Bomb & Gouge - When did it really start?

[Garland Bayley]

Another great example of how the memory of old men can't be fully trusted. Surely Wiki is more reliable


Are you guys a tag team?

No. I'm too polite to call an old man on his failure to remember dates.

[Tom ORourke]

I think it has been around for a long time, just not by players good enough to win. I saw the mention of George Bayer, and Mike Souchak was another of the early big hitters. You can go back to Snead, but I think Arnie, to some degree Jack, and Weiskopf were the first major examples of guys who would rather have the wedge from the rough than a 7 iron from the fairway. And they could actually play, putt, and win, not just bomb. Jack just happened to hit fairways better than most. I think Seve was the next stage as he was making birdie from everywhere. There have always been big hitters, but most of them were not winning before Arnie and Jack. We know that Hogan did not respect Palmer's game as it was not about precision. It has always been around, but winning B&G started with Arnie and was perfected by Seve.

[Jason Topp]

This was my take in a thread a couple of years ago:

http://golfclubatlas.com/forum/index.php?topic=39532.35

As Vijay Singh indicated in a 2004:

“I would rather sacrifice accuracy for length. I have a better chance of marking birdie on a hole hitting a shorter approach with a wedge from the rough than hitting an 8-iron from the fairway” Vijay Singh, USA Today, 2004




Statistics and results show that top players changed strategies in the the early 2000's - increasing their focus on length and worrying less about accuracy.  Vijay Singh and Tiger Woods results seem to support this view:

2000

Tiger hit the ball 20 yards farther than Singh off the tee (298 to 279) and hit more fairways (71.2 (ranked 54th) to 67.9 (ranked 112th)  Woods won $9 million and Singh $2.5.  Woods won 9 out of 20 tournaments.  Singh won 1 out of 26.

2004

The driving distance difference shrunk to nothing and Singh was slightly more accurate than Woods (60% to 56%) but 4% less accurate than the year before and 12% less accurate than in 2000.  In other words, Singh decided to sacrifice accuracy to make up his distance gap behind Woods.

Singh won 9 tournaments and $10.5 million and Woods won 1 tournament and $5.3 million.  

2005  

Woods cranked up his driving again - adding 15 yards and taking a 15 yard advantage over Singh (316 - 301) and a little hit in accuracy, now behind Singh by 6% (60-54).  Woods won $10.5 and Singh won $8.5 million that year.  Woods won 6 out of 19 tournaments.  Singh won 4 out of 30.


After 2005:


Since 2005, Woods has won 20 more tournaments.  Singh has won 6.  Woods has been ranked near the bottom in driving accuracy each year, as has Phil Mickelson.

Grooves and course set-ups may wind up offsetting the wisdom of this strategy.  

[Matthew Petersen]

It seems like an outgrowth of the most basic part of golf strategy. You can either lay back for a better angle/flatter lie/more accurate shot, or hit it with everything you have, which gives you a shorter shot in but one that's more likely to be from a difficult angle. That's true for every golfer, not just the very long ones--no matter what your game is like, you can make that same strategic decision. Bomb and gouge is an extreme version of it, but it's really just basic golf strategy.

[Sean_Tully]

In reading up on one of my favorite gofers it was noted that he was very long off the tee for his day and that he was in the rough or further off the fwy than most of his fellow competitors on a number of shots.

He happened to win the US Am in 1904 and 1905 and was still playing great golf in 1929 at the US Am at Pebble.

Chandler Egan

[Doug Siebert]

The idea of bomb and gouge may have been around forever, but modern equipment really helped it along.  Modern driver/ball combos have a larger percentage of their distance in the form of the carry, and the huge perimeter weighted heads allow mishits to still generate a large portion of the carry you would have otherwise achieved.

Basically this means that if you hit one square and land in the rough, it doesn't cost you as much distance as it used to, and if you mishit one and land in the rough it costs you MUCH less distance than it used to.  I remember back in the 80s on long par 4s (or what was long back then, i.e. 450 yards) the difference between a drive landing in the rough and landing in the fairway was a couple clubs.  Now its not even half a club, since I get only a few yards of roll most of the time.  The difference between a mishit (say 1/2" off center, which isn't enough to even care about on today's 460cc drivers) landing in the rough and a good drive was probably 50-60 yards back then, today I'm sure it hurts, but not enough that I could even assign a figure to it.  Maybe 10 to 15 yards at most?

Nothing stopped me from playing bomb and gouge back in the 80s, but in fact I hit a 1 iron off the tee about half the time.  I did that right up until I bought a 400cc driver in early 2001, and switched to the Pro V1 from the Professional at the same time.  I quickly realized that the head was so big that the driver was now the easiest club in the bag to hit and I'd be a fool to not hit it all the time.  Nowadays I rarely hit 1 iron off the tee, and it is always because there is some element of distance control in my strategy (even if it is only "I can't reach the bad stuff I might hit into if I used my driver")