News from the National Golf Course Owners Association

[Jim Thompson]

Tommy,

I think there is a great question just hovering around your last post.  Do those "golden age" experts put as much value or weight in the shot values of the era as they do the look?  It seems to me the emphasis has been placed more on the aesthetics of traditional design than the shot values.  I'm currently toying with getting into the Hickory game and hosting an event.  (Any input would be appreciated from the hickory groupies.) This process has led me to spend a lot of time analyzing how I'd set up our course for a hickory event, tees in particular.  Given MacDonald's guide for optimal hole lengths, see "The Evangelist" by that Devil's fan guy  , and compare those hole lengths to the yardage charts for 1900-1930 hickories.  Most of those holes we see as driver - 8-iron are suddenly transformed to driver - driving iron.  Are we living in an era where we are denying our club selection roots?  Have we missed the boat or at least a few of the oars on the "strategic options" of golf?  Do we really want to play old time golf, day in day out?

Curious,

JT

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Jim,
That's a great question and it certainly is one that deserves a great answer.

What I would like to do is point to you to a series of books that you've heard many of us postulize so many times.  The first four would be one of my favorties, The Architectural Side of Golf with the second being George Thomas' Golf Architecture in America and then actually reading before that, Geoff Shackelford's The Captain. The other would be Robert Hunter's, The Links.

So why these books?

Because they contain the direct answer to your question, as well as reiterate it over and over from author to author. My take on it is this:

Features are the key ingredient to great shots and great golf. Also these features have to be utilized in a way that they influence the play or at least, make the player think his way around the course. (in this case, golf hole)  Where many confuse the issue of "the look" and how it plays, "to produce the best shot value*" is in the naturalness of the feature, found, refined, or even artificially constructed. In Nature exists some of the best quirks of nature and in many cases the imperfection is the perfection.

(*I myself, in fact, hate the term "shot value" and "risk and reward" just because its utilized by so many that have little knowledge of the subject other then to use those two terms)(There have been times where I wanted to scratch my cousin's eyes out when he used this term! )

This thing about routing a golf course and how the metaphor of it being a journey are sort of ridiculous to me also. While I have never really routed a course, I do think if I ever had to, it would be a full learning experience. simply because I would learn exactly what Thomas or Bell or Ross or Tillinghast or MacKenzie or MacDonald, etc. were thinking when routing their courses. It was a high art back then. Today its the best proximation for restrooms and a cart barn.

While there are in fact many golf architects today inducing sound strategies to their designs, still many of them miss out on what they should be designing and how the land dictates that.

So many excuses--so little substance.

Something you bring up that is a valid point is that the difference between playing hickory and steel.

As far as the hickories, I have thought about it and planned on doing it--even talked to Ralph about what it would take to start assembling a set. I have yet to even start simply because of so many other major things on my plate at the moment! Still, I'll eventually get it together and play a set one day!

However, recently Brian Gracely brought up a interesting thread expounding the virtues of using less clubs. I couldn't agree more because I find, just like Brian and Dan King have, that playing with less clubs leads to more Golden Age-like shotmaking. If you read the Thomas book, he explains and suggests half pars. Holes where it may be a half stroke more or less, and will produce the term "hard bogie/easy par." Or as they say it in this day and age, "hard birdie/easy eagle! With scoring holes as half-pars, the proprieter of that swing is going to go looking for protecting the club.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

And Lou, let us not forget that supposedly he wanted to be a golf architect!

[A_Clay_Man]

Lou, I don't have a problem with earning a profit. In my naivate', I feel that an entity doesn't deserve a profit, just cause someone built it, and "they" didn't come. Spending 20m and expecting the blood to coagulate anytime soon, is folly.  

Here's what I feel about it. If your going to plunk down hard earned capital, you'd better LOVE the sport, and you'd better NOT expect to get rihc, anytime soon. After costs are long sunk, the profits will be exponential. But to go into this sport as a business, and then expect to change the implements, for everyone, to fit the need for a profit, is much too subjective, to possibly be the right thing to do.

Slow play by inconsiderate a**holes isn't a function of how far the ball goes. The amount of time it takes the pros to play a round of golf is so indivdualistic, limiting the number of those indivduals, should help ensure there's enough daylight.

All this mixing of justifications between the tour pro and the average Joe, seems inconsistant. Which is it? Reign in the ball, because the pros go lower than what the cogniscenti think is acceptable. Or, reign in the ball to help speed up the playing of short holes?

Bifurcate, trifurcate, decafurcate, it won't stop the legions of participants, who don't know. or, have never been shown the proper ettiquette, and who are so self absorbed that consideration is something that builds up on glass, on cold winter nights.

Tommy, The changes at ANGC (or any of the disfigured courses) is an example of how stupid rihc people are. All to protect a number.

Also, Those who viewed SHGC as a debacle, all seemed to have some reason for viewing it as such, some pre-disposition that altered what they saw, versus what I (and others) saw.
I sure wish Dan King would way in on the history lessons that JohnV's research paper, in the My Opinion section teaches.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

Adam, You wearing your nihlistic coat again.

All rich people are evil and we're the good guys? I do't see it that way because you would be insulting a lot of people I know that have worked hard for what they've made, sacraficed family time while doing it.

The Shinnecock debacle did in fact happen. You were just wearing rose-colored sunglasses while it happened. The funny thing was its happened twice before. You would think someone would have learned something from the incident. They didn't.

Your also just disagreeing to be disagreeing.

[A_Clay_Man]

Thomas- I maybe urging you to refine your arguments, but I have not changed my questions, to you and your minons, for like 4 years now. My reference to the rihc people, as a collective, was, and has been, at the crux of the matter. When Dr. Klein spoke those words I'm sure he only meant it in relation to how they have disfigured their golf courses. How they faiedl to learn what's really behind all the allure of this sport. It's the architecture! And I know you know that.

What I don't know is why is the sky falling on you? Why is it falling on anybody, save for those who can swing 120mph?

And what did I miss from JohnV's paper? My rose colored glasses must've bled to my ears, because every golfer I asked, 'how they liked the open' they all said, with no exceptions, they loved it!