If you're on this board, you think about golf --in all its aspects -- a lot, and I'm sure, like me, there's ebbs and flows in all of that storehouse...your game, the elite game on TV, fine holes, fine courses, chests full of treasured experiences, things you can't believe have changed, how you have changed and what you valued, lessons learned and unlearned... Perhaps its always in flux, even principles which evolve and become nuanced.
But catching my breath at the most current station, I've settled on a few things as they are happening/have been happening.
Part 1 (for now) - Settlement about Sawgrass.
In a 2022 post Kalen referenced recently, I said the best three candidates for a quintessential American course were Pine Valley, ANGC, Sawgrass. I don't know if any of that registers, but this weekend I felt as if Sawgrass was rather than quintessence, a different label...a boundary line which surpassing architecture solves, and yet other excellent, unique architecture fails to solve.
That boundary line is this: Sawgrass is an amazing and rewarding course to watch elites play on for my entertainment and appreciation of the game's highest skill. It is nearly a horror of architecture for the common, modest, humble, flawed, even if proficient, game most, if not all of US play.
Of dozens of specific examples, I cite the architecture of the 2nd hole, which even if played at the 507 Blue, or 470 W distance is generally speaking, a 3 shot hole for most of us...now recall or re-examine or re-watch on the internet play from this weekend when several pros got into that kitchen table sized pot front/side left of the green...
Isn't a joy of watching golf on TV with your Fritos and insulin to observe the pros have to put one knee flat on the bunker rim and take those wide awkward stances to access the ball with any surety...and oh what great shots they come up with...
Jesus, on Friday I can't remember which two, but their shots ended up side by side in that pot and one had to be marked, and both played amazing 30-35 yard shots to an uphill pin with most of their bodies and swings outside its margins...And for a world elite who's there in TWO, who was caught out trying to make a 3? ...that's just fine and an apt amusement...a superb design for sitting at home with the boob tube on and thinking all my wonderful thoughts about golf that I do.
But for most of us, playing Sawgrass, who are going to be in that pot in 3 or 4, if at all, that's not a joyous event in the least; what that is... is an 8 or a pickup. There's like 50 or more of you GCA er's who have described your knee, joint, shoulder and hip maladies or replacement woes here (and God bless you for your endurance and continued ardor for the game) but you're not playing that fucking shot, no less if you do, the $700 day at Sawgrass is likely to be ruined by your injury or your mood being like +5 or +6 after two holes. Yeah that's the way to start...
I know some out there might be thinking, well what's the chances your one or two plays at Sawgrass are going to result in that bunker and that situation...or perhaps that well, in my game, I'd be there in two just like the pros, so it translates the challenge...maybe so, but is that for the lot of us...perhaps as high as 80% of the players here?...and even if YOU would be there in two, what's your facility to hit that shot and not make an 8 or worse from the bunker?
And if not on #2...Sawgrass is littered with examples of instant, game-over shit for the (albeit widely-defined) "regular" player. Water or bunkers or trees or situations that just lead to pickups and desultory results. Your game's slightest cracks (of which my own resemble the Dead Sea Scrolls) projects to be under constant threat...It's a damn good bet most of us will not play our regular game there. And I'm not even going to 17...and its dazzling controversies.
There might be others who say, well then what do you think of some of the great international courses that have similar "tight-quarters" awkward stance pots among their penal features? First, I don't say this to blunt such a question, but there was an originally an idea of Sawgrass quintessence in "American" canon. My less-fettered answer is that many (most) of those (it seems to my understanding) developed organically with the native features and trodding of use as players and their play changed/amended their route...Like any quintessential American golf course would be, Sawgrass is planned. These features were designed.
I suppose if you're wealthy or just hit at the Jai Alai, in a lovely drunken match with close friends, and you don't care -in fact start to enjoy*** - that "7" wins several holes (as long as you don't run out of balls) then under those rarer circumstances, ok, but otherwise, I'm fine with watching the horse race I see there from afar...that architecture, while great, while novel, unique, perhaps even quintessentially American, or modern as TD put it...is not to serve my own game's enjoyment, it is to do something else...which as I say it does exceedingly well...a boon to the game and its profitable enjoyment by millions, but not for common play, which a surpassing course tends to better address.
Perhaps all this prolix is boiled down into I've settled for myself that a course can be great, compelling, entertaining to behold, well-regarded, but I can have zero interest in playing my golf over its architecture. Like a wine that I know inside and out, when and where the grapes were harvested, the type of oak that held the fermenting , the storage and bottling process...other comparable similar wines from nearby and disparate regions that I also know and/or have seen extensive connoisseur comment...it all doesn't matter, if it tastes like shit or gives me heartburn. I think many of us playing Sawgrass in objective circumstances, would find that result more than, "let me get a case of this."
*** I remember a hot humid day like this at Bedford with my best friend, original golfing buddy when we were both shit and by the back nine our "match" became a go-with it neck and neck comedy of tops, whizzers, duffs plugged bunker lies and careening trees...We both knew there were no winners that day, and so as each of us hit the next terrible shot, the other mouthed "marching music" in a loose soundtrack covering Napoleon's retreat out of Russia..."da -duhda - duh...dadduh da.. the match was tied and I beat him in medal...99 to his 100... the highest score I'd had for maybe 15 years at that point and haven't yet worsened since that afternoon.