[Jud_T]

Brent,

I have given up worrying about my medal score or greens in reg.  Do you see no correlation between the cost of golf and the time it takes to play with the length of golf courses?  And do you see no correlation between the length of golf courses and technology?  Or do you think it's all to do with ego, wheat germ and Pilates?

[Tom_Doak]

And no deflection here...what do you propose to do to "roll back" the fact that Gary Woodland generates, I dunno, maybe 20-30% more clubhead speed than Jack Nicklaus ever did?

Brent:

While I have my own views on this subject as an architect, as a fan of golf, I'm interested in your logic on the above statement.

Do you really think Gary Woodland is that much better of an athlete than Jack Nicklaus was?

I've never seen Gary Woodland swing a club, even on television, but I have to ask:  does he swing that hard at every club, or only at a driver that's got twice the face area of the driver Jack Nicklaus used in 1970?

I've got to tell you, I think Jack could have swung harder.  I think anybody in the 1970's could have swung harder than they did.  But, the sweet spot of their clubs was half the size of today's, so they all swung at about 90% of what they could in order to hit the sweet spot more consistently.

And that, of course, is the #1 thing that keeps us from rolling back the technology.  There are a lot of players on Tour today who would be non-factors with the old equipment ... if they had to approach it the way the old guys did, they'd be surpassed by others.  The argument always comes down to limiting the ball, and only the ball, because if you limit Big Berthas or long putters you are writing the obituary of SPECIFIC PLAYERS, and nobody wants to do that, even if we know they are lacking in the traditional talent set that made golfers great.

[Garland Bayley]

Tom,

There is only one sweet spot on a club, and it has not grown in size.

Tom Wishon

It is true that the club performs marginally better with small misses to the sweet spot over years in the past.
However, It is my belief that Jack did not swing all out all the time like they are able today, because the ball would react much different than the modern ball. The modern ball is advertised for it's straightness, as well as for it's distance. Small misses with the old ball were magnified by the ball spin. Furthermore, to get distance with the old ball you had to have lower lofted drivers. Small misses with the lower lofted drivers also magnified the significance of the miss, due to their inability to provide compensating back spin.

Garland

[Brent Hutto]

Tom,

I personally have a totally untestable theory about all this but it's more philosophical than practical and probably impossible to discuss on a forum. Kind of a chicken and egg thing that assumes neither player development or equipment development happens in a vacuum...

But anyway my own thinking is that Jack and a lot of other guys may well have generated a lot more clubhead speed than they actually developed, given the right set of incentives and disincentives in terms of winning golf. There was a tipping point which I suspect had more to do with urethane than titanium (if you get my drift) but in any case a certain generation of golfers discovered that it was possible to develop enough power that the whole calculus of risk and reward was put on a different basis.

Some of the biggest hitters in the persimmon+balata days may actually have been over the hump in that curve (thinking maybe Norman, DL-III, Couples heck maybe even Jack or a few others farther back) but it took the equipment changes to make the new risk/reward equation clear enough to be worth pursuing from a player's early-development years.

An interesting (to me at least) thought experiment would be a world in which the advantages of the "ProV1 class" of golf ball construction with regard to maintain a playable spin rate as clubhead speeds topped 120mph were present but the USGA did act a decade sooner to update their ODS testing regimen and throttle back the actual springiness of the golf ball by a pretty fair bit. The result would be still a huge distance increase as "Tour" type players adopted what we now call a "Tour" type ball (more akin to what would have been "distance" ball performance back then) but still substantially less ball speed than what actually happened.

I think the enabling factor for the big change in strategy to what is derided as "bomb and gouge" around here was controlling the spin off the driver at high clubhead speeds. Even if the distance gains per se were not nearly what they turned out to be and even if something less forgiving than a 460cc trampoline face were legislated on drivers, just the human potential for Gary Woodland type swing performance applied to a ball that goes forward instead of up at 130, 140mph of clubhead speed would suffice.

