[Mark Bourgeois]

At first by accident and now by design, I have been playing as much as possible without the use of any yardage aids (sprinkler heads, yardage books, as well as plates and poles if I can help it).

(Please no digressions, sidetracks or attacks: It's not a protest or statement against anything or anybody, I'm just finding it a barrel of monkeys!)

Anyway, it hit me that this is how the game used to be played, which maybe explains why blindness in years / centuries gone by was "to be detested." No yardage indicators? Brutal!

But I'm all for "suppressio veri" (suppression of truth) -- those design elements IMHO make for a lot of fun and interest -- so I say the classical view of blindness is wrong today.  The old assumptions no longer hold because unlike in the past, today's golfers have precise yardage at their fingertips through a variety of paper, electronic, and visual sources.

Unfortunately, this emasculates suppressio veri techniques, to the detriment of the golfing experience.

Here's the argument:
Suppressio veri is one of the tactics designers can use to boost fun.
Yardage "cues" emasculate suppressio veri and are here to stay.
Blindness increases suppressio veri, even with yardage cues.
Therefore: blindness should be brought back as a planned design element on new courses.

Please, no reductionist arguments; blindness on most or all holes would be stupid.  Treat it like a spice: a little can go a long way.

Should blindness now be praised as an effective tactic for increasing fun in a technophiliac age?

[cary lichtenstein]

I started playing in that era and it wasn't until Jack Nicklaus made it popular that we have began pacing off yardage. It was fun.

Today you can hit a 300 yard drive 2 fairways over, take out your yardage gun and how you have 113 yards to the pin. Takes all the uncertainty out of the shot.

[Mark_Fine]

Mark,
Don't kid yourself to think that players of years past didn't know how far they were from where they wanted to hit their golf ball.  As a golfer learned a course, they learned the distances to the hole from various obstacles and locations, etc.    

[TEPaul]

Mark:

Actually, blindness in the 19th century and back was considered to be "prized" in golf (architecture).

Can you name the man who last won on tour who never used yardages---just played by eye?

Of course some blindness should return to golf architecture. It never should've left in the first place. There can hardly be a better inspirer of imagination than some blindness.

[wsmorrison]

While speaking to the historian at Merion Golf Club, I mentioned that it would be a great acquisition if the club could get Jack Nicklaus to send them his yardage book for Merion from 1971 and/or 1981 as I thought he was known to be so studious in his yardages and they must contain some revealing notes.  The historian answered that he played with Nicklaus on more than one occasion and Nicklaus remarked that he played Merion by feel and did not have copious notes for the course.  Are the stories of him being so methodical about yardages accurate?  My friend the club historian was a bit surprised by my premise.

[TEPaul]

Mark Fine said;


"MarkB,
Don't kid yourself to think that players of years past didn't know how far they were from where they wanted to hit their golf ball.  As a golfer learned a course, they learned the distances to the hole from various obstacles and locations, etc."


Mark:

That certainly is true. When my Dad died in 1992 (he was a pretty good national amateur) I eventually cleaned out his house and I found a couple of boxes that contained a very large number of little flip notebooks that indicated hole by hole yardages from all kinds of identifiable objects on reams of golf courses. He made them all himself by walking all those courses (they were obviously the courses he played tournaments on). That was not an uncommon practice at all back in the 1940s and 1950s and 1960s for guys like that.

My only regret is that I didn't keep them. I don't know what I was thinking.  

[TEPaul]

"Are the stories of him being so methodical about yardages accurate?  My friend the club historian was a bit surprised by my premise."

Wayne:

Yes, those stories about Nicklaus and yardages are accurate. Nicklaus himself, in a book or two, mentioned that he had picked up playing by the numbers (playing strictly by yardage indication) from a California amateur (I believe his name was Gene Andrews) who sort of developed the system. Nicklaus was considered to be about the first on tour to really rely on playing by the numbers or at least the one who completely popularized the technique.

[TEPaul]

"Sam Snead? Seve? Did Mac O'Grady ever win anything?"

MarkB:

It was Tom Nieporte (Winged Foot head pro) at the Bob Hope, in, I believe 1970 (or thereabouts).

[wsmorrison]

Tom,

Do you know when did Nicklaus begin to play by exact yardages?  Was it before or after the 1981 Open?

[Phil McDade]

While speaking to the historian at Merion Golf Club, I mentioned that it would be a great acquisition if the club could get Jack Nicklaus to send them his yardage book for Merion from 1971 and/or 1981 as I thought he was known to be so studious in his yardages and they must contain some revealing notes.  The historian answered that he played with Nicklaus on more than one occasion and Nicklaus remarked that he played Merion by feel and did not have copious notes for the course.  Are the stories of him being so methodical about yardages accurate?  My friend the club historian was a bit surprised by my premise.

