"It almost wasn't real golf."

[Garland Bayley]

 Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: "Two things hurt Tiger's return. One, the lack of course knowledge, which was aggravated by the conditions. The course is at a bit of altitude, and the ball was flying six or seven percent farther than usual. But when the wind kicked up, it was heavy, which you don't expect in the warm air of Tucson. The most common denominator in Tiger's bad shots was distance control."

"Second, the greens. They were goofy. Tiger didn't like them. No one did. And that didn't help Tiger's enthusiasm. No matter how good of a putter you were, you couldn't hole much outside of 10 feet on those rollercoasters. It almost wasn't real golf."

Were in trouble now. SI thinks they know what real golf is!

Alister MacKenzie seemed to be of the opinion that if you left golf course design to good golfers they would create the equivalent of shooting fish in a barrel.

An iteresting tidbit showed up on the Macan thread today courtesy of J Mingay.

"Today, the uninformed believe a green should be constructed with the slope from back to front, so that it will retain the ball. In brief, this suggests the shot should be a mechanical operation and the result a mathematical certainty. This is not the game of golf. Golf was not conceived as a mechanical operation but rather full of fun and adventure. Many things could happen to the ball after it pitched on the green. The ill-happenings were not regarded as ill-fortune or ill-luck, but part of the adventure, and the more skilled found methods to overcome the risks of ill-fortune." - Vernon Macan

[George Pazin]

Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: "Two things hurt Tiger's return. One, the lack of course knowledge, which was aggravated by the conditions. The course is at a bit of altitude, and the ball was flying six or seven percent farther than usual. But when the wind kicked up, it was heavy, which you don't expect in the warm air of Tucson. The most common denominator in Tiger's bad shots was distance control."

"Second, the greens. They were goofy. Tiger didn't like them. No one did. And that didn't help Tiger's enthusiasm. No matter how good of a putter you were, you couldn't hole much outside of 10 feet on those rollercoasters. It almost wasn't real golf."

Looks like SI agrees with Huck and Rich.

Score one for me.

 

Nice quote from Macan, btw.

[Garland Bayley]

I guess another response would be ... well duh! get it inside 10 feet like Geoff did!

[John Moore II]

Thats just ignorant. Of course its real golf. And I agree, if you let the very good golfers build the greens, they'll be dead flat and huge. Impossible to miss. Might even be built like funnels to just move the balls exactly to the center of the green no matter where you hit it. Hogan once said he thought golf aught to be changed to take some of the emphasis off putting. Bet he wouldn't have liked the greens either.

Pro's don't like anything that makes the game overly difficult for them, its that simple. Its why they balked at Nicklaus when he used those funky rakes at The Memorial. Its why Fat Phil bitched and moaned about the rough being too deep at Oakmont.

Seriously, if these guys could determine what made for a good golf course, in many cases, the course would have perfectly flat fairways that were about 100 yards wide and no rough anywhere to be seen. The greens would also be dead flat in the middle with hills on all sides to funnel the ball right onto the green. No bunkers, no water hazards.

Oh, and Gary Van Sickle is not the sharpest knife in the drawer anyway.

[Greg Chambers]

On the flip side, from a viewer's perspective, I thought the quality of golf shots I saw from the professionals was piss-poor.  Nothing to do with the course.  Freakin babies. 

[David_Tepper]

Greg Chambers -

What golf were you watching?

Paul Casey was 6-under thru 26-holes in the finals and was 5-down?
Tim Clark was 6-under thru 16-holes against Tiger.
Oliver Fisher was 8-under in one of his matches.
After Tiger hit his tee-shot on the 310-yard par to about 12-feet, his first round opponent hit his shot inside of Tiger"s.

I saw an awful lot of great golf shots.

DT 

[Tim Pitner]

Ogilvy seemed to hole a lot of putts.  I'm not sure about the course overall, but I liked the severity of the greens and green surrounds (for viewing purposes anyway).  I wasn't glued to the tournament, but the players who seemed to me to be playing the best were the final four of Ogilvy, Casey (who cruised to the final), Cink and Ross Fisher.  

[John Moore II]

Greg Chambers -

What golf were you watching?

Paul Casey was 6-under thru 26-holes in the finals and was 5-down?
Tim Clark was 6-under thru 16-holes against Tiger.
Oliver Fisher was 8-under in one of his matches.
After Tiger hit his tee-shot on the 310-yard par to about 12-feet, his first round opponent hit his shot insider of Tiger"s.

I saw an awful lot of great golf shots.

