Walter Travis On Accuracy ..the state of the game

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

"Placing a premium on accuracy with due consideration for length should be the aim of all who deign golf courses, for accuracy in the play signifies skill..and..skill is generally the master of brute force.

The premium on accuracy should carry the greatest reward and is the essence of any game. Length may be considered least important........Octber 1927 Walter Travis"


What has happened to our game when Vijay can make the statement that accuracy from the tee is the most worthless stat the tour keeps?

The great Walter Travis must be rolling in his grave

[Brent Hutto]

I'm not disagreeing with the obvious observation that the length top players hit the ball puts their game out of sync with the way traditional courses trade off length versus accuracy.

However, the often quoted "Fairways Hit" stat that the Tour publishes is indeed next to worthless. A simple in the fairway versus out of the fairway checkbox does not capture whether or not the shot was hit into a poor position. There are obviously places where a Tour player doesn't want to hit the ball even if it's 100 yards from the green. However, those places are not identified by "missed the fairway", it's more complicated than that.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

So Brent,
Are you saying that some of those drives Phil hit last week that were 30 yards off line only to be faced with what at worst could be a marginal lie..were actually planned, and a form os strategy?..if so the theme behind this thread is only further emphasised...the tour just does not care to punish the off line tee shot and as such Travis' comments are considered to be no longer purposeful.

[JESII]

What has happened to our game when Vijay can make the statement that accuracy from the tee is the most worthless stat the tour keeps?

The great Walter Travis must be rolling in his grave

MWP,
I understand you are a very strong player so I'll exclude you from this statement, but Vijay is not playing the same game as us.

[tonyt]

I see both sides here.

Firstly, that tour players' misses aren't as harsh when they now have modern short irons that can throw the ball up onto the green, but the green complexes themselves are designed to be accessed from further away with longer clubs.

But #16 on Sunday at Doral both confirms Vijay's statement and yet also advocates accuracy. Both players get a missed fairway stat, but Tiger's miss shortsighted himself and contributed to him taking 5 after driving just short of the green.

In other words, we are correct in assuming that hitting the fairway on that hole is not the holy grail Travis may have wanted. But there was still a better side to miss (left due to the right hole location and because at least the bunkers allow a clean contact). Thus, position counts.

But yes, as I also ranted on about in another recent thread, the changing of a 450-460 yard par 4 approach from long iron or fairway wood (with the clubs manufactured in the 60s or 70s) makes accuracy way more important than when the second shot is with a nine iron or wedge and ProV1 from the rough.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

JES.
Yes Vijay is about 40 yards stonger than me off every tee, but should that exclude that type of player from fulfilling Travis' comments.
I feel very strongly that it should not, but really get pissed off when the tour do nothing to cahnge things.
Who really gts any enjoyment out of watvhing guys knocking it 30 yards off line, and then being able to hit shots that spin on the putting surface,what a waste of time...Travis and his definition of Skill are out of the window.

[Brent Hutto]

If I understand your point, you believe that a managable lie in the rough is insufficient penalty for being 30 yards offline with a 320+ yard drive. I'd agree with that to a certain extent for Tour players. How about if the course had been set up by the USGA and Phil's 30-yard-offline drive settled all the way to the bottom of four inches of juicy Bermuda rough? That would be enough penalty to make even the boldest player think twice about taking that club off the tee because after all missing by 30 yards at that distance isn't exactly a terrible shot.

My point (which I have no idea matches Vijay's wholly or in part) is that either of those situations counts as a "missed fairway". Any stat that counts being in one inch of rye grass a yard off the fairway, 80 yards from the hole the same as being in four inches of Bermuda with a tree to avoid on a 150-yard approach shot is a worthless stat. You can't judge the suitability of a course setup or the nature of the game being played by simplistic yes/no counting stats with no relation to the reality of the situation. It's not logical to say that Tiger winning the tournament "hitting 38% of fairways" or whatever is an indictment of the Tour or its courses. More information is required.

