Yardage Markers

[Dan King]

I got involved in this thread because someone (was it you?) repeated the myth that yardage speeds up play. Then my opinion was asked about yardage in general. I stated my opinion. I think there is practically no chance that yardage will go away because it is my opinion it should. If I were "King of the World" there would be things I’d go after long before yardage. It’s just one of many pet peeves.

That means that the 99%, or whatever it is, of golf courses that lack caddies would have no yardage markers at the tee, in the fairway or on the scorecard. It would only be in the elite world of golf you aspire to that a golfer could get any information. And only I might add by paying for it.

Not 99%, I’d want it to be 100%.  And I probably don’t have a problem with yardage on the scorecard.  

You are basing my aspiration to elite golf on what?

You neglect the average joe muni golfer who justs wants to know how long the next par three is. Am I reading this correctly or am I missing something?

Hardly.  Joe Muni golfer will develop a talent for eyeballing yardage. The golfer who often takes a caddie will not develop this talent, giving the advantage to Joe Muni.

Like I said, what you are generally paying for with a caddie is local knowledge. Why does a caddie giving unique information bother you more with yardage than strategy or reading greens?

Based on what?" If this is JUST your opinion, then is it also JUST a preference

Based on my job as "King of the World."

Dan King
dking@danking.org

quote:"With reference to the reported world’s record rebound of a golf ball from the head of a Scotch caddie which appeared in the home golfing papers, I beg to inform you that whilst playing the 7th hole at the Premier Mine course (Transvaal) on 28th September, my ball struck a native caddie (who was standing 150 yards away at the side of a tree just off the line of the fairway) on the forehead just above the right eye. The drive in question was one of those so dear to a golfer, a hard raking shot. The ball -- a Colonel -- rebounded back in a direct line 75 yards (distance measured). Strange to relate, but beyond a slight abrasion of the skin, the native was not affected at all. Therefore, you will readily observe the record of the Scotsman is easily outclassed.
--Edward Stanward, (In a letter to Golf Monthly{/i], 1914

[TEPaul]

"Why does a caddie with unique information bother you more with yardage than....?"

I think it bothers Mike O'Neill because a  caddy then has that information and noone else does, so logically you need to hire a caddy to get it! We are now many many decades past that now.

Yardage is here to stay Dan! Again if you want to make the point that golf was once played faster before anyone thought about yardages (a very long time ago) then I guess you have a point there.

But that's not the way it is today and it never will be again! So I couldn't agree more with JamieS, that if that's the way it is then give them the goddamn information as simply and easily as possible. If you don't give it to them or you insist on taking it away from them (only to be the esoteric purview of the caddy) obviously you can understand that it will create a complete mess and golf will take far longer.

The Dan "King of the world" idea who can change the culture of the game and dictate how golfers should play is a nice humorous whim---but that's all it is.

[Dan King]

I think it bothers Mike O'Neill because a caddy then has that information and noone else does, so logically you need to hire a caddy to get it! We are now many many decades past that now.

The point I’m trying to make is why do you ever hire a caddie, beyond the bag-toting stage? Isn’t it for the caddie’s local knowledge? Isn’t the caddie going to help you with strategy, yardage, reading greens, etc…?

I don’t think there are many people in this world that hate slow play more than me. If anyone could convince me covering a course with yardage would actually speed up play, I’m going to be a big supporter. But I believe the more yardage you give golfers the more they are going to want. They’re going to want exact yardage to every spot on the course. I think it’s going to be a mess, with 18 handicappers trying to figure out if they are 240 or 242 yards from some hazard.  

Golfers losing the ability to judge yardage is another nail in the coffin of the essence of golf, but I’d gladly trade that for faster golf. I just think y’all have bought into the myth of yardage and aren’t basing it on anything. I’m not going to be so easily convinced that the result of more yardage will be speed.

This months Maxim Magazine had a little blurb on Ginger, the new scooter that is supposedly the greatest invention since the printing press. Maybe this is the answer for golf. Get rid of cart paths, mount a comprehensive GPS on these babies and send them out. The thought of golfers ripping around a course on little scooters bothers me, but less than the current cart.

