Despite the field changing the most has the game changed the least?

[TEPaul]

Lou:

In the history of golf there was only one modicum of physical opposition between players and even that was only via the medium of the golf ball. That was the stymie, but it was always nothing more than an unintended byproduct of a principle Rule in golf that a player not touch his golf ball between putting it in play on the tee and removing it from the hole. But the stymie was removed from golf over fifty years ago so there is virtually no vestige left of golfers being able to physically oppose one another in the contest of golf even via the medium of a golf ball.

[TEPaul]

Sean Arble:

Interesting post that #160 but I have always been suspicious of Arabs, Greeks, the French and people who refer to themselves in the third person. To me the latter shows a pretty serious emotional and intellectual disconnect.

When I was a kid most everything I did I chalked up to either "Good Tom" or "Bad Tom" and I never took any personal responsibility for either of them and certainly not for "Bad Tom". But I grew out of that emotional and intellectual disconnect, or at least I think I did.

[TEPaul]

"Here is a simple example from real life.  I will beat an old man who has lost a great deal of distance over his life time but still has a great short game everytime on a 420 yd hole and rarely on a 470 yd hole.  Get it?"


JohnK:

I do get that and frankly there is some real statistical validity in it that plays out in the recommendations for "stroke hole" allocation.

That type of thing is one of the examples used by the great George Thomas in his treatise on the benefits to architecture in the so-called "half par" hole but Thomas took the idea farther and also recommended that to really level the playing field the game would also need to use half-strokes for putts.

Essentially Thomas' conclusion was that if that was done architecture would be able to have more holes in the "half-par" distance category and that golf architecture would also not need to rely so heavily on bunkering which would therefore serve to make golf less expensive.

[John Kavanaugh]

JohnK:

I do get that and frankly there is some real statistical validity in it that plays out in the recommendations for "stroke hole" allocation.

TEPaul,

Sorry, but the stroke hole allocation does not work at all because he gets a stroke on the hole where we both always make bogey.  We both get on in three and two putt.  Where he needs the stroke is on the medium length hole where he still gets on in three and I get on it two.

If I were to choose one hole in the world where either I or you had to tie Tiger I would not choose a wide open short hole.  I would choose the 12th at The Riviera stretched to close to 500 yds with a typical wind in our face.  Our only real chance to tie Tiger is if he either hits the ball in the rough and can't clear the barannca and makes 5 or somehow just makes five.  I believe that either of us can make easy five by hitting driver, 5 iron, wedge.  We might even get very lucky and one putt for four.  My point being is that the only way you can make a course fair for the weaker player against the stronger is to toughen it up.

[Phil McDade]

John:

That may be for one hole -- heck, I've hit it to within 18 inches of the pin on a par 3 on my local muni, and my first thought was, "Betcha Tiger couldn't have done better."

Do you think that's true for 18 holes, or the 72 holes played in a typical tournament? That is, even on an easy course, there's a limit to how low Tiger can go -- say 6,200 yards wide open with easy pins and little rough. I'd argue the differential between Tiger and me on that kind of course is likely to be less than taking on Pebble Beach on a windy day with F/F conditions. I saw what Tiger did there in 2000; I'm not sure I'd be able to finish the round there under US Open set-up conditions.

[TEPaul]

"TEPaul,
Sorry, but the stroke hole allocation does not work at all because he gets a stroke on the hole where we both always make bogey.  We both get on in three and two putt.  Where he needs the stroke is on the medium length hole where he still gets on in three and I get on it two."

JohnK:

I realize that and that's the very reason the longer hole should not allocate him a stroke. Too many people are under the mistaken impression that handicap stroke allocations should work off the holes that are the most difficult for the good player or better player (in the formulae that would be the scratch player). Frankly, the proper way is just about the reverse of that.

[TEPaul]

"My point being is that the only way you can make a course fair for the weaker player against the stronger is to toughen it up."

JohnK:

That's far too general a statement to have much relevence. Toughen it up how so?

[Bradley Anderson]

"Can anyone else support the argument that the key to keeping golf an open game where anyone can dream to be the very best is to keep the game playing field ever changing and ever more difficult played with easier devices?"

I have to agree with your statement John as it is stated, but the problem is not everyone who plays the game is intent on being the very best, or the club champion if that's what you mean by "the very best". I do think most golfers want to be the best they can be, and they enjoy beating whoever they are playing with that day.

But my concern is very often when a club is remodeled with the idea of keeping pace with the changes in equipment, the lower handicap players just continue to score well, while many of the club's members experience a golf course that is now too hard and not as fun as it used to be. Perhaps the higher handicap player eventually catches up with the modernization of the golf course at some point, but who knows, by then the next upgrade could be already be underway.

Last week I spoke to my green chairman from a club I worked at 20 years ago. He told me that when I was adding on to the front of the tees back in the day he went along with it more or less against his instincts. But he loves those tees now that he is getting older. At the time we all were concerned that adding on to the back of the tees, would only move the average players back to where the better players were playing from, and at the end of the day the better guys were still going to bomb it out there to within a short iron to the green anyways.

Moving forward, I hope the days of making golf courses more difficult are finished and we can settle into permanence and quit moving tees and bunkers back.

