Technology

[Carlyle Rood]

I've been voraciously reading about golf course architecture.  I've read Mackenzie, Macdonald, Hunter, Thomas, Crenshaw, Dye, Nicklaus, Fazio, Hurdzan, et al.  I've read books from the 1930s to 2003.

There seems to be one common theme: Technology is ruining golf course architecture.  They may have cited the Haskell, steel shafts, metal woods, or modern golf balls as the culprit; but, the point was still the same: Rein in technology or the game will be ruined.

Well, I don't know if I buy this argument any longer.

Last weekend, I concluded that I now hit the ball twenty yards longer off the tee than I did just a few years ago.  When did I have this epiphany?  On my walk back to the tee to hit my third shot.

I was out of bounds.  I had bombed my drive over a fairway bunker that was difficult to REACH five years ago, let alone carry.

I think the game will be fine.  Technology is overrated.  It allows us to hit it longer and straighter; but, crooked holes require shots with shapes.  Straight doesn't cut it.  (That may have been the worst pun I've ever made.)

[Patrick_Mucci]

Carlyle,

The difference may be that, previously, courses had the land available to implement elasticity through added length to the tees.

Today, most courses are out of land for tee extension.

I wonder how you would hit today's equipment when you were five (5) years younger ?

High tech is altering the game, making it easier, and making the architecture obsolescent.

But, that's just my opinion.

[Carlyle Rood]

I think making the holes longer may accomodate longer, straighter drives rather than mitigate them.  We don't need longer.  We need more dog on that leg.  

If you're going to use the driver, then you're going to have to bend your shot or risk hitting it through the fairway.  Let's see you move that ball with that enormous sweetspot!  

[Kevin_Reilly]

Carlyle, do you now hit your 3 wood the same distance, thereabouts, that you used to hit your driver?  That is the case for many players.  On a hole that requires a draw or fade off the tee, presumably you can use your 3 wood.  Most people are more accurate with a 3 wood than a driver, so in this case you are better off than you were 5 years ago.

Alternatively, you might try one of the many flavors of driver that offer less forgiveness and more control.  The new Titleist 983E, for example, offers this benefit over its larger and more forgiving brother the 983K.  But the E is still over 350 cc, so it is no Pittsburgh Persimmon.  The 510 model Taylor Made is the same (vs the 540 and the 580).  The Pro Series version of the Great Big Bertha II is another more maneuverable club.  Give them a try.

[Tim_Weiman]

Carlyle:

You are not the first person to point out that many years ago people wrote about how technology was ruining the game. Whenever this happens, invariably the conclusion is reached that those guys were wrong then and people making the same argument must be wrong now.

That sounds logical, but I have my doubts. Let me share one experience that leads me to a different conclusion. Anecdotal evidence, no doubt, but I think it is instructive.

Not long ago I had the opportunity to walk a course I hadn’t seen for about 35 years and was fortunate to be accompanied by the superintendent for part of my visit. We came across a hole I remember very well and I noticed a new tee built high up on a hill.

Naturally, I asked the superintendent why this new tee was built. He explained that many members felt carrying the hazards wasn’t a challenge and something needed to be done. Not surprising. We hear that all the time. But, I thought back to my youth and recalled how challenging this hole was for members years ago. The tee shot was considered very demanding. The reward for success was significant; the penalty for failure was also quite serious.

So, it got me to thinking: how exactly has technology improved this golf hole? Here was a club that spent a considerable sum of money just to restore what members enjoyed a generation before without spending all the money. New balls and equipment had forced the expense of course modifications just restore a balance. How could that possibly be considered progress? Do we normally think throwing more money at a problem just to accomplish the same result makes any sense?

No, we don’t. But, with golf we have all been seduced. We buy into the latest this or that, the latest incremental change that seems very logical. It takes walking away for decades to keep things in perspective. Or it takes seeing something shocking, e.g., the new tees at Oakmont. How many more mountains do we need to build to “restore” the game?

Nope. We have all been duped. The golf technology arms race doesn’t make any sense.  We don’t need 8,200 yard golf courses any more than we needed 7,200 yard courses when we were playing at 6,200 yards. But, that’s where we are headed if we so casually dismiss the writings of those before us.

Geoff Shackelford has written about the importance of “tempting” the golfer, creating a fine balance between the player’s ability and the placement of hazards. Get it right and you create fun. You get into a player’s soul. You bring him back time and time again.

But, put a weapon in his hand to take away the decision, to allow him to blow by all the hazards and all you are doing is creating the need to redeploy bulldozers. It is an endless cycle where money is wasted and nothing is really accomplished.