Dan King
dking@danking.org

quote:"He was far more useful to me than a club. Without his help I doubt if I could have won it. It amazed me the way he just put the club in my hand."
--Tony Lema (Winner of the 1964 Open Championship at St. ndrews on his local caddie, Tip Anderson)

[aclayman]

So, If I am hearing this right, Yardage markers are a drain on the economy? because without them more caddies would be hired?
Well, it is a logical conclusion from the direction this thread went.
May I ask this?
if you were playing Pebble Beach today and you had the 205 yds. left, on 18, would you have listened to your caddie when he hands you your 230 yd club?
Well my guy did, and sank the 30 footer, for a four. It was like putting whipped cream on horse chit, though. It was the epitomy of the 18th hole magic of getting you to come back for more.

[Mike O'Neill]

Dan,

You're basing your position on your job as "King of the World"? That's brilliant. I assume there was supposed to be a smiley face after that one.  

By the way, for the record, let me say YET again: I do not have a problem with caddies. I have a problem with the idea that the ONLY way one can get yardage information is through hiring a caddy. Your philosophy escapes me, though I am giving it the old college try. If a golf course wants to post people throughout the course to provide yardage information and I can still carry my own bag, I'd be perfectly happy. The courses can call them caddies or forecaddies or inforcaddies or whatever you as King of the World would like.   Or they can just take the economical way out, and post the information once on a permanent marker of some sort.

I hope golf is not too bitter a bittersweet game for you. Good luck.

[TEPaul]

MikeO:

INFOCADDIES! What a great idea! Clubs could just have them hanging out at particular holes all day and shout out the yardages to the players coming through.

It might not even take all that long to totally amortize a satellite eye and a central PA system course wide. When a player approaches his ball the PA system could boom out; "Hey dufuss, you've got exactly 161yds to the pin and exactly 4 1/2 seconds to hit your ball and move on! If you fail to do that you must forgo your next shot and/or see Big Brother in his office in exactly 49 minutes!!"

[Dan King]

Mike, why would "King of the World" need a smiley face?

If you and I were to have a match at a course that you had never played before and I had played hundreds of times, would it be unfair that I'm more familiar with the course than you? Is it wrong that I know more yardage, strategy and am familiar with the greens and you are not?

Have we gotten so carried away with fairness that now nobody can start a match with any sort of advantage?

A caddie supplies a variety of local knowledge. Why is yardage such a holy grail?  Should all golfers get all available information so that local knowledge is meaningless?  I don't understand why you are so hung-up on yardage.

Dan King
dking@danking.org

quote:"Why ask me? You've asked me two times already and paid no attention to what I said. So pick your own goddam club!"
--Dow Finsterwald's caddie during the U.S. Open at Cherry Hills, 1960)

[TEPaul]

Dan:

I wouldn't concern yourself too much with worrying about yardage info being the great equalizer and the Mother of all Fairness in golf.

On the courses I play if somebody or something was supplying me with yardages and I'd never played the course before and you'd played it hundreds of times you would very much still have an advantage with your local knowledge!

Why don't we just agree on this premise: That the prevalence of yardages on golf courses today has made the game slower than that time in golf when noone even thought of yardages. But that if you were to remove yardages from golf courses today you would make the game far slower. Unless of course you could remove from the minds of the world's golfers the very thought of yardages!

And if you seriously think that the latter is going to happen, you really are dreaming!

[Mike O'Neill]

Dan,

I assumed that "King of the World" would have a smiley face because otherwise it would appear to be too arrogant.

I think local knowledge can make the match more interesting. It's the home field advantage.

I hope you have a caddy every time you want one.

I hope the average public course golfer has the simple advantage of posted yardage.

Then everyone should be happy. Well, you're probably not happy because someone (the public course average joe walking a course for $12 a round and getting yardage) got something you didn't want them to have. But nonetheless, golf is a game big enough to accommodate everyone. That's something to smile about.  

