Ross,

I think you are polarizing the issue more than it should be polarized. To define the ground game as the crutch of the weaker player goes against most wisdom bouncing around in the golf world.

I've always been taught, and I always teach, that the good golfer seeks to get the ball on the ground as soon as is practical. The conditions and set up of a golf course in it's Ideal Maintenance Meld will go along with this principle.

When a course is at ideal firmness, sometimes the ground game is the BEST option for approach. The idea is to balance the design so that different approaches are tested at different times.

Look at the highlights from this past US Am at Merion, the course SHINED in that regard. Look at courses set up day in and day out like Fisher's Island and Huntingdon Valley, and you will see the balance in approach.

Is TGG overrated or misunderstood on GCA? I don't think it is at all.

On way too many courses, TGG is unnecessary due to conditioning. Throw in the unreal abitilties of tour players and you may not see the need.

But, play a course that is firm, has a lot of wind and you will discover the joy...even necessity of playing the ball along the ground. It isn't a crutch at all....it's an option which is often taken away by misguided desires and insecurities.

Joe

Perhaps at some championship level, where all the players are bombing it and having predominantly short clubs coming in (especially in the US and where the wind isn't a dominant force) the ground game lessens in importance. But for the 99% of us not driving it 280+, who play the game for fun as a game, who hit more than just 9 irons thru wedges into greens and who miss more than our share of fairways, having non-aerial options makes the game far more interesting.

How about another important element of the ground game, what tee shots do after they land? The right trajectory and ball flight into fairways designed to acknowledge the ground game reward the well thought out and executed tee shot with added distance and/or superior positioning, and kick unsoundly thought through or executed tee shots into bunkers or into awkward angles complicating the next shot into the green. Perhaps at the top level of the game it's all about carry and then stopping the ball before it runs into trouble, but isn't a fairway contoured to give boosts to the right shot something to be valued?

Ross,

Welcome to the board.  You are obviously a great student of the game.  Sorry our first exchange was awkward.

You are correct that I think about approach play when discussing the ground game.  Especially on firm courses where the wind blows, like the Bandon courses in my home state of Oregon.  Then I'm trying to hit low shots into the wind or crosswind, and high shots downwind.  Give me a 10-15 mph breeze, and if I've got that low hook going, I'm tough, baby!

So for me, "the ground game" is a fairly specialized attribute which only a small percentage of courses possess.

I'll just say the same thing I say every time a ground thread comes up.

Most posters here are from the US, and suffer more over watering than much of the rest of the world. Thus, their view on the near lack of existence of the ground game is heavily biased by narrowed local experience.

I live in Melbourne, and just played 18 holes this morning on a course with large greens. On 11-12 holes today, the only possible play that prevented the ball going over the back was to achieve at least one and sometimes two bounces short of the green. On one hole, I hit a well struck nine iron accidentally a few yards too far and it carried onto the front edge of the green. I chipped back on from over the back. A few UK golfers know what I experienced, as do some others elsewhere. It was great fun. It was extremely interesting (such as when a player in our group wrong sided themselves with a trap to carry or the like and had to bunt cutting shots that ran up onto the green from an approach angle other than where they played from), it rewarded thinking and was perfectly fair as we all had the same requirements placed upon us. The tee shots had similar challenges at times where there were doglegs or runouts.

Andrew

You hint at what is the real paradox of this issue.

1.  Courses designed (or found) with "ground game" options play much easier (relatively) for the average (15-20) handicap player when they are NOT maintained firm and fast.  Under those conditions, the ball rolls enough to make it possible to hit the green with a scuttle, but not so far as to have the scuttle get into severe trouble.  In those conditions, the elite golfer will fire at the pin with impunity.

2.  Alternatively when such courses are really "tuned up" (as described by Tony above), the better players (who have the distance and direction to "really" play the ground game) come to the fore, and the average players are at a loss.  Their bread a butter shots fly thorugh greens or into bunkers and into positions that they do not have the skill to extricate themselves from.  To extend my tennis analogy above, they find that the lobs they have been so succesful with in their regular match vs. Mr. and Mrs. Haversham, just do not work when they are playing Roger Federer and Venus Williams.

The really great players (i.e. touring pros) will even be able toplay the aerial game under such conditions, if the situation requires it.  They can put so much spin on the ball than we can that they will stop shots from hardpan onto hardpan that defies our belief.  I have seen it, and it is sobering.

