Do great courses produce great champions?

[redanman]

Do great courses become that way because great players play there?

[Paul Richards]

redanman:

I don't believe that great courses become that way because great players play there.  I think that the challenges presented to great players by the great courses let the "cream rise to the top", so to speak.

For instance, in the four Western Opens hosted by Beverly CC, the champions were:

1910 Chick Evans
1963 Arnold Palmer (in a 3-way Monday play-off over Jack Nicklaus and Julius Boros)
1967 Jack Nicklaus
1970 Hugh Royer

Beverly produced three great champions in its four-years of hosting the Western.  That's a pretty good track record.

[redanman]

Paul, what I'm getting at is that the better courses usually are picked for the tone-a-mints that these guys usually win. There are exceptions, too

Sam Snead won 6 Greensboros..........
Tiger won at Valhalla (yccch)........
Payne Stewart won at Kemper..........
Geiberger (I think) won at Columbine in Denver (This course does everything but go woof woof.....)

As for the Old Course, very few courses have a perfect record. (Sorry, but history will remember John Daly as a great player who was troubled, and he may be coming out of that.  What a combination of skills, sheeeeeeesh! I think we are to still see his best.

But back to the topic,
Generalities work, generally......

[GarySmith]

Redanman,

No big deal, but January won at Woof Woof CC. Geiberger won at Firestone.

Is emotional excellence part of a truly great golfer?

[kilfara]

A few other anecdotal points to raise about great courses which have produced champions of questionable greatness - sticking to the US Open and PGA, because the quality of British Open courses is more uniformly high and their sample sizes of winners generally larger and more encompassing:

--My favorite US Open course is and probably always will be Shinnecock. The two players to win at Shinnecock (other than James Foulis in 1896) are Ray Floyd and Corey Pavin. Both players with much to recommend them, but Pavin will ultimately fall far short of "greatness", and Floyd's position in history is debatable - I'm impressed by his record, but it certainly doesn't reach the Nicklauses of the world or even the Watsons.

--Merion's four US Open winners include two of the greats of the game - Hogan and Trevino - but they also include Olin Dutra and David Graham. (Bonus points may be awarded for Bobby Jones's two US Amateurs here.)

--I can't really comment upon the greatness of Riviera as a golf course, but its three major winners are Hogan, Hal Sutton and Steve Elkington.

--Oakmont has a pretty solid roster of major winners, including Sarazen, Shead, Hogan and Nicklaus. Tommy Armour and Johnny Miller's places in history may be debated, and Ernie Els's is yet to be determined, but what about Larry Nelson, John Mahaffey or Sam Parks Jr.?

At the other extreme, what about one-off or two-off postwar venues, greatness of design to be debated, which produced great champions?

--Bellerive: Gary Player (1965 US Open) and Nick Price (1994 PGA)

--1974 PGA at Tanglewood (NC): top three of Trevino, Nicklaus, and a 62-year-old Sam Snead (! - one of my all-time "how did THAT happen?" moments)

--1963 PGA at Dallas AC: Nicklaus

--1948 PGA at Norwood Hills (St. Louis): Hogan

--1946 PGA at Portland CC (Oregon): Hogan

In the middle of these two extremes is Cherry Hills - I can almost hear the USGA talking heads after Palmer's thrilling 1960 US Open win saying, "Maybe we should hold another one of these here," and then after Andy North's 1978 victory saying, "Then again, maybe not..." (Vic Ghezzi also beat out Byron Nelson in a 38-hole final in the 1938 PGA.)

I recognize fully that these examples were chosen to buttress my case, and that equally good examples could be produced to demonstrate the validity of the Conventional Wisdom. (Minor point: we keep forgetting, as I have, that Lanny Wadkins won the 1977 PGA at Pebble Beach!) But I think there are enough exceptions as to cast significant doubt upon the CW.

Thus endeth my crusade. (Smiley face edited out by Mr. Kelly.)

Cheers,
Darren

[redanman]

I completely understand your point;

Oakland Hills (Andy North?), Olympic Club (Jack Fleck?), and many others haven't produced the greatest of champions.  As much as I love Medinah, until Tiger, it's list wasn't so hot, at least as far as the Open was concerned.

Does anybody subscribe to the last-Ryder-Cup/Curtis Strange/horses-for-courses-theory?  How does this fit into the "weak champions" list thread?

[Paul Richards]

Redanman:

My apologies.  I filled out the last reply with your name, instead of mine.  I meant to address it to you, not from you.

Another thought here - why does the PGA consistently produce the "weakest" champs?  All the guys that win one major in their career seem to do it here.  Is it because of the courses the PGA is played on?  Any thoughts?

[GarySmith]

To me, the greatness of Shinnecock is not so much in the winners (though much can be said for both of them) but in the fact that all sorts of players came down the stretch in both of the modern tournaments with chances to win. You had faders and drawers of the ball, low and high ball hitters, and power golfers and great short game artists. In '86 you had truly great shotmakers like Trevino and Wadkins in the stretch, short game guys like Stewart and Floyd, and power in Norman. That tournament had a NINE way tie among different types with nine holes to go. Both modern tournaments there were thrilling.

Shinnecock is not the plodder's course used all too often in the U.S. Open.

[Ken_Cotner]

As one who "minored" (nice verb, eh?) in Math in college, I have to chime in...

I'm with Darren -- the popular credo regarding great winners on great courses is a classic example of anecdotal evidence.  I doubt it holds up to close scrutiny.  Of course, I'm not about to do the research...

Ken "Math was too hard my senior year, so I switched to Economics -- nice and fuzzy" Cotner

[kilfara]

By the way, just thought I should clarify one point in this thread, about the following statement I made earlier:

All I offered to do better than Snead is place the champion golfers of history into their historical context from a statistical perspective. Maybe I can't, but my historical knowledge and analytical prowess will stand me in very good stead when attempting the task, and my very distance from many of the golfers involved is likely to make me a more dispassionate judge of historical virtue than Snead is.

It's not just me of whom I think this to be true; I think it's true of quite a few people on this list and elsewhere who don't have any experience of playing golf at the highest level. There's a lot to be said for the detached perspective of history! (In any event, I wasn't trying to be as arrogant as it may sound!)

Cheers,
Darren

[Dan Kelly]

Darren --

Clarification appreciated. :}

Also much appreciated: the knowledge of how to make unlimited numbers of :}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}:}: ...!

[Dan Kelly]

My 10-year-old daughter is sitting with me here in the den, watching "The New Yankee Workshop" and, now, laughing her head off at her silly Dad, who was showing her how to make smily faces. (No wonder Dad can't make a good breakfront, the way Norm can -- or even a bad breakfront!)

Let's try that again:

Darren --
Clarification appreciated.  

Also much appreciated: the knowledge of how to make unlimited numbers of   ...!

Fingers crossed...  

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