Best Tour Player Round of the Year?

[Jeff_Lewis]

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bzqi1z7BZqS/


Where does one start?  Having the inspiration to go play North Berwick is pretty darned impressive for me when I see Fowler and Thomas go over there.  Pushing their own carts?   Playing off the stone wall?   


It's amazing how these guys can still love and appreciate golf as a game and that they understand that no golfer should ever be within 100 miles of N. Berwick without playing it!


Well done!

[David Wuthrich]

Shows that there are at least of few pros that appreciate golf architecture and history!

[David Federman]

Pulling a trolley, to boot.

[Peter Pallotta]

Oh, to be so good a golfer that it's never about you or your game but only & always about the golf course and the architecture.
Will JT & RF 'appreciate' North Berwick? Yes -- and I dare say they'll be able to 'see' the design for what it is and for what it calls for (shot-making wise) better than 99.99% of golfers who've ever played there.
Naturally -- since only if you're not concentrating on *how* to hit a shot (and not worried about the many ways you can/will mishit it) are you truly free to concentrate on *what* shot to hit, ie on the options and choices and strategies and potential consequences involved.
It's the one reason I have for trying to get better at golf.

[Jim Sherma]

Peter - great post. I have been lucky enough to have cycled between a 3.2 and a 7.9 index for pretty much of the past 37 years. Very rarely have I hit the ball well enough to feel that I really was truly "playing" the game and interacting with the architecture. I have had a few stretches where I believed that I could glimpse what good golf must be like (not just hitting 14 or so greens a round and breaking par but being able to have enough confidence to try to move the ball along slopes and control the spin on different shots in order to access pin placements and the like).


Played with one of the assistant pros from my club today on a road trip to a different course. He hit every fairway and shot the easiest -4 I could imagine. I felt like he probably left 2 or 3 shots out there and only made one putt outside of 10 feet the whole day. Clearly he interacted differently with the architecture than I did grinding around at +8 my first time seeing the course (38 putts did not help my case at all).


I know that this might be blasphemous to some and I accept the fact that players of all abilities obviously are playing the same architecture. Still, I think that there is something in the playing of the game on a field of play that you can only see at a pretty high level of ball striking. This is opposed to hitting the ball and seeing what happens. I only wish that I can have another run where I can feel that way again.