[PThomas]

it seems like the usually go pretty low here......maybe Jack should put more slope in the greens and slow them down

[Jim Franklin]

Soft, lift, clean, and place with perfect greens. These guys are good. You give them those conditions ANYWHERE and they will tear it up.

[redanman]

It was built with Jack's game in mind.  IF you play like Jack, it is easy.

Professionals are always being quoted as respecting water as a great hazard, it has plenty.

Professionals are really good out of sand (don't start another one of "those" threads, please?)

Professionals really love definition and framing that says "hit it here" (that rewards their definition of "great play" and fairness) as in tree-lined narrow fairways

-----------get the picture?

[TEPaul]

The reason some scored as low as they did is none of the above. The reason is the greens although they were very quick were also pretty receptive.

As on any other golf course, give players of that caliber receptive greens and they will go low. Firm those greens up, though, where they are not so receptive to aerial shots and I doubt the winner would have come with 10-12 strokes of the winning score at Muirfield Village.

Jack Nicklaus has come up with various ideas over the years to apparently control low scoring---eg regulate the golf ball or lightly furrow the bunkers or produce very fast greenspeeds but I don't believe Nicklaus has given that much thought to the incredibly effective technique of green surface firmness in controlling low scoring!

And I guess that makes some sense since Jack Nicklaus was, in fact, the most effective aerial shotmaker of his era and perhaps the first really functionally effective one in tournament golf. After-all, he was the one who first really developed the practice of playing by exact yardages and that's pretty hard to do in practice on aerial approach shots if the greens aren't receptive!  

[jeffwarne]

the scores seem low in relation to par because Jack has not resorted to the USGA's age old TRICK of shortening a par 5 20-60 yards and calling it a par 4.
Arnie did the same thing at his tourney as have others.

The actual scores are the same,just that at courses that don't chop par the scores are more under par.

In an age where we lament the disappearance of long irons,
we somehow believe that a 480 par 4 (driver 8 iron) is a better challenge than a 540 par 5 (driver 3 iron)

I understand why it's done because this thread is a perfect example of how it fools people into thinking a course is hard or easy based on how many under (or over) par one is.

[Edward Coombes]

TEPaul: are the green complexes designed so as they could support that kind of setup?
I'm thinking along the lines of catering for fairway-length grass runoff areas rather than green-fringe-rough which would be US Open like (not foreign to the Tour by any means I realise) or would some renovation need to take place to complete the firm-fast idea? (In your opinion).

[Brent Hutto]

In an age where we lament the disappearance of long irons,
we somehow believe that a 480 par 4 (driver 8 iron) is a better challenge than a 540 par 5 (driver 3 iron)

That one always gets me too. All the players and talking heads on TV lament the old days when they hit long irons into greens. But nobody sets up a course for them that requires a long iron into the greens...which for todays Tour players is somewhere in the 510-570 yard range if you let them hit driver off the tee and maybe 480-520 if you can somehow induce them to tee off with a shorter club. It doesn't seem to be a particularly tricky problem.

[tlavin]

The reason some scored as low as they did is none of the above. The reason is the greens although they were very quick were also pretty receptive.

As on any other golf course, give players of that caliber receptive greens and they will go low.

This is one of the axioms in golf.

[W.H. Cosgrove]

Rain.  

Doesn't it seem to pour buckets every year at The Memorial?  

Has anyone played MV in firm conditions?   Could you let us know if it is 'easy.'

[BCrosby]

We can agonize until the cows come home about how to defend against the modern pro game.

Seems to me the evidence has accumulated for a decade or so and the lessons are pretty clear.

1. You do brutal, penal set-ups. High rough, single file fw's, fast greens. Think WF. Carnoustie, etc. The worst of all possible solutions, imho. For several reasons; or

2. You extend courses to 8,000 plus yards. Minimum. That's how long they have to be today to play the way a 7,000 yard course played in, say, 1970. Ceteris paribus.

Tweaking green speeds, doing bunker furrows, firmer fw's, higher roughs are all weather dependent. That stuff isn't even very effective when the weather cooperates.

The bottom line is that as long as they can hit lofted iron approaches to every par 4 and most par 3's, the pros are going low. Because they will bogey those holes much less often than previous genrations of pros that had to hit long irons.

If they aren't forced to hit 5i, 4i or 3i approaches just to make par, the pros can make mince meat of most courses most of the time.

Bob      

[Edward Coombes]

Good points Bob.

Maybe shrinking the size of the hole is the way to go?

That may solve the modern tech/too many strokes under par and cheater line issues(some of 'em) in one go.

[Padraig Dooley]

Bob, generally the two big factors in scoring are receptiveness of the course, particularly greens, and condition of the course.

When you have these two factors combined ie soft, good greens scoring will be low, even with narrow fairways and high rough. You will also generally find that scoring is better with fast greens as opposed to slow greens.

If a course is to be presented as a challenge, firm fairways and greens are required.

