Bryson’s win at Winged Foot is accelerating the discussions we’ve been having for years on GCA about how—in light of longer, stronger players—we can preserve our classic courses and prevent competitive golf from being too one-dimensional.
Although it’s truly impressive (even mind-boggling) what Bryson, Wolff, Koepka, DJ, Rory, etc. can do with a driver, competitive golf is more interesting when players like Zach Johnson, Padraig Harrington, Jordon Spieth, etc. can also win majors because of their exceptional short games and shotmaking abilities. And most importantly, we don’t want to see the best courses in the world unnecessarily altered so they can host a 4-day tournament once every 10-15 years.
Many solutions have been discussed. The most common one is to roll back the golf ball, although it’s unclear how exactly we roll it back, and it raises complicated questions about whether the rules will be bifurcated, where and how they will be bifurcated, will it hurt equipment manufacturers (who may lobby to prevent a rollback and/or bifurcation), will it harm recreational golfers who enjoy using the same equipment as the pros, etc. Another problem with rolling back the ball is that it doesn’t necessarily take away the advantage of power or make the game more multidimensional. If Bryson goes from hitting lob wedge to pitching wedge and Zach Johnson goes from hitting 7 iron to hitting 4 iron, whose score is likely to suffer more?
Another proposal is to ban the tee, at least for elite competitions. I like this idea for its simplicity and ease of enforcement, although as with the rollback, it doesn’t necessarily mitigate the advantages of power.
A suggestion that I really like for other reasons (cost of clubs, weight of the golf bag, promoting walking) is to reduce the maximum number of clubs. But this will only exacerbate the advantage of the long-hitters. Jim Furyk really benefits from having 14 clubs, whereas Bryson can play almost as well with a driver, a few wedges, and a putter.
The other way to try to change the competitive game is to trick up the courses. We could design courses (and bring more high-level competitions to courses) with water in front of the greens, fairways that end at a certain point, etc. I hope we can all agree this is a terrible solution that detracts from strategy and harms the mission of GCA.
So here, I’d like to discuss a very simple solution that doesn’t require any changes to equipment, doesn’t require any permanent change to courses, and allows GCA to shine. What if, for high-level competitions, we have graduated rough that gets longer and thicker as you get further from the tee and closer to the green? Supposed a missed fairway with a 250-yard tee shot is a modest penalty, but a missed fairway with a 350-yard tee shot is a very severe penalty. This significantly alters the calculus for the long player off the tee. To play well, the long hitters will either have to play strategically and hit the right clubs to the right spots off the tee, or they will have to hit fairways with those long drives, at which point they deserve the reward they get.
This is such a simple solution that I’m sure it’s been proposed elsewhere, but I haven’t heard it. I don’t like the idea of building new bunkers or hazards just for the longest players. That seems like an unnecessary cost and unnecessary change to our classic courses. And it’s a fool's errand because as soon as we defend our courses against the 330-yard carry, more players will come along who can carry it 340 yards, and so on.
An obvious reaction is that perhaps we can’t grow rough thick enough to be a serious deterrent to the strongest players. The Winged Foot rough was already 5-inches long, lush, and thick, and Bryson managed it just fine. That might be right. But if the rough was a little less penal for the 280-yard hitter, maybe one of the shorter hitters would have also been under par and made the tournament a little more interesting.
I should emphasize that Bryson is obviously extremely talented, and he deserved to win the U.S. Open. But I’d like to see the extent to which distance is rewarded in high-level competitions come down a bit so that other aspects of the game will be highlighted a bit more. I’m proposing a simple way to do that without altering the equipment, without changing our venues, and without making permanent changes to our courses. What do you think?