How DO you keep the old courses competitive?

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

If you would like to keep the old courses competitive for the TOUR player:

1) No Official Yardage Books/Pin Sheets
2) No Bunker Rakes
3) Water the Fairways to limit the 40-60 yard roll outs
4) Forget the 6 Hard/6 Middle/6 Easy pin set-up
5) Rough as high as the conscience will allow

Not many of us mortals would enjoy shooting 90-100 in these conditions.  However, if you put 150 of the best players in the world into this course set-up, someone will get hot and break "Par".

Never before has science taken the game so close to the edge of maximum standards/rules.  That said, are we all at the point of time of similar arguements against technology?  

Allan Robertson vs. Old Tom arguement about featheries vs. gutta?  Jones vs. Sarazen in terms of hickory vs. steel?

Why is it so important to protect score on these courses anyway?  Lowest score ALWAYS wins.

FYI, watch out for the rough at Baltusrol in the upcoming PGA Championship - 3.5 inches when I visited in June with the promise of 5.5 around the start of the event.  I have never seen a course in such terrific condition.  280 might be enough to win.

JWK

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Break their toes!

Seriously, I've been thinking a lot lately about how to bring the game back to its roots.  Although I watched players in the PNGA Amateur hitting 2 irons over 250 yards, I am beginning to think the way to control the game is to limit club head size.  Drivers back to 380 cc's irons back to the size of traditional blades.  

Thoughts?

[Brent Hutto]

The guys driving Par 4 greens and hitting 220-yard iron shots off the tee are playing clubheads not particularly bigger than traditional blades. The drivers are huge and some opt for hybrids rather than fairway woods but give Vijay Singh the choice between a ProV1 and Byron Nelson's blades or Vijay's irons and Byron Nelson's golf ball and we can easily guess which he would choose.

I have the same reply to this suggestion as I do to the ideas of limiting numbers of clubs or the spin of the ball or whatever. If you think the problem is the ball going too far, either accept the extra distance or make the ball not go as far. To do otherwise would be rather silly, no?

[Brent Hutto]

If I'm shouldering rather than using my three-wheeler I carry about nine clubs typically. It's not that big an impediment for me and I don't think it would make much difference at all in the scores that Tiger Woods shoots.

I thought the issue being raised in this thread was the ability of players like Tiger to play Par 5 holes on older courses with a driver and a wedge or maybe driver and short iron. If you give Tiger six clubs I guarantee one of them will be a driver like he uses now another will be a wedge and he'll have a putter. If you let him play with a driver, wedge, putter and three others (or six others) then he'll still be able to play the fifteenth at ANGC the same way he does currently.

I think limiting the number of clubs will add a couple of strokes to the winning score of a tournament at an older course and that's that. I think anyone dissatisfied with seeing Tiger reaching a half-dozen holes in two shots per round at the Old Course will be equally dissatisfied whether he shoots 15-under or 12-under. Personally, I had no problem with the Open as contested this past weekend but if you don't want those 360 yard holes to be reachable it's going to take something other than asking the players to give up four of their irons and a wedge or two.

[Allan Hutton]

Abolish the notion of Par.  Who cares??

An excerpt from The Open Championship website....

"The first Open Championship was played on Wednesday, 17th October in windy conditions. Tom Morris, the Keeper of the Green at Prestwick, was the local favourite, but Willie Park took the first round lead with a score of 55, three shots better than Morris. Both Park and Morris did the second round in 59 strokes, so Park maintained his lead. In the final round, Morris could only make up a single stroke when he shot a 59 to finish on 176, so Willie Park, who went round in 60, was the first Open Champion with a score of 174."

Is there any par here?  It's the lowest total score that counts.  Records in any event get lower and lower, records are there to be beaten.  Score is a number, that will go lower and lower.  

Take the next Olympics, some guy runs the 100m in 9.0 seconds...hang on they are getting too fast....why don't we strap a parachute to each runner to slow them down.

The field one competes against is the competition, the course is the arena.  A great arena is not defined by the greatness of the competition.

When was par introduced into the lexicon anyway? I certainly don't believe that in the 1700's, people hacking around the linksland knew much about a par 4 anyway.

[Brent Hutto]

I think you overstate the case, Shivas. The media use par because it provides a way to succinctly state the relative standing of players who are at different points in their round. Prior to the common usage is "1-under" and "4-over" it would be necessary to say that "Woods is a 217 with fifteen holes to play" and that "Garcia is at 234 with twelve to play" or similar.

Without par or something like it, you'd have to be very wordy in coming up with anything like "Monty needs to make up two strokes on Tiger on the back nine".

[PThomas]

I believe Clifford Roberts was the one who came up with the concept of plus and minus under par as a conveniece for his Masters "patrons", Brent

[Rick Shefchik]

Before Roberts standardized tournament scorekeeping by referencing how a player stood to par, it was common to cite a player's relationship to "even fours." You could dump par tomorrow and the same general idea would still be used.

