Is Strategy Obsolete?

[Don_Mahaffey]

Is strategy obsolete? Not when you play The Old Course!
Watch a group of good players go around there and you will see a number of different approaches to many of the holes. Does anyone think 4 tour pros would all try the same line on 14 if the wind was from the left? What about the road hole? Some will try and bust it up to the narrow part of the fwy and some will lay back and take the chip and putt route.

Strategy can still be built, but it takes bold architects, IMHO.

[TEPaul]

Matt:

I don't care how high Tiger hits the ball there is a point when a green to any height or trajectory he has will not work as well as another option.

As just an example of a very slight refinement or indication of this very point, it's my distinct belief that the real reason Woods lost the PGA is the greens themselves became of bit of a conundrum to him and Steve Williams as to what they would reliably do once his ball hit them.

Clearly, to me, Woods was expecting one thing quite often and he wasn't getting it! This had nothing to do with his execution, only his choices of clubs and shots and how they reacted on the greens.

I'd consider myself a very interested student of Woods and I've noticed for a few years, I believe, that Woods can go ballistic if he dialed something in and he fails to physically execute it!

Vagaries and luck and such don't seem to get much of a reaction from him one way or the other if he executed physically what he thought was right and called for!

With today's excellent close up TV photography they're very good at focusing in close on him when the ball is in the air. You can see his eyes flick up and down from the ball's trajectory to the target and you can tell when this is happening when he's very impassive he's done what he wanted to do physically! If the ball does something he didn't expect when it hits and reacts on the ground he seems to take it in relative stride msot of the time (if the shot was executed as planned and intended)!

I feel he hit the shots he wanted to in the PGA and the ball wasn't reacting on the green like he and Williams expectecd it to many times! That's why he had all those longish putts all tournament with shots he expected to turn out better.

On one of the days his ball would release and go over a green and on another day when he expected it to release some it would stop dead!

Throughout the PGA the way he and Williams expected the ball to react on the green wasn't happening although he was hitting the shots he intended to a lot of the time?

But the unusual thing about the PGA is I don't think it was the PGA setup or the Hazeltine setup (green firmness or lack thereof and the variability of same throughout the tourney) that was bolluxing him--it was just mother nature and natural rainfall and his inability to estimate properly it's effects on  green firmness and how his ball would likely react to it!

[Tim Weiman]

Tom Doak:

Several weeks ago I followed Lee Janzen for eighteen holes at Waterville. The experience erased any lingering doubt that golf really is a better game for people who lack the skills of a professional golfer.

What stood out watching – and listening – to Lee play was how preoccupied he and his caddy were with getting the correct yardages and whether their range finder was working properly. Actually hitting the shots didn’t seem to be much of a concern.  It was almost like pushing a button. The challenge was all about getting the yardages numbers right, as if the caddy was really the person playing the game.  

All very mechanical, it seemed to me.  Not much fun. Not much thought, if any, to “strategy”.
What exactly is “strategy” when you know in advance how your shot is going to turn out? Isn’t something lost? Isn’t the game better when you have to question how likely it is that you will execute the more daring shot, i.e., when your chances may be no better than fifty-fifty?

I can’t imagine there is much “strategy” left for the professional level golfer, not based on what I saw with Janzen at Waterville.  But, for us mortals it is still part of the game, thankfully.

[TEPaul]

Tim Weiman:

It sounds to me that during that round you followed Lee Janzen at Waterville his aerial shots were finding the greens (and possibly the proper positions on them) and holding on them with total control and with monotonous regularity!

What if that were not the case on those greens at Waterville? What if the only way Janzen could rely on that type of control and aerial game was with really fine-tuned spin control from say more lofted clubs? What would Janzen do then?

I say he would look for other options and strategies to play the golf course, perhaps more defensively at times and more aggressively at other times!

What you saw was not just the excellent ball striking of a top tour professional or a lack of architectural challenge from the course, in my opinion.

What you saw was a maintenance situation that allowed Janzen to rely on one type of option all day long--the aerial option!