[Jim Sweeney]

Michael:

I do not suppose to answer for Brett, but the point is that if a player hits a tee shot into the intermediate cut, the tour counts that as a missed fairway, yet the effect on the next shot is minimal.

Certainly if a player hits a ball 40 yards off line past a tree line or into high grass or woods or a hazard there will be considerable negative consequences (or at least should be, in the absence of a whole lotta luck).

As far as Vijay's statement is concerned, perhaps the issue is not the players' skills at recovery,but the lack of penalty built into the design of the course for players who fail to keep the ball on the "line of charm."

[JESII]

Brent makes good points, and so maybe in that Vijay's remarks should be taken that way as opposed to thinking they just don't care about hitting a fairway.

Michael

I guess the marketing people for the Tour and its sponsors have determined that more people enjoy watching what they show than what you and I would prefer to see.

[wsmorrison]

MW-P,

Flynn also wrote about the same subject in his 1927 Green Section report, a series published between June and November 1927.  I seem to recall an early quote by Flynn that mirrored the brute force quote you cite.  As to the second quote, unless you mis-attributed the October 1927 quote, I think Travis might have been a copycat.

Coincidently or not, Flynn wrote this in the piece published in October 1927:

"The problems which should be developed on the various holes in the order of their importance are first-accuracy; second-carry; third-length, which includes carry and roll.

The premium on accuracy should carry the greatest reward for this is the essence of any game.

Carry while slightly less valuable than accuracy is important in that it promotes boldness.

Length may be considered least important but this becomes quite a factor when a player is able to mould all three tests together."

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Brent and Jim,
I agree with your evaluation of the stat 100%, but what Vijay meant was that it is the missing of the fairways..period..that does not mean anything anymore.
I agree wholeheartedly with you that the stat does not measure extent of miss, that is true..
What I was really trying to say is what Brent hit on..the lack of punishment on tour for missing a tee shot by 30 yards.

I dont care if you are hitting it 240 or 340, if you are 30 yards offline your ass should be in real trouble...otherwise...Travis' comments are indeed obsolete, and that is a real shame.

[tonyt]

Well said brent.

There's hay and cauliflower, and there's bare patches and grass not as thick as difficult rough. There are bunkers both penal and flat as a pancake. There's water and there are thinly treed areas with few impediments to a full swing and a ball-flight route to the hole.

At the end of the day, it is what lies off the fairway and where that dictates what is a fair position and what isn't. And fairways hit % doesn't just fail to show good misses from bad. It also fails to differentiate between good fairway position and that which is lesser.

[JESII]

I guess week in and week out on the PGA Tour you would have to say that Travis' comments are obsolete, no question.

[tonyt]

I dont care if you are hitting it 240 or 340, if you are 30 yards offline your ass should be in real trouble...otherwise...Travis' comments are indeed obsolete, and that is a real shame.

Agreed to some extent, without pleading for formula. I'm with the earlier suggestion above that the regular tour venues don't adequately make provisions for more harrowing recovery options. Most holes on tour when the players favour a miss to one side are due to a lake.

[Patrick_Mucci]

MWP,

I believe that Travis wanted to reward accuracy by punishing inaccuracy vis a vis heavy rough.

GCGC has traditionally had heavy rough, in the first cut and in the uncut grasses outside of the first cut.

Knee high rough is a substantive penalty as are deep, steep walled bunkers.

[Jim Sweeney]

Of course, effect of having crowds on the course is that they beat the grass down in the gallery areas, often reducing the punishment for a ball hit that far off line. At the very least, being in an such an area allows the player to get the clubface on the ball.

It doesn't seem to work that way when I play my recreational rounds!

Years ago Trevino said that anything outside the gallery ropes should be out of bounds. Fat Jack would still have been the best of all time, and you would never have heard of Seve Ballesteros.

