Brandel's response to Tom Doak

[Tom_Doak]

P.S.  I had the thought last night that maybe Brandel's words about "a romantic attachment to a bygone era" could describe his own attachment to the U.S. Opens won by Hale Irwin and Scott Simpson.  Was not Winged Foot set up pretty difficult for the last U.S. Open?  Yet it produced a champion [Bryson] and a runner-up [Cameron Young] who approached it a lot different than Hale Irwin did.

Matt Wolff was the runner up not Cam Young

Whoops!  My bad, wrong young long ball hitter.  Thanks for the correction.

[Steve Lapper]

Tom,


  About the Twitter posting and related "shit stirring," your initial post (and its provocative first sentence ) might have been the proverbial lit match. Regardless, I do wholeheartedly agree with you whomever re-posted it on Twitter wanted to be its accelerant.


  I also think you are spot on with your last night's thought. In talking with Brandel today, he fully admitted to being attached to the "bygone era" of super-difficult set-ups. Interestingly, he also now understands that the past is the past and the USGA isn't likely to pick sites and set-ups for future Opens that go back to such a time. As we both know change of the only constant's in our universe. Only its speed is the variable.


  Winged Foot was literally a one-off as it likely lacks the multi-dimensional capability to defend the course from raw bomb & gouge crowd that is now the PGA Tour. Having grown up there, and worked the 1974 "Massacre" Open all four days, the bulk of the available resistance to scoring today is near identical to the past: deep rough, narrow fairways, tucked pins and lightning stimps. C'est la vie I suppose.

[Michael George]

Steve - this discussion group is a public forum.  Anyone can read it and if someone makes a public comment on social media or elsewhere, they are entering the public debate and all comment and reaction to that public comment is fair.  You did nothing wrong starting this post.  It was based on public comments, not private comments.  Big difference.

I do think this topic has gotten off subject a little bit.

I think the interesting question is do golf courses now have to make a definitive choice between being a "test-worthy" tournament course or a fun, strategic golf course for the members/public.   Due to the quality of today's player and today's equipment, is it now impossible to now merge the two?  I think that is the heart of Tom and Brandel's comments.

Personally, I like to think that you can merge them, but I am not sure anymore.  What the PGA and USGA are required to do to great golf courses to make them "test-worthy" also makes them silly golf courses in some regard.  For instance, I think what Rees Jones did to Bethpage Black is a travesty.  The course has the potential to be an enchanting round of golf.  Instead, it is a long, boring slog with the worst bunkering of any course that I have played.

Also, let us be entirely clear, most Tour players know little about great golf courses.  They look at golf courses in terms of "testing your game".  They don't like a thinking game - as it opens them up to the criticism of "what a dumb decision".  Further, they don't like randomness, as they don't see it as fair.  They want to know the shot that they need to hit and be tested on whether they hit it.  I hate that golf so I know when the tour players love a golf course, I will often hate it.