SI Golf Roundtable

[Brent Hutto]

Brian,

Your points are spot on. I try my darndest to avoid trafficking in cliches but I've yet to hear or read pronouncements by any USGA or ex-USGA high ranking personage who doesn't exude the sort of blissfully class-ridden attitude that David Fay's comments evince. At some point one has to conclude that the organization is run by exactly the sort of self-serving "elite" (so-called) that popular belief has always associated with golf in the US. But hey, maybe they just keep getting misquoted.

As for the caddie thing, if the continued survival of the game depends on young kids being willing to work for laughably low wages for the privilege of being treated as servants then the game will just have to die. That is not the way things work nowadays. Fortunately, I think people (kids and adults) will keep coming to the game as they always have because they want to participate even if they didn't grow up around a country club.

[Mike Benham]

And then Faxon has the nerve to criticize Nicklaus for wanting a restricted ball, saying the only reason Jack brings up the subject is that he has never been able to make a dime selling golf balls...then, in the same breath, Faxon says a far more important issue is getting rid of the long putter. Who's viewing the problems of the game through the prism of their own interests now, Brad?

Perhaps the appropriate competition ball would be Jack's invention, the Cayman ball (disclaimer: I'm not sure he invented it but I believe he promoted it).

It is obvious that Faxon's pointed comment about Jack's balls[/i] were because he was an investor in one of Jack's failed equipment companies ...

[TEPaul]

".......but as my dad points out, there was one almost other-worldly, totally bizarre exchange between Fay and myself that didn't make it. Definitely a kind gesture by SI, as it did not reflect well on Fay to be claiming that the 7th at Shinnecock was rolled Saturday night, "in the middle of the night." To believe his claim would require quite a few unusual circumstances (total security meltdown, class A supers risking their careers and avoiding their 3 hours of sleep and rolling one green at a remote location in the high winds, dark, etc...)."

Geoff:

Maybe that remark didn't make it into the SI write-up but it wasn't exactly relegated to the dust-bin of history either. Stuff like uncut tapes and verbal currency have a way of making things like that pop their ugly or comical little head up.

Obviously it stretches the imagination like a thin rubber band to entertain what Fay said about mid-night mowing and rolling but it is possible. Don't forget at that time Matt Burrows was still at NGLA next door and it's more than likely he was chasing some of that young nubile Southampton talent around Shinnecock in the midst of Fri/Sat night. There's no telling the lengths that man will go to for some of that rich, tan Southampton skin. I think he conducted a fairly well attended orgy on the 7th green on the weekend and that's why the green was nearly unplayable on Saturday and Sunday.  

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Tom,
I should have known it was Matt Burrows based on all I've heard about him. He probably had the roller stashed behind #9 at National!! However, my July Golfdom column features an exclusive interview with someone claiming responsibility for the "in the middle of the night" rolling.  

Eh, Fay claimed in the roundtable that there was a middle of the night rolling Saturday pm/Sunday am. He repeats "in the middle of the night" not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times! There wasn't much grey area.

I've written an article about the Shinnecock shenanigans for an eastern newspaper and an excerpt from the exchange is supposed to appear in the story when it runs next week. SI was kind enough to let me use it.

Frankly, the "in the middle of the night" exchange is so bizarre that I can understand why SI didn't include it. To have run with it would have required giving Shinnecock even more space, while room for other topics would have been reduced. And as fascinating the whole episode is to some of us, the average reader has moved on.  

Brian, As for caddying, I just happen to believe good caddy programs at clubs or even high end resorts would be a whole lot better than First Tee programs. The Evans Scholarship program is one of the neatest things going in all of golf.
Geoff

[TEPaul]

Well, maybe they did cut this and that out of the roundtable for the SI article---but did someone at least have the good and historic sense to snap at least one still photograph with the youngest, perhaps the only, curmudgeon today, Geoff Shackelford, sitting at a discussion table with USGA Executive Director David Fay? If not that would be a tragedy akin to the lack of documentary photographic evidence of the roundtable discussion about European cricket that took place in Biarritz France in 1937 with Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler participating.

[T_MacWood]

'How can you say golf is more elitist? Everything argues against that. Before any of us came along, the game was private. It's completely different now.'

I just can't get the image of Fay's violent disagreement sporting his trademark bow tie.

I agree, self interests were apparently the guiding light, as opposed to the game, and the game's health...including preserving great golf architecture...GS being the exception.

I wish the roundtable devoted some time to what they all loved about the game...their shared interests (and shared concerns).

The runaway popularity of the cart and the death of the caddy are obviously related. Another decade or two of golfer's who believe the game and the cart are a natural combination is a little scarry.

