Two weeks ago my topic was perfect yardage. This week I've had another flash of insight.
Ted McKenzie, the professional at Stonewall, sent me the hole-by-hole scoring summary of the Pennyslvania Open on the old course. Guess what were the hardest holes on the course in relation to par?
The six hardest holes, in order, were the ninth, fifth, fifteenth, seventh, eighteenth, and the seventeenth. For those of you who don't know the course, the eighteenth is a long downhill par-4; the other holes are the course's five par threes.
I was particularly shocked by the inclusion of the seventeenth, which a lot of the members think is simply too easy of a par three, only 130 yards to a medium-small tilted green.
But the reason for this anomaly is simple: suddenly, it has dawned on me that golf pros are hitting it so long that even the shortest of par-3 holes has a longer approach shot than all the par-4's and par-5's!
Maybe they should take the U.S. Open to a par-3 course for a real test.