What would golf look like if courses never stretched past 6500 yards?

[Jason Thurman]

Imagine that, in the early days of golf, the USGA and R&A dictated a maximum course length of 6500 yards, with the same cup size and same ball size as today. Imagine that they did this instead of putting regulations on the performance characteristics of the ball, or club specifications like COR, MOI, clubhead volume, etc.

How would technology be different today? How would our courses be different? How would the game be different?

[CJ Carder]

I could go a couple of different directions with this as I could actually see a number of possibilities:

- My first thought was that scores would just go insanely low because technology would be out of control still.  A pro today could play a 6500 yard course with nothing longer than a 3-iron.  I reference back to when our club hosted the 2007 NCAAs.  At roughly 6800 and a par 70, there were two kids who flirted with 59 (one of whom was -11 through 14 before a bogey on 15 and 3 pars to finish).  Our dogleg right 420 yard first hole saw a number of players fly a 3-iron over the dogleg and hit a lob wedge into the green.

- As a result, one direction course design could go is to just get stupidly hard.  Think hay-length rough everywhere, small greens, and green speeds not recommended for the green contours.  A lot like what we have today, except EVERYONE would be playing the same course.  I think that translates to an even less enjoyable game for the amateurs.  At the end of the day, we would still build courses for the one week a year they host a professional tournament because that's where (theoretically) the big pay day is. 

- If they managed to control green speeds (without knowing too much, I have to imagine there are limits in terms of how far you can stretch the agronomy before they just can't get any faster), I could actually see green contours getting even more interesting because that would be a natural place to start looking for a course to have some scoring defense.

- On the opposite side of the spectrum, if the game's caretakers were originally concerned with making the game fun and not making money, I think you'd see course designers get a lot more creative and adding some more "quirk" to courses.  I saw this because they'd really be limited with how much land they could take up, so they'd have to do a lot more to differentiate themselves.  Today, a course can say "our back tees are 7500 yards" and that's considered a differentiating factor.  But if amateurs and pros are essentially playing the same golf course, you have to really mix it up.  Anyone ever seen a 180 degree dogleg par 4 where you CAN'T cut corners or carry across the middle?  I can envision some crazy shaped greens - crescent moon par 3 anyone?

- As for technology, I actually don't know that it'd be a lot different.  There might be less of it - maybe Taylormade's product cycle would be a little longer since 2 extra yards doesn't matter so much on a 6500 yard course.  But you'd still have game improvement clubs trying to help people hit it straighter.  This is a stretch for being considered technology, but I think club selection would be impacted as far as what's in your bag.  Maybe in response to course changes, the driver becomes a less value-added club and people start routinely carrying 5 wedges 2 degrees apart?

I could go on and on and think this is a pretty interesting topic.  But I'll stop and let other people have a shot at it for now.

[Ken Moum]

Hmmm... if we assume the move toward stroke play had happened I think that golf would have:

• No par 5s
• 300+ yard par threes
• At least a few U.S. Open courses with par of ~63
• Sets of clubs with at least five wedges

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Our tour courses:

Fairway? What's a fairway?  You mean the approach to the green?

The game:

For me, no different. I play @ 5,900-6,100 whenever possible, so unless my comment immediately above came to fruition on the courses I play it would be about the same.

K

[Peter Pallotta]

J - of course there's no reason to assume that the game and those who attempt to profit from it might pull/grow in the same direction, since I've not seen a whit of evidence that the bottom line of the latter cares at all about the good of the former. Spread out over 18 holes in an interesting way, 6500 yards of golf course would provide a fun and wonderful challenge to the vast majority of golfers -- and despite technology's leaps and bounds does exactly that even today. But if the length had been mandated but no restrictions placed on technology, companies would still have produced new balls and clubs and then top/pga tour players today would be making birdies even more often and easily than professional bowlers throw strikes. Has anyone around here watched a professional bowling tournament on television recently? Would anyone want to? So maybe televised golf would have disappeared a long time ago, and on the social/public spectrum recreational golfers today would be as little noticed as recreational golfers. Hey, maybe the Coen Brothers would've made The Big Lebowski about us!!   

[Jason Thurman]

Pete, you're probably right that equipment would still have made tremendous leaps and bounds. But would distance have been such an important part of those leaps?

The move to metalwoods and urethane balls and steel shafts was inevitable for durability, if for no other reason. But would elite players on a 6500 yard course need to hit 600cc drivers with super-hot faces? Would the distance gained be worth the lack of control?

