What a question. It's so good I'm forced to answer in Sybil fashion. So here goes. The character in my mind precedes each answer.
The Player says: Rough is necessary, and the older, shorter, and tighter the golf corridor the more penal it has to be, as the courses can't significantly be stretched in either length or width. The old courses in particular seem trapped in their borders. I think it’s harder to hit out of dense 2" rough than 3" wispy grass.
The Course Operator says: You bet we need rough. We’ve got to much bent grass already. I just have to provide bent grass fairways to compete these days and it just saps the funds of my bottom line. I tell my super to keep it as close to 1 1/2" as possible so folks can find their ball and think they hit recovery shots like the pros. My customers like thinking they're better then they are and that keeps 'em coming back. I wish the fairways could go back to poa. I'd cut it at 3/8" for a fairway and 1 1/2" all the way to the trees I'm just afraid local folks would ask me to discount my prices again and that I'd lose my destination golfers.
The architect wannabe says: Rough, we don't need no stinking rough. Let's cut bent as tight as possible from wall to wall and use undulation to create strategic options. Players don't realize how hard it is to hit off a tight lie with the ball below their feet. Miss the preferred line by ten feet now and the shot is ten times tougher. The accountant will never go for it though. He's so tight. If I could just convince him that people would love this place and pay for it. As for the old courses, if I could just convince the memberships to get out the chainsaws we could fix everything.
The idealist: Bent grass has prevented golf from reaching its full potential. There should be a law that it can only be used on greens and tees. How do I educate the public that that's OK when they see Augusta every year on TV?
Dr. Katz help!!!!
Shivas, Mike and all the other Philosophically inclined:
We spend a lot of time here recommending books to read.
I recommend the following:
“Finite & Infinite Games” by James P. Carse
Available from Barnes & Noble for just $6.99
From the Publisher:
An extraordinary book that will dramatically change the way you experience life.
Finite games are the familiar contests of everyday life, the games we play in business and politics, in the bedroom and on the battlefied — games with winners and losers, a beginning and an end. Infinite games are more mysterious — and ultimately more rewarding. They are unscripted and unpredictable; they are the source of true freedom.
In this elegant and compelling work, James Carse explores what these games mean, and what they can mean to you. He offers stunning new insights into the nature of property and power, of culture and community, of sexuality and self-discovery, opening the door to a world of infinite delight and possibility.
"An extraordinary little book . . . a wise and intimate companion, an elegant reminder of the real."
— Brain/Mind Bulletin
From The Critics:
The New York Times Book Review - Francis Kane
In {this work} marvelous if unintended ironies abound. In a work that celebrates that poet in all of us who 'reduces nothing,' everything is reduced into two simple categories. . . . Another irony: the infinite player eschews all seriousness. (Mr. Carse doesn't say how lightly one is to take fascism.) Yet I cannot recall a recent book that was more pretentious or took itself so seriously. . . . I suppose, though, that in this self-indulgent age this work will create its own disciples, and one could dismiss my objections as the cavils of a cranky old Confucian who little understands his ever-youthful Taoist colleague. So be it. For those of us who remain unconverted, we can take heartin one final irony. Since the infinite player takes nothing seriously, we can assume that not even books like 'Finite and Infinite Games' can escape the fate of being just a game.
After reading I would expect one of you to start a "Golf: Finite or Infinite Game?" thread.
Cheers!
JT