Tommy probably has a much better understanding of the reformation than I do. But, my basic understanding was that the church had become corrupt and deviated from its roots, and therefore needed to be brought back to its roots. Therefore, I think the reformation is a perfect analogy to the golf situation. I think Susie Meyers has hit the nail on the head pretty well.
"When I was learning to love this game, it was never seen as too hard, or too time-consuming to play, or too expensive, or too frustrating," said Susie Meyers, 51, who later played on the LPGA Tour and now teaches golf in Arizona. The course she played on with her family and friends was short and simple, but in her memories it was heaven.
In the intervening years, the character and challenges of the game changed, Meyers said. "Whose idea was it to make courses so difficult it takes 5½ hours to play?" she asks. "Whose idea was it to say there's a perfect swing and if you come to me I'll show you what's wrong with it and fix it? Whose idea was it that you have to find the perfect club and the perfect ball and play on perfect grass?"
So it seems Ms. Meyers wants to start the golf reformation, and get away from its excessive, corrupt, deviation from the game, and back to its roots.
It would seem that a huge portion of the members of this website agree with her on the rejection of the penal/heroic style of golf course.
Another huge portion of the members would agree with her on the rejection of perfect conditoning.
She really hits home with me on golf being too expensive and the need for the perfect club, and ball. When I joined this website, I was ridiculed for making statements about golf being too expensive. But, then every once in a while there would be a question about how much you would pay to play, and a significant number of the posters would come out of the woodwork and say they limited their games to under $50, and I knew I wasn't alone. The clubs are needlessly expensive. When my son expressed the desire to play more golf, my wife went to Target and came home with 12 clubs for $100. You can hardly buy a single club for that price in some "golf" shops. After a couple of years, I doubled the value of his set by going out and buying him a Ping putter for $100. In my opinion the advancement in club design is of no value. To demonstrate that, last year I replaced my cavity back irons with blades, and my handicap didn't change one iota. As a matter of fact, as the year wore on I believe the blades helped me discover why I shot worse scores at the end of the golf season than at the beginning every year, and for the first time in several years my handicap began to edge down at the end of the year.
I find it interesting that coffee has been bandied about on this thread as an example of MBA's gone to excess. You've got the right product, but it seems to me you totally misunderstand the whole situation. In the middle of the 20th century, coffee became heavily promoted, and the MBA's at the coffee companies began to try to grow sales and began to compete on price until it became absolute swill by the time I reached coffee drinking age. Upon completion of college, I went into the Peace Corps in Ethiopia. Ethiopia begin in close proximity to Arabia has always had arabica coffee trees growing wild in their forests. It is a tree that grows in the shaded understory of the forest. In some parts of Ethiopia at the time "coffee plantations" were harvested by simply going out into the wild forests and picking the wild crop. Perhaps needless to say, Ethiopia has a long historic coffee culture. To come there from the souless wasteland of American coffee was a true awakening. On returning to the U.S. I spent a significant amount of time in Europe drinking the same high quality coffee. So you see, Starbucks had brought the true reformation to coffee in the U.S., a return to its roots, and an overthrow of its godless MBA roots.
I find it pretty disturbing that the PGA of America is trying further to take golf away from its roots with the tee it forward program so people can make birdies and pars. That is not golf! The PGA of America needs to emphasize bringing players together to play enjoyable matches. And, I am not talking medal play here. Old Tom Morris did not create a handicap system so that people could play 18 holes, tally up their scores, deduct their handicap, and decide who won. Old Tom Morris created a handicap system so that it could be determined equitably who won or lost each hole in succession.
Guess I best push the post button so I don't muck it up and lose what may be my longest essay ever.