I personally believe the kids of today, both boys and girls, would appreciate and enjoy caddying if pushed into it...with all the benefits caddying brings. That's how I was introduced to the game...pushed against my will to ride my bike to the course...put my name into a draw at 6:30 AM. The idea was not too appealing, and at times I hated it, but I saved enough money to buy the set of clubs I use today, and was able to play golf for free on a course designed by Dr. MacKenzie. A good tan is also nice. Plus you stay fit. And you get to soak up the wisdom of many interesting and successful people (not to mention that benefit at OSU of being exposed to the elite players at the periodic NCAA tournament).

[Mike Erdmann]

The final question from the moderator was what can be done to improve the game.  Faxon, Dorman and Geoff all gave concrete suggestions.  Fay, on the other hand, said the USGA is talking about how to involve more people.  Man, if that isn't symptomatic of the USGA's problems....while others present actual ideas, the USGA will continue talking about it.  What was that about Nero fiddling while Rome burned?

[Kevin_Reilly]

did someone at least have the good and historic sense to snap at least one still photograph with the youngest, perhaps the only, curmudgeon today, Geoff Shackelford, sitting at a discussion table with USGA Executive Director David Fay?

I think this was when Faxon was talking about Jack's balls.

Historic Photo to be sent to Far Hills

[Mark_Guiniven]

SHACKELFORD: It gets back to Shinnecock. The courses are being asked to address the situation.

FAXON: What's wrong with that?

SHACKELFORD: Because golf has the largest, most complicated venues in sports. It's irresponsible to ask them to adjust so that Wall Street can continue to see earnings growth.

Hear, hear!

[TEPaul]

"Geoff, I don't know if you have kids or not but it sounds like you don't...there is not a cat in hells chance that kids in this day and age will caddy.  They just don't need to and cannot be bothered.  Caddying has never been a big thing in Europe at a young age and never, ever will be."

Brian:

So what if kids never caddied in Europe as they once did so prevalently in the US?

While it's certainly true that many of the wonderful things about golf did come to us from Europe some of you Europeans act like if we don't do every single thing over here precisely the way you do or have done over there something is wrong with golf over here or worse yet something is wrong with Americans. Clearly a lot of that is just crap.

Geoff Shackelford is exactly right that young people caddying in golf over here is a great way for them to learn not just the game but a lot of beneficial things. The history of kids caddying in America in the past has shown that loud and clear despite what you say about kids never really caddying in Europe.

Chicago's Evan's Caddy Scholarship is awesome and has been for many decades now. Nothing has ever been able to compete with it in size and extent although Philadelphia's GAP J. Wood Platt Caddy Scholarship Trust has done a wonderful job over the decades too but on a much smaller level than Chicago's Evans.

The amateur administrative organizations of golf in America should continue to do everything they can to encourage kids to caddy over here and just because they never really did tha in Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with it!  

[TEPaul]

Geoff:

I see in the lead-in to the article they refer to you as "author and fledgling golf architect".

Does that mean you fell out of your nest in SoCal and onto Rusitc Canyon or something?

[Brian Phillips]

"Geoff, I don't know if you have kids or not but it sounds like you don't...there is not a cat in hells chance that kids in this day and age will caddy.  They just don't need to and cannot be bothered.  Caddying has never been a big thing in Europe at a young age and never, ever will be."

Brian:

So what if kids never caddied in Europe as they once did so prevalently in the US?

While it's certainly true that many of the wonderful things about golf did come to us from Europe some of you Europeans act like if we don't do every single thing over here precisely the way you do or have done over there something is wrong with golf over here or worse yet something is wrong with Americans. Clearly a lot of that is just crap.I agree with you that there is a lot of crap said about the game from our side of the pond but there is a lot of crap said on yur side of the pond as well.  Many of the discussions on here only talk about the game with regards the American game and not much else. Was the roundtable just about America or the game in general?  If it was about the game in America then I apologise but I thought the discussion was about the game in general and I feel therefore my points are justified.  

Geoff Shackelford is exactly right that young people caddying in golf over here is a great way for them to learn not just the game but a lot of beneficial things. The history of kids caddying in America in the past has shown that loud and clear despite what you say about kids never really caddying in Europe.Good, but times have moved on and young people like myself and younger are in an age were we are spoilt and do not need to caddy to be able to play the game.  Times have moved on, kids do not need to caddy to play the game anymore. In America or anywhere else in the world

Chicago's Evan's Caddy Scholarship is awesome and has been for many decades now. Nothing has ever been able to compete with it in size and extent although Philadelphia's GAP J. Wood Platt Caddy Scholarship Trust has done a wonderful job over the decades too but on a much smaller level than Chicago's Evans.

The amateur administrative organizations of golf in America should continue to do everything they can to encourage kids to caddy over here and just because they never really did tha in Europe has nothing whatsoever to do with it!   I agree but I do not agree that it is possible these days....we are fat, lazy and cannot be bothered in this day and age.