If Waterville had dialed down the effectiveness and reliability of that aerial option Janzen would have likely started to look for other options and shots selections and if he had done so the inherent strategies of the golf course probably would have shown themselves to a much greater degree, even for him!

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

Your Doyenship

I have to agree with Tim.  As I said before many times on this forum in the past, I've seen top pros hit and stick approach shots to "unreachable" pins on greens so firm and fast that Karl Olsen will have only seen them in his dreams, over the past 20+ years.  This is not something new.  Once a pro gets to the fairway, he can "dial it in" from anywhere, obviously with less confidence the more distance to carry, all other things being equal.

Strategy is not at all dead for the 99.9% of us who can't dial it in, as others have said, nor even for the pros.  As some have said, creating uncertainty and increasing risk/reward on the tee shot is the key.  The great courses still have it.  Those that don't, today, maybe aren't as "great" as we thought they were, at least in terms of challenging the top players.

Cheers

Rich(ard)

[Rick_Noyes]

I must agree with Tim.  Since yardage information is available everywhere from yardage books, sprinkler heads, range finders, Sky links, GPS and just the plain ole bird house at the 150 stake.  Not many people, the pros in particular, play by feel anymore.  When the game was on the ground, you had to negotiate hazards to run the ball to the proper postion in the fairway in order to run the ball from the best angle to the green - Pinehurst #2.  Since you know the yardage to clear a hazard, you can take a extra club in order to clear it without giving it a second thought.  This seems to be especially true if the player is driving the ball to within 125-100 yards of the putting surface.  If you're carring enough wedges, you just pull the one where you can take a full swing to get it there.

[TEPaul]

Rich and Rick Noyes:

I'm afraid I'll have to roundly disagree with what you just said about a tour pro's ability to "stick" or "dial in" his aerial shots with complete control and reliability!!

I might not know much but my eyes sure aren't lying in the last few years. I've been seeing courses all around the world but particularly in Australia and Europe (but also now in America) that are dialing down bigtime on the effectiveness and reliability of the totally controlled aerial option for even a Tiger Woods! They're doing it simply by dialing up on the "firmness" of the green surfaces to that point where even the tour pros can't control their aerial shots with reliability!

I know how good those guys are but eventually green surface can get to the point were it's either very iffy or sort of "no can do" even for them!

At that point even they will look for other shot choices and shot options!

If you haven't noticed that recently here and there you should remember to look again!

Rich:

Don't underestimate what Karl Olsen is capable of with maintenance and course setup! I've seen both ends of the spectrum at NGLA but possibly not at the extreme softness and slowness that you saw when you were there. That's a real shame that you saw it like that because it only makes it harder to imagine what the other end of the spectrum is really all about and really like and that would definitely be applicable to the tour pro too!

[Paul Daley]

Tom:

There is hope, please don't despair. However, the answer is counter-intuitive, and may come as a shock: reduce the length of courses substantially; allow the guys to hit drivers but also "hang" themselves following failure; tight clever green complexes, a la Commonwealth G.C. in Melbourne, Australia; careful fairway turf selection; a move away (half of the time) from greens where the borrow and amount is obvious, to the old-style greens that are seemingly flat and appear to present straight putts. In reality, every second putt goes slightly to the right or left. By the day's end, the gofer has pulled out every strand of hair.

Cut swathes through the tress to create wind tunnells that swirl in and out throughout the course of a round and create uncertainty. This was the case of Royal Melbourne in the 30,40s.

Make courses appear easier than they really are. This brings about insane arrogance, and before long, the payers score is GONE!

The reintroduction of driveable par-4s that signal bogey, double-bogey upon poor shotmaking. In keeping with good principles, the safe route will uusually be rewarded with a par for the good player, or an easy bogey for the high handicapper. More holes like Riviera's 10th and RMGC West Course 10th will excite and infuraite players.

A mix of holes that dogleg to the right and left is a huge help. Today, too many golfers get comfortable with the one tee-shot pattern.

Turn off the irrigation and pipes: keep courses alive, but barely. The number one stiffling curse to your profession!

