Was the Old Course Americanized?

[Adam Clayman]

Today, Geoff has this quote as his lead.

There is always a way at St. Andrews, although it is not always the obvious way, and in trying to find it, there is more to be learned on this British course than in playing a hundred ordinary American golf courses.
BOBBY JONES

What do you think Mr. Jones meant by the above quote?

Do you think there were aspects of this years Open championship that Americanized the golf course? And did they in any way inhibit parts of TOC from always having a way? 

[Tom_Doak]

Adam:

I think Jones meant that there were so many little and subtle valleys and ridges and features that could help or hurt you trying to appraoch the hole, that it would take many years to learn them all ... whereas on American courses there is usually one preferred way of playing the hole that has been designed into it.

Dr. MacKenzie wrote in The Spirit of St. Andrews about a little valley in the tenth green which allowed you to feed the ball into one of the prime hole locations if you drove it out to the right a bit to approach on that line ... but in my +/- 100 times walking around the golf course, I still haven't figured out which little slot he was referring to.  Maybe they just don't use that hole location much anymore.

[Peter Pallotta]

It's striking how many times we arrive back at that key difference -- i.e. that the vast majority of courses have their ideas/choices 'designed into' them.  The parallel, for me, is the vast majority of what pass for 'documentaries' these days (and I've worked on a few over the years) -- i.e. the vast majority of them have their ideas and narratives designed into them.  I understand why -- after all, what else would 'talent' mean (in writers, producers, cinematographers, directors etc) if they didn't 'use' these talents in the pursuit of engaging narratives and interesting ideas and a cohesive and professional whole.  But IMO it is a shame nonetheless. First, because this rarely leaves any 'room' for the audience (in any meaningful sense), i.e. there is rarely any real chance for genuine and fulsome 'participation' in the finished work by the very people that work was intended for.  Second, because I have yet to meet anyone (including myself) who has a broad enough conception of what terms like 'engaging' and 'interesting' and 'cohesive' can potentially mean.  And what is at the heart of this difference? To me it is the difference between creators who want to say "WE did this" and (the much rarer) creators who want to say "We did THIS".  But I guess it doesn't work that way in the real world -- and that's why I'm in the cheap seats throwing out my critiques from afar instead of doing/creating the work myself.  Talent wants to express itself in the ways it knows how, and want to be recognized for same.  And so to get back to your question, Adam - how could TOC not have been "Amercanized' over the years? Not because there is something uniquely American about modern design (anymore), but because the very nature of modern design world-wide is that ideas and choices be "designed into" a courses.   

Peter  

        

[Tom_Doak]

The Old Course is only Americanized to the extent that Americans have tried to write the narrative for it, in part by copying holes like the Eden on American courses and reducing it to a simpler template instead of the complex hole it is.

[Phil_the_Author]

He would most certainly know as he was the one who designed those "hundred ordinary American golf courses."

[Peter Pallotta]

The Old Course is only Americanized to the extent that Americans have tried to write the narrative for it, in part by copying holes like the Eden on American courses and reducing it to a simpler template instead of the complex hole it is.

That's a mighty fine piece of writing there, Tom - concise, interesting, and very quotable!!

Oh man, I'm gonna be stealing from that one for years to come....

Peter

[Bill_McBride]

He would most certainly know as he was the one who designed those "hundred ordinary American golf courses."

Which Jones?   

[Adam Clayman]

Tom. Growing rough around bunkers, narrowing fairways and irrigating rough isn't Americanizing?

[mike_beene]

wouldn't know it by the leader board

[Pete Lavallee]

How times have changedl When I played TOC for 2 weeks in 1989 the course was completely unirrigated, we were in the middle of a very warm summer. I was told it was a concious effort to keep out the meadow grass (poa annua?). The greens were crusty to say the least and making simple length putts was a real challange. I distincly remember enjoying Carnoustie more, simply because they had some green grass on their greens and you could make a few putts. Altough even in those days TOC greens would be completely irrigated for the Open.

The rough on the left of the Priciple's Nose and the dictation of the landing area on The Road Hole seemed forced but what other specific changes were "Americanized"?

Is it even possible to irrigate the rough on TOC? If so, surely it must have been English R&A Members who installed those sprinklers, because the Scots would nary do thaaat!

