"The game has changed..."

[Jeff_Mingay]

Matthew,

We're going ahead with a bunker redo this spring at one of my client clubs. The greens are also scheduled to be redone, but that's been put on hold for now. (The greens will be redone at some point though, because they have to be - 90% from a functional standpoint.)

There's some debate (outright opposition in some instances) about a few, or more of the bunkers I've proposed. In response, I've simply said: If we went ahead with the greens redo this spring instead (putting surfaces and surrounds), and I had no limitations imposed on the design, the course might not even need a bunker to provide interesting and adequately challenging golf

[Garland Bayley]

Jeff:

The game HAS changed.

What has changed most is people's idea of what the game is all about -- that it's all designed around certain players, or that certain holes or hazard placements are fair or unfair.

Tell them you are trying to change it back.

A hazard placement that is unfair means that it is as difficult for the highly skilled golfer as it is for a hack like me.

[Dave McCollum]

Probably irrelevant, but this thread made me think of two playing anecdotes. 

On a yearly guy’s trip to play Old Works in Montana, we stay at a friend’s wonderful cabin on a lake.  The friend, Ray, always insists that we play the 6800 yard tees.  (There are like 6 sets of tees all the way back to 7,700 yards).  The other guys bitch and moan and then relent for one round before moving up where we belong for the other rounds.  Ray is a short hitting 16 cap.  However, he’s a wily player and always seems to play better from the longer tees.  Eventually, I figured out his MO.  He is just long enough to make the forced carries from longer tees, but short enough to avoid all black slag hazards.  When he moves up, the more the hazards come into play for him.  He matches his game to the best set of tees, in this case tees that would seem too long for him, and just keeps the ball in play while longer hitters find their troubles.

Another time at Huntsman Springs, a remarkable David Kidd design, I played a two-man scramble outing with a local pro and his partner, his superintendant.  The course had just opened and we were one of the first to play it.  The whole round, the pro kept pointing out what he considered flaws in the design or poorly sited bunkers.  Granted, the course is awash in eye candy bunkers, has water on 16 of 18 holes, and is totally manufactured on a dead flat, swampy mountain meadow (sits at the foot of the Tetons).  Once you realize that the design is totally about visual deception, however, the course is very strategic, has many classical features, and is fun to play.  In fact, given all the water, it is an engineering marvel that it is playable at all.  I was having a good day playing the middle tees and taking on all of the risk/reward lines of play.  Good shots were rewarded and the hazards seem perfectly placed for my game from the tees we were playing.  Everything the pro was bitching about seemed wrong to me.  Finally, when we got to one of the final holes, I spoke up.  He was complaining to his partner about a fairway pinching down to a narrow LZ bordered by a wetland.  I pointed out to him a nasty looking bunker in the face of a dune that looked like there was no place to land a drive if you took on the bunker.  I ended up betting him a six pack that if I took that line over the bunker, there would be an ample landing area hidden behind and it would provide a good angle to approach the green.
 
We both hit our drives as intended.  My drive ended up as I expected and was rewarded.  His ended up in the pinched neck, so he said “see, I told you that was crap design.”

I said “Duffy, you’re a freaking pro playing the ladies tees.  If you had been playing the tees you should, you’d be right where I am.  You own me a six pack.”  Unfortuanately, they didn’t sell beer there.

I’m not a very good player, maybe a bit above average and bit longer than most guys my age.  However, I really enjoy playing a course that presents me with some of the same challenges and rewards that it presents to good players from the back tees.  So, I guess my point is about creating options, something the ODG’s were good at.                   

[Tom_Doak]

Jeff, Tom - let me play devil's advocate for a bit. If the game has changed, it is ARCHITECTS who have changed it the most.  Sure, you might argue that you were only FOLLOWERS and not leaders; that you were simply RESPONDING to new technologies and client demands and golfers' expectations.  But I'd suggest that, in fact, you as a group/profession have much more POWER and INFLUENCE than you'd care to admit to or be held responsible for; and that it was YOUR ANCESTORS who were in fact the main DRIVERS OF CHANGE, at every stage of American golf and in several different ways.  The very stiff tests of golf that were Oakmont and Pine Valley; the 18 great holes/the ideal golf course that was Macdonald's NGLA; Jones' work on Oakland Hills and Firestone; Pete Dye at Sawgrass ; Nicklaus' early work and that of other player-designers; the monstrosities that are the country-clubs-for-a-day, with their elevated tees and 7000 yard back tees. It was architects/your brethren who FAILED TO PROTECT the fields of play in the first place, who failed to honour -- with the kind of good intentions that pave the road to hell -- the origins and ethos and history of those fields of play, and were and are very quick to suggest CHANGES and NEW STYLES to existing courses and ones yet to be built.  And so, by changing the playing fields you have CHANGED THE GAME. Has it changed otherwise? Well, the marathon is still the marathon, still a very severe test, and STILL 26 MILES; even though there are an elite few who can now run it in 2 hours and 10 minutes, the vast majority of runners/athletes, past and present, would take 4/5/6 hours to finish, if they can finish it at all -- and so the marathon, in essence, has NOT CHANGED.  In the same way, 6,100 yards with random bunkering is a challenging joy to play for the vast majority of golfers, and this has been the SAME CASE FOR 100 YEARS -- and I think architects KNOW THAT.  No, the game has not changed for the vast majority of men and women who play it, or who have ever played it, or who will ever play it in the future.  Unfortunately, for many decades your architectural brothers were amongst the very few, it seems, who DIDNT RECOGNIZE or maybe even DIDNT WANT to recognize this, and who didn't want the game (in particular, its fields of play) to stay the same.  Understandable, really: as in any profession the hot shots and young guns want to make a name for themselves by OUTDOING their predecessors -- it's always longer/faster/louder/more complex.  But let's not pretend that it's the BIG BAD world/client/golfer/equipment company/governing body OUT THERE that has been the cause. It may be time to look in the mirror gents.    

Peter
More harsh than I intended or would've imagined, even for the 'devil's advocate' role. But I'll leave it the way it is, if for no other reason than it is what my fingers typed without a pause, and so it is at least a direct expression of one point of view. (Six posts I see have come in the time I've typed this, maybe it has become redundant).

Peter:

You're dead right with pretty much all of that.

What you didn't pick out is that what HAS changed is the professional game [qf. Bobby Jones regarding Jack Nicklaus, "He plays a game with which I'm not familiar."].  Unfortunately, because everyone watches the pros on TV, everyone in golf is convinced that the game has changed and golf courses have to change in reaction.  But, by building courses to suit the pros, we have messed up the game for everyone else.

[Pretty funny, too, when you consider the project I've spent the past ten days working on!]

[Sean_A]

Jeff

Back to the bunkers, why would folks think sand 30 yards short of the putting surface is not in play?  Did you ask that?

Ciao  

Sean,

I have no idea. I'm perplexed by this train of thought, to be honest. Have I asked why they think this way? I'm in the process at one particular club that prompted this post...

I would have thought a well placed bunker will be actively on the mind's of half the players of any given day - at best.  A brilliantly placed bunker may actively be on the mind's of nearly 100% of play on any given day.   The thing is, you need both sort and I can easily think of scenarios where bunkers 30 yards short of a green could be very well placed and maybe even brilliantly placed.  

Mind you, there a still thousands of poorly placed bunkers out there so it is worth reviewing bunker placement when re-doing courses.  Otherwise, courses can end up with this sort of thing - honestly - what is going on here?





Ciao

[Mac Plumart]

I think Tillinghast would agree.