DT 

I agree, I saw some fine golf. Very good quality. Of course, some guys were beating it into the desert, but most of them played some top quality golf.

[Brian_Sleeman]

.

[Rob Rigg]

I don't watch a ton of golf on TV - but the course at DM looked pretty cool and I enjoy the Match Play format.

Ogilvy was amazing - I can't recall seeing someone put on such a clinic (for 5 days) - not even sure he made one bogey in all of his rounds.

It would be interesting to see a 4 day stroke play tournament on a course like that. All around shot making would be the deciding factor, not only driving or putting or short irons.

I would agree that some of these guys are babies - chapeau to the course for giving them a taste of what the rest of the population feels almost anytime they play.

[RichMacafee]

I look forward to the explaination of why altitude and heavy air effected Tiger's distance control, but no-one elses

[David Stamm]

Provided the greens are maintained at the proper speeds, Van Sickle is flat wrong. JKM hits the nail on the head. Leave it to them, and it would be dead boring to watch. AM's remarks prove once again to be right. TW just needed to hit better shots. And to say no one liked them is doubtful. I bet Ogilvy did......

[Andy Troeger]

Provided the greens are maintained at the proper speeds, Van Sickle is flat wrong. JKM hits the nail on the head. Leave it to them, and it would be dead boring to watch. AM's remarks prove once again to be right. TW just needed to hit better shots. And to say no one liked them is doubtful. I bet Ogilvy did......

David,
If you read the entire article (I posted the link in one of the other threads...maybe Jack Nickldoak) you'll get a quote from Ogilvy. He didn't care for them either based on his comment.

[David Stamm]

Then I stand corrected.

[Justin_Zook]

Thats just ignorant. Of course its real golf. And I agree, if you let the very good golfers build the greens, they'll be dead flat and huge. Impossible to miss. Might even be built like funnels to just move the balls exactly to the center of the green no matter where you hit it. Hogan once said he thought golf aught to be changed to take some of the emphasis off putting. Bet he wouldn't have liked the greens either.

Pro's don't like anything that makes the game overly difficult for them, its that simple.

You are aware that The Ritz was designed by Jack Nicklaus?  He wasn't exactly a NOT very good golfer.  And yeah, yeah, yeah...I'm sure his underlings were more involved in the design, but still.  I'm sure he was more than casually involved.

Ben Crenshaw, a VERY good putter, a very good golfer and a Masters champion builds greens too.  They're aren't exactly kitchen tables.

And were your referring to the hole size with Hogan?  Because if you were, that was Sarazen.  

But yes.  To the course.  Honestly, I appreciate greens that are challenging and exciting, but I wouldn't say that the greens were contoured with a whole lot of elegance.  The television deceives, so maybe someone who was there could comment.  Contouring can be overdone.  

Every green out there looked like the 6th at Augusta.  Which is okay, but chocolate pudding can be too sweet.

[Garland Bayley]

If the percentage of putts made from outside of 10 feet goes down, doesn't that reward the great ball strikers? Why would Ben Hogan not love this course?

[Garland Bayley]

Provided the greens are maintained at the proper speeds, Van Sickle is flat wrong. JKM hits the nail on the head. Leave it to them, and it would be dead boring to watch. AM's remarks prove once again to be right. TW just needed to hit better shots. And to say no one liked them is doubtful. I bet Ogilvy did......

David,
If you read the entire article (I posted the link in one of the other threads...maybe Jack Nickldoak) you'll get a quote from Ogilvy. He didn't care for them either based on his comment.

Geoff didn't like them, because they looked unnatural. He did not criticize them for playablility that I know of.

[Don_Mahaffey]

Did someone just compare the greens at DM to those at TOC? Whoever that was...you’re kidding...right?
Contour is great, but contour just to make things more difficult, and with little tie in to the native ground...looks odd.

IMO, JN and his group have never really got what the great modern greens architects like Doak and Coore have...they make it work because they seem to walk a very fine line between what the good player and hack can handle...and they seem to use the surrounding terrain to make it look right. JN's highly contoured greens look like they were drawn up in a back room somewhere.

[David_Tepper]

Justin Zoak & others -

Read Brad Klein's comments on the greens at Dove Mountain thread. He called the greens "amazingly over busy."

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php/topic,38746.0.html

DT

[Ronald Montesano]

GVS is no dummy; although he doesn't pander to this site nor its aficionados, that is no reason to skewer him.  He is a top-quality golfer (probably the best golfing journalist out there) and raised one hell of a great golfer in Mike Van Sickle.

