The perfect storm ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Is the impact of high-tech and distance, specialty clubs and the need for speed with the flatening of putting surfaces conveging to form the perfect storm that will render golf less challenging and mundane ?

[THuckaby2]

Absolutely not.

Even at the highest levels, courses still have ways of defense against making the game too easy.

And for the other 99.99% of players, the game is very far from being mundane.  Less challenging?  Perhaps, relative to a time of hickory shafts and the like.  But mundane?  Never, not even close.  No matter how great the arrow, the indian still has to utilize it well.

TH

[JESII]

Tom

If not, how about at some point in the not to distant future?

If the game has begun that evolution, what is to stop it? We see quotes all the time of people referring to golf in "the old days" being much more interesting and difficult. Importantly, these quotes are from the full range of era's.

Patrick,

I would add to that recipe the prevailing need for instant gratification amongst potential beginner golfers.

[THuckaby2]

JES:

I don't see a future where the game becomes SO easy that it is ever mundane, for the vast majority of players.  Make that 99% at least of players.  It's always going to be a very hard game so long as a club has to be swung by a human.  So many things to go wrong no matter how great the equipment is.

Now the pro or very highest level is a different story.  We aren't at the mundane level yet, but I can see that as a future for them without a doubt.

TH

[Bill Gayne]

Tom,

I think you only have to look at tennis to understand what JES and Pat are thinking. Tennis also had major advances in technology in the seventies that was supposed to be more friendly to the recreational player. Why couldn't the same happen to golf?

Bill

[JESII]

Tom, I agree that it makes no sense to have this type of conversation in regards to the top 0.1% of players, so let's use that often overused term 'The average golfer'. By average I prefer to use only the people that play a fair bit of golf, say 20 rounds per year or more.

My position is that the average golfer has a much less challenging experience than did that of 60 (to a lesser degree 20 or 40, and to a greater degree 80 or 100) years ago. And if that is true, then what is to make us think the trend will not continue.

I am not suggesting that the 18 handicapper will find no challenge in the game, simply that the challenge is reduced over time. Does this make the game mundane? I guess not, because it is difficult to get an equitable analysis of the game, and its challenge, at those wide intervals where the changes might be distinct.

[THuckaby2]

Bill:

Oh I get what they are saying and I do understand the tennis example.

So say it might stop growing, sure.  Be less popular, sure.  Become less challenging, yes.

But MUNDANE?

I can't buy that.

TH

[THuckaby2]

Tom, I agree that it makes no sense to have this type of conversation in regards to the top 0.1% of players, so let's use that often overused term 'The average golfer'. By average I prefer to use only the people that play a fair bit of golf, say 20 rounds per year or more.

My position is that the average golfer has a much less challenging experience than did that of 60 (to a lesser degree 20 or 40, and to a greater degree 80 or 100) years ago. And if that is true, then what is to make us think the trend will not continue.

I am not suggesting that the 18 handicapper will find no challenge in the game, simply that the challenge is reduced over time. Does this make the game mundane? I guess not, because it is difficult to get an equitable analysis of the game, and its challenge, at those wide intervals where the changes might be distinct.

JES:

I am just following the Mucci rules of the past, answering directly his questions, using the words he puts out.

The game will never be MUNDANE.  There are just too many variables.  The courses can always be made to be harder, as well.

Note I am not, repeat not, saying any of this is a good thing.  Far from it.

I'm just answering Pat's question.  I've found if one doesn't do that, one pays the price.

TH

[JESII]

If MUNDANE is to be defined as ordinary and:

ORDINARY can be defined as unremarkable:

Then I think yes it's possible.

If technological innovation, whether it be equipment or agronomy, is diminishing the return the game of golf provides then the game could at some point be considered MUNDANE.

[Andy Hughes]

Out of curiosity, isthe game easier now?  Is the average handicap lower now then it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
If not, is it a matter of lots of new golfers keeping the average handicap up?

