Firm/Dry unfair on the PGA Tour?

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Just watching Mike Weir hit a sand wedge a yard short of pin high, only to have his ball land hard and bounce into the back bunker on 15 at Pebble, Bobby Clampett talked as if Weir had  gotten a bad break! Like he should be able to hit a shot pin high to a hole location meant to bring the back bunker into play, and have the ball end up favorably??

How long before firm is considered unfair? Or is it already viewed that way? Is the notion of landing a ball short asking too much? Especially when the player has a downhill lie and is playing to a firm green?  

Is asking the players to think going to be deemed unfair soon!?

[Gene Greco]

Geoff:

   The bigger problem is that millions of viewers listened to Clampett and will apply that "thinking" when their ball reacts in the same way.

    Announcers and the PGA Tour continue to propagate this mindless "mindset" for the masses to absorb.  

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Gene,
Agreed, that's why I posted my whining! Scary to think how many see something like that and think that Weir got a bad break and that the course was ugh, "unfair."

I was also hoping for just one of the announcers to point how great it was that the course was so dry, that it was browning out in places. The best they could come up with was that it resembled US Open conditions.
Geoff

[Ben Cowan-Dewar]

Gene,
I could not agree more.  Clampett is not even the worst of the bunch.  Lanny Wadkins insights on golf are uninspired at best. Feherty is the only one I enjoy hearing from.

[rpurd]

Great to see it firm and fast out there this week.......and like to see the brown in the fairways/greens (talk about a world apart from the Hope).  Nicklaus has proposed that the Open be played on this setup.....no rough......just firm fairways and greens!

[Don_Mahaffey]

I didn't see Weir complain too much. His reaction could have been frustration that he hit the ball to far, and maybe he was still bothered that he didn't get the greatest bounce on his second at 14. I heard what Clampett said, but did Weir, or any tour player, complain afterwards?

About five years ago they changed the greens at Tucson National, site of the Tucson Open, from bent to bermuda. That first year they didn't overseed them except for a little seed the tour made them put out so they wouldn't be completely brown. They were hard as a rock and very fast. The tour staff bitched, but the players I heard were happy to play some firm greens. It was the last year before the match play and the big boys still came to town. I think some of you might be surprised how some of the better players on tour would favor more difficult conditions.

[JohnV]

The only good player I've heard complain about firm and fast was Paul Azinger a few years ago when the greens at the Honda were really firm and the holes were tucked behind the bunkers.  It definitely didn't fit his low ball flight and he wasn't happy.  I'm sure the best players would prefer these conditions in general.

Maybe Clampett is going down the Venturi trail towards losing total contact with the mindset of the players.

[noonan]

I wish there would be more firm greens in the real world.....the only ones in Dayton area are at Heatherwoode......where Dunakey shot 59.......

Most publinx have footprints like you were following Gengis Kahn.

We need to educate golfers that they could make more putts.

Jerry

[Jeremy_Glenn.]

Come on, Geoff!

Weir isn't stupid.  He wouldn't have hit that shot if he knew the ball would bounce that high and that far.  He got a bad break.  End of story.  He didn't even complain.

No one mentionned "unfair".

[Matt Kardash]

I agree with Jeremy,
Nobody said it was unfair, Weir just got a real bad break.
And nobody could have predicted that bounce. His ball just probably hit the worst possible spot on the green and he paid the price.
I don't think running the ball was really the option that some here would want to believe. Let's face it, Pebble was playing hard and fast but it was HIGHLY unpredictable. Some places you could have stopped a 4 iron on a dime(#17) and some places you couldn't even hold a sandwedge(#15)...That's why the scorinng was tough...If the greens had a relatively consistent degree of firmness, the players would have adapted..they are not as dumb as you think they are.

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Jeremy,

Could you copy and paste the line where I said anything about Mike Weir complaining or being stupid?

The announcer, Clampett (and to some degree Feherty), acted as if this was a horribly unfair break, something totally unforseeable. And I'm saying that when a player hits the shot he hit, with hard greens, a downhill lie, it's either a poor shot or sloppy course management. The announcers portrayed the situation as the fault of a hard spot on the course, not an overly aggressive play on a very firm course.  This translates to golfers believing that local knowledge or actual pre-shot planning are not necessary, but instead, to be handled by the architect or superintendent. And I'm saying, that's not a good thing.

Matt,
The course is supposed to adapt to the players, or the players to the course? I get the feeling you are saying it's the first, that maintenance should iron out every kink so that the players can adapt to, to what, predictable conditions? But then if it's predictable, then there is no need to adapt!

