[Phil Benedict]

Sentiment on this site is overwhelming in favor of wide corridors of play.  Personally I favor wide open space because I am such an erratic player.

Having said this, I think that championship level golf should reward accurate driving and occasionally punish off line hits.  At the US Open Mickelson couldn't get the ball in play and eventually he paid for it - getting what he deserved in my opinion.  I think the greatest test in golf is when you have to hit the fairway on a tight hole under pressure.  US Open style golf may be boring to some, but I think it tests accuracy in an appropriate way given the significance of the event.

[PThomas]

I agree....a non accurate hitter should be punished

[Mark_Fine]

Width for the sake of width is a waste of real estate!  I agree.  However, the reason many of us are advocates of width is because on well designed golf courses, width creates options and angles, and these aspects of the game are a big part of what makes golf interesting and exciting (even for the pros).  

I always like to tell a story about a course in Ohio that restored much of the lost "width” to their fairways.  Prior to the fairways being widened, many of the single digit handicappers were complaining that the golf course “was going to be ruined” and “was going to be too easy”.  They said the consultant/architect didn’t understand what he was doing.  The pro was diligent enough to keep a chart of handicaps prior to the changes.  A year later after the wider fairways had been in play for the golf season, the results proved very interesting.  The average single digit handicap at the club “went up by almost a full stroke”.  So if you were a six handicap, you were now about an seven.  On the other hand, the higher handicappers average handicap when down by almost the same amount.  How can you explain that?

Well, one of the reasons is that on many of the older well designed golf courses, play was meant to be along the edges and not necessarily down the middle.  When the fairways were narrowed, all play had to go down the middle or else the player was faced with a shot out of thick rough.  When the fairways were restored and widened, the hazards that had been left languishing out in the rough were all of a sudden brought back into play.  The better golfers who used to play down the middle were starting to realize that if they for example skirted the fairway bunker on the left or tried to carry it, they would be rewarded with a better line into a back right pin location.  These golfers started getting themselves in more trouble because they were tempted to take lines of play that were not available to them with the narrow fairways.  The higher handicappers on the other hand, just saw the widening as more fairway to hit to and the game became a little easier for them.  Everybody wins.  Needless to say, the lower handicappers who were complaining aren’t complaining as much anymore  

Education about these things goes a long way but it takes time and patience (and usually requires someone at the club to step up and lead it through)!  I'm sure a lot of us spent time talking about this topic when we are out at clubs.  I know I do.  

Hope this one example helps.
Mark

[Joe Hancock]

Medinah was a good example of how tight fairways lined with deep rough lessened the penalty for offline shots. If the rough was down, dry, unirrigated and unfertilized, along with the fairways, then some of the pro's might have actually had to play around or through the trees. But no, it wasn't meant to be.

Joe

[Shane Gurnett]

I think the greatest test in golf is when you have to hit the fairway on a tight hole under pressure.  

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have read here for many years.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Shane, your comment isn't very enlightening. If you disagree, please say why, specifically.

Aside from nostalgia, does any unthinking proponent of wide fws consider for a moment that the entire golf community from 1929 until now may not have been completely crazy for altering courses the way they did? I tend to believe that they did what was best overall.  Granted, you give something up to get something else, and we have lost the charm of the occiaisonal wide fw, but if we went back to them in a wholesale fashion, we would give up other architectural attributes.  

If Congress declared that fw's must be 60 yards wide from here on out, it would be as forumulaic as anything else we could do, and probably just as boring golf as a string of narrow fairways.

Most golfers agree with the logic of punishing off line shots is never lost on them.  Ultra wide fw either make it too easy for bombers or puts an undue emphasis on short game and putting, and isn't considered a balanced challenge.  For that matter, the idea that a frontal opening reached only from one side of a wide fw is kinda going by the wayside as the only way to design a course - IMHO, it works best downwind.

At the very least, the idea that narrow fw have a right to exist in this country shouldn't be put down with a dismissive remark.

BTW, I don't know what the toughest shot in golf is, but have always believed that its one whose description begins with "All I have to do is......"  Just ask Phil, and a host of other 18th hole or final round tourney leaders.  He might have missed an interstate with that tee shot.

[Shane Gurnett]

Jeff, how can the greatest test in golf be hitting a tight target from the tee? If that were the case then why bother going anywhere else but the driving range? Even if you do hit the tight fairway, the job still isn't done yet. The game is still about getting the ball into the hole in the fewest strokes. Hitting the fairway doesn't guarantee the lowest score.

