Hawtree Changes to Muirfield.

[Jud_T]

If I ever join another club that has ambitions of hosting a major professional event please shoot me...

[Mark Bourgeois]

Paul

It's too bad Whitten either lacks one of the most important skills of a good columnist or due to laziness chooses not to demonstrate it: represent both sides of an argument if not completely accurately at least fairly. Instead, he resorts to simplistic caricatures of positions held by those who do not share his opinion. For godsakes at least represent the opposition's position before you slay it. Whitten's serial create-a-strawman-then-knock-it-down columns make for tiresome reading.

He would get absolutely sledged at Oxford Union.

Everyone gets sledged at the Union these days, unless they're a topless model...

Hey! HEY! She's released 529 books. Yeah she'd sledge him, too. Forensically speaking.

[BCrosby]

Whitten quotes at the end of his piece the Secretary of Murifield stating that the course is now more Hawtree than Colt.

How can an experienced journalist, an expert in the history of architecture no less, bury his lede so badly? How did Whitten fail to grasp that the club secretary had succinctly stated for him the real issue in the topic of his piece?

This is journalism 101 stuff.

Modern golf architecture deserves a better press corp, particualry among golf's mass circulation magazines.

Bob

[John Kavanaugh]

I would guess that Whitten was limited to just enough words to allow that devilish picture accompanying the article.  The picture sets the tone.  The article is negative as it needs to be.  I also believe it read very well to the modern literary eye, hell, I even got through it without losing my train of thought.

You guys reference modern journalism.  Do you have any idea how difficult it is to hold a readers attention past 140 characters?

What exactly has the readership of the golf magazines done to show that they deserve better?  I don't see the point in writing articles that no one can read or appeals to a readership other than your own.

[Tony_Muldoon]

I would guess that Whitten was limited to just enough words to allow that devilish picture accompanying the article.  The picture sets the tone.  The article is negative

...and that's where I tuned out. Did I miss anything?           (53 characters )

[BCrosby]

Whitten has turned the attention span problem upside down. Develop a reputation for blather and people will simply skip your pieces.

Bob 

[John Kavanaugh]

I would guess that Whitten was limited to just enough words to allow that devilish picture accompanying the article.  The picture sets the tone.  The article is negative

...and that's where I tuned out. Did I miss anything?           (53 characters )

Yes, you missed Whitten throwing GCA a bone. His last sentence was a wink. I think the article was genius in that it is subliminally negative while appealing to his paying demographic.

[Jud_T]

I have no problem with the article aside from the fact that Whitten seems to side with the pragmatists with regard to the Old Course changes.  Was there a vote of the membership to hire Hawtree and approve such extensive changes at Muirfield?  Wouldn't it be ironic if the membership were willing to tear up a Colt course to protect par for the Open but aren't willing to admit women and thus get tossed out of the rota anyway?  Sounds like a nice restoration job for Frank Pont circa 2020...

[John Kavanaugh]

Whitten has turned the attention span problem upside down. Develop a reputation for blather and people will simply skip your pieces.

Bob  

If you want to spend a lifetime building a very successful career writing about golf you need to swim nude in a pool of blather just to pay your mortgage.  Anything past that should be limited to very small discrete audiences of like mind.

The most famous event in the literary history of golf is the coining of the term "Amen Corner".  Outside of these two powerful words it's all forgettable blather.

[Mark Bourgeois]

Hmmm, sort of like Fitzgerald going to Hollywood. The difference between that situation and this one is Fitzgerald held his nose. (C'mon, John, I'm giving you a softball setup here.)

[John Kavanaugh]

Hmmm, sort of like Fitzgerald going to Hollywood. The difference between that situation and this one is Fitzgerald held his nose. (C'mon, John, I'm giving you a softball setup here.)

Fitzgerald who?

[BCrosby]

"The most famous event in the literary history of golf is the coining of the term "Amen Corner".  Outside of these two powerful words it's all forgettable blather."

I'm always surprised (though at my stage in life I shouldn't be) at the pride many Americans take in being unread, uninformed and incurious. It's even worse when it is faked.

