Erik, I limited my comments to personal knowledge. I am familiar with almost all of the renovations in my area over the last 20 years. Increased length is a reality.
I know you did. I'm just looking for some actual numbers, because I feel the "reality" where I live is a bit different. Heck, the course I play most often opened in 2008 and tips out at 6900 yards.
Incidentally, your suggestion that longer clubs and lighter shafts added to length confirms that equipment changes are a significant factor in increased lengths.
As did the other things I listed. My point was it's more than just "adding spin to the golf ball." That will get you, at most, a few years (and a few yards) back.
Say there were only 10 golf courses in all of America that have been (and will continue to be) lengthened and renovated to suit the modern game and to serve as venues for pro-level championships -- only 10, in the entire country, but all of them golden age classics, all of them the best & most indicative examples of work by the greatest architects of all time, and none of which you or I will ever play. For you: are those 10 courses worth 'preserving' in anything resembling their original form, and simply because they represent unique expressions of creative genius and are storehouses of the game's history and spirit?
I would say, in that vastly different scenario, that the courses should be preserved as such.
However, the scenario you proposed is nowhere near the 100+ year reality that we have now. The PGA Tour does not regularly play "unique expressions of creative genius" or "golden age classics." They visit TPC Scottsdale.
My perspective is that 6500 yards is enough for the vast majority of golfers. That courses that want to lengthen to cater to the tiny percentage of golfers who can play at those lengths are making decisions for themselves, and nobody's forcing them to do that. That I don't think what 0.01% of golfers can do should dictate the terms by which the rest of the golf world should abide, and before you say "bifurcation," that I'm against that as well for reasons I've shared a few times.
And, more to the point: if preserving those courses and allowing them to continue to serve as venues for pro-level championships that 'play' in some way like they did for Hogan and Nicklaus required that the USGA bring in new rules & regulations limiting and/or rolling back equipment technology, would you think those new rules worth it?
No, because I don't really care if players hit the same clubs in as older players, because time moves on. In choosing Hogan and Nicklaus, you're setting a marker where someone else might say we should go back to hickory so players could hit the same clubs as Ouimet or Sarazen or Jones.
I don't really care if, some day, they no longer play championship golf at The Old Course, because it will still be there for the vast majority of golfers to enjoy. The ones for which the on-course back tees (not the off-course British Open tees) are still too much of a challenge. I also think that the impact of equipment is pretty much done - we have standards, and we domesticated the Pinnacle, and guys are swinging faster these days, but that's going to reach a limit, too. If you think the PGA Tour is going to turn into the WLD, watch those guys and realize how seldom they hit the ball within a 60-yard-wide area.
I also don't really care if they continue to play the Old Course and shoot -26 because the wind doesn't kick up for four days. People talk about how "par is meaningless" but then talk about how they can't stand to see people beating up some course here and there. And, I think the doom and gloom about courses hosting majors and PGA Tour stops is over-done, too. Pebble is barely 7000 yards and just hosted another great U.S. Open (albeit one in which the USGA was a bit gun-shy). Oakmont stands up to the guys.
Some of the game's best holes are the short ones. You want to reward more "skills" in the game - look at the 10th at Riviera. Look at the second at Oakmont. Those holes don't require a 4-iron approach shot, and never did. They require skill, touch, and thought. They confuse the guys.
175-225 is still a highly important yardage on Tour. It's where Tiger lived and breathed, and where the others who are now at the top of the game gain a lot of separation. So what if a guy is hitting the 15th at Augusta with a 5-iron now instead of a 5-wood or a 2-iron? The 5-iron has the loft of a 3-iron and the greens are firmer, faster, and more dangerous than they were when Nicklaus was playing it anyway.
Some people will talk about the "excitement" of watching PGA Tour golf, but I don't see that point either. Excitement comes from a few areas, including the personalities at play, the storylines, the closeness of the tournament on the back nine, the shots pulled off… etc. TV coverage shows a guy hitting a ball, the ball against the sky, and the ball landing on the green. We know for a fact that if the guy hits a 4-iron, it's going to generally finish farther from the hole than the guy who hits an 8-iron, so which is more exciting? Yes, us golf geeks can appreciate the extra skill it takes to hit a 4-iron to 30 feet than an 8-iron to 25 feet, but… so? If TV golf coverage never told you a yardage again, and added three clubs to everything the caddies flashed to the on-course reporter, would golf suddenly be more exciting because you think the guy hit a 5-iron instead of an 8-iron?
I didn't agree with all that Brandel Chamblee said, but I did with a lot of it. I think you could slow the fairways down (even doing the tapered idea that was my own twist on that), make them longer (amateurs like a little cushion anyway, and it'll reduce chemical use as well), and grow the rough
at PGA Tour stops a bit longer.
There's no 'right' answer here: some people on this board who I'm fond of and who I often agree with I suspect would say "no"; others might surprise me and say "yes". But I think that this 'yes or no' is really one of the key drivers of our individual POVs on the broader question -- i.e. not only our views on/reaction to driving stats and our opinions on sustainability/maintenance costs etc, but also this: are a few truly great courses worth preserving as championship fields of play, simply because they are truly great?
Why can't we have new courses, like Whistling Straits, enter the fray? Why does a course we played 120 years ago have to be played today, when it can still be played by 95% of golfers?
I run an event called the Newport Cup, named after the site of the first U.S. Open. It's not long enough to support U.S. Open play anymore, but 95% of golfers can get all the challenge they need from that course, no? What's so wrong with that?
Note: These are totally my opinions, and everyone gets to have their own, of course. Nobody's "right" or "wrong" because we're not talking about facts here. I appreciate that environmental concerns and societal pressures are valid and legitimate concerns. I do not want the government deciding that golf needs heavily regulated. I wish we could go back in time* and, somehow, create a game where a long par five was 390 yards and even expansive golf courses could fit into < 100 acres, and long drivers talked about how they can occasionally hit it 200, but we can't, and history is what it was, and even Nicklaus was hitting it 341 in the 60s. That's our history. (* And even if we could craft that game in our time machine, I wonder if people wouldn't bemoan the 5,500-yard monstrosities that started to spring up as golf became a richer sport that athletes began playing more regularly…).
I've walked the fairways with a bunch of juniors (as a volunteer walking scorer at AJGA events) and they are LONG. I walked with Akshat Bhatia when he was 15 and it was incredible how far he hit it. Now, he's gone from junior to pro, skipping college and in 11 rounds on Tour he's averaging 316 yard off the tee.
And how's he fared in those 11 rounds? It's not just about power. The game still requires a ton of finesse, touch, and skill. Speed is a "skill" in every sport; golf is no different there.
That puts him 5th in driving distance at AGE 18!! The only players ahead of him are Cameron Champ, Grayson Murray, Ryan Brehm and Bubba Watson.
He's played six PGA Tour events. He's missed the cut in six PGA Tour events.
And anyone who says today's "athletes" of golf are head and shoulders above guys like Jack needs to read this.
Nobody's said that today's golfers are better than perhaps the second-best golfer of all time, Ken. The average PGA Tour player, however, is much better now than in the 60s to 80s, though.