[johnk]

Don't forget that golf courses have gotten substantially longer and more challenging for the "20-round" golfer over the last 30 years.  Average scores may be lower as well, but they are nowhere near the "mundane" level where everyone is threatening par.

You have to think about the big world of golf when looking at this argument.

I think technology is a big factor in keeping the game relevant for 80% of the population.  To support all the golf development that has happened - all over the world - the game has had to become more enjoyable, and less difficult to for one to be compentent.

When you take the balance of the technology and the increased length and difficulty of most courses, I think you have the requirements for modest worldwide growth of the game.  If we all were forced to learn and play with equipment from 1970, fewer people would take up the game and stay with it.

Having said all that, a corollary for old clubs which haven't changed much (say perhaps Winged Foot), the technology has made the membership better while the course has stayed about the same difficulty...  However, that group is a tiny portion of the golfing world - but it's the portion that most GCA posters would probably think about the most since the courses are classic.

[JESII]

Out of curiosity, isthe game easier now?  Is the average handicap lower now then it was 10 or 20 or 30 years ago?
If not, is it a matter of lots of new golfers keeping the average handicap up?

Good question Andy because I always hear the defenders of golf as it is today state that the average handicap is virtually the same as 20 years ago, but give me the average handicap of the guy that plays 20+ rounds per year as opposed to 20 years ago and I'd bet there's a significant difference.

[THuckaby2]

Adj. 1.  mundane - found in the ordinary course of events; "a placid everyday scene"; "it was a routine day"; "there''s nothing quite like a real...train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute"- Anita Diamant
    Synonyms: everyday, quotidian, routine, unremarkable, workaday
  2.  mundane - concerned with the world or worldly matters; "mundane affairs"; "he developed an immense terrestrial practicality"
    Synonyms: terrestrial
  3.  mundane - belonging to this earth or world; not ideal or heavenly; "not a fairy palace; yet a mundane wonder of unimagined kind"; "so terrene a being as himself"
    Synonyms: terrene


Do you see golf meeting any of those definitions?  I sure don't.  Not now, not ever.

TH

[jeffwarne]

I completely disagree that the newer/average golfer face less challenges today.Courses are tougher,longer and have many more Magazine cover inducing hazards and eye candy-The so called naturally grassed area has greatly slowed the game,particularly when employed on daily fee courses.
To say nothing of the time it takes to play the game with vast distances between tees,lost balls etc.
There are way more water hazards,enviromental areas etc.
Many courses you could top the ball all the way around.On many of the new courses that "strategy" will result in a lot of lost balls.
Sure equipment's better,but the ball's just going deeper into the schmoo.
The equipment is out of control and the average pro kills it,but the reaction has been to punish everyone with tougher,longer,more penal courses-which I believe are less fun to play-particularly if you're with or behind a group of these tortured players.
If golfers were in charge of track meets,the 100 meter dash would now be 140 meters with knee deep fescue and water.

[JESII]

Patrick

Could you please define MUNDANE as it applies to your thread title?

[THuckaby2]

Patrick

Could you please define MUNDANE as it applies to your thread title?

JES - sorry to make you go through this.  But it was gonna have to happen sooner or later.

 

[JESII]

I just wrote a great post that was going to completely turn you around on this Tom, and sonhow I was logged off right as I hit the post button. What a killer .

TH, do you have some hacking ability that allows you to see others posts as they are writing them and when you want to eliminate one you can sabotage it?

[THuckaby2]

JES:

Shhhhhhh!
You've given away the secret nirvana that awaits one at the five-figure post level... Tom Paul and I have great fun with this... just don't tell anyone else, will ya?

TH

ps - I remain ready to be turned around.  My entire premise rests on the game never becoming so easy that it's an ordinary daily boring event.  

[JESII]

Lets see if I can rekindle any of it.

First, I do not use the term MUNDANE as a synonym for EASY. That goes to the heart of jeffwarne's argument as well. I think when you put golf up against the other activities you might do in that time (these activities will obviously vary  by person) you will see a value in each. We have chosen golf for that value it provides us as individuals; exercise, mental stimulation, competitive outlet, social interaction, emotional variety...etc...
Any activity you might choose will have these values I speak of to some degree. Golf will compare differently to each of those other activities in regards to those values.

