Legitimate Generational Bias - Age Results Now In / My Theory

[Steve Kline]

Thanks Phil.  Much worse in Alabama where only 1 in 3 fans can spell "Saban."

Cheers.

Bogey

The most common misspelling in Alabama is Satan.

[Steve Kline]

Hadn't seen Phil's second post when I posted my misspelling above.

[Chris DeToro]

It was still worth repeating

[Jud_T]

So how do gen Xers trodding the modern fairways with 90 year old sticks and golden age era repro balls jibe with this sophomoric treatise?

[BHoover]

So how do gen Xers trodding the modern fairways with 90 year old sticks and golden age era repro balls jibe with this sophomoric treatise?

I think it tears a hole in the space-time continuum...or something.

[Mac Plumart]

So, as a 41 year old...when I play with my hickory clubs...am I destroying the universe?

 

[Tom_Doak]

One of the things I see with the younger generation is that they are fine with severe circumstances which might cause you to pick up, once or twice a round.  Kingsley certainly has holes like that.

Some people will identify this as "match play mentality", but I think it's different.  The old-school norm was that you ought to be able to finish with the same ball you started with, and that included holing out all the way around.  "Match play mentality" allowed for the occasional bad break that would cost you a hole -- such as hitting the wall on the 13th at North Berwick -- but it didn't generally extend to making you put the ball in your pocket, other than because you were going to lose the hole.  Likely, the increasing expectation of water hazards has been a factor in holes like this becoming more accepted by younger players.

So, greens like #2 and #15 at Kingsley are great fun for the younger generation, but there are a lot of grumpy old guys who mark the course down severely because of them.  That helps to explain the wider disparity in feelings about the course:  the same holes that one group likes most are precisely the holes that another group likes least.  [But, it does NOT explain why a guy who likes such features at Kingsley hates the one similar instance at Crystal Downs.   ]

[Bill Seitz]

So, greens like #2 and #15 at Kingsley are great fun for the younger generation, but there are a lot of grumpy old guys who mark the course down severely because of them.  That helps to explain the wider disparity in feelings about the course:  the same holes that one group likes most are precisely the holes that another group likes least.  [But, it does NOT explain why a guy who likes such features at Kingsley hates the one similar instance at Crystal Downs.   ]

Tom, Any chance you could elaborate on this?  I'm not sure which feature you're talking about in the last sentence.  So far, the only person I know who hates the holes at Kingsley that I love, and loves the holes (or more specifically, hole) at Crystal Downs that I hate is  Steve Salmen, who is roughly the same age as I am, and almost exactly the same in ability.  

Regarding the match play mentality, the extreme holes at Kingsley have fairly easy recovery options IF a player is willing to take his medicine and make an extra shot.  I'm not sure how this is different from a lot of classic courses which are heavily treed, except that the concept extends to almost every hole on courses like that.  Heck, I was in my pocket on #6 at Kankakee Elks the other day because I stupidly refused to give in to the trees.  It was an easy bogey if I'd been willing to take it.  Granted, a lot of the classic courses weren't designed that way, but that's how they're presented today.  I'm not sure how a drive that ends up in the trees on the right on the 16th at Beverly is in any better shape than a tee ball down the hill on the left at Kingsley's second.

The old-school norm was that you ought to be able to finish with the same ball you started with, and that included holing out all the way around.

I only mention this because you brought Kingsley into the discussion, but over the course of seven rounds in one day at Kingsley (holing out on every hole, as per the rules of the event), I used three golf balls.  One was lost, and one was taken out of play because I felt that after 60+ holes, it had probably had enough (and I think I had just hit a sprinkler head on 16).  This is not a rare occurrence.  One thing I love about Kingsley is that it's particularly easy on the golf ball inventory.

Anyway, I don't mean to make that sound like a knee jerk Kingsley defense.  I really like both courses.  And my only round at the Downs was with punched greens in late Spring, so they probably weren't at full severity.

[Tim Bert]

Tom - I have seen more people forced to pick up on #10 in Crystal Downs in three rounds because the ball could not be stopped close enough to hole the ball than I have seen in any weekend ever on any hole at Kingsley.

To turn the question a bit, why is it not ok that the surrounds are severe but the green is completely playable (#2 at Kingsley) but it is fine that the green itself has so much slope and is maintained at a speed where the ball can't be stopped near the hole?

You keep making the point about why the young guys are ok with severity at Kingsley but my few times around the course Crystal Downs has been far more severe. Severe in a different manner perhaps but severe nonetheless and in the exact manner where the ball can be found but the hole can't be finished.

I for one don't mind picking up and moving along if I hack up a hole but it irritates me to no end when I turn 90 degrees away from the hole and tap a putt as if I am putting a 3 inch putt and I watch it roll all the way off the green and then I watch three guys chip up to the hole from BELOW the hole to within 2 feet of the hole and watch the shots all roll ball off the green or into a bunker.

I am the first to acknowledge that Kingsley is severe in places but I have also watched a number of golfers play the course with one ball and card their handicap or better without picking up a single hole. The course is less severe for my game than Pacific Dunes which I also happen to love.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom - I have seen more people forced to pick up on #10 in Crystal Downs in three rounds because the ball could not be stopped close enough to hole the ball than I have seen in any weekend ever on any hole at Kingsley.