[Adam Clayman]

Pete, You said it all when comparing it to 1989.

Hell bunker was also surrounded by rough. And from what I could tell the entire middle of the course.

Maybe it was the HD but the 17th fairway and adjacent rough looked like a fluorescent Disney theme ride.

13 paces for the width of the 17th fairway!

For those who know the course, any more examples?

[Tom_Doak]

Boys, they had rough in Scotland way before golf came to America.

The Old Course has had fairway irrigation since the 1970's.  They just never used it that much, as a point of pride.

And I don't think Hell bunker ever had fairway right up to it.  The rough was just thinner.  It certainly appeared that the R & A tried to make certain areas thicker for The Open, but that isn't enough to say the course has been "Americanized" to me.

[Adam Clayman]

Well you would know. Thanx

[Tim Bert]

Iont remember too much about the setup for 2005 but the one thing that stood out to me then was that the fairway on 17 looked almost non-existent. I would have bet money that it was wider this time around. I remember thinking how absurd it looked and played that year. Perhaps it was slightly wider this time because they moved the tee back, or am I imagining things?

[Niall C]

Adam

The course got no play for 3 (?) weeks prior to the Open, maybe even longer, which allied to a bit of rain and sun, would have been enough to get the rough into "pristine" condition. Thats probabaly why the lines between rough and fairway looked so stark. The rest of the year when club golfers are hacking there way round from dawn to dusk, the rough takes a bit of a beating and gets trampled down a bit. Well that's my theory anyway. 

Niall

[Peter Pallotta]

Good theory, Niall. 

Golfers as modern-day sheep, altering the landscape and the architecture with their 'grazing'.

Imagine 100 years from now, a gca.com poster suggesting that a massive waste area on the edge of a sea of rough was created by hackers hacking their way out of the rough after poor shots -- and someone else thundering that, no, it was 'designed that way'!

Peter

[Niall C]

Peter

I just recall doing some marshalling last year at Turnberry and the R&A trying to keep us out of the rough during the first few days which is pretty difficult when you're supposed to be ball spotting. When we did venture in it was amazing how much more difficult it was just to find a ball never mind play it.

Niall

[BCrosby]

Adam:

I think Jones meant that there were so many little and subtle valleys and ridges and features that could help or hurt you trying to appraoch the hole, that it would take many years to learn them all ... whereas on American courses there is usually one preferred way of playing the hole that has been designed into it.

I think that's right. Such views had broader significance for Jones. He wanted ANGC to be all about contour. The emphasis on contour at ANGC was what linked it to TOC, as Jones repeated time and again. He wanted to make his new course inexhaustibly interesting (unlike other American courses) by borrowing the features that made TOC so inexhaustibly interesting. Jones understood that contour went to the heart of it. Contour (i) is difficult to see, (ii) makes outcomes difficult to predict, (iii) is not dependent on wind or other externalities to create variety, and (iv) impossibly complex.  

Jones was not alone in that emphasis. MacK's emphasis on contour in S of SA jumps off almost every page.

Bob    

[Adam Clayman]

Bob, Then there's the freedom through width. Undefined, by too much rough, corridors, that can tell the exactly where to go.

I recognize all of my observations are from memory of Television. The HD likely adds to the feeling I was getting from this broadcast, compared to all the past ones, where the differences in colors weren't so obvious. My earliest memories must have a sentimental bias to them, too, because they recall predominately one color throughout. A lovely whispy brown.

[BCrosby]

Adam -

I was commenting on Doak's comment on the wonderful Jones comment about TOC. A bit OT, I suppose. Yes, there is width too. 

I wasn't at SA for this year's Open, but the pictures of the RH fw looked nothing like the fw I've played several times. The course was set-up  - to my eyes at least - like a milquetoast version of the kinds of setups Tom Meeks used to do for the USGA back in the day.

Certainly rough, gorse, etc. have always been part of TOC, but the extreme narrowing of the 17th fw was new to me. It was also dumb. I can't think of a hole that better protects its green against approaches from the left. That's the greatness of the Road Hole bunker, no?

