When/Why did conditioning expectations change?

[Matthew Sander]

Brad Klein contributed the following post to the discussion of Peter Kostis's proposal for USGA venues:

"It's a brilliant idea and would be a welcome lesson to the USGA. They'll go broke trying to maintain the place the other 49+ weeks the courses are not being used and find out that the model of championship set-ups is unsustainable and has nothing to do with how the game is actually played on a day-to-day basis.."

This statement made me wonder, when/why did the USGA (or professional tournament committees in general) begin the practice of significantly "improving" conditions for tournament play in a way that was out of tune with day-to-day play? I am under the impression that years ago, high level touraments were more likely to be played under the same or similar conditions that members or regulars experienced (If I'm way off base here, feel free to inform me of my ignorance). Was it the growth of golf's popularity on TV?  Was it the improved maintenance equipment which provided the ability to present pristine conditions? Or is it simply that over time, most things improve exponentially and there are a multitude of consequences, intended and unintended, that follow.

Also, I would assume that the era of "improved" conditions seemed without drawback at the time. However, we've seen how the conditions presented at televised tournaments have affected the expectations of consumers and in turn the economics of the industry. Instead of another thread on the positives/negatives of current maintenance practices, I'm curious to hear some thoughts regarding when/why the current realities came to be...

[Jud_T]

In 1967, the Masters was the first golf tournament broadcast on television in color.  Also it was the summer of love.  Bad karma?

[Tom_Doak]

Matthew:

That's a good question, and I'm not sure I know the answer.  I think it predates my interest in watching golf, which started about 1972.  The U.S. Open was at Pebble Beach that year, too, and they had the course as "on edge" for that event (relative to the standards of the day) as they did last month.

We know that Robert Trent Jones started toughening up U.S. Open courses (and for that matter, Augusta National) around 1950.  I am not sure that major changes in the conditioning and set-up of the courses changed with it.  But, back in the day, all courses tuned up their greens for the club championship.  I think maybe part of the issue now is that there is nowhere to go from up.

[Jeff Goldman]

I found an article from 1928 on teh USGA's SEQL website discussing preparation for a course to hold the US Open.  Yardage, growing rough, the whole 9 yards.  Not much on green speeds though, if I recall correctly.

[DMoriarty]

If you go back and read the local papers from the early last century on you will find plenty of articles about how courses were "improved" before (or for) a big tournament.   For example Merion made "improvements" prior to the 1916 Am, including flashing white sand in their bunkers.   Not sure though what if any role the USGA played, or when exactly they got involved. 

[Brad Klein]

I think there's a difference between improving a course on the occasion of a tournament and amping up its toughness deliiberately for one event. Ross totally renovated Inverness for the 1920 US Open, Wannamoisett for the 1931 PGA and Pinehurst No. 2 for the 1936 PGA. But that was part of ongoing renovation that changed the courses equally for all.

The real problem here is the more distinct separation of premier players from everyday golfers -- a gap that's grown steadily, and almost exponentially in the last decade. In the mid-1950s the USGA's Joe Dye began to espouse the systematic preparation of "Open-tough" courses, and he relied heavily upon RTJSr. to do the redesign work. But it was also combined with stringent set up standards, though it has to be said than in many cases it was the local course officials who all-too-eagerly staked their club's reputation on the layout being brutal. Recent improvements in irrigation, growth regulators, rollers, top-dressing and everything from moisture level monitoring and fertilizer applications to mowing heights has made it easier to achieve specifically delineated outcomes -- even if in the process reducing the margin of error left when Mother Nature turns her wrath on the course Sunday morning.

[TEPaul]

Matthew:

In answer to your first question, to some extent, probably to a large extent, Brad may be right that it began to happen with Inverness in 1920 but perhaps not for the reason he thinks----eg Ross.

That was the very place and the very year that the USGA first began to really ramp up with their emanating organization of the USGA Green Section to get involved with a club about to put on the USGA's major championship. They first did it at Inverness in 1920 basically because of the call on them from a very important member of that club at the time by the name of E.J. Marshall, a first rate Toledo attorney who had a pretty well known greenskeeper by the name of William Rockefeller.

If one goes to the USGA's website and then the section on their Green Section and then to the history of their Green Section they can read all about this.

Frankly, I think the USGA's Green Section probably needs to update and slightly rewrite this history of the beginnings of their Green Section because they now have in their possession what we call the Wilson Brothers' (of Merion) "Agronomy Letters" correspondence with particularly Piper and Oakley of the US Dept. of Agriculture that precedes E.J. Marshall and Inverness by a number of years. By the time Marshall got involved with the USGA's Green Section effort there were already well over a thousand letters between the Wilson brothers and Piper and Oakley who were the ones who did all the research work on agronomy for the USGA for an annual fee paid to the US Dept of Agriculture.

Eventually Piper and Oakley became the chairmen of the USGA Green Section (Oakley followed Piper after he died) but in fact Piper and Oakley never actually stopped working for the US Dept of Agriculture even though they continued to ramp up their research for the USGA in the development of grass for golf (as well as other things to do with golf construction and maintenance economies), particulary bent grass with what they called the "vegetative method."

The structures they used to set up the USGA Green Section was most interesting and rather complex. They first set up what was called the Green Committee of the USGA and it was chaired initially by USGA Executive Committee member Alan Wilson of Merion. The purpose of this committee was to look into ways to set up and fund the research work by the US Dept of Agriculture. They actually formed a Pennsylvania corporation known as the USGA Green Section Corporation. The idea was to raise a million dollars by subscription for a fund that would generate enough income to fund the research work of the USGA Green Section as conducted with and by the US Dept of Agriculture.

An interesting item is the very first subscription they got was from Howard Toomey under the names Toomey and Flynn who contributed $1,000.

Actually in the late teens this group from the USGA came very very close to convincing President Woodrow Wilson that the US government should become involved in the primary research work on golf agronomy. It almost happened but I think President Wilson and the Interior Secretary (I believe) felt this kind of thing would be better operated under the aegis of the organization that administered golf in America----the USGA.

I do not believe this corporation ever actually prospered and reached its goal but E.J Marshall was one of the corporation's vice chairmen. Alan Wilson was insistent that Washington D.C. and Columbia CC's Walter Harban become the first chairman of the corporation but he refused, and that alone may've been the reason this fund and corporation never reached its expectation.

The Wilsons and Piper and Oakley also strongly encouraged C.B. Macdonald to become involved early on (in the late teens) with this USGA Green Section effort but he too refused them a few times for the reason that he was basically out of golf at that time.

There is more, but that's the short to medium story of how and when the USGA became directly involved in some of these things with golf courses and championship venues.

By the way, Wayne and I have never exactly figured out specifically what he was doing out there but in preparation for that 1920 Open at Inverness for some reason William Flynn spent close to two months at one time out there at Inverness GC.

Another interesting item in this entire evolution with the USGA and their Green Section was an intereting article that William Flynn wrote for the USGA and Green Section's Bulletin in the late 1920s proposing that the USGA actually buy and operate a golf course or perhaps two for their championships simply to be able to experiment with improving architectural and agronomic conditions without having to annually put this kind of thing on individual golf clubs themselves.

Another fascinating item in the history of the USGA was that early on in the development of NGLA, Macdonald and NGLA actually proposed that NGLA be used as the USGA's site to hold their championships on.