Jim K. was kind to post this a few years ago. Here it is again for those who have not read this...
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EXCERPTS FROM THE "TEE IT DOWN" DINNER
Last year at the U.S. Open at Southern Hills in Tulsa, I had the privilege to be included in an informal discussion at a private dinner hosted by the USGA. The discussion turned on how traditional championship courses could stand up against the onslaught of ball and implement technology. Thus I now report to you a proposal made by Peter Dawson, Secretary of the R & A, at that time with which I concur.
"There's one sure way to level the playing field of golf," the Wise Man said." And that is to take away the current artificiality. You don't have to ban any new technology. You don't require the player to give up his preferred ball with its hexogumple dimples and its hoxadymonic flight pattern. You don't even have to fight a patent. The only patent pertaining to my subject has long expired. "We also have a long-standing tradition on which to base our decision. It's called playing the ball as it lies," Mr. Dawson reminds us.
So colleagues, here's the plan: we ban the tee from the tee.
Each club player will be allowed to roll his ball around on that area, praying that he finds a tuft of something, or a worm-cast, or a acorn-cup or whatever, while our job will be to ensure that each tee is properly constructed to be tightly cut and as smooth and fine as any eleven stimp-measured green. But during club medals or other championships, the rule would be simple. Drop the ball between and behind the markers and play it from where it comes to rest.
There will be one new etiquette standard, and that shall be all. A player who scuffs the teeing area will be required to make repairs from available sod and sand to ensure the area is left as pristine as we presently leave bunkers and greens. With that then let the best player find some way to fly the ball with a 7.5 degree light-alloy, bigheaded driver three hundred and thirty-three yards through the air.
And for my fellow golf course architects in the audience we shall have a role to play in all of this. Up until now most of you have been moving bunkers on the fairway wings forward from two hundred and sixty yards out into the high two eighties. Now I want you to consider placing sizable bunkers with significant lips, and very soft, powdery sand, say about fifty to one hundred yards or so from the championship tees as Donald Ross once implemented.
I see some of you grimacing, no doubt thinking that this change will only service to take the driver out of the hands of highly-skilled exponents of golf; and that they will simply use a 3-wood to get ample distance, the way young Tiger Woods has done in order to master holes such as that tough, dogleg 13th at Augusta National with a high sweeping hook. Perhaps therefore I have not been sufficiently explicit in the proposal.
What I heard is exactly the opposite: the driver will still be obligatory for everyone on the par fours and fives. The only other option permitted will be the wedge. Draconian, did I hear someone murmur? Perhaps, but you see we have sat around for long enough doing nothing while that was always the constant complaint. No, we have waited for far too long while technology crept up on us and turned golf on its ear. Now it is impossible to turn back the clock, and we are stuck with lawsuits by manufacturers, and how resistance to change is bad for the game and on and on.
Nevertheless, now we can do something and something very positive, even though it too will cause some measure of resentment. Still, that's the way things have always been with golf, ever since Old Tom Morris or even before his time.
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