‘I’m a big fan of 12 holes’

“The Open started with 12 holes. Why don’t we just push that?” That’s the view of one of Britain’s greatest ever golfers as he said shorter formats were the future of the sport.

In an exclusive interview for GBQ TV, produced by the PGA, Sir Nick Faldo said he was a “huge fan” of shorter courses, explaining he’d spent the last two decades fighting the fashion of long layouts that take too much time to play.

“I’ve been pushing that for years and it’s been blooming difficult, because you go to a hotel and they go, ‘we want an 18-hole championship course’,” he said.

“I say, ‘It’s not going to be championship, you haven’t got the room’. And you go, ‘why don’t you have a nice 12 holes?’. ‘No, we’ve got to have 18’.

“We’ve been fighting that. It’s taken 20-plus years but we’re finally getting people to go, ‘you know what? 18 is a lot. I can’t disappear from the family for six hours’. Pop down, do 9 holes. Do 12.

“I’m a big fan of 12 holes, because you can do two sixes. Do another one and there’s your 18. The Open started with 12 holes. It’s a good story. I’m trying to get the R&A to back me on that one because I’m saying, ‘you started that way. Why don’t we just push that?’

“That will happen more. I’m doing a project up at Yellowstone, up in Montana. We went in there, we found 27 holes and we’re going to do 9 holes for the kids.

“I said I wanted wall-to-wall fairway. You can basically top the thing and off it will go and you just have some fun. They loved it. That’s going to be a really cool project.

“That’s really bringing the whole family to go and be entertained by golf.”

Sir Nick added 9-holes was much more convenient for him to play these days and people needed to understand that short did not mean easy.

“People with knowledge in the game get it,” he said. “I could build a 9-hole course where you shoot 8-under and I could build a 9-hole course where you might shoot 3-over. It doesn’t mean a short course is not worth playing.

“As I get older, I love 9-holes. It’s a great distance to go. It’s perfect for me now.”

In the GBQ TV episode, Sir Nick addressed the sustainability demands on golf – adding his company had been ahead of the curve when it came to environmental concerns.

He said: “We’ve been working on the eco side of golf for decades now. The best way of saying it is golf is a lot greener than people think it is. The old days of chemicals and pesticides are well and truly gone.

“We understand so much more. Every time you make a pond, it’s for the ducks and not for the golfers. We’ve got rice fields in Cambodia. They put the buffalo in there and 20 per cent of the rice goes to the hotel and 80 per cent goes to the village.

“That’s all part of it. Golf is very green.”

Sir Nick also talks about his renowned Faldo Series, which has helped produce a host of top-class stars including Tyrrell Hatton, Rory McIlroy and Yani Tseng, as well as discussing his career in golf business and how he became such a match play phenomenon in the Ryder Cup.

You can watch the interview here.