The Amercian obsession with straight cut narrow fairways and bordering penal rough is completely anti strategy and a blight on the game for players of any ability. If you kept it to yourselves I could care less, but its a dispicable disease which is spreading worldwide (along with compulsory carts, $200+ green fees, 7500 yard courses etc etc).

The US Open and its baby clone brother the USPGA are yawn fests from start to finish (except when an Aussie beats your homegrown gambling addicts). The US Masters is now almost as bad. Thank god for the Open Championship .

Shane

[Tony_Muldoon]

I always like to tell a story about a course in Ohio that restored much of the lost "width” to their fairways.  Prior to the fairways being widened, many of the single digit handicappers were complaining that the golf course “was going to be ruined” and “was going to be too easy”.  ...  A year later after the wider fairways had been in play for the golf season, the results proved very interesting.  The average single digit handicap at the club “went up by almost a full stroke”. ...

Well, one of the reasons is that on many of the older well designed golf courses, play was meant to be along the edges and not necessarily down the middle.  When the fairways were narrowed, all play had to go down the middle or else the player was faced with a shot out of thick rough.  When the fairways were restored and widened, the hazards that had been left languishing out in the rough were all of a sudden brought back into play.  The better golfers who used to play down the middle were starting to realize that if they for example skirted the fairway bunker on the left or tried to carry it, they would be rewarded with a better line into a back right pin location.  These golfers started getting themselves in more trouble because they were tempted to take lines of play that were not available to them with the narrow fairways.  

Hope this one example helps.
Mark

I've edited Mark's post down.  However it seems to me the logic here is that low handicaps should just ignore the edges and bomb down the old lines they took and the course will be more forgiving.  But the thread is asking about Championship Golf it’s the fear that the old hazards are not strong enough that leads to narrower fairways.


The point about Phil, also Joe's comment, is that with the distance they hit nowadays you have to be in serious trouble either behind a tree or in water for a hazard to really affect your chance of getting the next shot on the green.  So for tree lined courses wide fairways and runoff can offer a better challenge than narrow?  More examples please.  

Also those who have really studied developments at Augusta why do you think they've followed this path?

[Ed Tilley]

Of the 13 players that have won 6 majors or more, i.e. the best golfers of all time, their breakdown of major wins is as follows:

Open Championship   36 wins
Masters                  27 wins
US PGA                   25 wins
US Open                 24 wins

I'm not sure this would support the USGA's assertion that their set up identifies the 'best player', particularly given that the US Open is the only one of the 4 that these players would always have played (e.g. Ben Hogan only played one Open, the Masters came after the careers of Jones and Hagen). Interestingly, every one of theses 13 players has won the Open Championship and only Trevino (of the modern players) hasn't won the Masters.

if you looked at just the modern era (i.e. from Palmer onwards) the breakdown would be Masters 22, Open 21, US Open 11, US PGA 12.

IMO the two majors that traditionally place emphasis on creativity and shot making (The Open and Masters) over straight hitting have clearly had more success in identifying the best player.

[Andrew Thomson]

For championship golf I think it depends on which perspective you choose.  From the player point of view I don't think it makes much difference if fairways are narrow or wide.  Sure, players may have preferences, but they do not and should not have any say in the set up of a course.  

They effectively stand up on the tee and are told where to hit it.  There is no choice other than how far they wish to hit it.

Then when they miss the 10 yard wide fairway they get caught in thick rough and all the hazards become superflous.

[Mark_Fine]

Tony,
The old lines of play in my example were still available after the fairways were widened, however, the temptation was restored with the new width to offer other potentially more rewarding lines of play.  You miss my point with your comment about just bombing it down the middle and "the course will be more forgiving".  More birdies will come from the edges and the good players know this.  But so will more bogies.  It is the temptation of the reward that lures them to the sides.  

I remember walking Cherry Hills with Tim Moraghan as we discussed the fairway lines for the U.S. Women's Open.  On hole #11 which is a long par five up the hill, there is fairway bunker on the left cut into the hillside.  First of all there was a tree in front of that bunker blocking the aggressive play.  We fortunately had this taken down.  Next the fairway there was pushed out and away from this bunker leaving little temptation to try to skirt it or carry over it to shorten the next shot to the hole.  We discussed the strategy and moved the fairway closer to the bunker and beyond it to restore this temptation.  I recall during the tournament watching several of the top players who ended up in that bunker (one of them was AS) thinking, "we might have cost her the championship if we left the fairway alone.  She never would have been tempted to take that line".  

[BCrosby]

I had an interesting conversation with Larry Nelson at the Tour Championship this year at East Lake. We got to talking about Oakmont and his win there. He said the fairways were so narrow and the rough so penal that on the first couple of tees on Thursday he freaked out and could barely swing. He recalled that he started the tournament bogey, double bogey or something like that.