[Jim Nugent]

The USGA and PGA are very conservative.  Hard to see them taking a radical step like lowering the number of clubs to eight.  Canīt imagine them doing anything that dramatically changes the basic setup of the game.

I love long hitting, and doubt technology can be reined in.  Iīm also very much reminded of what the course profile here says about St. Louis CC:  it is too short to hold another U.S. Open and has nowhere to grow.  Many of our top, beloved courses face that same danger.  

Take Augusta.  Despite all the complaints about the ill-advised changes there, what would Tiger shoot if the course had been left untouched, at 6900 yards and no rough?  More generally, do we want to see top tournaments become drive and pitch contests on ice-rink greens?

I really donīt know the answer.  Patrick says there is none.  If heīs right, the modern pro game could make many top courses obsolete for tournament play.

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

The modern, physically fit golfer with modern, high tech equipment scores 18-20 under par on PGA designed modern, long, narrow courses with high scoring indexes.
In quite a few tournaments held on old, defenceless courses lately i.e. Canadian Open at Hamilton, scoring was in the single digits under par.
Where is the problem?
If you limit the players to six or eight clubs, the same guys will be on the leader board, and might even score better!
With Tiger's ability to work the ball he would be given an even larger advantage.
I agree that par is irrevelant to the tour, and that we need it for our handicap matches.

[Paul Richards]

Sean

If they aren't going to go to a competition ball, at least lower the club limit .

> My point is that pros will have to be more inventive with their shot making if they have less clubs.


That would certainly be a welcome change.


Driver.
Lob wedge.
Putter.

Driver.
Lob wedge.
Putter.


These guys are good.  


BORRRRRRRRRRRRRRING !!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[A_Clay_Man]

Were it not for handicaps, par would be irrelevent.

Guys, when you think about it, we have nobody to blame but ourselves for the destruction of grand old golf courses in "defense of par".  

It is OUR need to have a handicap so we can play against our friends or in tournaments in net events that makes par relevent, and by extension, makes the Tour, the USGA and the R & A want to defend it.  Without our need to play net events, whether they are tournaments or friendly matches, there would be no par for them to  defend!

Next time you blame someone for destroying a golf course in defense of par, look in the mirror.  Anyone with a handicap is part of the problem.  ....

Dave, The concept of par is relevent, the absolute value, is not.

[TEPaul]

In my opinion, all of you are completely missing the point with TOC. Distance doesn't really matter there, par doesn't really matter there---over par, under par, whatever. That golf course is always going to be eternally fascinating through and through no matter how far they hit it or what they score on it. Accept those facts and live with it because if you don't the next thing you'll start thinking about is how to change it somehow---and that's not necessary. There's just too much going on out there to ever make any of that necessary.

[Paul Richards]

> That golf course is always going to be eternally fascinating through and through no matter how far they hit it or what they score on it.


Amen!

[Doug Siebert]

Brent

Perhaps you are right.  If these guys can shoot the same scores with 8 clubs, then why not lower the limit of clubs?  Better yet, why not cut it to 6 sticks?  My point is that pros will have to be more inventive with their shot making if they have less clubs.  If they can still go deep, I think some of these shots mat be worth seeing, rather than the bland soup the PGA tour servers up every week.

Ciao

Sean

If you want to raise the ire of the equipment manufacturers, this is the way to do it.  For all the chicken little talk about how the USGA would be sued into oblivion if they tried to cut back the golf ball, the makers would still be making golf balls, still competing with other makers to be have the longest "short" ball.  If you cut the number of clubs players can carry, you cut directly into their revenue with no way to make it up.  That'd certainly get their attention.  Even with six clubs, most pros could get by just fine with driver, long iron, mid iron, short iron, SW/LW, putter.  How would that have hurt Tiger this week, other than having to use a 2 or 3i instead for those holes he hit 3W off the tee?

My issue with the distance the ball goes today has nothing to do with scoring.  I really don't care if players shoot -20 or +10.  But I do care if their approaches are way easier than they should be, with wedges to most par 4s and middle irons even to "long" par 5s.  Where's the challenge and interest?  I don't tune in to see birdies, I don't get off seeing bogies.  I love to see birdies where a player does great shotmaking, and sticking a wedge close over and over again from 120 yards isn't great shotmaking even if it does require more talent than I or most golfers have.  They try to compensate for it by putting pins in more precarious places but it isn't the same as seeing them figure how to get the ball close to a right pin on a firm green with a bunker right with a 5i that must be struck perfectly and land 3 yards over the bunker to hold, or be worked and/or use the natural slopes to get close (or, heaven forbid, play safe to the middle instead of trying to get close...i.e., strategy instead of lawn darts)