Tim:

Perhaps much of this is just the difference in our golf games.  I have had days where I had a lot of putts on the 11th at the Downs (or occasionally another hole), and it never made me want to pick up; but I'm an above-average putter and I know the greens very well.  By contrast, I have picked up on 2, 9 and 15 at Kingsley without ever getting the ball ONTO the green, and watched others do the same.  Maybe that's not as common as I think.

I was not commenting about lost balls -- Crystal Downs certainly has too much of that in a wet summer, though I generally know where to look for my own.

[Jud_T]

15 is a bit surprising to me, unless you were long and left and determined to get up and down.

[Tim Bert]

I enjoy a good putting off the green as much as the next guy.  That doesn't bother me. Maybe we just caught the pin position and green speed on a bad day but it was more of an issue that there wasn't way to leave a putt anywhere in makeable range from anywhere.  We would have been happy to finish up the putts but as groups started to stack up on the tee and fairway they might not have been as happy!

[Tom_Doak]

I enjoy a good putting off the green as much as the next guy.  That doesn't bother me. Maybe we just caught the pin position and green speed on a bad day but it was more of an issue that there wasn't way to leave a putt anywhere in makeable range from anywhere.  We would have been happy to finish up the putts but as groups started to stack up on the tee and fairway they might not have been as happy!

That's the left-front hole location.  It's pretty bad in the fall, when the greens are fast and the rough above the bunker is worn down ... when it's at its worst, a ball that comes off the top shelf winds up in the front right bunker.  I played in those conditions years ago with Ran M. and Bob Harrison from Australia, and Bob said that if he built a green like that for Greg Norman, Greg would have fired him.

They really just shouldn't use that hole location at all if the greens are fast.  In the spring, it's not nearly as severe.

[Jim Nugent]

Tom Doak, while I've never played Crystal Downs, many posters keep saying the greens stimp too fast, and that makes the course less fun/playable than it should be.  Any reactions to that?  

[Mac Plumart]

Jim...

I'll comment on your post (in hopes of putting the thread back to the top of the heap and getting Tom to see it).

Yes, that is one of the issues that keeps Crystal from being as good as it should be.  Add to that the mowing patterns.  These two things combine to yield a much less than ideal maintenance meld for the courses architecture.  This, effectively, neuters a lot of the architectural intent of the designers.

I've only been around Crystal once, but I've talked to many who have played it and I've studied it quite a bit.  What I saw in my time there was confirmed by my further research on the course and, therefore, leads me to believe that my play did, in fact, yield a good representation of how the course plays day in and day out.

Change those two things and...WOW...Crystal's architectural intent would shine through and the course would, should, could, be at the very tipity-top on the list of greatest courses.  Heck, even with those issues, it is at the top of those lists.

If someone has played it hundreds of times over the years, I'm sure they've seen it in its ideal maintenance conditions.  So, they know how great the course can be.  This might be a good thing...but it also might blind them to what is on the ground right now.  And what is in the ground right now is not perfect.

[Tom_Doak]

Tom Doak, while I've never played Crystal Downs, many posters keep saying the greens stimp too fast, and that makes the course less fun/playable than it should be.  Any reactions to that?  

Jim:

Hopefully this answers your question (and Mac's as well).

I do think that for the last 6-7 years -- before this year, when it changed a bit -- the greens at the Downs were maintained too fast for the contours of the greens.  Really, the ideal speed on those greens is 8.5 or 9, but sadly golfers just aren't satisfied with those speeds anymore, so the only time of the year you play them ideal is early in the spring.  They're still great up to about 10; after that, they are pretty severe even for someone who putts well and knows them well.  I've said so here, and I've said so at the club.

However, that does NOT affect my rating of the golf course much at all.  The green speed changes from day to day and month to month, and it could change [for good] at any time they decide for it to change.  If what's on the ground is perfect [to me], and it's just a matter of getting the set-up right, my ratings in The Confidential Guide assume that they will get the set-up right.  And don't forget, when I wrote my book in the mid-90's, the set-up WAS right.  

Likewise, back then, they still had that one stupid cherry tree in place on #17, but I didn't hold that against the course either -- and it would have been pretty silly in hindsight had I done so, since the tree is now a distant memory.

The ratings in The Confidential Guide generally give the course the benefit of the doubt as far as conditioning and set-up.  I felt this was only fair, because I had seen most of the courses only once or twice, and that wasn't enough to make judgments about their ideal maintenance meld.  And because the book is supposed to be about golf courses, not conditioning.

P.S. to Mac:  I'm supposed to get over there once I get over the flu, and mark out expanded mowing lines on three of the holes.  They do intend to widen things out on many holes to what Mike and I recommended a year ago -- although the two of us do not want to see them do it as justification for a whole new irrigation system that we will have to pay for.  I don't know why you are wasting your spare time "researching" why Crystal Downs should not be a 10, but suggest you find something more fun, and more productive!  

[Mike Hendren]

Deleted.

[Mac Plumart]

Thanks, Tom!  Great post on a great thread.  Thanks, Bogey, as well.



As a sidenote, I wasn't researching to see if Crystal was a 10 or not.  I was just researching it.  Great place!  Great course!  I wanted to know more about it.  (oh yeah, that and I'm a loser with nothing else to do with my life!!    )


Again, thanks guys...really good stuff.