More urgency in building 90-110 metre par-3s holes will keep a lid on scoring.

Experiment with leaving the traps unraked around the course for one month and see what it does to scores. This reverses the trend and would promote golfers to aim for the diffiicult greenside rough, in prefernce to death-defying bunker conditions.

More imagination shown by the people at clubs when setting the pin positions.

Throw in confusion by keeping the fronts of greens open. A whole generation has grown up just "bombing" the ball from long range over the frontal bunkering.

More confusion: rather thana clear dilineation between green, apron and fairway, have the whole thing merge into one. With this scenario, careless golfers will often leave their approaches twenty metres short of the green, and be furious about the deception.

Confusion again: this time by building 2-4 bunkerless holes per layout. Are not the 14th at Dornoch, 1st and 18th TOC brilliant holes?
  

[Tom MacWood (Guest)]

Strategy is becoming obsolete. Equipment is a factor, but the biggest culprit is maintenance practices. The majority of courses are far too soft. My home course has for years been very soft -- ironically the superitendent doesn't play golf.

[TEPaul]

Paul:

I'm not despairing at all! I'm just sometimes sort of amazed that so many people, even some on this website, don't seem to be able to see the obvious!

[BCrosby]

I agree with Rich(ard) on this one. By all means make the greens as hard and as fast as possible. But they will always be subject to the vagaries of rain and wind. It's not always possible to control how hard greens will play.

Bottom line is that if the big boys are approaching from the fairway, its game, set, match. They can all dial it in.

You are left with creating defenses against them at the tee. Make the fairway hard to hit. Or make them lay up. That's what happened at Muirfield (with some help from the weather).

If I'm right, that's not good news. Absent a remarkable architectural imagination, it implies US Open set-ups. You get the Tom Meeksization of golf course architecture. The ability to hit it straight and long will overshadow all other golfing skills. (It's always been important. But if my hunch is right about the future, it will become the only skill that really matters.)

Bob

[Matt_Cohn]

One situation where strategy matters is when an overly conservative shot leaves a blind shot into the green.

Tom Doak did this three times at Apache Stronghold. On the long par-5 first, you have to flirt with the left bunkers with your lay-up to get a look at the green. On the par-5 eighth, you have to play near the right-side fairway bunker to see the green on your second. On the thirteenth, the longer a carry you attempt over the right fairway bunkers, the more of the green you can see for your second shot.

I think these are good holes for all players because there is a lot of risk-reward, but they're playable holes, when a shot is blind, you don't need to add a bunch of nasty hazards to make it difficult.

I agree that angles are less of a consideration for good players today. But in addition to the comment about sidehill lies, which I agree with, I think line of sight is an important strategic consideration. I for one will take a good degree of risk if that's what I need to do to see the flagstick on my next shot.

[TEPaul]

I simply cannot agree that with the ideal firmness on green surfaces the big boys can dial it in at will! If that were so true why then have I been seeing all the touring pros occasionally miscalculate and bounce even their aerial wedges right over greens with no functional spin, no suck and no control?

The spin on these shots that they have so come to expect control from is just not working effectively in some cases! How could that be if not for the firmness of the greens in question? These guys are very good golfers indeed but they are certainly not above the laws of physics and "grip" and "control" (or lack thereof)! I saw so much of this last year in a few of the tourneys in Australia and those pros were approaching from the fairways and sometimes with lofted irons!

You can tell me all day long that you can't prevent them their reliable highly controllable aerial shots but I'm sorry guys I saw the contrary to that way too much to accept what you're saying!

[George Pazin]

I'll second Tom Paul here. Don't you guys remember the umpteen times you've seen a perplexed look from someone hitting the green in an Open, only to watch it bounce over in horror? How often, during a non-waterlogged US Open, do you see guys hit shots that hit & stick? I'll agree, you are at the mercy of the elements, but, for God's sake, at least give the course a fighting chance! How about all the whining during this past year's Bay Hill about how firm things were? The problem is, the Tour's idea of firm & TP's idea of firm are pretty far apart.

