Should many Par 72 courses become Par 70.

[Chris Kane]

mot,
Thinking about the par-5's on the West Course, there is nowhere to go on 12 and 15, and not more than 10-15 yards at most behind the 2nd and 4th tees.  Where could the extra length come from?

The West is realistically a par 70 or 71 anyway - isn't the ACR 70.6?

[skivail]

Chris,

  Its not the moving of the tees, but the moving of the greens which could take place, which seems pretty stupid. There is some room behind 15th but that is it. There is a little bit of room to move the tee back on 4 but, from the tournament tee this can play pretty long anyway. The ACR is 72 I think for the west.

[Chris Kane]

Mot,
Are you serious  

What greens specifically are you talking about?  

[A.G._Crockett]

Doug
My mistake on the par three stats; it was 3.09, not 3.9 for the 100th player on Tour.  The stats came off PGATour.com.  Sorry; math is not a strong point!

I did think about recommending that courses change their easiest par 5 to a par three; statistically that would protect par like nothing else!  I was afraid somebody might take that seriously and reply, though.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Mark F,

Isn't the real problem vis a vis Pat Mucci's NGLA 7th hole post?  Namely that short par five's need a genuine risk/reward on both the first and second shot's to be effective?

Bring back unraked bunkers as driving hazards on short par five's, I say.

This is the problem.

Changing the par doesn't impact the demand/challenge/Risk/Reward of the drive,
instead it chooses to ignore the problem,
which is that the intended features have been taken out of play, and merely changing par doesn't bring them back into play.  So, what does it solve ??
That is why lengthening is a valid solution.

By lengthening the 7th at NGLA by 30 yards you would bring the "Hotel" bunkers and risk/reward features back into play, as they were designed and intended to be.

Changing par doesn't solve the core problem, it overlooks it.

[Tiger_Bernhardt]

Dan, you are one of the few talking about what I started trying to talk about.

[Tim_Weiman]

Tiger:

I have no problem with what is being done Brookside, e.g., making #18 a long hard par 4 as opposed to a mid length par 5. Where one must draw the line is messing with greens. That shouldn't be done.

It's fine to just play from a forward tee and call it a par 4. No problem. But, when we start tearing up the golf course that's a pretty good indication that inappropriate technology is being deployed.

We should all be fighting against inappropriate technology, i.e., golf balls and/or equipment that forces us to spend money revising a golf course just to accomodate a small minority of players who need something more than 6,800 - 7,000 yards.