Those old timers knew something. We just need to become better at learning from them.

[Carlyle Rood]

I think what we lose sight of his how much fun it is to use new equipment.  I have about six putters in my closet right now.  They all conform; but, unfortunately they don't always make the ball go in the hole.  

I think banning new equipment or technology is largely unrealistic (and spectacularly unpopular).  I've enjoyed the new stuff, frankly.

I remember my first metal wood.  It was a Taylor Made 5-wood.  It had a gray grip.  (Remember these?)  It was a Christmas gift.  It was exhilerating playing with it.

I cleaned it everyday.  That's when we started to discover that the cork in the center of the club would shrink when submerged in water too often.  After about five months, it rattled.  (To Taylor Made's credit, they replaced it entirely for free!)

I've also discovered that I miss persimmon clubs.  I just bought four MacGregors that were made in 1997 to commemorate their greatest models.  It's fun to fool around with them on the range.  I'm not sure whether I'll play with them or not.  I like the sound.  (Ironically, I like the "ping" from Karsten Solheim's orginal putter too--though I wouldn't putt with one.)

Of all the technology, I think the arguments about the ball are the most compelling.  Tiger hit a shot from rough, over a tree, and stopped it about seven feet from the pin at the Buick.  It may have rolled twelve inches.  The commentator exclaimed that "Tiger hits shots Nicklaus couldn't comprehend thirty years ago."  Well, of course Nicklaus couldn't comprehend it.  Technology wouldn't have permitted it back then.  He damn sure had the skill to do it.

[Tim_Weiman]

Carlyle:

You are right. We are like pigs going to slaughter in the golf technology arms race. So many people are convinced that all the changes really are "progress" that we are probably doomed to an endless cycle of wasteful spending to "improve" a game that was fine years ago.

The incremental nature of the changes puts people to sleep. We fail to see the forest from the trees.

I don't want to take away all your toys, but regulating the golf ball is well overdue.

[Jeff_Mingay]

Carlyle,

You certainly have read a lot of architecture. However, you've missed Flynn, who 'hit the nail on the head' re: technology when, in 1927, he wrote:

'If, as in the past, the distance to be gotten with the ball continues to increase, it will be necessary to got to 7,500 and even 8,000 yard courses and more yards means more acres to buy, more course to construct, more fairway to maintain and more money to fork out.'

Sure, it's fun to try new equipment. But it's no fun paying $300 green fees, everywhere, which will inevitably be the case if an adequate test of golf requires 8,000 total yards or more in the near future.

No doubt, golf architects can design great courses based on players hitting 400 yard drives (although, I'm not sure short doglegs are the answer). And, perhaps, the classics will eventually be completely out-dated, for even average golfers. But those are not the most pressing problems presented by an even longer golf ball. It's the economics of the situation that's most troubling.

[Tim_Weiman]

Jeff Mingay:

I'm happy to see you make reference to the economics issue.

There is no economic rationale for equipment technology (balls and/or clubs) that requires us to build ever larger playing fields. I'm amazed people can't see this.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Jeff,
I'm not a believer in unbridled technology but I do question  how much the jump from 7,000 yds. to 8,000 yds. would really add to a green fee.
That's no more than an addittional 15 acres or so and maybe only half of that would become fairway. In the NE the average per acre cost for maintenance is about $2,200.00, or roughly $30k per year for 15 acs.. If the 15 acres cost $300k that would add around $3.00 to a round, the maintenance and labor would total about $1.50 per round. Add it up and those 1,000 yds. nudge up the fee by $5.00.
Even if the addittional construction cost $500k (and I don't think it would be anywhere near that figure because you are not adding to the high cost elements such as greens), the fee jump would still be less than $10.00.    

What am I missing?

[Mark_Huxford]

Great first post Tim.

Carlyle I sometimes think something new in the bag is all that motivates a lot of golfers to get out and play. I feel that's just a sad reflection of how our golf courses are failing to energise/inspire/motivate golfers.

[Tim_Weiman]

Jim Kennedy:

Part of the reason consumers are losing the golf technology arms race is the seductive appeal of arguments for incremental change.

“Oh, it really doesn’t cost that much to add another 500 or 1,000 yards to the golf course. …….let's do the calculations”, some very reasonable sounding person argues.

As soon as we go down that road we have fallen in a trap. We have been lured into throwing away – or at least putting aside – our normal common sense.

Why should we debate how much technology is ADDING to costs? Isn't that getting things backwards? Shouldn’t we be turning the argument around and asking the golf industry why technology isn’t being used to LOWER the costs of playing golf?

