Today I was playing at a course where, on the par five 18th hole, trees overhang the fairway severely. The branch encroachment is so great that if a player is between 150 and 100 yards from the green in the fairway, he will have no aerial shot to the green. The only option is to play a low runner into the green. Initially, I believed the finisher was a miserable excuse for a golf hole. However, the more I think about it, the more I am intrigued by the idea of a forced bump and run approach.
Many golfers, particularly on this website, lament the loss of the ground game in modern golf. While the Trent Jones era has come and gone, most modern courses still provide serious rewards for golfers who can carry the ball high and far. Architects can do all they want to reinstate running approach shots, but even courses by Doak, Dye and C & C exceed 7,000 yards, meaning that the high ball hitter has a distinct advantage.
A solution to this problem would be to force players to use the ground game as their means for attacking a hole. It would force players to control trajectory and resist the urge to blast away with a high, hard straight shot. Is it fair to force players to use the ground game? Is it any different from forcing players to use the aerial game in the way that Trent Jones and many architects do? Is it more to force the use of the ground game than to force the use of the aerial game because golf was originally and, arguably, meant to be played along the ground?