Here's another topic: Gone are the good old days when there were no such things as graded tees. Nobody expected to have a good clean lie on a tee. You dropped your ball a few feet from the previous "hole" and hit away. If you wanted an advantage over your opponent you had your hired hand fluff up a little sand and place your ball for you.
As Dan himself said, "Sure, I'd like to go back in time." The game was different then from the game you play Dan. How far back do you really want to go? In architecture and rules.

[Michael Moore]

One of my favorite topics, as I am getting started in mapmaking and yardage books. A couple of thoughts -

Anything that helps the golfer hit the ball onto the putting surface, instead of over the green or into a bunker, certainly saves time.

I use the dreaded illegal Rangefinder about 20 times per round, which takes roughly five minutes total. The device usually saves me four or five shots a round, so the truth is that using it costs a small amount of time. I still maintain that number of shots taken is the greatest factor contributing to slow play.

I left my "Little Red Book" at home, but Mr. Penick has some wonderful quotes about how knowing the exact yardage provides an large boost to one's confidence, and I definitely subscribe to that.

[Dan King]

Mike O’Neill writes:
Well, you're probably not happy because someone (the public course average joe walking a course for $12 a round and getting yardage) got something you didn't want them to have. But nonetheless, golf is a game big enough to accommodate everyone. That's something to smile about.

Mike, we’ve gone round and round on this issue. I first thought you did not understand my point because I was doing a poor job of explaining my point. So I was continuously trying to clarify. I’ve gone back through this thread, and I’m confident I’ve done a good job getting across my point. You still don’t understand, but I don’t see that as my fault. I figure you are either:

* Having a reading comprehension problem.
* Choose not to get my point, because it is much easier to knock down bogeymen of your own creation.
* Are having trouble understanding my point because it isn’t a simple black and white issue and you deal with those colors better than any others.

Even the simple "King of the World" statement has apparently gone right over your head.

I can live without convincing the world of my viewpoint. We’ll continue to disagree on this issue. However, regardless of the reason for you not understanding my point, our discussion has convinced me it will be silly to get into another discussion with you on a different subject.

Dan King
dking@danking.org

quote:"Try to remember that a person may be a most indifferent golfer, and yet be a good Christian gentleman, and in some respects worthy of your esteem."
 --Horace Hutchinson  (Hints on Golf)

[TEPaul]

Dan:

Apparently your point has gone over everyone's head that I can see. We can all read just fine too. A number of people have given perfectly valid reasons why removing yardages from golf courses would probably not be a good idea in today's world and have given some good reasons why doing do so would not speed up play either, which, I for one, thought was the point of this whole excerise and discussion.

Despite all the discussion you just continue to say that nobody is getting your point. Well, apparently that is so. Again, if all you're trying to say is golf a hundred years ago (before yardages) was played faster than today that is obviously so. So what? Next topic.

[Jim H]

Anybody remember the Payne Stewart story?  I'll take a stab at retelling.  When he first went out on tour Stewart one day noticed that his caddie's yardages all ended in 0 or 5.  So Stewart asked his caddie, "How come every yardage you give me is 160 or 165 or 170?  Can't you be more accurate than that?"  His caddie looked at him and said, "You're not good enough for anything more accurate."

Then the one about Bernhard Langer.  Langer's caddie told him he Langer had exactly 167 to the center of the green, based on a sprinkler head with yardage near where they stood.  Langer asked his caddie where the plaque with the yardage was located on the sprinkler head. The caddie didn't quite know what Langer meant, so he Langer explained. Look at where the yardage was located on the sprinkler head. He Langer wanted to know if he was 167, or 167 plus or minus 5 inches to the center of the green!

Then one of my favorite images is from one afternoon where we sat on a bench in the shade and watched a player in an adjoining fairway get totally anal about obtaining his yardage. He was in a foursome (it was a HOT day) and he marched up to a sprinker head about 20 yards in front of him, stopped, planted both his feet, did a pirouette, and began to march back precisely to his ball in big surveyor's steps. You could tell it was driving the other guys in his group crazy, because it was the 15th hole.  He was wedge distance, about 110 into the pin.  The player, now with his precise distance, took several practice swings then got in behind his ball to do the pro-set visualization, then stepped-in and addressed the ball.