I don't care how much spin you can put on a ball, a shot that hits a downslope like a redan will not hold if the green is firm enough. Period.

[Peter Galea]

ironically the superitendent doesn't play golf.

A superintendent who doesn't play golf is like a chef who doesn't taste the soup before it leaves the kitchen.

[TEPaul]

GeorgeP:

I really don't think my idea about the ideal firmness of green surfaces that dial down some on the effectiveness and reliability of aerial shots and what we're occasionally seeing on some of the recent pro tournaments is that far apart!

I'm amazed that we are seeing as much as we are although it isn't as prevalent on the regular weekly PGA Tour tournaments as some of the other more premier tournaments. But basically I'm seeing more of it than I ever expected!

But the idea is not to dial the effectiveness and reliability of any option down to nothing or obviously even a tour pro won't use it. The idea is to dial the effectiveness and reliability of any option (ground or aerial) in whatever direction is necessary to bring their reliabilty (or unreliability) into a bit of a balance. When you do that any player is going to start struggling with even the choices he makes.

The fact of Bay Hill this way was a total disaster. They dialed down the aerial shot option to nothing by making the greens so firm no aerial shots were holding and they dialed the ground game option (the approaches) down to nothing by wetting them so the ball almost plugged. Basically the pros were left with no reasonable or even semi reliable option at all!

But frankly I think the greens for firmness at Hazeltine were about perfect this way and the interesting thing is they changed during the natural rain but apparently not to the extent Tiger Woods thought they had.

It was clear to me he was doing the things he wanted to do with his choices but the ball wasn't doing what he thought it would when it hit the green!

And you know what? I think the whole thing this way for both Beem and Woods translated all the way back to their overall strategies emanating from their tee shots.

Beem hits it real long like Tiger and he went with a driver all week more than almost any other competitor. Woods, in the converse stuck with his super conservative mode off the tees all week.

And the payoff was that the green surfaces were just at that firmness that Beem was able to just control his approach shots onto those greens because he was probably generally using 2-3 clubs less than Woods!

That was sort of the break even point to me with those greens--wedges were holding just that much better than Woods 7 irons (because he was using 2 iron from the tee where Beem was using driver!)!

That 2-3 club difference between Woods's conservative mode and Beem'ss aggressive mode all tournament was the ultimate payoff because wedges were just doing what Beem expected on the greens and Woods's 7 irons basically weren't.

So it ultimately came down to the green surfaces and filtered all the way back to the tees and those two golfers' overall strategies and the difference in them.

And if that isn't "strategy" then I don't know what strategy is!!

[Jerry Kluger]

Is the ultimate goal here to make a hole which is impossible for a pro to birdie or is the goal to make the hole a challenge which requires thought and execution.  We can make all greens so hard that they will reject any aerial shot and then put hazards all the way around resulting in an unplayable hole.  What I want to see for the 5 to 20 handicapper is more holes with risk/reward options where the risk is not necessarily length  off the tee.  Too often we speak of a risk/reward situation where the only chance to be able to go at the green is to hit your best tee shot in the absolute perfect direction which you might do 10% or 20% of the time when you are pressured into doing it.  I like holes that give you an option which might require accuracy rather than length.  

    The first hole at Augustine Golf Club in Virginia has a split fairway with an environmental area in the middle.  The green is at a 45 degree angle from the fairway and the fairway is longer and wider to the left, and narrow and shorter to the right.  If the pin is back right you have to play to the narrower right fairway in order to have a shot at it.  I think that a strategy that puts a premium on accuracy is often more interesting than a strategy which emphasizes length.  Not everyone who plays the game, and even plays it well, necessarily carries the ball 260 yards and today's designers cannot lose sight of this fact in trying to make the game enjoyable for all who play the game and take it seriously.  I know that some of this has to do with playing the correct tees but making a few holes impossible for some players while the balance are interesting and challenging does not do anyone any good.  Thought should be given perhaps to a setup which can be played which is a combination of tees.  It was recently suggested to me that when playing a course like the Ocean Course at Kiawah the best way to enjoy the course for the average but serious golfer when the wind is blowing pretty hard is to play one set of tees into the wind and another when you are downwind.  We need to be inventive in our shot making and perhaps we need to be inventive in how we play the course.  