[BCrosby]

Having spent last weekend in Chicago at a Murphy Foundation event (held in conjuction with the Evans Scholars program) I am here to say that the caddy/scholarship thing is alive and well in Chi-Town.

Evans Scholars high school kids caddied for us and then joined us for dinner. Several gave little speeches to the group (about 250 people) and all the kids were impressive.

I had never seen anything like it.

As many of you know, the deal is that the kids have to maintain a certain grade point average and do a minimum number of loops during the year to keep their scholarship money.

A group of us from Atlanta will try to start something similar here. But we have an enormously long way to go.

Bottom line for me is that these kinds of programs are far more effective than First Tee. Far more. At many different levels.

The only thing First Tee has going for it is that it is better suited to publicity shorts for the USGA. Other than that, there are many better, more effective youth programs out there that are dying for support.

Bob  

[Philip Gawith]

Interesting to hear all the talk about the death of tennis. I think these things go in cycles.

Right now Roger Federer has in tennis the status Tiger had in golf in 2000, roughly speaking. I don't think there is much dispute that he is order of magnitudes better than anyone else - and he seems to be very widely liked and admired. He has a Bjorn Borg type of cool. And although he is dominant, his skill is such that he remains a pleasure to watch.

Add to that the sudden emergence of Rafael Nadal, and you have the seeds of a  phenomenal rivalry. I looked forward to watching their match in the French Open last week more than any other tennis match for probably 20 years.

I think these two have real "box office" potential - moreso than the big Four? Just a shame neither is American.  

[Kyle Harris]

Caddying was how I was able to play the game. I still play with the clubs (irons at least) that I bought with my money from caddying, and most of the play I got to do over the summer was on Mondays at Lookaway or Five Ponds.

Am I an anamoly? In the big picture, probably. But, at Lookaway we would have about 40 regular caddies show up, and over half were my age or younger. They all got out.

At Cherry Valley, I was able to get a small, but respectable and effecient caddy program started. The course is a 5-mile trek, so most members ride, but the dozen or so caddies that showed up were well-trained and well worked.

It's doable, just needs a dedicated caddiemaster. And with my recent emploment state... I am looking  

[Kirk Gill]

Times have moved on, kids do not need to caddy to play the game anymore. In America or anywhere else in the world.

Forgive me for stating the obvious. That not everyone lives in the same world you do.

[Tom_U]

While some of his comments during the SI Roundtable were disturbing, did anyone notice how disturbing Faxon's (and a few others') performance at the U.S Open Qualifier at Columbus were?  http://www.usga.org/news/qualifying/2005/columbus.html
Withdrawing from the qualifier after posting a high round?  What's that all about?  Seems to run counter to his postition as sportsman/elder statesman for the game (IMHO).

[Mike Hendren]

You don't want 66 of the best players in the world averaging close to 80 on a day when, if we were [a few miles away] at the National Golf Links, we would've said, 'What a great day to play golf!' You look at the 7th hole and ask, 'Why did this hole play so much differently in 2004 than it did in '86 or '95?' It wasn't simply the firmness of the green. It was this desire -- and we have to rethink this -- to create chipping areas. They work in some places, but not everywhere. At 7 there was no place for the ball to stop. Shinnecock was a very fast course in every respect -- too fast. Maybe we have learned from that.

Chipping Areas? This is a new one, to me. I haven't seen, or remember having seen a negative word about the chipping areas. Maybe the one behind ten green?? But that was more  a function of course mis-management. Seriously, what the heck is he trying to do? deflect it onto Mark? And what the heck does he mean when he says "not everywhere"?

Adam,

Is it really a "chipping area" if nobody ever chips from there?
I do not recall many balls coming to rest on the "chipping areas" at Shinnecock - notably behind the 9th (?) green.  The result was that such areas were nothing more than accelerants to move the ball further away from the hole, ultimately winding up in the high stuff anyway.  

That's the same problem I have with the depth of the shaved surrounds behind some greens at Rustic Canyon.  

Mike

BTW, I'm glad to report I have not hit a golf ball backwards since our last round together!

[George Pazin]

That was a disappointing roundtable.

In too many respects, it was like some of our discussions on here that starts off promising and then turns into a pissing match over meaningless personal issues, rather than focusing on the big picture.

[Brent Hutto]

The problem with the original statement quoted in the SI article was its implicit assumption that the issue of caddie programs or kids as caddies or whatever to do with caddies is in some way fundamental to the future of the game. Obviously from the discussion here there are viable programs in certain places that result in kids being caddies. Just as obviously there are places where caddies (kids or otherwise) are a total non-issue.

