Geoff is quoted a fair bit in this..
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/15/sports/golf/15roberts.htmlSports of The Times
It Is High, It Is Far, It Is...in the Rough
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By SELENA ROBERTS
Published: August 15, 2005
Springfield, N.J.
UNCOILING his wispy frame, whipping his 10-gallon driver through the ball, Davis Love III launched one tee shot into the treetops, scattering the birds, squirrels and Swiss Family Robinson.
A Suspended Final Round
Just another errant drive. Par for the course at Baltusrol. By the time play was suspended last night at the P.G.A. Championship, Love remained on a leader board cluttered with bad drivers on the scale of Mr. Magoo.
Almost no one saw a fairway. Almost all of them bumped into the rough, trees and fan ropes.
For all of their inaccurate ways, Love was tied for fourth place, while Phil Mickelson was in first. Joining them on the leader board were Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods.
Of these superstars of swing, not one of them was among the top 40 in fairways hit during the major. Mickelson was closest at 44th, followed by Love (51st), Singh (52nd) and Woods (63rd).
This is why the most memorable shots of the tournament have been recovery shots from the abyss. There was Mickelson, ankle deep in the rough, using a short iron like a banana blade as he blasted a ball onto the 14th green.
Somehow golf has gotten to the point where inaccuracy isn't punitive because distance is so highly rewarded. A 330-yard drive into the rough, plus a wedge to the green, is far more attractive to a player than a 280-yard poke and a 5-iron to the pin.
But is might always right? There is an aberration on the leader board in Steve Elkington, who was in a tie with Thomas Bjorn for second place when the storms blew across Baltusrol last night.
Elkington is the amiable Aussie with a caddie nicknamed Gypsy and a driving distance that ranks him 132nd on the PGA Tour. But his fairway accuracy is No. 14 at Baltusrol. He is not an equipment aficionado like Mickelson and Love or an all-consumed workout fiend like Woods and Singh.
"I couldn't be like Vijay," Elkington told Australian reporters last week. "I admire what he does, but I bet he doesn't even know where the light switches are at home."
In other words, Elkington has a life. But he occupied the space among the leaders as an anomaly. More and more, players like Woods, Mickelson, Singh and Love overpower their errors to find success.
"I don't blame them," said Geoff Shackelford, author of "The Future of Golf: How Golf Lost Its Way and How to Get It Back," when reached by telephone yesterday. "Over the course of four rounds, it's a wise thing to do. Power is more important."
It has become an obsession. It's all about the equipment and computer analysis, the balls and the Launch Monitor, which, in essence, is a time-lapse X-ray of a swing to determine factors like ball spin and carry distance in order to match a player to the optimum club.
"Players have picked up 30 or 40 yards on their drives using it," Shackelford said.
What else are players using? Power cravings in any sport can lead to boundary pushing of the chemical kind. There is no whisper of a steroid problem inside the P.G.A., but there is also no drug testing. So how does anyone truly know surges in distance are all about technology and not about the designer steroid THG?
The long ball's allure creates a slippery slope. Baseball heard the siren song of power and sold its soul for magic pills. Hitters bulked up to keep up. Pitchers juiced up to spike their endurance. The game was rewarded with money and fame until Balco revealed the secret behind the long-ball success.
The fallout from Balco also revealed how the power obsession was just a mirage. In truth, fans longed for a return to nuance, to the beauty of a stolen base, to the grace of a diving catch, to the roots of the game. Fans, as it turns out, truly loved the game without the homer hype.
Golf may discover the same thing. One day, ball shaping and shot-making and strategy may once again come into vogue. But for now, course designers will continue to lengthen and tighten the fairways of the majors in an effort to outdistance the long ball on some of the most prestigious courses. In 1993, Baltusrol added 10 yards to the width of its fairways.
"It's a dramatic shift in the way the game is played," Shackelford said. "To anyone who loves the great old golf courses, it's offensive. There used to be an element of strategy, of placement. That is gone now and that is tragic."
It's unfortunate for the Fred Funks and Mike Weirs of the game, for those who believe accuracy should be rewarded. As it is, power, however errant, is not a hazard.
"Players are not afraid of missing," Shackelford said. "They're just hitting it as far as they can without worrying about whether they're going to land in the fairway. It's absurd."
It's the way of the game, unless someone, maybe Elkington, can place a little finesse into the bag of a winner of a major.