So, what is the architect (or the greenkeeper) to do?  Design and maintain a course that really tests the super-elite or one which is playable by a wide range of players?  The ones I know (from my 25+ years of playing and watching golf in Scotland) which do it the best try to keep the course at some happy medium most of the playing year (so as to not to discourage "les autres"), but then supercharge it for big events.  The result is that most of us never get a chance to see what fast and firm and the ground game really means, and tend to romanticise its egalitarian properties.

All IMHO, of course.

The best golfers rarely use the ground game because they don't need to or are not able, due to conditions.  When pushed to use TGG their superiority is still evident.  

Steve

In a 1960 SI some pros were asked what hole they felt they played best at ANGC.

Some answers were predicatable. Palmer said the 15th because he felt he could use his cut 2i or 3i to good advantage to hit the green in two. Finsterwald liked the 12th because he felt he had great control over his medium irons.

But two answers surprised me. Doug Ford said that he always tried to land his approaches short of the 11th. If they bumped onto the green, fine. If not, he liked his chances chipping. In any event, he took a 6 out of the equation. He went on to say that he preferred chipping from the right side of a hole at ANGC than putting from the wrong side, thus he didn't mind missing greens if it was on the correct side.

Julius Boros said that because he hit a low ball, he had an advantage at 5. He said he always tried to roll his approaches up to the green with a 2i or 3i. Given the extreme contouring of the green, he felt his low ball, ground game gave him a distinct advantage over the field at holding the green.

So at least as late as the mid 60's, prominent pros still viewed the ground game as an important part of their repetoire.

Bob

I agree with the consensus of many of the posts here. When a course is soft you need to keep the ball high to get anywhere but in the fairways particlarly, the ball will stop not terribly far from where it landed.

When the ground is firm and undulating, it can change the play of a hole significantly. A great example is a simple dogleg left. Most players will struggle in hitting a draw but can play the shot to the corner and rely on the ball stopping not far from where it landed.

Now add significant bounce and roll to the same hole and the ball can easily skip right through the turn and into the rough. This forces the player to play the corner somehow. You either need to play a draw, bounce the corner, or layup short, but it does add another dimension to the game.

TGG makes golf more interesting. Firm and fast conditions through the green makes golf so much more interesting than the drop and stop aerial game. Obviously it is dependent on the weather in many respects, but the fact that it tends to be consistently evident at the 2 Opens leads me to conclude that it is as dependent on the persons responsible for setting up the course as the weather.

I'd suggest that if you are dismissing the ground game, perhaps it is misunderstood by you.

TGG is not misunderstood by most contributors on GCA.com who sing its praises.  The proper incorporation of TGG into a golf course design is revered by many on GCA.com because it is an option of design that upholds the traditions of the game.  TGG was being set aside by many modern architects because of conventional wisdon that crept into the golf scene and one dimensional play by U.S. centric golfers.  The modern golf course design model became one based on lush green and generally soft conditions.  Uniformly narrow FWs 27-35' wide, and flat soft greens began to utilise repetitive bunkering at inside and outside doglegs in the LZ and greenside Bs guarding flattish, perhaps sectional/tiered greens as the primary and repetitive strategy.  When width, lines of charm, bunkering within the FWs went away, so did the understanding of TGG.  

A crutch for the weaker player is a canard.  I remember a guy winning the 2000 Open, never getting into a B, and bounding the ball artfully to all the rightly selected places in FWs and onto greens from short of putting surfaces.  He was never considered a weak player, yet he did not misunderstand the appropriate time to use TGG.

...
Rich,
  I think you make some good points regarding realistic set-up. I've never been able to understand how the pros can put so much spin on the ball...I certainly can't do it!

The pros lay up to a full swing distance. The higher the loft of the club they use at that distance the more spin they can create. The faster the swing speed the more spin they can create. The higher spinning ball they use, the more spin they can create (in GD, Tiger says he uses a higher spin ball than everyone else).

Therefore, hit all your drives to SW or LW distance, swing at full speed, use the highest spin ball you can find, catch the ball cleanly and you will begin to approximate the spin of the pros. But then, since you probably don't carry your drives anywhere near 300 yds, you will only approximate the spin of the pros.