[TEPaul]

I don't know what's so difficult to understand about this whole equation of firmness and such. No one is looking to create a situation that makes any hole play impossible for anyone certainly not a tour pro.

Options for any level of player just need to be well balanced--not removed altogether!

As to distance and strategic playability various tees do help and compensate different levels of golfers but even that isn't completely necessary as in the old days everyone played from the same tee markers!

The strategies in those days revolved around different levels playing to the same holes in different ways and in a different number of shots anyway!

This whole notion of GIR and that it might somehow apply in the same way to different levels of golfers has seriously skewed understanding of what real architectural strategy is, in my opinion!

[Rich Goodale (Guest)]

TEP

I wasn't trying to dis Karl Olsen.  I just do not think that it is possible to make NGLA as firm and fast as true links courss such as TOC, Dornoch, Lytham etc.  The day I played NGLA in the morning I played Shinnecock in the afternoon.  It had not been watered and tined and was playing fairly firm and fast--about normal early autumn NGLA speed according to mein host.  It was nothing like links golf, at least IMHO.

George P

Very good players can indeed "stop" short-mid irons hitting into downslopes on firm and fast greens.  I have seen it done many times, the most recently two weeks ago.

Cheers

R

[Rick_Noyes]

i don't consider watering down or firming up a golf hole an architectural practice.  I was pointing out the fact that no matter the hazard, no matter the location of the hazard, if the player knows the yardage and is confident in his/her ability to carry that yardage, the hazard loses its effectiveness in determining play, except for club selection.
I can live with firm greens as long as the approach is just as firm.  I heard on pro at Pinehurst flying a shot into one of the par-3's, can't remember which one, but it hit the green and rolled off into one of the "chipping areas".  His comment was "Oh, that's fair," sarcstically.  I wanted to yell out that maybe that wasn't the shot to play!

[Dan_Belden]

TEpaul is right.

   There still is strategy on the tour, but alot of it depends on the course setup and the course.  Don't forget too, that the guys you are seeing on the weekend on TV, are the guys that are playing the very best that week.
   Strategy tends to come in the form of how aggressive you can be playing into the green.  If the greens are extremely firm and the pins are tucked, your angle of approach certainly dictates how aggressive you can be.  
  Also the L wedge changes everything.  A tour pros short irons and weges tend to go either short or long, not right or left.  This really helps alot.  This is the biggest difference between tour pros and really good amateurs.  
  So what do you do about it.  You build courses where angles of approach have trouble short and long.  Pete Dye does it constantly, greens tend to be small and angular.  A great example of hole where there is strategy for any player is the 6th at Shinnecock.  The more down the left side of the fairway you are the more aggressive you can be with you approach.  From the right side of the fairway you are hitting at a very shallow green, as the green is fairly deep, but not wide, therefore you cannot be as agressive.  A great example of a short hole with strategy for anyone is the 8th at Pine valley.  A drive down the left side gives you a straight in appraoch to a resonably deep green, but again a very narrow green. A drive down the right side leaves a very shallow anlge for your second.  
    Resort courses with huge greens with trouble mainly right and left are sitting ducks. Pacific Dunes falls into this category.  The 16th at PD is close.  That is a very shallow green fromt  the right. That is how you incorporate strategy for tour pros.  Even if the conditions are a little soft if you are constantly fighting for angles to be aggressive you still have strategy, but somebody is going to be hot and light the place up.  So instead of alway looking at the winner, check out and see how the guy that is 50th is playing the course.  

[Ed_Baker]

Isn't the ultimate strategy in golf to overwhelm the player with options? Let the player select a shot type based on his ability to commit to the shot and then execute it?

The proliferation of the aireal game has much more to do with over-watered,lush green conditions than particular architectural features, as many above have stated the ability to fly a golf ball a precise distance and stop it quickly will negate even the greatest architecture to some degree.

