As if You Needed It

[V. Kmetz]

...a Final Note on Winged Foot and the reverb of BDC's excellent win.


I start with:
I played WFW the day after the Open, same tees (foolishly at my host's pleasure), same pins (watered, unrolled greens already growing below 10.5)..a day more growth of rough. I did the same after the tournament 06, as well as have 250 loops, tours, plays, and practice on that course... and so have broad samples of comparison.


1. The conditions for normal WFW play were so steroidal, so monstrous... and the elite players (BDC first among them) still so adept at bombing, hitting short irons out of rough, holding greens, .. that it reinforces the notion that we are falling harder than ever for the trap of measuring golf standards and formulating our own opinions (in all things) with play that has nothing to do with the games all of us play here - not just the hackers, as I've realized I've become, but even the best golfers, the former pros, the club champs on our board.


This doesn't signal that I am dismissing the impacts on where golf is led, what governing authority can or cannot, or does or does not do, where architectural synergy is directed; I simply mean that whatever science, genius, perspiration and inspiration BDC or Wolfe or the nearest dozen to them demonstrated has nothing to do with the measurables and new strategies of the game we play.


2.  Again without dismissing the sexy, "moving the needle" debates over BDC's handsome win (and his/the media's desire to express it in unprecedented, self-made genius terms), I also would like to reserve my opinion how novel, or telling, or sea-changing BDC's win/2020 season has been until I see it tested and repeated under the emotional pressure of a gallery, distraction and the now-assumed mantle of "leading golf story" wherein all the greats have had to prosper ... and where the recent "goods" have been unable to give more than a "burst" without capitulating to some factor of being a game changer... McIlroy, DJ, Day, Spieth, perhaps now Koepka... I would like to see the new BDC when he fucks up and the crowd groans, and the usual suspects shout out an indelicate remark.


2a. I am certain that these Tour players (while the economic entourage bubble that surrounds them will never permit them to admit) like it better, and play better when there is no gallery to hoot, holler, root for or against, or distract. From the range to the putting green to the local off hours, it easier to focus, concentrate and relax without the unique public spectacle of golf tournaments... Even if Golf crowds were reverently silent as a rule (think tennis), there's no eye contact, clearing ropes and people to play shots; no distracting movement alongside the ropes, fewer generator noises for concessions and infrastructure, all of it... thsi more mimics the environment of their competitive youth; it is entirely focused, only a handful are there (like even most NCAA and Top Am tournaments) and there is a relaxation that players of normal seasons had to master.


3. In asking those many threads questions that summate to "Where does it go from this performance?" I again return to focusing the question on:

• Our play and our experience of courses, what the Golf world will do with this? - Jones modeled how to preserve a beautiful game and prevail under tournament stress; Hogan led the way toward success by practice, Palmer by the professionalism of public craft, Nicklaus provided a lantern of detail and fundamental understanding of competitive pressure...Woods by fitness and the confidence to expand natural talent with swing refinements... what will Bryson DeCahmbeau's 2020 season and victory light?  Let me first see if it has the staying power?

• Architecturally? - I get the disfigurement-to-chase-a-par-number/pro championships thing, but I disagree that Merion was/continues to be spoiled by the 2005-2013 Am to Open era from something better in an earlier day.  I disagree that Oakmont is worse for the wear because the USGA returns there and gets a par number most of the time. I disagree not because I'm an expert on those courses, but that I know WFW will still be fun to play next season, in May, after the fairways are widened 3-7 yards on each side, before the rough grows up as it does in every summer, when the greens are not pushed over 11 quite yet for high season play.  I will agree it WAS NOT FUN TO PLAY on Monday September 21, except for the company... my ribs hurt, MY wedge could only go 50 yards or so, the 'par" 3s were medium length 4s and every other hole was a Par 7.5, I shot a "loose" Hundred and Eleventy-Two. But WFW is hard in the summer every year; the bestial conditions imported can be removed and leave a course that most will enjoy; it isn't ruined.

