Mis-hits & fairness-Catalysts for aerial golf ?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Did mis-hit golf shots that ended up with good results,
and the American fixation of the pursuit of fairness act as catalysts for aerial golf in America ?

Did the desire to not see poor shots end up with good results expedite the trend toward aerial golf ?

[A_Clay_Man]

One of the interesting things about playing my home course in the winter is that the firmness does re-define what a good shot is.

Having such a narrow view of what constitutes a "good shot" is part and parcel of what went wrong with golf design post wwII and what has led to the standardized crap that lemmings pay $125 or more to play.

[BCrosby]

The desire not to see bad shots get good results goes back pretty far. Ross was building "top-shot" bunkers before 1920.

Bob

[TEPaul]

Pat asked;

"Did the desire to not see poor shots end up with good results expedite the trend toward aerial golf?"

I doubt that. I think the thing that acted as a catalyst to expedite the trend toward aerial golf in America was the onset of improved balls and equipement that made aerial golf (particularly for good players) a far easier and obvious option than it had formerly been. I think there's little question of that and the players from that time and what they said, felt and did is undeniable evidence of that.

Aerial golf was the coming thing--far more than it had been pre-WW2 and golf architecture simply reacted to that in the years post WW2.

But as for mishits and fairness being a catalyst for aerial architecture today that certainly is a very strong opinion. I can't tell you how many conversations and even arguments I've had in the last few years trying to convince various good players that the ground game should be restored at our course in the present restoration.

And frankly it's a very hard argument to counter! At first I didn't know what to say and had to think hard for a logical response. This is certainly something Jeff Mingay went through too in his efforts to restore ground game options at Ross's Essex C.C.

Those good players at my club were saying how can I expect them to endorse something where they hit a great aerial shot close to the pin and somebody else mishits a shot and it carooms off some ground game feature that has been turned into a short grass area wide of the green and gets a lucky bounce and also ends up next to the pin?

I've said so far that the lucky bounce from an opponent that turns out that way certainly won't happen as often as your great aerial shot and furthermore if you can't handle an occasional lucky bounce from an opponent you've got a lot to learn about all the game of golf is and should be! In this way it's a great test of your resolve--ultimately your character to overcome what you can't control!

Actually, there's a great thought on this basic subject from C.B. Macdonald that speaks to what he believed was the spirit of the game at St. Andrews. That was that any golfer should look at his own game as an attempt to beat the very best an opponent can throw at him. He should never wish ill for his opponents shots--only the best and strive to beat that--never poor shots from his opponent. Clearly in that thought an apparently poor shot that got a lucky fortunate bounce was not a poor shot at all!!

The message to me in this is that lucky bounces from your opponent are just part of golf and are an added part of the game to test your character to accept them and overcome them.

The idea was--only wish the very best from your opponent and strive to beat him anyway! What could be purer and more gratifying to do than that? That was the essence of the old game!

That's my counter response to these people on this issue of fairness and I'm thankful at least I appear to have C.B. Macdonald to support that counter argument.  

Have you noticed how many times good players who are excellent competitors and strong of mind in a competitive sense remind all of us that you should always expect a good result from your opponent in the heat of battle even if the result of his shot is benefical to him from an improbably shot and result--most certainly including things like lucky bounces and lucky results!

What does that say to us about fairness! It say to me that a good player should simply accept what appears to him to be a momentary unfairness!!

[Michael Moore]

Mr. Mucci -

I offer the following quotation from de Tocqueville's masterpiece Democracy in America -

"When inequality of conditions is the common law of society, the most marked inequalities do not strike the eye; when everything is nearly on the same level, the slightest are marked enough to hurt it. Hence the desire of equality always becomes more insatiable in proportion as equality is more complete."

There is much much more in there - what a book! If only I were not at work!