But as you rightly point out it's a contingent historical path that can neither be amended retroactively or unwound after the cat is out of the bag. You could shrink driver faces to 350cc and reduce the "smash factor" of the ProV1 by a few percentage points and put a legal spin minimum on the golf ball and eventually pare away a certain amount of the distance differences between now and Jack's day. But you're not going to eliminate anything like all of that distance without equipment rules so Draconian that anyone but Dave Moriarty considers them purely thought-experiment territory.

Because now you'd be taking a world where "bomb and gouge" is understood and pretty well optimized as a strategy at the elite level and where golfers are almost literally born and bred (golf-wise anyway) to generate the most clubhead speed humanly possible and backing off the distance available without necessarily changing the basic risk/reward equation. That is not the world Jack Nicklaus was born into so we'll never know how a proto-Jack Nicklaus born 50 years later might fare under the conditions that currently obtain.

[Kalen Braley]

Tom,

The is only one sweet spot on a club, and it has not grown in size.

That may be, but the misses are soooooo much better than they used to be.  I can slightly miss the sweet spot and still have a decent result, whereas with the old equipment, it was either sweet spot or nothing.

My slices still go 200 yards, but with my older equipment, even though I was younger and stronger, my slices went much further off line and only 75% as far.

Even older guys on the Champions Tour admit this as they claim they hit it 20-30 yards further at 60 than they were hitting it in thier prime at 35.

[John Kavanaugh]

It's always the ones who refuse to work who claim that is easy. I think the game is hard enough as it is.

[JMEvensky]

Brent Hutto,if I'm understanding you correctly,your premise is that today's player may/may not have been able to play old equipment --but the point is irrelevant.The game has changed to a "new" way to play based on the equipment available and these players have adapted to the game as it's currently presented.

Am I in the ballpark?

Kind of like arguing if Ozzie Smith would have been as great as Honus Wagner if he'd had to use HW's glove.

[Garland Bayley]

Tom,

The is only one sweet spot on a club, and it has not grown in size.

That may be, but the misses are soooooo much better than they used to be.  I can slightly miss the sweet spot and still have a decent result, whereas with the old equipment, it was either sweet spot or nothing.

My slices still go 200 yards, but with my older equipment, even though I was younger and stronger, my slices went much further off line and only 75% as far.

Even older guys on the Champions Tour admit this as they claim they hit it 20-30 yards further at 60 than they were hitting it in thier prime at 35.

Kalen,

I don't know if you have enough and accurate enough data to categorically state any kind of results.
As for the Champions Tour, the USGA has said that they should get 25 yards from the ball alone (when the finally got around to admitting it). The spring face drivers are going to give them perhaps an additional 1/5 of that. You don't even use spring face clubs, nor a very large driver, so I don't see your claims about changes could be anything but the ball.

[Melvyn Morrow]

Don’t you just love it when people come out with so called information on past players and generations. The fact of the matter being they are and were like us, nor was their equipment inferior to ours.  It just had not undergone the technological development which so much aids the modern golfer.

Could they match todays golfers, IMHO I would say yes. As a generation they were fitter than many of us and tended to walk  not ride unless it was in a train. So why do we dismiss their ability when the records show that the skill levels of some was just unbelievable.

What do you actually know of the golfers in say Scotland pre 1890’s? In real terms the answer is zero. So their quality and I would go further the skill they possessed to control both the ball and those early clubs must have been something wonderful to observe.

We are doing it again, underrating past generations, as we hind behind our technology. Strip away the technology and our best players would have a battle on their hand. Alternatively give the Old Dead Guys the modern equipment and watch them adjust, again I believe the modern top Pro’s would have a serious job to beat them

The reason for my opinion is based upon the past generations were harder and stronger both in mind and body that we are today. I also believe that they had the resolve to achieve whatever thy set their mind too. Just look at us, we have had it easy, our modern lives have not encountered the hardship of the Victorian Age.

Why do many underrate past generations? Given an even playing fields they are certainly the equal to us.