Shouldn’t we be asking what sense an endless cycle of equipment technology “improvements” followed by demands to revise golf courses to accommodate the new technology really makes?

It’s really amazing. The golf industry laughs at us. Leading manufacturers make television advertisements mocking golf architects for not wanting to change golf courses and we go along with it. Just like pigs to slaughter.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
Trap or not, it really doesn't cost that much more. I still don't see a problem until it comes to dealing with the older, revered courses that we'd like to see remain a challenge, but they are a special case. I think the best way to deal with them is on a personal level. If you want to experience them as they played in 1960 re-grip your Eye-O-Matic, buy some 4 year old balls that have lost some zip and go on out and have a good time, or wait until your 70.  

A lower cost alternative:
Potential owners and their architects should follow P.B.Dye's example at Buck Point, build a 7,000 yd. course for 1.5 mil. by using topsoil greens, moving little earth, buying a lot of used equipment, using old trailers for bridges, etc., so money can be made at less than $40 green fees.

The correct way to run an equipment co.:
Club makers should have stayed within the same framework as Karsten Solheim and sons. Keep your company in private hands and only introduce product when you feel you've made something that's worth retooling for instead of selling out to a corporation and being forced into six-month product cycles to keep the investors happy.

Do we really need all the toys:
How about not signing the lease for the 100k fairway mower or the 35k greensmower? Send the GPS salesman packing.
Use the Sand-Pro only on your neighborhood Little League field. Rent out or bulldoze the 20,000 sq.ft. of your clubhouse that you're using for banquets, etc,etc,etc.....  

[Doug Siebert]

I've been voraciously reading about golf course architecture.  I've read Mackenzie, Macdonald, Hunter, Thomas, Crenshaw, Dye, Nicklaus, Fazio, Hurdzan, et al.  I've read books from the 1930s to 2003.

There seems to be one common theme: Technology is ruining golf course architecture.  They may have cited the Haskell, steel shafts, metal woods, or modern golf balls as the culprit; but, the point was still the same: Rein in technology or the game will be ruined.

Well, I don't know if I buy this argument any longer.

Last weekend, I concluded that I now hit the ball twenty yards longer off the tee than I did just a few years ago.  When did I have this epiphany?  On my walk back to the tee to hit my third shot.

I was out of bounds.  I had bombed my drive over a fairway bunker that was difficult to REACH five years ago, let alone carry.

I think the game will be fine.  Technology is overrated.  It allows us to hit it longer and straighter; but, crooked holes require shots with shapes.  Straight doesn't cut it.  (That may have been the worst pun I've ever made.)

No one says you have to keep using the same clubs on the same holes as you get longer and longer.  Over the years I start hitting my 1 iron off the tee on holes I used to hit driver on, for reasons like yours above.  One local course I play often has a shortish par 5 for its second.  It is one of those evil holes that has a one-way OB to keep people from cutting the corner via the 3rd fairway, with twin traps guarding the corner.  One is about a 250 carry, the other maybe 270.  The problem is that if you aim over the 250 bunker, when it is dry you will run through the fairway into some small trees and have no shots (or at least be in the rough, making the 180-190 yard shot over a bunker cut 5' in front of the green a dicey prospect, especially with OB lurking for a shot missing the green left by more than 10-15 feet.

Off the tee, the more you hit left, the shorter it is to the OB, it is probably only 270 to the OB if you pull or hook it maybe 25 yards off line.  If you pull it 10 yards offline it is perhaps 295, easily within reach when there's roll to be had.  OB is a risk to the right if you slice it just a bit, even over the left bunker, let alone the right.

So I've given up on the driver on that hole when it is dry.  If it is dry, I play a 1 iron along the left edge of the left trap, and try to give it a little fade.  Even without the fade, I've still only got 210 or so to the green, which isn't too bad of a shot when played from the fairway.  If I miss it in the trap, I don't really care, I can lay up from there more easily than if I hit driver through the fairway and was among the trees, let alone when compared with reteeing for my third!

It is amazing how many people will question my strategy of playing an iron from the tee when they know I can easily clear the bunker on the corner.  They think if  you can do something, you must do it, even when there are risks all around (particularly the very nasty stroke and distance kind) that should make one rethink this.  Funny how some of the same people question my decision to hit driver off the tee to play for the green of a short 4 a couple holes later that's almost impossible to hit (I think I've been on that putting surface once) but I figure its easier to play it from a greenside bunker or rough than it is to play the layup and uphill wedge to a mostly blind green on that particular hole.  Most people don't consider strategy and how it relates to the hole at hand (and their particular strengths and weaknesses) I guess.