[Steve Lang]

VK,


I'll wait a year or two as well...  I expect things to easily devolve into a "paralysis by analysis" situation for BDC, when the engine room doesn't respond to the helm, quite as well, for whatever reason...

[Ben Sims]

Vinny and Steve,


I don’t think it’s that BDC himself is the sea changer, though he is certainly a catalyst. It’s that he—and the runner up’s—style of play may represent a sea change. My hunch is that there are a bunch of guys having discussions with their teams to determine if they can get to 140mph club head speed.


What that means for regular joe golf? Not much honestly. Many of our architectural gems have been relatively moot from the perspective of resistance to scoring by pros (easily the most ridiculous metric to judge architecture) for some time. I don’t see a rollback of the ball putting Cypress Point back in to the Clambake. Which is my way of saying I agree with your viewpoint about architecture.

[Steve Lang]

   Hey Ben,


Yep, The 140 Club is the new 125 Club...I watch the swing of BDC and see the club bending insanely as its delivered in 10's of milliseconds and think it must be Rated XXX, very seductive when it works, very wild when it doesn't.... 


As much as I'd like to see the old gca gems test the current power game players, it just isn't going to happen, and folks should just move on and accept it.  The subject golf clubs should protect their legacies versus chasing the publicity and exposure of the next big tournament, but I know they view such as their ticket to relevancy and sustaining funds. 


Play on, I see ya at around the green

[Matt_Cohn]

I wonder why people seem to feel that the verdict on Bryson’s decisions is still somehow TBD. He’s 5th in the world and just won the US Open. But we keep hearing the same stuff, and not just on here:


“Okay but what about Augusta? I’m not convinced.”


“Okay but the fairways were so narrow nobody was hitting them anyway. I’m not convinced.”


“Okay but what about 5 years from now? I’m not convinced.”


Obviously we don’t know how the future will go. But for now, can we give him some credit and admit that his approach has proven wildly successful so far? Has he not earned the benefit of the doubt at this point?

[Ian Mackenzie]

I dont get all the "BDC" chatter.


He was 6th or 7th on driving distance.


BUT, the dude made 90% of his 10 footers...when others missed.


He wins.

[Peter Pallotta]

VK - nice post. A random thought/reflection/ramble:
Joseph Campbell, in an essay from the last months of 1969, explores the public reaction to the moon landing-walk, and notes that the academics & intellectuals he knew tended to mock/downplay the accomplishment: "we spent millions that could've been used for affordable housing to confirm what we already knew -- that the moon is nothing but a dead rock". He contrasts this with his own awed/excited reaction, best expressed by an Italian poet who was captured in a photo looking back from his television set and saying "This is a night like no other night in the history of the world". Which is to say: for Campbell, the American moon landing marked/drove a change in global consciousness. Literally: one small step for a man, one giant leap for all of us, who could never look at the moon (or the Earth) in the same way again. Which in turn is to say: yes, maybe some of us (including me) are making too much of BDC's US Open win, extrapolating too much from it; and, yes, as you say, the average golfer (including the scratch amateur) is indeed falling harder than ever into the trap of confusing the pro game with his own. But perhaps there is a 'legitimate' or at least understandable reason for this, i.e. that deep inside we know/recognize that one man's accomplishment does change the perception-reality for everyone else. I happen to think that BDC is different than all the long hitters and bomb & gougers who came before him -- i.e. the very rare hybrid of a complete 'insider' (US Amateur champ) who is also an unabashed and highly successful 'outsider' (testing a 48 inch driver that may, in his view, so increase his clubhead & ball speed as to make any & all "distance-accuracy equations" obsolete). And if/when such a unique golfer succeeds in making that equation obsolete -- which is, essentially, the same as making golf course architecture obsolete -- it will in fact change things for every other person who plays golf, whether or not we are conscious of it/fall into the trap. When those Apollo 11 astronauts looked back down at the Earth, we *all* got a perspective on our home that no human being had ever had before. Sure, like Campbell's academics and intellectuals we can shrug it off with a "yeah, it just proves what all of us already knew -- that today's athletes using the latest technologies hit the ball a hell of a long way". But I'm not sure that will capture what is really going on.
Best
Peter 

[John Crowley]

I wonder why people seem to feel that the verdict on Bryson’s decisions is still somehow TBD. He’s 5th in the world and just won the US Open. But we keep hearing the same stuff, and not just on here:


“Okay but what about Augusta? I’m not convinced.”


