Golfers all over the world have a fascination with short courses, or if you prefer, par three courses. They carry with them a sense of "fun practice." I remember as a kid playing the short course at Cottonwood Creek Golf Club and the thrill it provided. I wanted to play it more than the course itself, or for that matter, any course. At that age, fun was the priority and if I could do that and play golf at the same time I was all in. Now, as a student, the short course still provides the same fun as it did years ago, but my appreciation for it, and short courses in general, has grown immensely. Time and money, simply put, are undebatable reasons to love short courses. Time and money are huge areas of debate in golf's seemingly dwindling popularity and one of their solutions, short courses, is often overlooked.
I play the short course at Cottonwood Creek about twice a month. I bring a wedge and putter and play a quick nine in about 30 minutes by myself or if I play with some friends, we may set up a game and take a few more minutes to play. You almost can't beat that, if I were to play at a four hour pace on the course that would be two and a half holes compared to nine holes on a short course. It's not just the time it takes to play, but also the time it takes out of my day. If I don't have class till mid-morning or have a gap between classes, I can swing out to the course and practice golf without circling around the same hole on the putting green for twenty minutes or hitting the same chips over and over.
I'm in college, I don't want to spend a lot of money but I also want to play golf, and if you work, odds are you probably don't want to spend a lot of money either, so the short course provides an ideal middle ground. At Cottonwood, the sign says that rounds are either $2 or $5 depending on age, they really don't even charge you though, and its still cheaper than a medium bucket of balls. Even if they did charge, it still worth it for the fun.
So why don't more courses have short course? It's simple, our current culture in golf is focused on the structure of having a range, chipping green, and putting green. While these certainly aren't bad, they do add to the expense of maintaining the course making it almost not worth it to add a short course if property allows. In my opinion, the dark age of golf course architecture extends far beyond the course and into the culture of golf. We've grown dependent on the range and the structure it provides in aesthetics and routine. There lack of creativity and options in dark age architecture is also apparent in practice facilities, targets every fifty yards and when it rains players hit off the mats. It's a sad reality, land that could be used to let players be creative, hit fun shots, and actually play golf turns into a fifty by three hundred yard space for repetitive use. It doesn't take up that much room to have a short course either, in fact at Cottonwood Creek the short course takes up about 100,000 less square feet than the range. The short course doesn't have to be kept in immaculate shape like The Needler at Whispering Pines or the Spieth Lower 40 at UT Golf Club, it just needs to be able to let players play reasonable golf. Let's make golf more accessible and a little less structured. It'll be worth it.
