[paul cowley]

...a simple answer to the distance thing would be to adjust 'par' ,not add length.....drop a few 5's to 4's ,play short fours from the front tees as par threes...this would apply only to the elite players amoungst us...
  merion would still be a par 72 for most but a 68 or 69 for elite competition.....everyone can still play thier level , i doubt with few complaints...

we really need to break thru this 'par can't be lower than 70 and still be good golf ' barrier............par pucks.

[bg_in_rtp]

if you're going to do that, why not take it a step father and simply assign a Scratch Score to the course.  then you can remove the "par" from individual holes.  

[paul cowley]

brian ...twas the way it was till recently [in a historical perspective].

[SPDB]

Merion would still be a par 72?

[paul cowley]

  not having played it ,it would be whatever it is now from the forward tees ,adjusted [if need be] from the middle and so forth......

[bg_in_rtp]

Didn't they used to have a concept called "Bogey Score"?  Alfie Ward explained it to me in January, but I've seen read about variations of its definition.  It seemed to be related to the score of the best player at the course.

Just go back to playing match-play only, and all you have to worry about is naming the holes.

[paul cowley]

i'm not talking about match play ,scratch or bogey scores ,just everyday modern golf ,but with adjustments for lowering  par instead instead of lengthening holes in an attempt to circumvent technology............we have a real problem in that most people would not percieve a course with a par of less than 70 as a 'real ' course.............................

[A_Clay_Man]

Paul- Your right! But it's much deeper than that. People's obssesion with "the number" is comically natural. Perhaps it is all about ego but I know that once you let go of the concept of par, you are free to swing away in the least strokes possible.

[TEPaul]

I wish it could be that simple but not that many courses and holes are easily "transitioned down" in par. Some are such as NGLA and Maidstone--as they happen to have par 5s that are good tough par 4s for tour pros but that's not easy to do with short par 4s into par 3s. Even #2 NGLA would not be a good par 3 hole from the shorter tees.

Merion's a great golf course but it really doesn't have any holes that are the type or design that could transition down in par well at all. PVGC doesn't have any holes like that either.

The only logical way to do that on any course would be to simply have a single "gross 18 hole course par" that didn't really take the individual holes into consideration in any kind of par context. That would probably work just fine but that would be an enormous change in peception of the way golf has always been perceived.

[paul cowley]

...tpaul ,the 'par' concept has only been around 100 yrs or so ,design prior was more focased on terrain than strokes...
count them up ,low man wins.........
   what i'm suggesting will happen.....as a futurist ,there is little choice [except anachranism].........

[Rick Shefchik]

Don't we already have a kind of "gross 18 hole course par"? Isn't that essentially what a course rating is?

[TEPaul]

Paul and Rick:

Both excellent suggestions, in my opinon, but still one of enormous peception change in golf generally--just enormous. It really doesn't matter if golf has been played this way for a 100 years or 1000 years---golfers today don't have memories like that nor do they apparently seem to care.

Rick:

The so-called "gross score mentality" is enormous, in my opinion, even in match play but it has almost nothing to do with a "course rating" mentality and almost everything to do with a mentality of "handicap fixation" on that one single "gross score" which is all golfers post--all golfers can post really.

This could all be remedied if the USGA would promote the posting of scores on a hole by hole basis. If offered correctly hole by hole posting wouldn't take more than 30 seconds and probably a good deal less. This would then create in the minds of golfers far more of a "match play" mentality simply because hole by hole is the match play format. A single gross score is the "stroke play" mentality and only serves the negative purpose of making golfers, even if subliminally, grind out each stroke for a better gross score. With a hole by hole posting procedure and mentality (match play) that just seems to be so much less necessary to golfers, even if subliminally.

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