[Jeff_Brauer]

Tom,

I was reading a MacKenzie quote in the Doak book last night.  In essence, the short version is that the lucky topped shot won't happen often enough to make a difference in the match.  You would expect that it would be accompanied by a lot more bad shots of all types, and the better player would still win.  For that matter, why would the club champion be in a competitive match with a C class player?  Wouldn't he compete against those of his own level?

So, according to Mac and Doak, architecture moved away from top shot bunkers.  It lets poor players play.  And it doesn't affect good players on iota.

I remember another article years ago to the same effect.  Why punish a topped shot?  If one goes on the green, so what?  And their are a lot of senior out there who need the frontal opening to continue to enjoy the game.

I think the trend to aerial game starts with equipment, irrigation, and common sense.  The aerial game is safer, just like airlines are safer than Amtrak - once in the air, there is whole lot fewer things a plane can collide with.  Trains come to intersections that can derail them every few blocks/miles.

[CjM111]

I agree with Jeff....he should not walk...he should strut!

It might be possible that aerial golf came about as a result of the change in how the game is now played.  It started about the time that Jack Nicklaus came into prominence.  If you think back and look at many of the old Shell series events, most courses allowed players the ability to play a lower game, in some instances a game on the ground, much like in Scotland.  So much of the game in England and Scotland is played on the ground and requires players to not only have the ability to "carry" shots, but to play bump and run shots, and many other ground shots.  
Players ability to hit the ball high, far and stop it in most cases changed many architects perspective on the design of golf holes.  Many seem to feel that it now is necessary to challenge the golfer with a shot that must "carry" the elements.  
Great players mis-hits are better than most average golfers good shots.  I am not convinced that mis-hits are the catalyst but maybe the fact that architects and designers felt a need to challenge better golfers with aerial requirements.  
Just an opinion...everybody has one...just like some body parts.

[TEPaul]

"I am not convinced that mis-hits are the catalyst but maybe the fact that architects and designers felt a need to challenge better golfers with aerial requirements."

Dornoch Mac:

I believe you've said a mouthful there. The reality of designing against the aeiral shot which became so prevalent in the "Modern Age" of architecture should probably be looked at as architects designing primarily with the better player in mind!

If that's so, and it probably is, one would logically have to say that to some degree then architects sort of forgot about the logical option for the weaker less good player that once was the ground game option particularly on approach shots.

The interesting old architectural analogy of the "tortoise and the hare" from the old days almost required that the tortoise (the weaker player) have the ground game option open to him somehow. It's obvious from the thinking of the old architects that he needed that to make up ground cleverly and hopefully arrive at the destination in the same amount of strokes!

It would appear the modern aerial reliant game of the modern better player (the hare) and architecture's reponse to design against that primarily (in the Modern era) sort of proves modern architecture may have forgotten about the tortoise (the weaker player) and his necessary option!

I do believe in this idea of the "ideal maintenance meld" for the old style (ground game) courses which "ideally" requires that green surfaces be firmed up to begin to make the better player (aerial reliant hare) think about the ground game option too (obviously almost defensively). If you don't do that and have very receptive greens the logic is that the good player (hare) would use the aerial option all day long without ever thinking of the  ground game option even if available to him. But even if the good player used the aerial option all day long, neither architecture nor maintenance should take that ground game option away from the weaker player (tortoise).

Afterall, just as the good player may use the aerial option all day long (with receptive green surfaces) the weaker player MAY NEED TO USE the ground game option all day long.

That should not be taken away from him in the classic spirit of the "tortoise and hare" analogy! It shouldn't be taken away from him with architecture (design requiring aerial carry) and it shouldn't be take away from him with maintenance (soft non-roll conditions, particularly approaches)

[Doug Siebert]

The problem I think people have with fast-n-firm from this standpoint is not so much the hacker who cold tops everything getting 100 yards out of it.  Few would begrudge that (except his friend who cold shanks everything who gets 100 yards at a 45 degree angle out of everything )  But a better player who kind of half thins a shot, hitting a 5 iron that instead of flying high and true never gets more than 20-25 feet off the ground, lands 40 yards short, but bounces and runs and rolls on.  That sort of thing really pisses off the double digit handicaps, because they are more likely to have some big misses that aren't helped by conditions, and they say it is "unfair".

