If undulations are made of this kind, then there are always plenty of comparatively flat places where the green-keeper can put the flag, and there should never be any necessity to cut the hole on a slope.
A test of a good undulation is that it should be easy to use the mowing machine over it.
If undulations are made of the kind I describe, it is hardly possible to make them too large or too bold.
Perhaps the most aggravating type of undulation is the finicky little hump or side-slope which you don’t see until after you have missed your putt, and then begin to wonder why it has not gone in the hole.
[Illustration: THE HOME GREEN AT SITWELL PARK: An undulating green with a wide choice of places for the hole in the hollows or on the flat.]
An almost equally common delusion is that fairways should be flat. I quite agree that there is nothing worse than a fairway on a severe side-slope, but, on the other hand, there are few things more monotonous than playing every shot from a dead flat fairway. The unobservant player never seems to realise that one of the chief charms of the best seaside links is the undulating fairways, such as those near the club-house at Deal, part of Sandwich, and most of the old course at St. Andrews, where the ground is a continual roll from the first tee to the last green, and where one never has the same shot to play twice; on these fairways one hardly ever has a level stance or a level lie. It is this that makes the variety of a seaside course, and variety is everything in golf.
If one considers St. Andrews hole by hole, it is surprising to find at how many of them the dominating and important incident is associated with an insignificant-looking hollow or bank, often running obliquely to the line of your approach.
In constructing undulations of this kind on inland courses, it is well to make them with as much variety as possible, and in the direction you wish the player to go to keep the fairway comparatively flat, so as to encourage players to place their shots, and thus get in a favourable position for their next.
In this connection plasticine is frequently used for making models of undulations. Plasticine is useful to teach the green-keeper points in construction he would not otherwise understand—in fact, I believe, I was the first designer of golf courses to use it for this purpose. The 14th green at Alwoodley, which was the first one made there, was constructed from a model in plasticine. It has its disadvantages, however, as a course constructed entirely from models in plasticine has always an artificial appearance, and can never be done as cheaply as one in which the green-keeper is allowed a comparatively free hand in modelling the undulations in such a manner that not only do they harmonise with their surroundings, but are constructed according to the various changes in the subsoil discovered whilst doing the work.