I say it's a real bad shot, especially with a sand wedge. And judging by Weir's lack of a negative reaction, I would guess he agreed it was not a smart play.  
Geoff

[CHrisB]

Weir's lack of reaction indicated to me that he didn't hit the shot he wanted to hit.  My guess is that Weir probably didn't catch it solid, taking some of the spin off and/or flattening the trajectory.  He might have caught a break had it hit a soft spot (like Love's shot did a minute later), but he probably didn't expect one.  It was certainly not a poor course management decision; he was 3 down to Love with 4 to play with Love in the fairway ahead of him.  He had to play at the flag with a sand wedge and give Davis something to look at; he just didn't pull the shot off exactly as he planned it.  The penalty for missing was a tough but manageable up-and-down for par out of the back bunker.  So I'm fairly confident that it was an error in execution rather than one of management.  I don't think Weir is making too many mental errors these days.

[Jeremy_Glenn.]

Geoff,

The announcers, from what I understood, were saying it was an unlucky break, not an unfair one.

There's a big difference.

[A_Clay_Man]

There was nothing that would resemble a bad break for that shot.

That green is raised on the left and in the rear, ergo, much firmer on the high spots=ball in bunker. Enough said, nothing was bad except for his decision to fly it near pin high.
The other end of the spectrum was on 12 when someone flew one just left of the hole and it made a ballmark and stuck. Who would've thunk it? Well, where that ball hit was at the base of both slopes, ergo, a soft spot.

[bagtotter]

How do you know what shot Weir intended to hit ?
How do you know how well or poorly Weir executed the intended shot ?

You don't.

But, Geoff has a point.

Those that communicate with the public, the announcers, have a great deal of impact on the public's perception of golf, and golf course conditions.

The message will be echoed in green committee and general membership meetings across the country.

"FIRM IS UNFAIR"

Many members already complain that they can't hold that slightly downhill green, when coming out of 4 inch rough with their pinnacle ball.  

Those on-air comments won't help the cause.

[Matt Kardash]

Geoff,
That's not what i meant.
All I'm saying is that the turf was unpreditable, therefore making it very difficult to judge when a bump and run was necessary or when i high shot was necessary. I'm not saying that's unfair, infact it's perfectly fair. In golf you just deal with what you have, the best you can. Weir just got a bad break. Hey, us Canadians don't complain about stuff!  

[m mackay]

So how do you explain the fact that Love's nearly identical shot stuck and spun?  Just a bad break on inconsistant greens.

[TEPaul]

Jeremy Glenn:

Surely you must know by now that the "Great American Golfing Public" tendd tp view an "unlucky" bounce and an "unfair" one as exactly one and the same.

The "Great American Golfing Public" has apparently now come to the conclusion that "luck" both should not and does not enter into the game of golf or its architecture.

One of Geoff Shackelford's ongoing and underlying points.

[TEPaul]

"So how do you explain the fact that Love's nearly identical shot stuck and spun?  Just a bad break on inconsistant greens."

m mackay:

Why does anyone have to bother to explain it? That's the point. Maybe Love had a different type of ball, maybe Love hit a better more spinning golf shot--who knows and who cares?

What happened with both golfers and the different results is just golf and luck in golf. That's what Shackelford is saying to me. Does the cause of F&F really need an announcer making distinctions about why one might have gotten a "bad break", implying the green was too firm?

Don't think so! It would've been much more benefical and much cooler if Clampett had said;

"Wow, look at that, Weir got a bad bounce and Love got a good bounce with basically the same shot. That's great, that's the way the ball bounces, that's the luck of golf for all you Walter Mitty golfing fans out there in television land!"

Any other explanation on Clampett's part is too formulaic.

[Rick Shefchik]

From Clampett's point of view, of course it matters that both Love and Weir hit identical shots and one bounced into the back bunker while the other only bounced to the fringe and spun back to the hole. Same shot, significantly different outcome -- what's an announcer supposed to say?

Both the players and the announcers have been out there all week. Clampett was assigned to the 14th hole, so he'd seen shots come into that hole location all day. If his gut reaction is that Weir's ball reacted in a way other balls had not been reacting Sunday, I don't think saying so is a capital offense. He wasn't saying the golf course sucks or "firm and fast" sucks or Weir made the right decision. He was pointing out a distinction between the result of Weir's shot and the others he'd seen that day and that week.

And Weir did not bellyache.

If anyone made a dumb shot on 14 it was Love, who was protecting a lead and saw Weir's ball bounce over the green, then went ahead and hit the same shot. That tells me these guys are so dialed in to the course conditions from day to day that Love simply didn't believe he'd get the same result that Weir did. Or, in effect, he came to the same conclusion Clampett did: Weir got a bad bounce.

