From todays The Age :
Winds of change need to blow across golf
By Mike Clayton
December 7, 2003
Peter Thomson wrote in The Age yesterday of his dismay at the modern player's inability to pitch the ball low through the typically high winds that we encounter in Melbourne at tournament time.
"There are, of course, ways of keeping one's approaches from climbing so high. One way is to take a club with less loft and hit it gently. Either this is not taught by modern coaching or else players are scared to try it," he wrote.
Of course, he is right. In my view, over the past five years, technology has advanced far beyond the imagination of the inactive legislators who have sat by and watched the professional game alter beyond recognition.
One of the major advancements has been the production of a ball that flies through wind with more efficiency than ever before. Players no longer have to learn to knock the ball down with less club and a softer swing because they have never experienced hitting one of the old softer-covered balls that really wanted to climb up into the wind. Nor have they ever hit a ball with a wooden driver, where controlling trajectory was vital into the wind. Peter was the master of judging the direction and trajectory of his shots, but the new balls have made that a non-essential skill simply because they have been engineered to spin less and, as a result, fly easily through the wind.
Everyone in the professional game agrees there is a problem with how far the ball is flying. No one who cares for the game or the intent of the original architects wants to see Ernie Els hitting a driver and an eight iron to the ninth of the Composite Course at Royal Melbourne, as he did earlier this year, or Steve Allan driving the fourth at Huntingdale, which he astonishingly did in the opening round this week.
The other cause for dismay is the state of the golf courses that professionals venture to all over the world. In America, players are fed a diet of soft, over-watered, predictable and fair golf courses that has sanitised the game to a point where players and teachers only have to develop one-dimensional games based around smashing the ball miles and putting. Australia is one of the few places in the world where the best courses are still the tournament venues. Royal Melbourne might be the only great course, outside of the major championships, that still has a professional event, and it still stands up despite all the modern technology.
It does so because the greens and their approaches are firm and fast, and there are any number of intriguingly difficult short shots to hit around the greens. Great design will always hold up, but there doesn't seem to be much of it on the professional tours of the world. It's a pity and it makes for a more boring game to watch.
That leads to the other debate of the week, raised by Steve Elkington and Rich Beem, bemoaning the power of the American tour and the stay-at-home attitude it breeds among the players. The insularity of the leading Americans was threatening to ruin the game, argued Elkington, because it based the golf world in one country, choking the life out of the other tours with the assumption it was the only place to play professional golf. If money is a major motivator, then it is clearly the place to play, thanks in part to Tiger Woods and the increased television money that has poured into the game.
The US tour has always been the biggest and its players have, for years, claimed themselves to be the world's best - and not without justification. Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus, Watson and, latterly, Woods were the best in the game, although Watson's significant challengers and successors were foreigners - Ballesteros, Norman and Faldo.
What Americans have never thought about - because they never had to - is how they would handle playing golf all over the world in the same way the tennis players do, where no one has a home-ground advantage for long. In golf, Americans can eat at McDonald's every night, watch their own sport on the television, drive on the right and generally feel very comfortable each week.
They have never realised the advantage it gives them over foreigners away from home, in an unfamiliar culture, which, to the amazement of some Americans, is not one they necessarily enjoy.
If the golf tour was structured like tennis, with major championships and significant tournaments spread across the globe, it would be a more interesting game. Players would have to learn to adapt to a variety of conditions, perhaps even learn to impress Thomson with a few little knock-down four irons.
The custodians of the game, who seem to deny there is a problem with the equipment, also need to do something about introducing a professional ball onto the tour that plays more like the balls of a couple of decades ago. I only wish those who deny the problem had been on the fourth tee at Huntingdale on Thursday morning to see Allan's mighty swipe. That may have opened a few closed minds.