[John Kavanaugh]

TE,

The reason this really all only works by accident is that it is too difficult to explain.  

[TEPaul]

JohnK:

I don't think it's too difficult to explain. Maybe it might be a little difficult to get some of these guys on here to understand it because some of them recently have been admitting they're dumber than a stump!  

[John Kavanaugh]

"Can anyone else support the argument that the key to keeping golf an open game where anyone can dream to be the very best is to keep the game playing field ever changing and ever more difficult played with easier devices?"

I have to agree with your statement John as it is stated, but the problem is not everyone who plays the game is intent on being the very best, or the club champion if that's what you mean by "the very best". I do think most golfers want to be the best they can be, and they enjoy beating whoever they are playing with that day.

But my concern is very often when a club is remodeled with the idea of keeping pace with the changes in equipment, the lower handicap players just continue to score well, while many of the club's members experience a golf course that is now too hard and not as fun as it used to be. Perhaps the higher handicap player eventually catches up with the modernization of the golf course at some point, but who knows, by then the next upgrade could be already be underway.

Last week I spoke to my green chairman from a club I worked at 20 years ago. He told me that when I was adding on to the front of the tees back in the day he went along with it more or less against his instincts. But he loves those tees now that he is getting older. At the time we all were concerned that adding on to the back of the tees, would only move the average players back to where the better players were playing from, and at the end of the day the better guys were still going to bomb it out there to within a short iron to the green anyways.

Moving forward, I hope the days of making golf courses more difficult are finished and we can settle into permanence and quit moving tees and bunkers back.

Bradley,

Thanks for taking the time to make an excellent point.  I think there has been as large a move toward building women, senior and junior tees in modern architecture as there has been to build championhip tees.  I just don't was people who do choose not to play a given set of tees to bitch about their construction.

[Bradley Anderson]

Bradley,

"Thanks for taking the time to make an excellent point.  I think there has been as large a move toward building women, senior and junior tees in modern architecture as there has been to build championhip tees.  I just don't want people who do choose not to play a given set of tees to bitch about their construction."

I don't mean to sound impertinent John, but if I was acessed money for a Tiger-tee that I will never use, I just might bitch about it. But I would REALLY bitch if someone changed the name of my tee to senior tee.

John, you don't have to show me the inconsistency in my point above cause even I see it. You shouldn't bitch about someone making your club too hard for you after they've provided you an alternative tee for your game. But I don't know - it just all seems kind of crazy.

I played a club last summer that had five sets of tee markers. On one of the tees, there were different colored blocks that were within 4 paces of each other. I kept getting confused about which color I was playing.

And it also seems unfamily like. The best clubs feel like an extension of your home. There should be comraderie and friendship to go along with the sport. But this whole crazy multiple tee system sends everyone in so many different directions. So people end up only playing with their kind.

[TEPaul]

I'm no fan of members who say they don't want tees they will never play and if they get them they don't want to pay for them. As long as they work for some segment of the membership fine. Does it make any sense for the club champion to say he doesn't want tees that work well for women because he won't ever use them----or vice versa?

Of course not.

Sometime clubs do create back tees that are rarely if ever used and that has to be a mistake.

On the other hand, I do believe it is more than possible to design courses where all players can play from the exact same tee marker, even if that's something like the tip tees on most courses. It would take a lot more design thought on the  part of architects but that's the way golf was once and it obviously worked fine and there's no reason to think it couldn't again.

If it was done again it would bring back perhaps the most natural handicap golf could ever have---eg the natural handicap of distance.

And just like in the old days there's a remarkably easy way to allocate handicap shots for that kind of thing.

This notion that multiple tees is supposed to theoretically provide in golf and architecture that all players should in theory hit the ball to the same basic places in the same amount of shots is not realistic and it never will be no matter how anyone tries to slice it. It won't work if a course had twenty different sets of tees on every hole. It won't work until some club basically forces golfers to always use the tee commensurate with their distance ability and that is something no club or course could ever do. Nor should they ever even contemplate such a thing.

[Lou_Duran]

JK,

RE: the old, distance impaired golfer example, this is one of many, many possible scenarios, and, frankly, includes a stereotype that is probably relatively rare (most "old" guys I know lose more prowess on and around the green than getting there).  Holding everything else equal, I would rather play Tiger even up on a 425 yard hole than one of 475 yards.  I suspect that Tiger would support this based on his choice of skipping such relatively short courses as Colonial and Riviera, and favors long ones like TP-S and Firestone.  Of course, I do feel like a tree stump today, so I may be wrong.

TEP,

Behr's perspective is an interesting one.  Too bad that he could not convey his ideas as well as you do.  Nevertheless, for better or worse, competitions are conducted to differentiate between human beings.

I happen to agree that in balance, "modernization" has been a good and necessary thing.  Technology is a very important reason why this is so, but there are other factors such as size, nutrition, conditioning, and superior instruction.

JK's larger point just doesn't make sense to me.  The disproportionate advantage that strong players gain from technology throughout the bag makes longer courses more suitable to their game.  As Ralph Plummer, ASGCA stated back in the 1970s, the way to address the distance problem is with rough and narrower fairways.  Unfortunately, this runs conter to what most on this site prefers.