Melvyn   

[Brent Hutto]

JME,

Yes it's a lot like that. My first-level thought is that yes there's been an adaptation and selection of today's players based on the equipment as it happened to develop. There's a second level that is harder to describe. As that development was happening the path it took was influeced by the way in which players were adapting and it is overall simultaneous but at the micro level it is a reciprocal sequence of historical contingencies. The big picture arc of how equipment and players evolved is not a smooth arc while it is happening. It is sensitively dependant on what happened when. And there's sort of another level to it involving reality vs perception.

[JMEvensky]

JME,

Yes it's a lot like that. My first-level thought is that yes there's been an adaptation and selection of today's players based on the equipment as it happened to develop. There's a second level that is harder to describe. As that development was happening the path it took was influeced by the way in which players were adapting and it is overall simultaneous but at the micro level it is a reciprocal sequence of historical contingencies. The big picture arc of how equipment and players evolved is not a smooth arc while it is happening. It is sensitively dependant on what happened when. And there's sort of another level to it involving reality vs perception.

Thanks.

When you feel like typing the long version,I'd be curious to see it.

Somehow,I think there also has to be some room made for the hugely increased purses attracting better athletes in general.Guys who,in earlier times, might have concentrated on other sports.I think if the purses had remained relatively small,we might not have seen the distance explosion we see now.

[Garland Bayley]

Somehow,I think there also has to be some room made for the hugely increased purses attracting better athletes in general.Guys who,in earlier times, might have concentrated on other sports.I think if the purses had remained relatively small,we might not have seen the distance explosion we see now.

I have no doubt that the distance explosion would have been there. I believe any concentration on the sport due to the money simply caused more people to combine directional control with the distance that was inherently there.

[Sean_A]

Sorry Sean, but it is you who has missed the point.

Our great courses are being changed, and new courses are being built to absurd standards.  The reason is that the people who are making the changes and having these monstrosities built have seen that the ball flies a hell of a lot farther than it did a relatively short time ago, at least for one group of golfers.   This is not a part of a gradual, evolutionary process, but rather a huge jump dwarfing all that have come before.  

Of course pushing back the equipment is no absolute guarantee that the courses will not continue to be ruined.  So what?  Since when do we need an absolute guarantee of success to try and curb the trend?  

And yes, courses have have always been altered, but it has not been "regardless of tech advances."   Oftentimes it has been because of them, and those changes have ramped up correspondingly with unprecedented jump in distance.  And again, so what?  Failing to try stop the changes in the past is a poor excuse for failing to try now.

Do I have any direct evidence that a rollback would work?   A transparent deflection on your part.  How could I have direct evidence of future events?  

As for your denial of the impact the perception of top players has had on architecture, it is really not worth discussing.  

No USGA rule ever has or ever will alter that.

Do you have any proof of that?  If the USGA rules were such that huge drives generally stopped short of 280, do you suppose people would still be trying to come up with 500+ yard par fours?  

_______________________________

Brent,  

Your response seem equally a deflection. Golf is a game defined by rules, and the ruling bodies already restrict equipment. All I am asking for are more effective rules that rebalance the game.  

David

How many times must it be explained to you.  Our courses have been evolving since day one and it isn't all as a means to combat distance.  In fact, even much of the time distance is used as the excuse when it isn't the issue.  How could it be when the tour never comes to town for a huge percentage of courses?  And even when the tour does come to town its for a week a year.  You may think the tour is to blame, but I blame the egos of memberships.  The answer is simple, don't change the courses.  Its not a difficult concept to understand. 

I see you changed your tune and used "perception" of the top players.  Quite sly, but a totally different argument then you made previously.  Perception is not necessarily reality and as I have said all along, these perceptions have led to knee jerk reactions which in fact for most clubs have no direction connection to the tour.  I could understand if you were moaning about dented egos and therefore the answer is to fight back with added length, but most clubs shouldn't have a tour inflated ego to be concerned about.  Funny thing is too, that a great many of our beloved classic courses didn't fall in line with the times.  Somehow, their memberships lagged behind and resisted the urge to pump up the yardage to 7000+.  I also note that you don't even have evidence that proposed rollbacks would in any way "save" classic courses.  The only thing these courses need saving from is their own memberships and owners.