In my opinion, technological innovation (whether in equipment or agronomy) has the potential to reduce the value golf carries over some of those other activities therefore moving it towards the MUNDANE.

[Mark Brown]

I think the game is difficult enough that the only major thing we have to do is limit distance by taking some of the zip out of the golf ball, as Tim Finchem inferred in his press conference at the 2004 Tour Championship. The base year would be 2003, which is when the titanium spring-like effect and the solid core ball technology reached their zenith. From 1996 to 2003 the average driving distance on the PGA Tour increased by 20 yards -- and I blame the USGA for not putting a red flag up long before that.

With Finchem's plan, the ball would be rolled back the same amount for all players - pro and amateur alike. And the PGA Tour is the only organization that has the strength and financial where-with-all to stand-up to the equipment companies.

I just wish the base year would be 1996, which might mean old classics like Merion would still be holding major championships.

I also believe that putters that are lodged against another body part should be banned as they require less skill and minimize the factor of pressure and nerves in putting.

[JESII]

I just wish the base year would be 1996, which might mean old classics like Merion would still be holding major championships.

I agree in general, but in reality I ask myself why we can't create modern versions of Merion. I know it is much easier said than done to creat a masterpiece, but why shouldn't we expect courses to provide the same variety and inspire the same emotions as those classics.

Admittedly I have played a pathetic few of the 'modern classics' so maybe we are doing it and with time they will develop the reputations the Golden Age classics have done. One can only hope.

[Patrick_Mucci]

John Krystynak,

The mistake that you and many others make is that courses, for the vast majority of golfers, haven't gotten longer.

They've only gotten longer for that segment of the golfing world that plays from the back tees.

Most courses are unchanged from the "members" tees and the Ladies tees.

JES II,

I agree, the need for instant gratification is an integral part of the perfect storm.

As to mundane, Tom Huckaby understands the defiinition,
and he understands it in the context of the thread.
He's just playing dumb, something he's become adept at

With my reference to the flattened of putting surfaces it doesn't take a rocket scientist to equate the term mundane to ordinary, or less intersting, and if one adheres to Donald Ross's view of putting surfaces, the faces in a portrait and character, it's easy to see that the unique distinctive life is being squeezed out of putting surfaces in the name of speed.

And, once the green is softened, the contours and the slopes muted, their character is lost for every golfer, making them less interesting and reducing the challenge for approaches, recoveries and putting.

Add to that the softening of bunkers, despite the advent of specialty clubs including Lob-wedges, and you have the covergence of the perfect storm.  

[JESII]

Anybody have a spare umbrella?

[THuckaby2]

Patrick:

If anything I am playing smart, at which I am far from adept.

 

So OK, granting me the unqualified WIN in that your initial question can only be answered in the negative...

And taking this for what you actually mean....

I still think the game is anything but too boring or too easy for the vast majority of players, nor do I see a future where that becomes the case.  Your post there has not swayed me.  Yet.

But as I say, I am open to being convinced.

TH

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom,

So OK, granting me the unqualified WIN in that your initial question can only be answered in the negative...
Not true.[/color]

I still think the game is anything but too boring or too easy for the vast majority of players,

Where did I ever say this ?
Could you cite those words for me ?[/color]

nor do I see a future where that becomes the case.  Your post there has not swayed me.  Yet.

That's because you don't understand the thread.

Do you think that flattening putting surfaces on existing golf courses is adding interest and challenge to those greens ?
On the approach ?  On the recovery ?  putting ?

Do you think that softening or eliminating bunkers on existing golf courses is adding interest and challenge, to their avoidance of and play from ?

Do you think that high tech which has increased distance and obsoleted the architectural features that the golfer was intended to encounter and deal with has lessened the interest and challenge ?[/color]

But as I say, I am open to being convinced.

I shouldn't have to convince you, it should be self evident.[/color]