Par 5s are also the key to scoring, if you added 30 yards to every par 3 and 4 on a given course, an extra 420 yards, but let the par 5s alone, I think you would find overall scoring to be very similar.

[BCrosby]

Padraig -

Firm/soft, fast/slow all those factors come and go. Sometimes they work; more often they don't.

But one thing that always works is asking a player to hit a green with a 4i. He will always, under all conditions, hit the green less often. In addition, his misses will be farther off the mark. He will make more bogies and fewer birdies.

And the weather will be irrelevant.

All that means stretching courses to more than8,000 yards. These are the wages of failing to manage the distance issue over the last 20 years.

Bob

[Padraig Dooley]

Bob

In my experience there is a significant difference between firm and soft when it comes to scoring, having played in tournaments on the same course in different years with different conditions.

I might also suggest having someone hit a 4 iron as opposed to an 8 iron to a hole wouldn't have a great effect on scoring, the 8 won't be hit close enough for birdies and the 4 won't be hit far enough away for bogeys.

Also weather is relevant, try playing in firm conditions with a 2 or 3 club wind.

[BCrosby]

Padraig -

No, the weather will not be relevant. Day in, day out, dry, wet, windly, still, no one hits a 4i as accurately as they hit an 8i. That will show up on the scorecard.

Bob

[Padraig Dooley]

Bob

If 150 yards is taken as an 8i distance and 200 yards as a 4i distance, a tour pro will have a 7 or 8 percent error on average. He will hit an 8i between 31.5 and 36 feet, and a 4i between 42 and 48 feet, a difference of between 10.5 and 12 feet.

This difference won't have much bearing on his score.

[Pete Lavallee]

This difference won't have much bearing on his score.

Padraig,

If I added 10.5 feet to every first putt in your round next Sat. you actually think you'll score the same?

[Padraig Dooley]

Pete

If every 30 footer that I had was made into a 40 footer, I don't think my score would be much different. I don't hole too many 30 footers and I don't normally 3-putt from 40 feet.

[Pete Lavallee]

Then why do longer courses always have a higher course rating?  Face it, distance in golf always adds up to a higher score one way or another. Plus when I add 12 feet to your 48 foot 4 iron shot, you might just 3 putt that 60 footer.

[David Miller]

I almost posted this same thread yesterday while watching the pros shred the course.  I have a friend that's a member at MV, and he is continually amazed at what the pros shoot out there.  Regardless of the course setup and conditions, those guys are just really, really good.

[Phil Benedict]

My brother was at MV this year.  The course plays short because so many holes are downhill.  From an architectural standpoint, Jack believes golf is more fun if played downhill and routed MV to achieve this on all but 2 of the par 4's and 5's.  

Having said this, these guys are incredibly good.

[Bill_Yates]

Tom,
In addition to firmness, what about the primary slope of each green and it's influence on receptivity and scoring.

For example in two weeks at Oakmont these guys will see the following primary slopes:
Front to Back - Greens 1,3,10,12
Back to Front - Greens 2,7,13,17,18
Right to Left - Greens 5,6
Left to Right - Greens 9 (has 3 separate L to R sections), 11,16
"Flat"/Plateau - 4,8,14,15
(Note: the above might not be perfect but it's close)
What influence might this factor have on scoring?

I've only been to Muirfield Village one time, perhaps someone could let us know if perhaps the majority of greens there slope primarily from back to front for example.

[Padraig Dooley]

Pete

Added distance does make a course more difficult, especially for the average player. However the distibution of the distance is a much bigger factor.

Take two hypothetical courses which both add 400 yards, One does so by adding 20 yards to every hole, the other does by lengthening two 290 yard par 4s to 490 yards.

I think the former course mightn't be any more difficult but the latter might be nearly two shots harder.

Also to add 12 feet to a 48 foot result of an average 4 iron shot would mean adding another 50 yards to the length of the shot, ie an approach of 250 yards.

[TEPaul]

Speaking of firm and fast greens, less than a year ago I stopped off at Piping Rock to speak to super Rich Spears about these kinds of things and he said if the club schedules a tournament at Piping, particularly in the real heat of summer and they ask for really firm and fast greens he basically says pick one or the other but I'm not doing both.

I sort of like that idea, and it's certainly practical unless one wants to hang the agronomy out on the razor's edge.

If the greens of Muirfield Village were 13 yesterday I bet they're around 9 as I type this and they may be heading down some more for a while.  

And that reminds me of stopping in at Shinnecock to see Mark Michaud about five days after the 2004 US Open.

I said:

"How's the course coming out of the Open?"

Mark said:

"The greens have anthracnose , some worse than others."

I said:

"Oh no, what a disaster."

He said:

"In three weeks they'll be fine, although I haven't decided yet to treat them individually or all the same."

That's what I call a real "Emergency Room Super."  

[Kalen Braley]

Just in case anyone wanted to know.  Here's a link to what that is:  

http://www.oznet.ksu.edu/dp_hfrr/extensn/problems/turfanth.htm

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