Discussion: Course Planning Resources

At the 2008 Canadian Champs in New Brunswick I gave a presentation on course planning at the COF Conference. A few people asked if I would put the PowerPoint presentation onto the web. I've finally done this - the link is on the new Barebones Course Planning Resources page.

On this page, beside my presentation - and much more useful - are links to a series of four articles by Barry Elkington about setting the four 'lowest' courses for the kids and beginners. Excellent stuff - well worth reading.

Nice Adrian. I was sorry to miss the presentation (way too much other stuff on my plate at the time...), but am very grateful that you took the time to put the files onto the web. Really good stuff!

Great presentation, AZ. Thanks for putting it up. Can you post the example courses too?

Very good stuff. Thanks for posting the link.

One of the slides says:

Mistakes are most often made on:
?First control
?Second control
?Second-to-last control

Is that based on some sort of analysis or is it common knowledge?

It is possibly an old wives tale - I'm not sure. The main bits of the powerpoint presentation are based on a talk given at O-Ringen Clinics a few years ago by a top Swedish course setter. He mentioned that tendency to make mistakes at those controls but I don't remember if he backed it up with statistics - or maybe I imagined it all. I've noticed it stands up fairly well to informal observation - but I've never got right into it.

On this page ... are links to a series of four articles by Barry Elkington about setting the four 'lowest' courses for the kids and beginners. Excellent stuff - well worth reading.

Excellent indeed. The white course article should be required reading for all course-setters. I can't count the number of times I've seen these common sense principles violated on white courses.