As I have said before, I will follow what the USGA decides - it isn't a huge issue for me or the large percentage of other golfers no matter their opinion on the subject, but I won't be part of the knee jerk crowd decrying distance when it is the knee jerkers adding to the distance of courses and thereby fanning the flames. Sorry, I will leave that sort of nonsense to folks like such as yourself.

Ciao       

[JESII]

I wan to get back into this but don't have time right now other han to say  have gained a hell of alot more on the greens tan through distace in the last 10 or 15 years...so if in 1996 I would have been 18 strokes better than an 18 handicap and today I'm 22 strokes better I would say 3 of those 4 strokes are on the greens...how does that fit into this conversation?

[Garland Bayley]

David

How many times must it be explained to you.  Our courses have been evolving since day one and it isn't all as a means to combat distance.  In fact, even much of the time distance is used as the excuse when it isn't the issue.  How could it be when the tour never comes to town for a huge percentage of courses?  And even when the tour does come to town its for a week a year.  You may think the tour is to blame, but I blame the egos of memberships.  The answer is simple, don't change the courses.  Its not a difficult concept to understand. 

Well, your brought up the nonsense word below, so I have to label the paragraph above as nonsense.


I see you changed your tune and used "perception" of the top players.  Quite sly, but a totally different argument then you made previously.  Perception is not necessarily reality and as I have said all along, these perceptions have led to knee jerk reactions which in fact for most clubs have no direction connection to the tour.  I could understand if you were moaning about dented egos and therefore the answer is to fight back with added length, but most clubs shouldn't have a tour inflated ego to be concerned about.  Funny thing is too, that a great many of our beloved classic courses didn't fall in line with the times.  Somehow, their memberships lagged behind and resisted the urge to pump up the yardage to 7000+.  I also note that you don't even have evidence that proposed rollbacks would in any way "save" classic courses.  The only thing these courses need saving from is their own memberships and owners.

As I have said before, I will follow what the USGA decides - it isn't a huge issue for me or the large percentage of other golfers no matter their opinion on the subject, but I won't be part of the knee jerk crowd decrying distance when it is the knee jerkers adding to the distance of courses and thereby fanning the flames. Sorry, I will leave that sort of nonsense to folks like such as yourself.

Ciao       

[DMoriarty]

Wow Sean your last post is something . . .

How many times must it be explained to you.  Our courses have been evolving since day one and it isn't all as a means to combat distance.  In fact, even much of the time distance is used as the excuse when it isn't the issue.  How could it be when the tour never comes to town for a huge percentage of courses?  And even when the tour does come to town its for a week a year.  You may think the tour is to blame, but I blame the egos of memberships.  The answer is simple, don't change the courses.  Its not a difficult concept to understand.

How many times must it be explained to me?  Might it be your position is lacking, not my perception?  

The problem is that our courses are being changed.  And your simple solution is "don't change the courses."  

Really Sean? That's all you've got? You see no logical or practical problems with your "simple" solution?  

I see you changed your tune and used "perception" of the top players.  Quite sly, but a totally different argument then you made previously.  Perception is not necessarily reality and as I have said all along, these perceptions have led to knee jerk reactions which in fact for most clubs have no direction connection to the tour.  I could understand if you were moaning about dented egos and therefore the answer is to fight back with added length, but most clubs shouldn't have a tour inflated ego to be concerned about.  Funny thing is too, that a great many of our beloved classic courses didn't fall in line with the times.  Somehow, their memberships lagged behind and resisted the urge to pump up the yardage to 7000+.  I also note that you don't even have evidence that proposed rollbacks would in any way "save" classic courses.  The only thing these courses need saving from is their own memberships and owners.