Was that a reason for overwatering and non-firm conditions and aerial golf though?  No, I think it was Augusta on color TV, equipment, and the influence of Nicklaus.  Bush would probably claim Saddam Hussein had some involvement in this as well.

[TEPaul]

Saddam Hussein is complicit in almost everything on this earth that's evil, immoral and wrong but amazingly soft and lush conditions on golf courses around the world is not one of them.

However, if one of our F-18 pilots find him fleeing across the desert it does not mean that pilot should hesitate to make him part of a really good hell's half acre bunker with an artistically placed missile right up his ass.

[Tim Taylor]

A question for those more knowledgeable that I:

How much of the trend to aerial golf has to do with the fact that for the last few decades it has become difficult to fill in all the environmental "stuff" that must now be carried?

TimT

[Steve_L.]

Some of this trend is clearly due to environmental considerations...  Wetlands, desert, etc...

But - IMO much of it resulted from a trendy period of "target golf" design which gained notariety through the TPC Sawgrass...  

I think there is a new period of enlightenment which favors playability, sustainable maintenance, and creative design.

Hopefully...

[ForkaB]

shivas

Here's a quote from Donald Grant's book on Ross and Dornoch:

"One of my boyhood memories carries me back to an occasion in 1904:  I stood beside the putting green at "The Witch", a hole of 165 yards (once the 17th at RDGC, now the 18th on the Struie Course).  I saw J. H. play his "Taylor" mashie off the tee, saw the ball coming up, saw it pitch on the green then bite into the turf and spin back for a yard.  The first time I had seen that kind of shot."

Methinks that the aerial game has been around for much longer than many of the purists on this site might want to admit.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Shivas,
I really don't know if players in the 16th century wanted to soar the ball around but if it were as easy to do then as it is now we probably wouldn't be sitting here discussing it.  

Regardless of equipment and what a player could or could not do at any specific time in history, it's all about the wind and I feel the ground game evolved because of it.
We don't need to rely on it as much today, but, how many times have you shaped an aerial shot to follow the ground below it, just in the off chance that you thin it a touch and find the earth a bit too soon?
I think holes that employ the terrain in this fashion are the best in golf and the ones that still remain faithful to the roots, or ground game, of golf.

[ForkaB]

shivas

That makes sense! (which makes me wonder about MY sanity.....)

Which reminds me of the fact that the only non-blades I ever bought (a set of Ping Zing's in 1993) only lasted about 6 months in my bag before I sold them on.  Sure, they cut my handicap by 1-2 strokes, but I wasn't having any fun!  Who likes hitting shots that go dead straight all the time?

As for "The Witch", it is still a damn hard hole today when you are hitting aerial shots, and due to the topography (lots of lumpy ground to a tiny uphill green) I can't imagine what sort of ground game wizardry would have been needed in 1904 to bump and run the ball near the hole........

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rich,
More than likely Taylor used a Haskell ball to hit that shot as it became the ball of choice after 1901.
The aerial game has always been a part of golf, its coming to the forefront is in direct correlation to the heightened  trajectory of the modern ball.

Shivas,
If you read Rich's post correctly it surely doesn't seem that Taylor had a problem hitting a spinning shot with a mashie, does it? The best players today can still fashion the shots they need, it's just become easier to hit it straighter with modern equipment, that's all.

[ForkaB]

Jim

Let me add three sentences which precede those I quoted above:

"Later I had the privilege of knowing J.H. well and of playing with him, indeed it was often against him, in foursome play at Dornoch.  Taylor designed the lofting-iron into the 'Taylor Mashie.'  It had a shorter and deepr face and the suitable loft.  One of my boyhood memories......."

I think from these snippets that Taylor was doing something as revolutionary (no pun intended) as Sarazen did 30 years later with the sand wedge.  Just guessing, of course, as usual......