Does the average golfer...

[Connor Dougherty]

care more about his equipment than the quality of the course he is playing?

I was reading a post on reddit.com/r/golf, a website that has a series of threads on different subjects that can be up-voted and down-voted by users. On one thread, bifurcation came up because the original poster had asked why everyone talks about rolling back the golf ball when pros don't carry the golf ball all that far, and the solution could be solved by letting fairways grow out a bit more than they do currently on tour.

That led to this response from fupresti

People just need something to bitch about. The equipment has gotten better, but so has the athletics of the guys they are complaining about. Tiger Woods changed a lot of shit when he came to the tour, including the need for conditioning and good health.

Bifurcation isn't going to work, Titleist and others make a lot of money selling you a golf ball you perceive to be the same as the one on the tour. Rolling back innovation almost killed Nascar, it wont happen in Golf.

This shouldn't be a debate about the merits of bifurcation, there have been far too many of those on this discussion board. But it seems to me that the average golfer has an addiction to golf equipment. More than keeping golf affordable, ecological, shorter, interesting, etc., he wants to be able to hit the ball farther and straighter. According to a friend of mine who once interned for the website, golfwrx.com, a website entirely dedicated to golf equipment, was the third most visited golf site on the internet. So I ask, does the average golfer care more about the equipment in his bag than the course that he is playing?

[Adam Clayman]

Anyone, and I mean every one person who says they know what the average golfer thinks, is full of it.

Sure, you could separate people by any criteria you want. The group with the largest number of people in it, is not the average golfer. It maybe who advertisers want to market to, but they aren't the average golfer.

To break golf down, into such finite models, shows how little they know about golf.

[Connor Dougherty]

Anyone, and I mean every one person who says they know what the average golfer thinks, is full of it.

Sure, you could separate people by any criteria you want. The group with the largest number of people in it, is not the average golfer. It maybe who advertisers want to market to, but they aren't the average golfer.

To break golf down, into such finite models, shows how little they know about golf.

Adam,
I've played a collection of golf courses of varying types of difficulty with tons and tons of different amateur golfers. My general experience has been that they recognize whether the golf course they are playing is good or bad, but they are far more fascinated by their equipment. This should be a judgement of what our experiences are playing with certain golfers, and identifying their personal preferences. That can then be brought to this discussion board to compare experiences and see if the same holds true.

It's one thing to come on here and say that every amateur golfer cares more about his equipment because that is a hasty generalization. That would mean we are ignoring much of what we see and learn when we play golf. Plenty of us GCAers are amateur golfers who have far more passion for the golf courses we play than the tools we put in our golf bags.

I cannot tell you the number of times I have played with golfers who focus on their equipment. This was exaggerated playing on a high school team, where new equipment launched discussions of how it looked, how it probably felt (based on a company's reputation) and subsequent trips to Golfsmith to try the golf club. It's this kind of obsessive behavior that leads me to believe that the average golfer (and perhaps more so the avid golfer) tends to care more about his equipment.

In a GCA context, architects have to design golf courses with modern equipment in mind. If equipment kept "innovating," and, say, 8,000 yard courses became the norm overnight, would that generate any sort of reaction from amateurs? Comparatively, if the USGA came out and said, "We're bringing back the technology to more reasonable levels" and made every player in competition use hickories, what happens?

[Garland Bayley]

Since most golfers can't answer "Whip it out, list the 10 best courses you have played" as they have not played any courses that are acknowledged to be great, they resort to "Whip it out, list the best tool you've used to play the game".

Golf equipment manufacturers play into this scenario.

[Jason Thurman]

I don't know who the "average golfer" is. I don't know any weekend players who want to talk about their equipment all the time.

It makes sense to me that players at a competitive level would care a lot about their equipment since, for better or worse, it's such a big part of success for modern players. But the "average golfer"? I tend to think the "average golfer" has never been fitted, buys his clubs on ebay, and cares more about having a cart with GPS and beverage holders than he does about the quality of the course's design OR his equipment.

Also, let's take our noses out of the air just a bit. It's really no less dorky or tragic to be an architecture nerd than it is to be an equipment nerd. The "average golfer" probably isn't any more interested in centerline bunkers than he is in MOI and COR. I'm not a big fan of these threads that deride groups of golfers like "pencil pushers" or "technology lovers" as though they're somehow beneath us. Never lose sight of the fact that all of us architecture snobs are dorks too, maybe the worst ones of all.

[Connor Dougherty]

I don't know who the "average golfer" is. I don't know any weekend players who want to talk about their equipment all the time.

It makes sense to me that players at a competitive level would care a lot about their equipment since, for better or worse, it's such a big part of success for modern players. But the "average golfer"? I tend to think the "average golfer" has never been fitted, buys his clubs on ebay, and cares more about having a cart with GPS and beverage holders than he does about the quality of the course's design OR his equipment.

I think that's a fair argument and for the most part I agree with you.

Also, let's take our noses out of the air just a bit. It's really no less dorky or tragic to be an architecture nerd than it is to be an equipment nerd. The "average golfer" probably isn't any more interested in centerline bunkers than he is in MOI and COR. I'm not a big fan of these threads that deride groups of golfers like "pencil pushers" or "technology lovers" as though they're somehow beneath us. Never lose sight of the fact that all of us architecture snobs are dorks too, maybe the worst ones of all.

I never said that it was a bad thing. I mentioned that I have a good friend who writes for an equipment website, and I've visited that site on occasion. I used to be (and still kind of am) one of these "technology lovers" but as much as I like the new technology I want it to be rolled back because I would rather play golf courses that are shorter, easier to walk, etc. This isn't meant to bash the amateur who is an equipment nerd the way we are all architecture snobs, its merely trying to determine what amateur golfer cares more about. This can also tell us about what the reaction would be to a technology rollback.

[Garland Bayley]

I don't know who the "average golfer" is. I don't know any weekend players who want to talk about their equipment all the time.

...

No, but as soon as they get a new one, they want to whip it out and show it to you.