[Yancey_Beamer]

During a GCSAA course given by Graves and Cornish on golf course architecture I was told of Alice Dye's Research on distance of drives on the unwatered fairways of the classic age and the fact that distance became less with lush watered fairways.Given that  Bobby Jones was known io drive from 275 to 325 yards depending on the requirements of the hole we must assume that there was quite a bit of roll.Also the 1.62 inch ball used at that time when struck with a modern driver will outdistance a Pro V1 by 20 yards as tested by Ralph S. Livingston III.Hickorygolf.com/pages/newscss1.html . Ralph is the author of THomas Stewart Jr. Golf cleek and Iron Maker.Add to this the fact that almost  all competitive golfers are lifting weights.Finally a friend who played in Northern California during the drought of the 1990's tells me that they were getting drives of 290 to 310 yards on the unwatered fairways.Essentially if you take all of this information and think about it are we overly concerned with distance.Is this our version of global warming?

[Adam Clayman]

Yancey, It seems obvious that the roll out distance would be in the range you ascribed to Mr. Jones' era. However, the issue in these modern days is carry distance. Not just the driver, either.

The capability of prolific aerial assault, has likely always been the sign of the so called better player. Especially so today. However, there's more than this one aspect to the game of golf, or, more correctly, there should be more than one way to exhibit golfing skills. The shot maker has been lost, or re-defined to a limited ball flight, trajectory and audience.

The imbalance that has occurred, from the over-irrigation of the canvas, virtually gearing the game to just the aerial assault player, is the imbalance that needs to be corrected. 

There's been recent talk about getting down with a little brown, but from this seat, it appears to be just talk. Save for the very few clubs who value a truly firm and fast turf, as a general rule, day in day out, as long as it doesn't rain.

So no, we should continue to be concerned about the distance the ball travels, especially if there's no proportional penalty for the non thinking way layer.

The lack of interest in the sport can be directly related to this imbalance, imo. Why? Because it's a lot less fun with out the bounce and roll and a lot more repetitive with the plop plop fizz fizz of daily aerial assault on a consistently soft field of play.

[John Moore II]

I think we all miss a key point. Unless there is some compelling reason to play the ball on the ground, the preferred play on ALL shots for ALL players will be the aerial shot. Make the greens concrete hard like they did at Chambers Bay for the US Am, and you may see some guys putting the ball on the ground. Get a site where the wind blows fairly hard, fairly often, guys will put the ball on the ground. But overall, guys hit the ball in the air to a target. And even the the so called ground game, its about flying the ball to a particular spot and having it roll in from there.

However, with the references to top tier golfers in the first post, I must assume we want to focus on the top tier. Well, for those players, unless the wind is howling and the greens are unimaginably hard, they will play the ball in the air. I played this past weekend with winds sustained above 20mph, with gusts above 30. I played the ball in the air on nearly every shot. For the best players, baring 35mph sustained winds, the ground game is rarely a thought.

For the average golfer, I am sure its a thought, but still, flying the ball to a point is the preferred play, it tends to eliminate bad breaks on the ground.

[Sean_A]

The critical difference between 1940 and 2010 in this debate is course conditions.  Well designed firm courses require more control of the ball.  It doesn't matter what we do in terms of distance control if courses are relatively soft.  Honestly, does anybody care if a pro hits a 9 iron or a 7 iron approach?  Or a 5 iron vs 7 iron?  We have our ideal course sitting over there in St Andrews and even the R&A won't let the course get properly keen - which is a great pity.  Even so, what I hear most punters saying is TOC is outdated because it yields low scores too easily.  When that attitude is prevalent then any discussion of a "fix" is completely futile.  Now, what if we were to look back at Hoylake?  An essentially modern design that was allowed to become properly keen.  The winning score was deep, but folks didn't seem to mind.  That could be partly because Tiger won and that is what many people want to see, but I also believe many respected the way he won.  He didn't play smash mouth golf.  He took what the course gave him and relied on others to mistake their way out of a chance to grab the Claret Jug.  What made this sort of golf possible were the conditions and Tiger's willingness to play the course on the terms set by mother nature. 

I understand that we can't always have Hoylake conditions, but I think we are so far from maximizing what the weather gives that its hard to know what is possible to accomplish in terms of course set-up.  Yet, I still don't believe the rank and file golfer is really ready for f&f as witnessed by this year's US Open.  I never heard so many complaints about the course set-up.  Okay, Pebble may not be the best sort of course for these conditions because the greens are essentially meadow grass and get chewed up easily and the course requires a lot of aerial style shots, but if the rough were better dealt with we could have seen a special Open.  That to me was the real issue.  Many of the kick in options that do exist for guys with such high skill were taken away.  Bottom line, even if f&f is deemed desirable (which I don't believe it is by most) we still have a long way to go before we truly understand f&f and how best to achieve these conditions. 

Ciao   
 

[Mark Pearce]

I think we all miss a key point. Unless there is some compelling reason to play the ball on the ground, the preferred play on ALL shots for ALL players will be the aerial shot.

John,

That simply is not true in the UK.  Given the choice between flying the ball to a spot or using the ground a very significant proportion of the players I play with (which does include some good players) will use the ground?  Why?  I think because on most shots on anything but very uneven ground it allows a greater margin of error.  That probably would not be true of those who learn the game on soft courses.

[Melvyn Morrow]

John

Here is the voice of a modern golfer – he believed he understand the game yet by this very comment he has shown he knows next to nothing

I think we all miss a key point. Unless there is some compelling reason to play the ball on the ground, the preferred play on ALL shots for ALL players will be the aerial shot

John may I suggest you take some time, read up on the Scottish game and in particular where the game originated, i.e. on links courses then perhaps you may see the fundamental error you have just made. Also to assist think back to the last few Opens here in UK when the weather closed in with the wind and rain, who was leading the players during these conditions. The Old guys Watson and Norman who fully understood Links golf and when not to play an aerial shot.

You have shocked me, I know of your dislike for my comments but I thought better of you.

Melvyn

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