of course there's a lot of factors that go into it, but approx how much land is required to create a nice 18 hole course? i've heard from 1-2 acre/hole. how about for a par 72-ish course?

thanks for any input.

How much Land? Jim Land!

That's all the Land you need.

For 18 holes and a par 54 course, you need 15 acres minimum. For a par 72 course you need about 50 acres minimum.

I own 28 acres and I was able to build a par 61 course using about 22 of the acres.

http://www.hoyhoy.com/subweb/coursemap.jpg

Anne...Why did you NOT use the south west corner and the center part of your lot. 18 seems to be out-of-place. Also. What did you see first. What hole or ????? made you say "this has got to work".

With adequate elevation and vegetation to work with you can get by with considerably less land. My home course in western NC's Brushy Mountains has an abundance of both and 18 holes on 12 acres actually leaves a moderate amount of wiggle room for future tweaking. It's not a long course and it's not a trick shot course, but there are a couple or three holes that require big air. Don't know if I succeeded in anything but pleasing myself, but I sure do enjoy it. :cool:

Anne...Why did you NOT use the south west corner and the center part of your lot. 18 seems to be out-of-place. Also. What did you see first. What hole or ????? made you say "this has got to work".



I wanted to use the creek a lot, and I wanted lots of elevation. That happened to be the same because most of the big elevation is near the creek. I also sometimes picked the fairway just because the woods was not so thick, it would be easier to clear, which often meant skidder trails. (The loggers were there about 10 years ago and they took all the biggest trees, and where the skidders went they left trails). The big patch in the center was not used because it was supposed to be hole 18. But I didn't need 18 because I already had 19 holes. And the SW corner was not used because I never got around to it.

My son and just installed 9 holes on 6 acres with a lenth of 2,415. with another 3 holes on 1\2 acre. just for practicing upshots and putting. the 3 holes are called the old course. the new course has a elevation change on 5 holes that is more than 30' from tee to basket.

I know nothing like ramcat ridge.

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I'd think a public course needs a little more room than a private course. It needs greater separation of fairways to reduce overlapping drives; a private course has no issue with this, except in the infrequent tournaments.

Sqeezing a course into minimal acreage tends to force compromises and weaker holes. Designers end up having to use every inch of land, whether optimal or not. It can work---Earlewood in Columbia, SC is a cozy course, but a good one---but it seems to me that at 2 acres per hole there is an opportunity to select and use the best features of the land, and leave sufficient buffers between holes.

PDGA acreage guidelines:
www.pdga.com/documents/AcreageChart.pdf (http://www.pdga.com/documents/AcreageChart.pdf)
Certainly less land can and has been used for several private courses that may have crossing fairways and multiple holes played from the same tee and/or to the same basket.

Yeah I just got done building the best 18 hole course ever on 2.5 acres with 5 baskets ;)

one of the most unique and challenging courses that I have ever played is on 8 acres

I have always thought that Kilborne, in Charlotte, used the heavily wooded land well. It is spaced so that there is no danger on any one hole from another. There was about 30 wooded acres used to create this course. Now I am overlapping a longer course, par 70, over the existing course. It will not be a long par 70, but it can be done in 30 heavily wooded acres. Obviously, the more open the course, the more land would be needed for safety's sake.