Debasing the Game

[Doug Siebert]

It looks like this thread is getting a bit off track, but I just don't see the argument that making the hole bigger makes the game easier.  Sure you score lower since it is easier to make putts, but it is still just as hard to drive it in play, it is still just as hard to escape from a sand trap, it is still just as frustrating to hit the ball fat and dump it into the water hazard in front of the green.

If golf was filled with people who had mastered the long game but required 40+ putts per round that would be one thing, but there are a lot more capable putters who can't hit for crap on a full shot than there are guys who have the tee to green game of a single digit but putt like Bernhard Langer on acid.

If they want to make the game easier, make the fairways wider and have fewer water hazards.  The bad players don't suffer much on the cow pasture courses that let you drive it all over the map and have only a few holes with water in play.  The problem is all the new designs that used leftover land with retention areas, so the courses are way too tight for high handicappers and they have to navigate water on every other hole.  Even a 15 foot cup isn't going to make that any easier on the hacker.

[Brent Hutto]

Doug,

I agree totally.

Give a person playing their 10th round of golf, ever, the choice between these two courses:

1) No OB in play, greens open in front, shallow bunkers, rough short enough you can see your ball from 50 yards away, no water hazards, conventional putting greens and cups.

2) A typical housing-development course with water in play on half a dozen holes, OB on one side or another of half the holes, several greens where approach shots have to carry over bunkers fronting the green, ankle-deep rough but you cut 15" holes in the greens.

99 out of 100 of those beginners would prefer Course #1. Now maybe such a course is totally impractical but it's only a slight exaggeration of the courses a lot of us learned to play on.

[Mike_Young]

Brent,
While I agree with your analogy above, I would also think that a young person today given a choice between speaking to a friend and texting to a friend in the same room, they would choose to speak.  They don't.  

[Howard Riefs]

Shackelford reports that Taylor Made, in the midst of its horrific earnings announcement, has abandoned its much ballyhooed Hack Golf initiative:

http://www.geoffshackelford.com/homepage/2014/8/12/15-taylor-made-workforce-cuts-adams-golf-plant-closes.html