[wsmorrison]

Pat,

Didn't you read my post #9?  Travis stole all his ideas from Flynn  

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Patrick,
That is why Travis is my man..I agree with that philosophy 100%..heavy rough once you are beyond 15/20 yards offline, that is the way this game should be played.

US OPEN like set ups are what the so called best players in the world should be facing very week, this is supposed to be a game of skill, just as Travis said in the quote at the start of this thread.

[George Pazin]

MWP,

I believe that Travis wanted to reward accuracy by punishing inaccuracy vis a vis heavy rough.

GCGC has traditionally had heavy rough, in the first cut and in the uncut grasses outside of the first cut.

Knee high rough is a substantive penalty as are deep, steep walled bunkers.

To me this is the danger of this line of thinking. It leads to boring one dimensional golf, IMHO. I wouldn't trade Seve for 1,000 Mike Reids.

I think the better solution is firm conditions and hazards and green contours that encourage the ground game.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

George of course you are correct there is a happy medium in there somewhere, but on tour at the moment they do not have the mix right.
The obsession with big booming teeshots, without significant punishment for error, really is as boring  to me as Mike Reid 245 down the middle...now if you do what you are talking about, firm up the greens and increase the rough height  a significant amount...I think we are in the business again of recognising a more skillful level of play.

[George Pazin]

Michael -

I respect the fact that you're a helluva golfer and I'm a mere high handicapper, but I think you're wrong in your emphasis, for the reasons I already mentioned.

The Tour nowadays emphasizes the long ball by having soft greens (in a relative sense). Firm greens would go a lot further in reducing the advantage of the long ball than heavy rough. Heavy rough would simply cause the long hitters to hit 2 irons off the tee all the time, and result in thoughtless hack it out golf from everyone.

The Tour this year has been working at a disadvantage - wet and soft conditions abound. Even with relatively high rough, these guys can throw up shots that stick if the greens are soft.

To me, some of the most exciting tournaments in recent years have been courses that were not simply hack-it-out fests. The 99 US Open leaps to mind, as do several of The Masters, Tiger v Ernie at the Mercedes in '00 (I think that was the year). I loved Shinnecock last year, and The Open at RSG, because they were firm almost to the point of silly. Contrast that with The Open at Carnoustie, which was probably the most brutal combination of narrow fairways and thick rough the players have faced the last 15 years. Some thought the rough at Oak Hill in the '03 PGA was over the top - it resulted in a stretch run of Micheel v Campbell.

Please don't tell me you prefer Curtis Strange to Seve!

 

[Patrick_Mucci]

MWP,

George Pazin is incorrect because Travis provided significant margins for errant drives vis a vis wide fairways.

[wsmorrison]

"...just as Travis said in the quote at the start of this thread. "

I repeat, you quoted Flynn, not Travis.  Not that it matters that much.  The message is more important than the messenger.  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Wayne,

"...just as Travis said in the quote at the start of this thread. "

I repeat, you quoted Flynn, not Travis.  Not that it matters that much.  The message is more important than the messenger.

Travis was dead by 1927, at the age of 65, which is when you indicate the statements were published.

The likelihood is that Travis developed his design philosophies while Flynn was still being read nursery rhymes.

Or, perhaps, Flynn read or heard of Travis design theories and adopted them.  Travis wasn't a shy, retiring type and I believe that he made his views well known.[/color]
 

[wsmorrison]

Pat,

Shall I use smaller words?  

I pointed out that the October 1927 reference was not Travis.  I quoted the exact passage written by Flynn.  The concept discussed in the beginning of this thread is Flynn's.  Others certainly shared the philosophy and may have come up with it before Flynn.  Don't you get that the quotation here is not attributed correctly?  You continue to discuss this as Travis.  Why?

Travis didn't die by 1927, he died in 1927.  But why is that relevant?  Items can be published in the year of someone's death or posthumously for that matter afterwards.

I made a joke about Travis stealing Flynn's ideas (note the smiley)  You don't seem to get much of this.