Didn't change my tune at all.  Top players hit it way too far.  That is reality, not perception.  Just tried to put it in terms you could understand.  You were hiding behind this truism about how people change courses yet failing to address the reasons they change the courses.  Your psycho-babble about how they'd change them anyway doesn't move me.

As I have said before, I will follow what the USGA decides - it isn't a huge issue for me or the large percentage of other golfers no matter their opinion on the subject, but I won't be part of the knee jerk crowd decrying distance when it is the knee jerkers adding to the distance of courses and thereby fanning the flames. Sorry, I will leave that sort of nonsense to folks like such as yourself.

Speaking of nonsense . . . This is smug, insulting, haughty, passive aggressive nonsense, but nonsense nonetheless.  You know nothing about me and lashing out at me really ought to be beneath you.

[Sean_A]

David

Don't worry, you aren't alone.  There are others who for some reason believe its the USGA's job to make sure courses aren't altered.  If that is what you really want, why don't you press for a rule which bans altering courses?  Why bother with an end around rule when it isn't at all clear it will be successful?  Then again, it would seem more prudent to go to the source and convince those who actually have decision-making about courses to be better stewards of what are sometimes unique designs worth preserving. 



Ciao 

[JESII]

I'm curious why the primary explanation from those of you who think the game is in dire straights is because someone else may not be enjoying it as much anymore...or they would enjoy it more in your world. Why not let them speak for themselves?



"Top players hit it way too far"

For whom?

How many PGA Tur guys played your course last year?

[Melvyn Morrow]

Golf is not about hitting the ball as far as you can, it’s about control, learning, skill and deploying it against the land, nature and the designer.

If Golf was just about the long ball we would have no hazards, no bumps and dells, In fact, we would be playing upon a very long cricket pitch. However we do not, the land used as courses are and were selected for their hazards and sporty nature. That means TEST, golf is a TEST, it challenges the inner self to step up, to consider the potential paths and direction one can take on each different designed Hole. It requires the player to control his shots, to defeat/overcome the hazards on the way to the Hole.

In truth the long ball is a total failure in Design. Something the ODG knew way back in the late 19th Century even with the gutty ball, but subsequence generations of designers have filled in, discarded their obstacles or rejected their way of combating the long ball.

We build courses costing millions of $ or £, some are so well manicured, they look like parks instead of golf courses, why go to the expense of all this is we intend to keep the long aerial game which IMHO contributes about zero to the game, players or spectators enjoyment when compared to seeing a golfer standing firm and taken on the course with all its hazards.

Like many new fads,  its introduction to the game again IMHO has been a disaster. Although to the ill-informed (when it comes to how to play the game, I said play, not fly over it be it by cart or long ball) they seem more keen to removing most of the understand one gets, as well as the responsibility of playing golf using ones legs and mind. Today it’s a game that require the majority not to think, just as well when you see some drinking beer (one straight away know that this course does not police its own Course Etiquette), to be unable to define distance so use gadgets, unable to walk through some cruel illness (laziness or other associated problems). I suppose all that is left to these trouble people is to try and hit the ball straight and as far as possible although that is not the aim behind Golf.

As for Putting on a Green, I suppose the mental state of these individuals make then believe that they can take as many shot to finally sink the ball on the Green as they got to it rather quickly courtesy of the long aerial shot.

A thought – Do you think the Scottish love to play the ground game on our Links course due to our love for value for money so want to see as well as utilise all the land that we have to pay for, be it via Green Fees or Club Membership, hence our preference for the ground game. Or could it be we understand the weather on our Links courses.

A Golf Course is a beautiful living thing, if reacts to the conditions and to fully appreciated the game and the course, you have to play it. Hence, the importance of Land Fit for Purpose to allow the course to flourish. So why do so many want to pass over it as quickly as possible, losing the time to fully view Nature and the design that has cost you or your club a fortune – lack of perhaps understand as to what the game actually entails and how it can reward the player far better that just a lower score.

