[David_Tepper]

"A tournament with a reduced number of clubs on a classic links course would be great fun to watch. Can’t see it happening though!"

James Reader -

In one of the pieces ("Europe in the Fall") in Herbert Warren Wind's anthology Following Through, he reports on the Braemar Professional 7-club tournament that was held at Turnberry in 1964.

You can find the actual New Yorker piece here:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1964/11/07/europe-in-the-fall

DT

[Kalen Braley]

The one point in Lou's post I would certainly agree with is Bifurcation.


Its not like the NBA worries about street ball pickup games
Nor the MLB care about school yard baseball games.
Or <Insert League Name> for applicable informal games.


Why should the PGATour or anyone on it give a damn about what weekend hacks do.  Its thier show, make thier own rules...


P.S.  And yes i'll say it, they should say the USGA can do whatever they like, but we'll govern ourselves...

[Matthew Mollica]

Thanks for the link to the article in the New Yorker David. Wonderful.

[Carl Rogers]

There needs to be some common ground about what is too short or too long a course.
I have seen 2 formulas for that: (operable premise is that par and getting close to a par 4 green in 2 is important)
1. multiply the distance the golfer hits a 5 iron and multiply by 36
2. multiply the distance the golfer hits a driver and multiply by 30


for me that represents about a 6100 yard course ... ok for me


for Dustin Johnson that means a 8800 yard course or longer ..... I do not see DJ clamoring for this.


When I get through my medical problems next year, now at the age of 64, I will play the senior tees without embarrassment.

[JESII]

I really bristled at his statement that the distance explosion is the average American golfers fault...but it is. Just not in the way he says. The pursuit of distance has been a constant. When he was 12 years old, did he (and all his contrymen) not marvel at Greg Norman's distance? If GO didn't, he was hiding out on the back range by himself because 99% of Australians surely did. Norman's uncanny accuracy and control were a more nuanced observation.


The reality is, the average American is to blame for one side of the current issue around distance/sustainability/skill etc...


If we had simply decided, yes, these guys are extremely good at their craft AND...they're not coming to my course for a tournament so I need not build/alter my course into a 7,300 behemoth at the expense of the folks that play 99% of the golf on it.


If we could accept that single fact, and move on a couple dozen "Championship Courses" would alter themselves each year in an effort to protect par and the rest would provide quality golf.

[Tom_Doak]

Jim:  Everything you describe above is, at least partly, on architects, as Geoff correctly assigns it.  It's up to us to advise clients not to do that.  Not that Australian architects have been any better at resisting.

[JESII]

Sure, the architects can give an opinion but how many walk away from work for it? Not that I could ever advise them to...


The owners/boards of clubs striving to be viewed as "better" have a blind motivation to lengthen and strengthen...even still.

[Mike_Clayton]

Jim,


I think the average American player (if there is such a thing) is more concerned with distance than the average British or Australian player. The whole thrust of American manufacturer advertising has always been on distance for as long as I can remember.
Way back in 1968 there was a First Flight ad 'Will First Flight force America to build longer golf courses.'
It's not something you would likely have seen in a British magazine/advertising campaign.
It's a bit like you would never see a Japanese or French 'all you can eat buffet.'


Tom,
It's true in Australia we haven't been able to resist - on courses likely to hold major tournaments. Kingston Heath,Victoria.Karrinyup,Royal Queensland,Lakes,Peninsula amongst others are all hosting (or want to) Australian Opens and/or Australian amateurs/ tour events and stretched out they are still short for those guys. John Rahm even made 17th at Kingston Heath 'not blind' when he drove it where he could see the green in the World Cup last summer.


At every other course we work though I can thing of only a handful of holes we have lengthened. 17 at Portsea was one - which is now the 14th.
Having said that almost every single new course built here in the last 25 years - post Greg Norman starting in the business - has been over 7000 yards. Barnbougle and Ranfurlie were two not quite to that mark.

[Lou_Duran]

Back in the early to mid 1970s, I worked part time as a starter at Ohio State's golf club.  The Scarlet course was then around 7200 yards, par 72 and very difficult.  The Gray was a bit over 6000, par 70 with a number of interesting holes, and a nice challenge for the average golfer.  Many days I would have a walk-up list of an hour or more for Scarlet while the Gray was wide open.  Men and women who couldn't break 100 from the middle tees on Scarlet on their best day would wait an hour for a 5+ hour round on the Scarlet.   Even the ladies golf association, many of its members seniors, competed for scarce weekend tee times on the Scarlet.

Let's face it, most golfers in the U.S. not hooked on GCA.com like long golf courses, at least on the card.  Developers I've known have been hung-up on 7000+ long courses not primarily because of ego, but due to a need to hear the cash register ring.  Scarlet then could be played from 6200 +/- to 7200+, offering considerably more flexibility than Gray's 5600+/- to 6000, not to say anything about its cachet.       

[John Kavanaugh]

It's not how well you play, it's how where you play that counts.

[Peter Pallotta]

I don't suppose average golfers have changed all that much since Lou's days at Ohio State. Maybe today's developers and designers have dug the secret out of the dirt, ie an architectural amalgamation of Scarlet's style & cache with Gray's interest & playability. It's the gca equivalent to keeping the right elbow tucked in and pointing down coming through: a good path ensues.
Peter
I wish I could be as pithy as JK, at least just once!

[Thomas Dai]

What Lou has highlighted above is akin to what Adrian has been saying about his Codrington and Stranahan courses for some time.
And even with different price points many players seem happy to pay more to play the course that’s less suited to their personal game.
Ego and vanity seems to play a big part in golf.
Atb

[Bruce Katona]

If I had the magic fairy dust to amend how professional golf was contested; the 1 st thing I'd do is find a nice rolling course with few trees, wind as a defense and think about eliminating the sand bunkers and making them turf depressions or real revetted sod bunkers and mowing the collars and approaches tightly. 


Any good professional would prefer to be green-side in the sand rather than in a grass depression or having to chip/putt up a tightly mowed area.  These ideas would bring the touch/short game experts back into the mix more often.


I do like TD's idea of 400 yard par 4's, which eliminate driver.......perhaps take it one step further and offer the alternate green par 4 like at PV #8 where the targets are very small. 

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,
It's true in Australia we haven't been able to resist - on courses likely to hold major tournaments. Kingston Heath,Victoria.Karrinyup,Royal Queensland,Lakes,Peninsula amongst others are all hosting (or want to) Australian Opens and/or Australian amateurs/ tour events and stretched out they are still short for those guys. John Rahm even made 17th at Kingston Heath 'not blind' when he drove it where he could see the green in the World Cup last summer.


At every other course we work though I can thing of only a handful of holes we have lengthened. 17 at Portsea was one - which is now the 14th.
Having said that almost every single new course built here in the last 25 years - post Greg Norman starting in the business - has been over 7000 yards. Barnbougle and Ranfurlie were two not quite to that mark.

Mike:


I have just been going through Darius Oliver's reviews of all the Aussie courses I haven't seen for the next volume of The Confidential Guide, and I was amazed at how many of the Queensland courses were apparently designed with a brief to be a tournament venue or the most difficult course in the region:  Coolum, The Grand, Paradise Palms, etc.


Of course most of the designers in Australia are former tournament professionals, so their perspective of what golfers need is a bit tilted in favor of the strongest players.  Present company excepted, of course!

[Mike_Clayton]

Tom,


That's true of almost all the newer resort courses in Queensland.It's no surprise given they were almost all designed by Graham Marsh or Greg Norman.


Neither were likely to make a 6600 yard course even though that'd have been ideal for the customers.

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