9 South green shape and surrounds are to be modified in conjunction with its resurfacing. It remains to be seen how good the changes will be, but damn good idea, in this blogger’s view!

Yet again, this shows that Mike Clayton’s opinion is not the be-all and end-all of golf course design, and begs the question about how well our considerable money was spent in his employment.

The story goes (if I’m wrong, please speak up) that at the time of the course “modernisation”, the committee requested Mike Clayton to modify this hole, but he said he thought it was a good design and “refused” to change it. Really! He refused to change it. Any half self-respecting committee would have said change it Mike, or we’ll get someone else. I mean, who’s paying who?

But of course, that didn’t happen. Weak committee at the time, controlled by Gary Richardson, whose friendship with Mike Clayton is a clear conflict of interest. But, has anything changed nowadays?

Mike Clayton (8)

OK, it’s time to start talking about Mike Clayton’s golf course design at Peninsula Country Golf Club again – the North course.

1 North.

My only comment is regarding the pin location board at the first tee. What’s the point of having such a thing if it’s wrong half the time?

3 North.

A very large proportion of second (or third) shots on this hole will find the collection area on the RHS of the fairway about 100m out. Doesn’t matter if you hit a good solid shot straight down the middle or a topped shot down the left or right. Chances are it will end up amongst the diviots in the collection area and you have to have a fair bit of luck to get a clean lie.

Any hole that has such a collection area is badly designed in my view. Again, it means that luck comes into the outcome far too much (with respect to the lie), as well as the fact that the fairway in that area sustains much more than the normal amount of wear and tear.

6 North.

The uphill, flat green makes a difficult approach shot with anything other than a pretty short iron (particularly if the pin is tucked behind the greenside bunker). This means you have to be fairly aggressive with the tee shot if you decide to play to the right of the fairway bunkers, or extremely accurate/lucky if you play to the left.

The landing area to the left of the fairway bunkers is quite small and slopes steeply down into the bunkers. If you drive to the right, the shot must avoid or clear the first fairway bunker and the tree overhang just to the right of the women’s tee. If you achieve both of these then you run the risk of going too far and being stymied by the large tree on the right of the fairway.

Whenever I play this hole, I always feel I need a fair amount of luck as well as hitting good shots to achieve par. I think the hole would be greatly improved if one of the following were done:

- the landing area to the left of the fairway bunkers increased in size and flattened

- the tree overhang near the women’s tee removed

- the first fairway bunker removed

- the large tree on the RH side of the fairway removed.

This would make this hole, again, more a test of golf than a test of luck.

9 North.

I’ve no problem with this hole as such, just worth commenting that the recent changes made to the hole once again support my view that Mike Clayton is not the golf master of the Universe at Peninsula that a number of committee and Gary Richardson would have us believe.

12 North.

In my view, the most difficult hole at the club. The severe ridgeback fairway will severely punish any tee shot or second shot that is even slightly off-line. I have no problem whatsoever with difficult holes, provided they are fair. That is, they reward a good shot and don’t unduly punish shots that are ever so slightly off. I don’t know of anyone who likes this hole and what’s the point of that? It might give Mike Clayton a devious sense of gratification to know that all golfers at the club struggle with this hole, but I would have thought building a good, fair, albeit tough hole would be more in line with good golf course design than a ridiculously unfair one.

Course Maintenance (2)

The recent heavy downpours have lead to problems with the condition of the course that are unavoidable. However, I make the following points.

We have too many bunkers located at the bottom of steeply sloped fairways. Just a couple of examples – fairway bunker on 10 South, fairway bunker on 18 North. These bunkers not only catch too many shots, but get excessively flooded and damaged by water flowing down the slope of the fairway. Nice course design Mike!

Access to the fairway from the tee on 9 North has become impossible without having to walk through ankle deep mud. It is literally impossible to get to the fairway without getting mud in your shoes. If it was me in charge, I would put a priority on putting something in place so members could avoid mud foot. Even just a couple of planks temporarily across the mud would do the trick.

I see they have replaced much of the fairway grass harvested from the left hand side of 18 South. However, they have filled in the area close to the tee and left the far area bare. I mean, fair suck of the sauce bottle, who the hell is in charge? Wouldn’t plain common sense say that it would be better to replace the area where balls actually finish than the area where balls never go?