“Okay but the fairways were so narrow nobody was hitting them anyway. I’m not convinced.”


“Okay but what about 5 years from now? I’m not convinced.”


Obviously we don’t know how the future will go. But for now, can we give him some credit and admit that his approach has proven wildly successful so far? Has he not earned the benefit of the doubt at this point?

Yes, credit due for a good 2020 season so far. At this point he has won one professional major. 17 more to go to tie Jack. Remember when all this started with Tiger-proofing courses, how did that affect Tiger’s record from that point forward? Not much.

[Ken Moum]

Yes, credit due for a good 2020 season so far. At this point he has won one professional major. 17 more to go to tie Jack. Remember when all this started with Tiger-proofing courses, how did that affect Tiger’s record from that point forward? Not much.

If he wins ONE more he'll have a better majors record than most of the "stars" from the era between those two actual stars. Including Love, Duval, Couples, Azinger, Kite, Sutton, Stadler, Watkins, Lehman, Elkington and Woosnam. All of whom had one, just like him


And he'll be tied with Crenshaw, Norman, Lyle, Langer, O'Meara, Olazabal and Strange.


I don't see anyone making the case that he's a once-in-a-generation star.

[Steve Lang]

  HEY KEN,


DON'T FORGET ANDY NORTH WON 2 US OPENS!!  78 & 85  or Lee Jansen, 93 & 98...

[Erik J. Barzeski]

BUT, the dude made 90% of his 10 footers...when others missed.

If you're being serious, what's this stat exactly? Was it inside ten feet or less? That type of stat is often skewed by putts of much shorter range (tap-ins after putts from outside 10 feet, etc.).

[Peter Pallotta]

Just an aside:
On how BDC's approach to the game relates to golf course architecture, according to three-time major winner Jordan Spieth:

"His fairway on 9 [at Augusta] goes from the scoreboard at 1, 90 yards left of the fairway, to the bunkers off No. 7. I mean, it's a thousand yards wide!"

[V. Kmetz]

To return the service...


Peter - I realize what point you're making, but I'd rather us both search for a more reasonable, apt analogy than the Space program, of which the landing on the moon represented a culmination of more than two decades, billions (now trillions), and the best 2000 engineering minds on the planet as well as the personal courage of the Mercury to Apollo pilots.  A fellow winning a tough tournament after a new training regimen, new equipment specs and a novel, data-based approach has its limits in comparison. But if we go forward despite this, I'm saying I want to see some more Atlas rocket tests and what happens when Apollo 1 burns on the pad, before I give over my wonder.(All that said, I'll still watch the The Right Stuff with you any time)**EDIT.. Comparatively, BDC didn't yet arrive on the moon, he's had an accident-free year including a successful orbit


Matt C - I really, really like BDC and what happened at WF...And conversely to your state of reaction (to the reaction), I don't know why in so many things (a malignant disease of sport since sports radio 30+ years ago and social media age in general) we have to assign momentous significance to each new feat, with little gestation.  He's 5 in the world you say? Then we should've had this clamor for the methods and work habits of Singh and Els who got to #1 in the prime of a great, a real sea-changer, in Woods.

[Ian Mackenzie]

BUT, the dude made 90% of his 10 footers...when others missed.

If you're being serious, what's this stat exactly? Was it inside ten feet or less? That type of stat is often skewed by putts of much shorter range (tap-ins after putts from outside 10 feet, etc.).

https://golf.com/instruction/putting/biggest-transformation-bryson-dechambeau-game-nothing-to-do-with-driver/