Attack & Defence and the PGA Tour

[JNagle]

Reviewing again "The Architectural Side of Golf"  and the chapter entitiled Attack and Defence a portion of that chapter struck me as being prophetic.  For years now I have become bored with PGA golf.  Often times you cannot tell week to week which courses the Tour event in being played on.  The Majors certainly offer some difference, but even that seems to be changing as Opens are becoming more and more standardized.  Can this cycle be broken?

"But it must be kept in mind that the elusive charm of the game suffers as soon as any succesful method of standardisation is allowed to creep in.  A golf course should never pretend to be, nor is it intended to be, an infallible trubunal"

"The multiplication of 1,000 Pound tournaments and innumerable championships has to a considerable extend disturbed the values.  Players, not unnaturally, when so much is at stake, insist more and more on a rigid standard of equity.  It would be unwise to underrate the fascinations of publicity or the importance of golf as a spectacle to entertain the enthusiastic galleries; but at the same time it is necessary to point out certain mischievous tendencies that can influence the progress and spirit of the game, tendencies which, in the long run, by laying an undue insistence on apparent miscarriages of justice (for which the architect is usually held guilty) reduce the imaginative element of our courses to a lower level than they should rightly posses, and have the effect of diverting poetry of golf into less desirable channels."  

Has the Tour dummied down its courses in the name of equity and standardization?  Has that thought process crept into the industry as a whole?  

[redanman]

Jim

Golf for the masses and I suppose golf entertainment for the masses (e.g. PGATourŪ) have become more of a soothing than a stimulating pastime/game etc.

Fairness has become paramount to the golfer of all levels on the whole.   In the masses the regular Joe and Jane do not want to have their day spoiled and of course to the playing professional the player for pay does not want to be cheated by a twist of fate.  The same Joe/Jane want to emulate their heroes and the cycle continues.

Heck, I'll only personally go to a golf tournament if I want to see the golf course.  Watching on TV?  I miss most of most weeks of the US Tour because the only courses of interest on TV are the ones abroad.  Then again you and I and those that really care about the subtletities of architecture are the nut cases on here.

So in a nutshell I think the sameness feeds on itself and on ffeds back on multiple levels.   Commercial success drives the industry and the only way to change that is for the grass roots player to demand great architecture - unlikely to happen.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Jim,
I'm not going to comment on the thread simply because it will be rehashing the same ol', same ol' of concern for the Sport and how many of us can continue to hide our heads in the sand on equipment issues as it affects our beloved SPORT.

I will however explain great joy to see that your reading this book and getting the most out of Attack & Defence from TASOG. I went to great lengths about three or four years ago, of typing the entire chapter out here so all could read, and then posted it in successive posts because it wouldn't all fit! The usual Huckaby's and Goodale's refuted all of it as nothing more the brick-a-brack for the dinosaur-set such as myself. (This is probably where I get my more Velaceraptor characteristics as a participant here on Golf Club Atlas.)

In closing, Attack & Defence, for me anyway clarifies one thing: defense of at the hole itself while maintaining the most symbiotic relationship with the natural charateristics of it's natural state. We can wax on and off about how good these guys really are, but while the Sport is confronted by a continuing mass-excellerated escalation of equipment technology that benefits the art of hitting the golf ball by making it easier, longer yet with a loss of feel, I can't see the Sport evolving in direction which benefits it's vitally important long term health.

The television ratings prove this......

Yes, these guys are good, but do they really have any talent, like say of a Ben Hogan? Frankly speaking, I don't really give a damn!

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Re-reading my post, I see where I did in fact make a comment, so I'll apologize for that now!

[Tom_Doak]

There is no defense out there.  They just attack.  It's getting like watching an NBA game, without the jumping.

All of the players who are older than me (45) speak in hushed tones about how great a "driver of the ball" Norman was, and Nicklaus before him, and on back to the great ball-strikers of yore.  With modern equipment even I am a good driver of the ball ... even though years ago, I sucked.  I didn't even carry a driver when my handicap was its lowest; it was easier to hit 3-wood and 1-iron than driver.  That's how much equipment has changed the game!

The Tour gave me their Shot Link breakdown for this year's Phoenix Open to study.  Fascinating stuff which I am still trying to decipher.  I can tell there IS still a little strategy left in the game, because on some holes 80% of the misses are left of the fairway and on other holes 80% are to the right, and it's not a wind effect.  But with the average drive right on 300 yards and somebody uncorking a 344 yard drive on each hole each day, it's hard to believe it makes much difference where they drive it, as long as it's not behind a tree.

[TEPaul]

"Has the Tour dummied down its courses in the name of equity and standardization?"

Jim:

Apparently. To me that's why a US Open, British Open or Masters is so much more fun to watch. Stuff happens in those events which never seems to happen on the weekly tour stops.

On the tour stops it's just hit the receptive green, make a birdie or two putt. Get in a bunker and get out and sink the putt inside 6-7 feet all the time and outside that maybe not all the time. To me that seems pretty standardized.

On Tour when they hit the greens the interest is over, in my opinion, but at ANGC, Shinnecock, #2, TOC, St George's, Southern Hills etc, etc, all non-Tour stop sites when the approach first hits terra firma, that's when the fun begins.  

However, I don't know what's going on with the Tour Championship at TPC Jax but for some reason they seem to be willing to break out of that standardized mold, at least to some degree.

Furthermore, in my opinion, the defence of most any golf course regardless of its architecture CAN BE so much more in the area of maintenance practices and set-up than most realize. If you give even the best architecture (or hardest courses) a pussy maintenance set-up those guys have no problem killing it.

But give them the right kind of maintenance practices and set-up and things change dramatically---eg get so much more interesting for both player and spectator. Some may say that's beginning to go over the top. It isn't. Basically, that's what most all of it is about.