The comeback story of the day was one Lester George, who had been "scratched", Rollerball style from the tote-board by Chairman Bausch due to a broken tooth, yet steeled himself with a sip or two of Pinot Grigio and then fought his way to the podium, resplendent in an ASGCA plaid jacket.
We were all the better educated for his efforts!
Lester's presentation focused on something near and dear to all of us, the future of golf. Evidently the USGA is becoming somewhat convinced that all of their "grow the game" initiatives will be for naught if they can't do something to reduce the pace of play and I believe they're right. I can't tell you the number of times I've thought during a 5+ hour round of golf, "if anything ever made me quit the game, this would be it."
Lester's case study concerned Independence Golf Club in Midlothian VA, a public course built in 2001 and designed by Tom Fazio whose charge was to provide Virginia with a US Open capable course. The course was also to be the home of the Virginia Golf Association and due to conflicting goals and large capital debt ten years after inception the course was struggling and new ownership took over. I should mention that the property is quite large, also contains a par three course, a vast training center, and outbuildings for Corporate and retail functions.
The new owner came at things with a vastly different approach. Knowing what he was asking was likely to be controversial, he explained to Lester up-front that he wanted to significantly reduce the time it took to play a round of golf and pretty much provided Lester free reign (and about 1.3 million) to do what he saw fit towards that goal. The owner is also doing a number of novel things to get folks to the facility and particularly is looking to create family-friendly activities such as concerts, pizza restaurants, fitness centers, use of the grounds for jogging trails, 6 and 9 hole rounds, etc., as a way to have a recreational center that just also happens to have a golf course.
The golf course had a significant amount of bunkers, many of them over 10 feet deep and many located far from putting surfaces, ensuring that the weaker players would be brutalized. Many of the greenside bunkers were front right. The grasses in the rough grew lush and deep and rarely were any bailout areas provided where the lesser player could navigate safely.
Lester described how through a combination of bunker removal, bunker reconstruction, re-grassing, widening of fairways, clearing of off-fairway areas, the creation of milder short game recovery areas, and some other touches the course was able to reduce rounds by over 45 minutes, from nearly 5 hours on average to 4 hours 5 minutes, measured by GPS in the carts. In addition to the financial impact of getting more people through the gates, overall less carts were needed, maintenance costs were reduced, the course rating actually improved, and things are looking rosier, with more changes to come.
I had an evil thought that in 50 years some internet geeks will find old aerials and set out to restore Independence, penal bunkers and all, to "Fazio's original design intent". Indeed, I think we sometimes here get so caught up in the "bunker porn" view of historical courses that we sometimes forget the very real economical decisions that club's and courses have made over time, often for reasons we can only speculate about decades later.
I do know that the other architects in attendance certainly were given food for thought in terms of their own designs and while some may view these types of changes negatively as reducing golf course challenge, Lester provided plenty of evidence that the course's design intent remained intact while the course is now much more navigable for the average player.
I personally think "sustainability" is the watchword for 21st century golf so listening to Lester's presentation was refreshing in approach and educational in substance.