As I recall, leading up to the event, Dove Soap Mountain was taking a beating on this site for that very reason:  goofy greens.  I propose a double-blind test.  Take a set of Nicklaus greens and pretend that they are Doak or Coore or Nuzzo or whomever GCA likes greens and see how people react.

[JNC Lyon]

GVS is no dummy; although he doesn't pander to this site nor its aficionados, that is no reason to skewer him.  He is a top-quality golfer (probably the best golfing journalist out there) and raised one hell of a great golfer in Mike Van Sickle.

As I recall, leading up to the event, Dove Soap Mountain was taking a beating on this site for that very reason:  goofy greens.  I propose a double-blind test.  Take a set of Nicklaus greens and pretend that they are Doak or Coore or Nuzzo or whomever GCA likes greens and see how people react.

I agree about the double blind study, impossible though it is.  When Klein and company mentioned over-undulating greens, I thought we were in for some goofy golf this week.  However, I was watching the telecast, and the announcers said the greens were "the slowest greens for a professional tournament in recent memory."  I wondered, "isn't this what GCAers have been proposing for years?"  Wild greens at slow speeds provide the visual stimulus and tremendous approach/short game options without being overly taxing on the putting.  People advocate the same thing for severe Ross greens or the original greens Engineers.  One might not 18 extreme greens on a golf course, but for me, that is always better than 18 bland greens.

Additionally, "playability" can't be legitimately applied to putting greens the way it is to the tee to green.  No matter how severe greens are, there is nothing that can place a physical strain on players the way forced carries or excessive hazards do.  Severity on the greens is more fair than on any other part of the course.  This is because every golfer will have to deal with the green contours on a golf course, regardless of distance or skill level.

How much more severe are the Nicklaus greens than the 4th at Lost Dunes or the NLE 18th at Sitwell Park?  If Dove Mountain had been designed by GCA gods Doak, Mackenzie, or even a Mike Strantz, people would be praising them as "bold and imaginative," and rightly so.  However, Nicklaus seems to face a double standard.  Why, why, WHY? 

If you are to be a good judge of architecture, you need to examine golf courses separately from their architects.

[Ian Larson]

JNC,

Thats exactly what I was trying to get across on my "Greens at Dove Mountain" thread.

[Kenny Baer]

Ian and JNC,

Well said; that is exactly what I was trying to say as well in the "Greens at Dove Mountain" Thread.

The most difficult greens in the world can still be putted by even the worst golfer; the longest forced carries can not even be played by some decent golfers.

[JNC Lyon]

JNC,

Thats exactly what I was trying to get across on my "Greens at Dove Mountain" thread.

I saw that thread as well a few days ago and I totally agree.  This one was just higher up on the board.

[Andy Troeger]

Additionally, "playability" can't be legitimately applied to putting greens the way it is to the tee to green.  No matter how severe greens are, there is nothing that can place a physical strain on players the way forced carries or excessive hazards do.  Severity on the greens is more fair than on any other part of the course.  This is because every golfer will have to deal with the green contours on a golf course, regardless of distance or skill level.

How much more severe are the Nicklaus greens than the 4th at Lost Dunes or the NLE 18th at Sitwell Park?  If Dove Mountain had been designed by GCA gods Doak, Mackenzie, or even a Mike Strantz, people would be praising them as "bold and imaginative," and rightly so.  However, Nicklaus seems to face a double standard.  Why, why, WHY? 

If you are to be a good judge of architecture, you need to examine golf courses separately from their architects.

Slope in and of itself does not make for fun and interesting putting surfaces. Quite honestly, I think the ROUTING at Lost Dunes is what makes the course a great one--I thought the greens there were a bit much too, although there were some that I really liked. If I played Dove Mountain, I might say the same thing--its hard to tell on TV.

Personally, I think that a lot of members of this website overvalue the short game and putting--put me in Hogan's camp evidently. I don't have a problem with that seeing as the whole thing is subjective, its just different from my own thoughts. The short game is an important part of the overall game, but courses that overvalue it, or any other aspect, lose points in their overall variety. The best courses are not defined by one aspect, even if they have definite strengths. They do all have a great routing and a great variety of holes and shots required.

Regarding these last few posts, if all you guys can come up with is that overly-severe greens are better than forced carries then I'm glad to agree with you. But who cares? Just about anything on a course is a better feature than ridiculous forced carries. If that's the best of the worst then its still part of the worst. Do you want to be the group playing behind the group of duffers that all 5-putt every green?