The casual golf spectator/ player turns his TV on to see birdies and eagles, which sells the ad spots ect,ect. Even the European Tours venues are falling victim to the same soft, lush, americanization. Par is no longer a good score. Pro golf has become a dart game and a weekly putting contest. Is it likely that the trend will be towards firm and fast so that all except wedges won't hold greens and all the humps and bumps and random bounces (the architecture,what's on the ground) comes in to play? No. If we turned on the golf every week to watch pros missing greens and making bogies the PGA would have to change their tag line to "These Guys Suck."

Which brings us back to the ever widening gap between the pro game and our own. Balls,clubs, maintainence practices, continue to take the pro game farther away from ours. Let them play theirs and we will play and appreciate ours.

[Matt_Ward]

For what it's worth -- I agree with Tom MacWood. As Gomer Pyle would say ... "Surprise, Surprise."

It behooves many courses today to use LESS water and try to achieve firm and fast conditions. Too many are simple overwatered and as a result turf conditions allow for the kind of pinpoint play you see from the better player.

I can sadly recall playing the famed GCGC with Pat Mucci last year and tee shots were hitting and barely moving out of their pitch marks. This was happening even after days and days of hot and dry weather.

I'm not saying that firm and fast conditions are the ONLY answer but it's long overdue for many superintendents and the people who are entrusted at any facility to stop with all the water usage. The game will become even more challenging even with the technology gains made in the last few years.

[Tim Weiman]

Dan Belden,

I’m not sure I understand your comment about Pacific Dunes being a “sitting duck”.  To my knowledge, Mike Keiser didn’t have hosting a PGA event in mind when the course was built. Are you saying the course is a “sitting duck” for people who actually play the course?

Moreover, I’m wondering about putting PD into a “category” of courses with trouble “mainly right and left”.  Do you see many courses where the trouble is somewhere other than “right and left”?  Wouldn’t something like Pine Valley fit this description better?  What tee shot at Pine Valley has a fairway bunker like #2 at PD? What approach shot at Pine Valley has a greenside bunker like #8 at PD?

[Dan_Belden]

Tim:

   PD is only a sitting duck in the context of conducting a Tour Event there.  I think that minus some really bad weather twenty plus under wins.  That being said, so what. It was never designed to have a tour event there.  Thank god it wasn't because Bandon is so hard it wouldn't make any sense to have another brute there.  The only complaint I have with PD is that I would prefer not to have 4 par 3s on the back nine, otherwise I love the place. The greens on the whole are very big, open in front, and they are not that hard to hit. That is all I am saying.   And it is interesing to me that any kind of constructive criticsm of a Doak golf course is met with almost instant hostility,even if it is not criticism.  PD is not that hard of a golf course for the expert player, so what.  It is still a blast to play
   As for fairway bunkers like number two at PD, that is fine, but I am not talking trouble if front and back for driving, I am talking about trouble back and in front on approach shots. So I completely disagree with you that Pine Valley mainly has trouble right and left, while PD doesn't.   PD was designed for a ground game that lets you run the ball onto the green. Pine Valley lets you do this on some holes, but often the worst trouble is short or long. And as for fairway bunkers on a direct line, what about the tee shot on 6 at Pine Valley, or the 2nd on 7, or the tee shot on 16, I guess those fairway bunkers don't count.  How about the approaches on 2,7,10,12,14,17,18.  And as for PD, on hole like 4 the trouble is definitely on the left, and vice versa for 13.  But on the whole you can run a lot more shots onto the green at PD,than you can at PV, and that makes the game easier for all players. It also means that a touring pro does not have to be as accurate with the drive to be aggressive going into the green, less strategy.  Shallow firm greens that sit at proper angles to the line  of play  require strategy to play from even the best touring pros. Once again perhaps the best example of this is the angle at which the 6th green at Shinnecock sits in relation to the fairway.  If you want to play the hole aggresivley you have to be in the left side of the fairway, more strategy.
                            Dan, believe it or not I love PD, Belden