[Justin_Zook]

It feel good to be back, it's been a long time since i posted last as I find school easing off a bit.

With a course "as short" as Pebble, it would be unfair for the conditions to be soft and wet.  You had to be striking the ball with some elevated degree of skill in order to put enough spin on the ball to land it where you wanted and keep it there.  

It increased the distance off the tee for the shorter players, and decreased the distance for the second shot (there's my Madden comment for the day).  For the pro, the accuracy between a P-wedge and say an 8 or 9 iron is simular.  So whether you were 100 yards from the green and hitting S-wedge or 140 yards from the green hitting 9 iron seems GENERALLY negliable.  

Poa greens also are much less bumpy and "puffed up" when they are hard, dry and fast, so due to the lack of many green inconsistancies, we can better see who is actually putting well.  

As for Mr. Weir thats just the game, and it really sucks when announcers are off the mark with their comments.  But ultimately who cares if its fair or not.  Even if you play by the rules, life isn't always fair and neither is golf.  Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you deal with it, and its the champions of the game and life who have dealt with it the best.  

Has this AT&T proven how incredible Tiger's feat was in 2000 at the Open of -12, or has it proven that you don't need 6 inches of rough and tight fairways to put on an exciting, dramatic tournament?

Justin

[W.H. Cosgrove]

There is a term for this discussion....Rub of the Green.  The Scots knew that a game played on a several hundred acre game board, outside, was going to be unfair.  Over the course of 72 holes the good and bad breaks even out.  

Did anyone notice the Poa greens beginning to shine and 'lay down' yesterday afternoon?  The greens were just right.  The moisture had dropped off and they were just stressed enough.  The superintendents in the crowd probably loved that.  

Finally, Davis wins at -14 in a pro-am.  Nobody went crazy on scoring against the courses.  Firm Greens and shotmaking defended the courses just fine.  Week in and week out we have these discussions about whether the old courses have seen their day, but this week showed that a well designed golf course that forces a player to make shots instead of throwing darts still stands up against the onslaught.

However,  I still believe the ball needs to be controlled.

[Rick_Noyes]

IMHO, It's the mindset of the announcers and the Tour that "these guys are good".  The implication on such a shot as Weir's was that it couldn't possibly have been the player, it must have been the course.  Kostis and Rosburg are the worst offenders.  They preface each shot with how difficult it is and how the player has no chance whatsoever.  usually followed by, "I can't believe he got it out of there" or in case of a mis-hit, "that's all he could do from there".  I'll give Johnny Miller one thing, he usually calls them as he sees them.

Don't get me wrong, these guys are good.  They practice everyday, have equipment made to spec, have access to the best teachers (both swing and head Drs.) so good, great shots should be expected.  Weirs shot was not a bad one.
Just the rub-of-the-green so to speak.

[Jeff_Brauer]

This doesn't apply directly to the topic, but for what it's worth, the half dozen tour pros I know feel very differently about the old courses, like PB, and the new TPC courses.  

When the Open went to Oylmpic, for example, they all said the fairways sloped too much, but we all play the same course.  Of course, everyone is afraid to talk about Augusta, because they covet the invite so much.

They do feel the TPC network should be designed to allow them to display their skills, and minimize luck. That said, its hard to believe greens are much faster than at premier tournaments, which should generally also be firm, too.  

Of course, a player compting for a title wants to minimize luck, and "fairness" whatever that is, dictates to them that two similar shots should be treated about equally.  If it does, to quote Venturi, they should "go away quietly".  I think Weir did, and the announcers were just reporting what happened.

[Jeremy Glenn,]

TEPaul,

Yes, I know “The Great American Golfing Public” tend to use the terms “unlucky” and “unfair” interchangeably, when they are both entirely separate concepts.

Yet it irks me when Shackelford seems to try to create controversy by attacking the so-called cries of “unfair!” when, as far as I remember, none existed.  He begins with unlucky bounce into a bunker and finishes by saying “Is asking the players to think going to be deemed unfair soon!?”.  He then claims that Clampett acted as if the bounce was “terribly unfair”.  Maybe it’s just me, but I certainly didn’t get that impression.  Clampett acted as if the bounce was terribly unlucky.  Which it was.

But it was perfectly fair.  Could have happened to anybody.

Rather than trying to muddle the terms, further confusing the public.  I would expect someone as influential and knowledgeable as Geoff to take a higher road.  

Geoff, couldn’t you instead write about the difference between luck and fairness?  Do it in one of your columns.  Wouldn’t that be more productive?