Bob

[John Kavanaugh]

When a Harvard man accuses me of faking my ignorance I think of Mark Twain, Abraham Lincoln and the famous satirist Roy Rodgers. Thank you.

[Brent Hutto]

Roy Rogers or Will Rogers?

Or were you faking that one too?

I like the Will Rogers line that goes something like "I'd rather be the guy that bought the Brooklyn Bridge than the guy who sold it".

[JMEvensky]

Roy Rogers or Will Rogers?

RR had Trigger stuffed.If that ain't satire...

[Niall C]

Paul:

It is the same story as it was at St. Andrews; they do it because ... they can.  Both the USGA and the R & A have made it clear over the years that you have to submit to their infinite architectural wisdom in order to host a major championship.  They've given up even pretending that it's the club's will to make such changes ... they dictate what the changes will be.

I have never, ever understood the logic of it.  All the changes illustrated above might change the winning score for the Open by a couple of strokes, max.  Why do they care so much about the winning score?

Tom

Do you know that for a fact ?

From chats I've had with members of a club hosting the Open, changes were made in conjunction with the club. In other words the club was already getting the Open and then a discussion was had on possible changes, everything done by agreement. Im pretty sure you couldn't coerce Muirfield or Troon into making changes they didn't want to.

Niall

[Tom_Doak]

quote author=Niall Carlton link=topic=56315.msg1307203#msg1307203 date=1374086328]

Paul:

It is the same story as it was at St. Andrews; they do it because ... they can.  Both the USGA and the R & A have made it clear over the years that you have to submit to their infinite architectural wisdom in order to host a major championship.  They've given up even pretending that it's the club's will to make such changes ... they dictate what the changes will be.

Tom

Do you know that for a fact ?

From chats I've had with members of a club hosting the Open, changes were made in conjunction with the club. In other words the club was already getting the Open and then a discussion was had on possible changes, everything done by agreement. Im pretty sure you couldn't coerce Muirfield or Troon into making changes they didn't want to.

Niall
[/quote]

Niall:

I used to believe them, but not anymore.  Not after the USGA decided to introduce a bunker at Olympic a month before the championship, with the promise that they'd pay to pull it out afterward if the membership wanted.

The changes to all of the Open championship venues [except St. Andrews] were announced all at the same time by the R&A championship committee, not by the clubs themselves.  Quite a coincidence that they would all independently decide they needed to make changes to their courses, don't you think?   They can pretend it's all the club's idea, but the governing bodies "suggest" course changes the same way that gangsters "suggest" you make yourself scarce.

[ward peyronnin]

Have ltd ability to comment while traveling but if I don't say now I won't get it said.

Whitty and I played a R Ostende, the only dunes course in Belgium.

It had major issues that have affected over the years but the bottom line is we could clearly se many changes that were clearly recent and wondered who had ripped off this historic club as the grens, bunkering , an routing were abysmal. A friendly member filled us in on the process
But couldn't name the designer just that they were well known. Frank Pont told us Hawtree was responsible and let
Me say again it is awful!

[Paul_Turner]

There does appear to be a "one size fits all" philosophy.

 Added green side hollows and bunkers relocated closer to the greens was accepted at Muirfield and deemed a success and then a very similar line of thinking was used on The Old Course.  And the courses aren't all that similar in character.

[BCrosby]

TD says:

"They can pretend it's all the club's idea, but the governing bodies "suggest" course changes the same way that gangsters "suggest" you make yourself scarce."

Merion's championship chairman has made it clear that Merion will roll back changes made for the USO. Which says pretty much all that needs to be said about where they came from. 

Bob 

[Rick Shefchik]

Here's the note from the Whitten piece that sounds false to me: "It matters not that his work [at The Old Course] has the approval of the St. Andrews Links Trust and the R&A, and are truly modest changes. To purists, Villain Hawtree is a blasphemer who ought to be shunned, stoned or insulted as many times as humanly possible."

The negative reaction was 90 percent directed at the R&A and the Links Trust for deciding to make the changes, not at Hawtree for accepting the job.

[Jud_T]

The negative reaction was 90 percent directed at the R&A and the Links Trust for deciding to make the changes, not at Hawtree for accepting the job.

Well, he's either a villain or a schmuck...