Wayne:

That's interesting about Nicklaus, and the historian's observations. I'm wondering if Nicklaus -- who has an absolute computer for a brain, and the memory of 10 elephants -- played the US Open there "by feel" in 1971 because he learned and remembered so much about it during his play at the 1960 World Amateur Team Championship in 1960, when he won easily with a 269 (still the best 72-hole score at Merion East?). I would've thought that, of the two primary contestants in the '71 Open who might have played it by feel, it would have been Trevino, who'd been a pro less than five years, and maybe never had much a chance to even visit Merion East prior to the '71 Open there.

Interesting stuff -- I've always regarded Trevino as perhaps one of the game's ultimate "feel" players (he grew up playing in conditions -- west Texas -- not unlike those from the UK associated with feel vs. technology), while Nicklaus was one who focused intently on yardage, conditions, and clubbing for the right distance.

[Mark_F]

Of course some blindness should return to golf architecture. It never should've left in the first place. There can hardly be a better inspirer of imagination than some blindness.

Tom,

Then why did it leave?

What came first - architects/developers not using/wanting blindness on their courses, or the technology to give the player the distance regardless?

Most people these days don't consider blindness on a new course to be an 'inspirer of imagination', however.  It's an oddity, unfair, silly and often just plain dumb, in their thoughts.

[RSLivingston_III]

I did find an ad for a yardage disc for sale in either the USGA bulletins or The Golfer. I believe it was offered around the turn of the century.
I will see if I can find it again and post it here.

[Mark_F]

Mark,

It is one of the main elements that polarises people.

Some say there is simply too much of it.

Most miss the fact that if you hit the ball to certain parts of the fairway the blindness is lessened substantially in most cases.  

There are still a number of pins where you don't quite see the bottom of the flag, though, and most don't appear to like this feature, thinking it is poor or gimmicky, as opposed to an unsettling hazard in itself.

[JohnV]

Mark and Cary,

Thanks for the response.

Mark,

Three questions intended as open questions not leading:
1. Was that "skill" or experience available to all golfers or just to a few? Was yardage-aiding technology (and by that I include sprinkler heads, yardage books, etc.) a "leveler" the way some say the modern ball has negated the skill of working the ball at the professional level of the game?
Mark

Would you consider a caddie "yardage-aiding technology"?

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

I used to ply that way and loved it. now my eyes are not good enough to even make decent guesses. I need to step off yardage from the 150 etc. I still like that much better than the guns.

[Kevin_Reilly]

"Sam Snead? Seve? Did Mac O'Grady ever win anything?"

MarkB:

It was Tom Nieporte (Winged Foot head pro) at the Bob Hope, in, I believe 1970 (or thereabouts).

Ryan Moore came close last year.

[Tom_Doak]

Nicklaus picked up the yardage trick from Gene Andrews in 1959 or 1960.  He had yardages for all of his professional career, and that's how it got popular on Tour.  But he didn't overdo the reliance on yardage ... he played more by feel than most players today, especially on shorter shots, which might be why he wasn't so great from 100 yards in.

[Mark_F]

Mark,

No worries.  Glad you managed to make it out there.  I'm guessing the weather would have been another hazard yesterday... As well as the price of coffee in the shop...

Yes, the greens cop a fair bit of flack - probably a toss up as to whether they, the blindness or the lack of short game options causes the most uproar.

[Doug Siebert]

While I don't use the Pelz system, preferring to play by feel, I do think that getting distances on the half wedges or even little 20 yard flop shots is useful information.  If I'm able to step off the distance, or part of the distance (estimating the rest) I think it helps me.  Just like terrain can fool the eye from 200 yards, it can fool the eye from 20 yards when it isn't all flat between the ball and the hole.  I figure out the distance, figure out how much bounce and roll it'll have based on the shot I'm playing and the green conditions and slope, etc.

Having in mind that I want to fly the ball x yards while I'm taking my practice swing helps me focus on how to swing it based on my muscle memory.  Knowing the distances wasn't useful at all the first time I tried it, but over time I think I've got the yardages gauged in to some extent.  I won't claim I can call up a 34 yard carry on demand, but knowing its 34 yards would help me reduce my deviation over just eyeballing the pin and playing the shot.

There's definitely a difference in my ability to hit those half shots to a certain distance when I've say played every other day for the past two weeks versus at the start of the season when I seem to fly all those little shots over the top of the flag.

Not that I'm remotely close to being accurate to within a yard like the pros Pelz was testing, even when I'm at my best.  And if I need to hit 1000 shots to reach that, I can guarantee I never will....that's like a decade of wedge practice

[Tags:]

Tags:

[Tags:]

Tags:

Call to undefined function theme_linktree()