He chunked his wedge fat about 20 yards in front of him and the ball came to rest right at the sprinkler head where he'd got his yardage.  At least he didn't need to pace off distance for the next shot.  He had 90 left into the pin.

Personally I like to know my yardage into a green.  But just give me a sand cherry shrub at 150 yards and I'm experienced enough to eyeball how far I have in relation to the 150 marker.  I'm not good enough to deserve anything more accurate than that.  

When your average Joe Player needs a yardage of "234 to the front edge" I'm with Dan King.   To the extent that your average golfer seeks out that level of precision, and other have to wait for him while he gets it, objectively speaking he's slowing up play.  

Whenever anyone asks me for a yardage I'll tell them whatever it is, as exact as possible: 137, 158, 172, whatever it is. If it speeds up play I believe in giving the golfer the "precise" yardage he think he needs.  

[TEPaul]

Are yardages making golfers anal like that or are some golfers just anal? Let's not put the cart before the horse here. Are we taking into account what is really causing slow play here or are we blaming it on something that's convenient to blame it on?

[Mike O'Neill]

Jim H.,

A sand cherry shrub would be fine with me too. There are those who don't want you to have that yardage marker however. But you could hire a man who would be able to tell you just where they would plant the sand cherry shrub if they were allowed to. If you then told your playing partners, you'd all be penalized.

TEPaul,

You are correct. I think I read well enough. I believe that the larger story here is one of a question of which version of the game of golf is acceptable. Because the truth is that the game we play today is only a version of itself. If we turned back the clock, neither Dan nor myself would be able to wear golf shoes and/or golf gloves. I have yet to hear Dan rail against those two things. But he may yet. We also could not expect the kind of tees and greens we have today. We might have to share St. Andrews with the town residents on Sundays. Talk about a slow round. Watch out for the group picnicing on the 14th fairway. We could go back really far and start banging around stones with a "stick". It's funny because in golf just as in everyday life, people pick and choose what they "believe" in according to personal preferences not objective criteria, in most cases. If we had to follow our extreme positions to their logical conclusions we would expose the weaknesses in those positions. Rarely are extreme positions not undermined by compromises or inconsistencies.

I think that as we discuss architecture and the rules of golf, it is useful to embrace what we prefer in the game but also to recognize that the golf umbrella that is the game covers a vast group of players. I don't know why some golfers should have to get wet. It's a big, big umbrella.

[Jim H]

TEPaul,

If I guessed as to the main reason for slower play I'd put course design much higher on the list of reasons than golfers searching for exact yardages.  In the old days, classic courses with generally short hikes from green to tee created a rhythm for faster play.  Now all too frequently the pace is broken up and attention is lost more easily.

I don't know how it was in the past, since I only started to play again in 1995.  Throughout these six years I've noticed that golfers spend what I consider significant moments of time sorting out exactly how far they have into the green.  

The 150 fairway brick (our club uses bricks for the 150 mark) frequently is prominently visible and within 20 yards of a player.  Players literally 10 yards from the marker will walk to the side of a broad fairway to get the sprinkler yardage.  Heck I even do it myself sometimes.  

Players seem to want to know that they're 143 to the center.  A "few yards shy of 150" isn't good enough.  In the aggregate this quest for exactitude slows play.  Whether this is a significant time drain I'm afraid I really don't have a firm opinion on that.  My thoughts here are offered as observations I've made while playing a lot of golf (many hundreds of rounds) in the past five years.

[Brian Phillips]

I have been reading this post for quite a while now and I agree with most of what Dan King says.

However I have to admit that I use the markers way too much myself especially within 110 yards.  I have three different swings on my wedges and can knock them accurately to about -+ 1 yard.  However I have probably chunked my way up to this distance that it is not neccesary to score by this stage!  (I have forgotten how to do the faces)  

Are most players really good enough to hit their clubs to within 10 yards anyway?Without markers they are only going to be 10 yards out by eyeballing.  I have a handicap of 9 and eyeball nearly everything from 110 yards and up over.