There are probably 30-odd golf courses with 50 miles of my home, including a few private clubs. To the best of my knowledge not a single one of them has a caddie program of any kind and caddies are just not used. Heck, there's only a handful of the 100+ courses within 100 miles of me that have caddies. It's just not part of the golf culture around here.

Golf is a very big game and a huge industry. To say that the presence of absence of caddies at the 1% of golf courses that have them will determine the growth of the game just doesn't make any sense at all. The fact that David Fay brings it up as a possible factor to be intervened on to make the game healthier shows a very skewed perception that I fear is shared by most of the movers and shakers in the USGA.

Suddenly it's not hard to see how that organization could just now be getting around to studying the question of whether a ProV1 flies a lot farther than a Titleist Professional did a decade ago.

[JESII]

As for the caddie thing, if the continued survival of the game depends on young kids being willing to work for laughably low wages
WHAT, IF YOU DON'T MIND MY ASKING, DO CADDIES TYPICALLY GET PAID WHERE YOU PLAY GOLF?[/COLOR]

for the privilege of being treated as servants
I GUESS THAT ANSWERED MY FIRST QUESTION, GLAD MY KIDS WON'T BE CADDYING FOR YOU[/color]

then the game will just have to die. That is not the way things work nowadays. Fortunately, I think people (kids and adults) will keep coming to the game as they always have because they want to participate even if they didn't grow up around a country club.
THOSE ARE A COUPLE OF THE MOST AMAZING COMMENTS I'VE YET HEARD ON THIS BOARD FULL OF AMAZING COMMENTS, TRULY.[/color]

[Brent Hutto]

WHAT, IF YOU DON'T MIND MY ASKING, DO CADDIES TYPICALLY GET PAID WHERE YOU PLAY GOLF?[/B][/COLOR]

Our posts crossed. As I pointed out in the previous post, there is no such thing as a caddie in my experience here in Columbia, SC. I've employed caddies at Cuscowilla (actually a group forecaddie), the Ocean Course (a guy about my age, not a kid) and Cypress Point Club (those two caddies were total pros who'd been doing it for 50 years). So other than GCA outings, the issue of caddies is moot for my part.

[JESII]

In the post of yours that I crossed, I understood your point a bit better, however I cannot imagine a better way to spend the summer as a teenager than by caddying. The money is generally far better than anything else you could do at 12, 15, 20 or whatever and the other advantages over typical teenager jobs are undeniable.

I wouldn't want to argue on the side of Mr Fay on this because I see your point about the pure numbers, but more available caddy programs would do a number of things for golf and golfers:
1) improve enjoyment of the round
2) improve pace of play
3) improve a courses maintenance/conditioning
4) engage young people in the game
5) get kids away from video games
6) increase the overall understanding of what golf is all about among current golfers (via the caddy experience) and future golfers (via learning the game through observation and participation)

My argument is not that this is the only way to save golf, but it sure as hell does have a long list of positives for the game.

[Kelly Blake Moran]

George Pazin, you're right that is the way these things usually end up.

If kids were more involved at the golf courses by employment and playing it might draw the parents out there as well.  Instead the parents are running kids from soccer fields to baseball diamonds, to travel team tournaments, and on and on.  I think it is good for the kids to play multiple sports, but this insanity of offseason sports, ie fall baseball, and travel teams for 8 and 9 year olds needs to stop, and maybe a little more time could be devoted to family golf, or at the very least, like I experienced, the kid goes to the course to play with buddies while at the same time or sometime during that same day mom and or dad were there playing with their compadres.  I just think golf courses have really missed the boat in terms of finding ways to bring kids, which brings parents and grandparents, to their courses in much the same way these organized leagues get kids to the baseball and soccer fields, and it may be the golf culture.  It is not a very inviting culture to the uninitiated, it is very intimidating to some people because of the rules and traditions.  There have been threads on here about how awful noncollar shirts are, or I know of a course where the women golfers were sent away because the shorts were too short, I don't mean to dramatically lower standards of behavior anywhere, especially on golf courses, but there has to be a relaxation of traditional standards so people feel more encouraged to populate public and private courses.  The CCFD somewhat promoted a boutique quality and that is just not what a typical golfer wants.  There definately is a need to relax a stuffy culture that may have spurned potential players including kids.  One idea may be to include a junior set of tees at 2800 to 3000 yards so the kid has their own little course within the big course that is manageable for them and the parents are more inclined to bring the kids out in the evening if there is some place from which the kids can play the hole in a reasonable number of strokes.  I have heard more than one story about a dad bringing their kid out to the range in the evening at private courses and being reprimended.  Total insanity.

[Kevin_Reilly]

Adam,

Is it really a "chipping area" is nobody ever chips from there?

They tried a "chipping area" around the 9th green at Olympic in '98....I don't think a single ball ended up in that area all week.  They were trying to force-fit a concept where it didn't make sense.