We need to control technology so as to maintain our Great Courses thus letting future golfers and Designers the opportunity of experiences the joy of past generations. Well, that is unless you are just a bloody selfish sod. Remember it’s not all about you, it’s about the past and future, we too have a duty of care for the future unborn golfers or are we really that much embroiled in this throwaway society of our, that we just do not care, nothing being worth fighting for anymore.

Have a nice day

Melvyn

PS Watch out a Long Ball, duck. Its Ok it's, ‘One Flew over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, or is the above just an excerpt from the original scriptwriting discarded for fear of upsetting the inmates.   

[DMoriarty]

Sean, 

The USGA only has control over the rules, so whatever change they make would have to come through the rules.
________________________________________________

Jim,

The "primary explanation" for me is about the courses, not about any particular players enjoying or not the game.  Courses are being changed to try and keep up with the technology.  You can argue that they are being unnecessarily changed, but they are being changed nonetheless.   

Why does it matter how many pros have played any particular course this year?   Does that change how far they hit it?

[JESII]

Why change a course in preparation for the off chance the Tour shows up for a week?

That's really the point David, your argument seems to come from the position that the course changes are inevitable and I can't get my hands around it. If I'm hitting the ball too far here in Philadelphia (whatever "too far" means) why would a club in California care? How could they relate?

I'm not arguing for a second whether or not the top guys today hit the ball much further than the top players used to and that as a result they are able to score much lower. What I'm arguing is that each individual club has to look internally and really think about why they would ever build a course to protect against the Tour guys? There's no logical reason to do that! Even the guy sitting next to Garland in the 19th hole that drove a 380 yard green is a non-event because I'm certain he didn't break the course record that day.

So yes, it does matter that the pros don't play a particular course because golf is a total score game. Driving it 300 yards doesn't buy you anything else.

I'm actually incredibly intrigued by the Lucas Glover referrence from early in this thread...and I'm amazed you all don't see the positive indications from that.

[Dale Jackson]

I enter this discussion with some trepidation but it seems to me a key component has been missed.

Folks are focused on the distances top level professionals are driving the ball and the impact that has on the courses they play.  But the problem now runs much deeper than that.  Ten or fifteen years ago the long hitters playing bomb and gouge where fairly rare and limited almost exclusively to the top professionals.

But consider that John Daly made "grip it and rip it" popular 20 years ago, the "Tiger era" is now 15 years old, titanium drivers became popular about 12 years and the Pro V made its debut 11 years ago.  That means every golfer under the age of 25 has grown up emulating the bomb and gouge style.  And that means every golf course in the world has a growing proportion of its players overpowering the course.  It is not just a matter of whether we should be addressing the play of the very top players in the game but of a now significant (and growing) percentage of club players who can hit the ball similar distances as the top professionals.

If anyone doubts the veracity of my statements, I invite you to watch any city, regional state/provincial or national amateur tournament, you will see dozens of players who can drive the ball 300 yards.

This discussion can continue to consider whether steps can be taken to control the new reality and what those steps might be but this is not something that is limited to just the very highest levels of play.  It is a phenomenon that will continue to grow as more young players enter the game knowing and expecting they can drive the ball distances none of us old timers ever dreamed of at that age.

IMO, that is the context that should be considered for this thread.

[Jud_T]

Sean,

Let me spell it out for you.  Image you belong to a quaint old-school 6200 yard course.  Now imagine that a bunch of 7200 yard championship new courses sprout up around your area, get a bunch of ratings from the "resistance to scoring" crowd and are where all the young professionals want to join to take their clients and test their mettle and their metal.  Now imagine that your membership dwindles from guy's dying off, moving away and simply dropping their memberships to go join the hot new club in the next town.  Now imagine that your club can't give away memberships or tee times fast enough to keep up basic maintenance costs.  Then picture the reception you get at the next board meeting where a GCA is presenting a board-requested renovation plan which includes lengthening your course when you stand up and say the course is fine as it is.  Then imagine opening the bill for the assessment.  Then imagine playing a 4 and a half hour round in a cart instead of a 3 and a half hour round walking.  Then imagine your kids going through the same thing from soup to nuts 20 years from now and again 20 years after that ad infinitum...