I suspect there would come a point of diminishing returns with distance. I also suspect we'd see a lot more variation in the clubs players carry as a result. We have Tour players carrying four wedges today. I could imagine a game where half their bag is devoted to clubs used to get off the tee, some more positioning focused and others more distance focused. The other half would essentially be wedges used for those shorter approaches the elite would be playing. Meanwhile, the clubs carried by average players would let them make up some of the distance gap on their approaches. Essentially, I think we'd have more choices for clubs that were actually useful and made the game more interesting, with average players carrying sets similar to today but bombers carrying even more "wedges" for control. Maybe we wouldn't have seen the de-lofting of irons that we've seen over the last 50 years, as there'd be no real reason for a souped-up 5 iron with the loft of an old 3 iron.

Finally, think of how crazy an architect could get if courses were short enough that the elite didn't complain about "fairness" all the time. On such short courses, it would be almost impossible for elite players to even think about the ground game, which means you could make the path along the ground extremely accommodating for weaker players without diminishing the challenge for guys playing aerial golf. The great flaw of modern golf is that we've tried to make it an equitable challenge for all players. We'd gain so much more flexibility in how we challenge elite players if we kept our courses short enough to guarantee that they can't play the same game as their shorter-hitting counterparts.

[Donovan Childers]

This assumes that people will always listen to what the USGA & the R&A have to say. There was already some talk about the pga tour doing their own rules when the anchored putter ban was talked about. There have been other companies talking about  building non conforming equipment today. Somebody would eventually spend the money and build bigger courses and Club companies will make equipment for that purpose. As long as there is money to be spent, there will be somebody standing there to make it, including course designers.

If 6500 rule were ever in place, I guess you would see more courses like Tobacco Road, or Tot Hill Farm. Mike Strantz has already show what can be done with 6500 yards. And I don't see the pro game changing all that much.

[mike_beene]

Architecture would be even more important. You might see a good course still require every club including driver. Perhaps driver is hit 6 times instead of 12 times. Maybe on 2 par 5 holes, 3 long par 4 s and 3 drive able fours. Throw in a few long par 3s and every club gets used and every shot tested. We would call it a par 70 but even if the real par for a pro is 66, so what. He still needed every club and perhaps his good round is 61 instead of 67. Why does that not work? It works very well at many older clubs.

[Sean_A]

If the ruling bodies mandated the max length of the course I don't see why they wouldn't have eventually mandated the max length the ball carries.  For the same reason, I don't think bifurcation would have been on the cards. 

This scenario may seem like a dream come true and maybe it is.  But it would certainly diminish one aspect of golf which makes it unique, the playing fields are all different. The fields would still be different, but in a more limited way.  Losing that added aspect of design would be harsh, but perhaps a good trade off for better control of the ball.

Ciao 

[Jeff_Brauer]

Actually touched on this topic last night at dinner with my son, a good golfer.  Our home club is 6700 yards, which he and his former college golf buds could overpower, but usually don't.

Basically at that length, if the pins are easy, they shoot 60's (he shot a 63 in the club championship, for example) but if put in tricky positions, its still hard to break 70.

Based on that, I suspect greens might be designed differently, with more tucked pins if a club was interested in protecting par, and more contour than the typical 1.5-<2% cup areas to keep the challenge up a different way.  And, maybe the pins would be even closer to the fringe than they already are!

Some clubs would protect all the greens and fw better, maybe in the RTJ 50's style.  I believe any chance of wide fairways would be greatly reduced, as golf implemented the old US Open strategies to protect par in light of effectively reduced length.  I mean, if there were other strategies to counter effectively shorter courses, I think someone would have come up with them by now, so I think we have sort of seen what would happen in general, but it might be even more exaggerated.

Interesting, because its not out of the realm of possibility that somewhere, courses are mandated to take out turf to conserve water, and many might simply reduce yardage, taking out back tees that hardly anyone uses anyway.  So, for different reasons, this could still happen somewhere and it would be interesting to see the real world results.

[Carl Rogers]

connecting to other threads, the single irrigation line with the crusty soft edge to the un-maintained
-severely defended greens
-severely defended strategically optimal through the green areas

[jeffwarne]

not all 6500 yard courses need be short.
i.e. there is still room for long and or uphill par 4's or 3's, as long as balanced by short 3's or 4'
a la Merion.

If GCA existed in 1990, would we have the same discussion about 6000 yard courses?

Nearly all course reactions/adjustments to hot equipment are bad, and take away strategy and enjoyment for the average player.
What is most amazing to me are the comments that the ball/driver are maxed out.
I've been hearing that since 1980.
Sadly, for most golfers, they are maxed out-but the better and elite players keep benefitting.
ironically, the rollback camp is more often frequented by the best players

[Jud_T]

Owners might be less married to Par 72 courses with 4 5s and 4 3s.