The new rough on the left suggests that Dawson doesn't get what makes the RH so special. There's no good reason to take away the option of bailing wide left off the tee. The new rough was, in effect, a double penalty. It had the additional liability of minimizing the number of times we got to see the best players in the world trying to hit one of the best greens in the world from the wrong angle. 

That sort of setup surely counts as the Americanization of the set up of TOC for the Open. But I don't read too much into that. I assume TOC will revert to its traditional width for regular play. TOC remains very much sui generis.

Bob       

[V. Kmetz]

BCrosby,

Both these last two comments of yours were measured and spot-on in my opinion.

To your last point about TOC (specifically 17) reverting to its traditional appearance for regular play...this is so true vis a vis my day-in, day out experience of Winged Foot, post-06 Open.  WFW is a magnificent course played at 6500 yards and Par 72 now.  The USGA absolutely takes the most difficult points of the Tillinghast design and enhances them, diminishes its few allowances, makes the rough a hot-house nightmare and calls the par something its not.  Remember considered from level fours and 288, Oglivy is -3, not +5 and Irwin is -1, not +7. Zoeller is even lower. It doesn't matter to me very much, but the idea that you've made a par 4 instead a birdie 4 on #9 and #16 is psychologically different to the competitors in an unquantifiably unique way. 

Everyone would get great enjoyment out of the thankfully treeless Winged Foot West throughout this nearly unprecedented July heat wave.  They have nearly run out of water, all of it is devoted to the green complexes and so the greens are running around a reasonable 10, but the fairways are running like a 12.  From a 6600 tee and smaller, an average golfer can get within reasonable approach distances and the rough is glassy and toast, so the ball doesn't nestle down too often.  People can really play...you can really take some swings, receive extra roll and even take a run on many putts - it's so enjoyable and preferable to the hack and hold you see when the course is lush and the greens over 11.  it convinces me that classic and supra-classic green contour can make a great comeback if the stewards and architects of current and yet-to-be-designed courses will demand that green speeds only top out at 9.5-10.  Yale currently comes the closest to this aesthetic, dramatic green contour at reasonable speed, equals the best total enjoyment a golfer can have.

This leads to your penultimate holdings on the relationship of contour to the experience and influence of the Old Course.  Amen.  The crappy scrubby arcane 9-holer I play (once Gene Sarazen's country practice course) will never cease to fascinate me because there are tiny targets enduringly defended by inscrutable contours that add, subtract, repel or receive each shot, each playing in a slightly different way.  Thank god it is a forgotten relic and I can play it for less than $20.  We actually call it the Ol' Course.

cheers

vk

[jeffwarne]

Adam -

I was commenting on Doak's comment on the wonderful Jones comment about TOC. A bit OT, I suppose. Yes, there is width too.  

I wasn't at SA for this year's Open, but the pictures of the RH fw looked nothing like the fw I've played several times. The course was set-up  - to my eyes at least - like a milquetoast version of the kinds of setups Tom Meeks used to do for the USGA back in the day.

Certainly rough, gorse, etc. have always been part of TOC, but the extreme narrowing of the 17th fw was new to me. It was also dumb. I can't think of a hole that better protects its green against approaches from the left. That's the greatness of the Road Hole bunker, no?

The new rough on the left suggests that Dawson doesn't get what makes the RH so special. There's no good reason to take away the option of bailing wide left off the tee. The new rough was, in effect, a double penalty. It had the additional liability of minimizing the number of times we got to see the best players in the world trying to hit one of the best greens in the world from the wrong angle.  

That sort of setup surely counts as the Americanization of the set up of TOC for the Open. But I don't read too much into that. I assume TOC will revert to its traditional width for regular play. TOC remains very much sui generis.

Bob        

Bob,
Agree completely with your thoughts on 17.
But given the recent European sites presented for the Ryder Cup and their rare use of links courses for Euro tour events,why do we call bad course setups Americanized rather than just they are (poor)

[BCrosby]

But given the recent European sites presented for the Ryder Cup and their rare use of links courses for Euro tour events,why do we call bad course setups Americanized rather than just they are (poor)

Because Americans invented bad setups? 

Bob

[Adam Clayman]

So is it possible that Americanization has been ocurring slowly and subtly for so long that Mr. Doak doesn't recognize it?