[Melvyn Morrow]

Problem Jud, in 20 years could or should the game be called Golf.

A golf course is very much like an Infinity Pool, it occupies a limited space.

In 20 years will there be any more space.

As for the half an hour round who is going to pay for that?
Oh yes the next generation of 40 Stone golfers who can hit a straight ball but have difficulty retrieving the ball from the Hole once they finally sink the putt.

One question would the course still cost 10-20 $ million to build for a half hour round. What ever happened to value for money, £50+/-for half an hour, sorry not for me. 

Melvyn

[DMoriarty]

Why change a course in preparation for the off chance the Tour shows up for a week?

That's really the point David, your argument seems to come from the position that the course changes are inevitable and I can't get my hands around it.

I think we are talking past each other.  You seem to be arguing that the courses shouldn't be changed because there is no good reason to change them.  While I understand this argument, it does nothing to address the reality of the situation.  

The courses are being changed.  The reason they are being changed is because those in charge of the courses don't see it your way.  Whether or not you, Sean, or I agree with them, they perceive that their courses are becoming obsolete and the reason they think so is because of how far the ball is flying for long hitters.

And, looking at it from their perspective, I can understand where they are coming from.   While I don't think they should change their courses, I also believe that the huge jump in distance for longer hitters is stressing the architecture and the courses past the breaking point, at least for this segment of golfers.

Let me ask you the question Sean never addressed:  How does your belief that they shouldn't change the courses address the fact that are changing the courses?

If I'm hitting the ball too far here in Philadelphia (whatever "too far" means) why would a club in California care? How could they relate?

How very Philadelphian of you to assume that only those in Philadelphia hit the ball a long ways!  Just kidding of course, to help make the point below . . .

I'm not arguing for a second whether or not the top guys today hit the ball much further than the top players used to and that as a result they are able to score much lower. What I'm arguing is that each individual club has to look internally and really think about why they would ever build a course to protect against the Tour guys? There's no logical reason to do that! Even the guy sitting next to Garland in the 19th hole that drove a 380 yard green is a non-event because I'm certain he didn't break the course record that day.

As Dale explained, the jump in distance is hardly limited to the tour, or to Philadelphia.  There are a large number of low handicap players and some mid-handicap players who generate enough swing speed to have benefited from technology and are hitting it inordinate distances.  This seems especially true among younger golfer and this suggests the percentage of really long hitters is growing.  So while I and others turn to tour stats only because they are available, I do think those tour stats reflect a growing trend amongst better and younger players, generally.  Unfortunately, I am unaware of any stat database to check this.

And I disagree with you regarding Garland's friend.  You seem to be saying that long hitters who don't break course records, then they should be ignored! Why is that?  Aren't there a large number of golfers who hit the ball a mile, but who don't break par, much less course records?   But you don't think they should be at all considered when it comes to golf architecture?  

No offense meant, but you guys seem pretty self-righteous on on this point.  Don't they like to hit driver too?  Don't they pay their dues just like everyone else?  Wouldn't they enjoy an occasional architectural feature actually serving the function it was meant to serve?

I sure hope this doesn't apply to the rest of us. I don't think I could break par from the 5300 yard tees at my home course, much less the course record. Actually I probably only be a few shots closer to par than from the 660 yard tees.
- Do you think that everyone who couldn't break par on a 5300 yard course (most golfers) ought to content to play all their golf from tees shorter than  5300 yards?  
- Do you think they would be content?  
- Or would they try to change things?  

Golf may only be a "total score game" for some, but for others it is also about enjoyment of the experience, and the architecture plays a large role in that experience.   Driving it 300 yards may not guarantee you a good score, but it gets you a spot a hell of a lot closer than the architect ever envisioned, and such drives change the dynamic between golfer and architecture, and that puts pressure on the course whatever the final score.

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