Imagine what the USGA (and others) would have to do to courses, to keep the pros from demolishing par.
Jim,
It is kind of fun to imagine what they would do.
I can't imagine they would play tournaments on greens or with pin placements as flat as they do today. Hey, maybe the classic courses would have their greens restored with slopes 4% and above, perhaps even greater than they were in Mackenzie's time.
I imagine greens would be rebuilt with truly freakish features, huge undulations and elevation changes, and topsy turvy and willy nilly internal contours. I imagine the fat or centre part of the green could become the most dangerous place to aim.
But most weeks one or two guys would get hot, combining near perfect ball striking and putting, and it would be far more common for par to be demolished by outstanding play than it is today. So they would have to change the attitude that offense is bad, which to some extent I think they've started doing the past couple of years in their championship course set ups.
I think one other effect for all players would be greater acceptance of less than perfect greens and a lowering of maintenance costs. I believe players don't crave fast greens so much as they crave greens with a true roll in the sense that their putts "finish" into the hole rather than wobble erratically near the hole. Fast greens tend to finish better into the hole. A larger hole would diminish the impact of wobble, making less than perfect greens more acceptable.