So he decided to take a different approach to the tight fairways. He closed his eyes on his tee shots. He aligned himself as to where he wanted to go, closed his eyes and swung. He said he didn't look at bunkers, rough, hills, nothing - he just closed his eyes and swung. That was the only way he could deal with the narrowness of the playing corridors. He played the entire tournament by not looking at the course from the tee.

That such an approach could be successful suggests, among other things, that penal set ups are, in essence, tests of a player's ability to hit it straight. And that is what Nelson figured out. You don't need to understand the architecture. Heck, you don't even need to look at it. You just have to hit it straight down the irrigation pipe.

Nelson agreed. He said that because of the penal set-up, he felt like the great architectural features at Oakmont were largely irrelevant to him. He ignored those features, focused exclusively on repeating his own swing - to the point of closing his eyes - and he won the damn thing.

That is at the heart of why I think USGA set ups tend to result in dull golf and dull tournaments. Or, conversely, train wrecks, like last year's Open at WF. (Try watching a replay of the '06 US Open. It is painful. The theme is great golfers being beaten up. It is not great golfers displaying their skills.)

Penal set ups tend to reduce courses, even great courses, to platforms for testing a certain kind of golfing skill, a skill that could be tested more accurately with white lines on a driving range. In fact, if we are to believe Larry Nelson, the best way to play such courses is to ignore their design features altogether and pretend you ARE at the driving range.

Bob

[Phil Benedict]

I think the greatest test in golf is when you have to hit the fairway on a tight hole under pressure.  

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have read here for many years.

Am I entitled to some sort of award for this?

[JR Potts]

Medinah was a good example of how tight fairways lined with deep rough lessened the penalty for offline shots. If the rough was down, dry, unirrigated and unfertilized, along with the fairways, then some of the pro's might have actually had to play around or through the trees. But no, it wasn't meant to be.

Joe

Agreed!  That being said, Medinah's fairways aren't that tight.

[Jeff Doerr]

Ed,

Thanks for your input.

The US Open and the PGA are moving towards the same setup. Narrow fairways and thick rough. The artificial piece to the rough is that it tends to be high and difficult right off the fairway. If you hit it just a little farther off line you'll bounce it into the area where the gallery stands. There you'll find trampled down rough and pretty reasonable shotmaking conditions if the angle is still OK. At the next level of wayward tee shot the pro will often end up in the same place. This time the ball hits the gallery and lands in the trampled zone. Finally you have the Tiger or Phil wayward shot that puts the golfer in the trees or some other truly creative land.

To me this is the bizarre rub of the green of tournament golf - the slightly wayward tee shot can often be punished more than the medium wayward.

The same thing can be said about greens, grandstands and spectators. That would be a topic for another thread.

[Andy Troeger]

To me it seems that the wide/narrow fairway debate for an average amateur probably comes down to what parts of the game are strengths. I'm not an especially straight driver of the ball, so wide fairways (whether or not there are good/bad angles in them) are a huge aid to my game because I am generally a fairly precise iron player with an adequate short game. Narrow fairways make life very difficult because I can't hit the iron shots if I'm in deep rough or the trees.

That essentially is my argument for wide fairways, because it allows more chance to recover and makes the game more fun. However, for my game, there's no way on earth that it makes things more difficult except on maybe a few courses that I haven't yet seen. Even if I only hit 50% of the shots to good positions (par-saving perhaps) from a bad angle in the fairway, its much better than my "hack out of the rough" percentage.  No matter how wide the fairways are, I aim for the middle of nearly every fairway I'm presented with (including many with central hazards) because I almost never hit it there and know by doing that I have chance to catch one edge or the other because that's the way I'm most successful. Sometimes I even get lucky and get the good angle!

Obviously its a different game for the pros, but I would have to agree that its also more interesting to watch them have the chance to recover than to hack out of the rough and make boring types of bogeys. I'm not convinced with the quality of today's player to have a course with generous fairways that's not going to yield some low scores unless the conditions are otherwise made very difficult, but maybe that's ok.

[Phil Benedict]

Tight set ups can go over the top.  Carnoustie is the best example of that in recent memory.  That's not what the Open Championship is all about.  My original point was that they have a place in championship golf and that the US Open has claimed this space as its own.  Being able to hit straight drives is an important skill in golf which has recently been diminished and to a certain extent replaced by being able to hit long drives in most pro events.  

While Winged Foot may have been a bit over the top, it exposed a supposedly great player who lost because he couldn't hit straight drives, which he compounded by poor decision-making.  Frankly, Michelson's drives were so far off line that even generous fairways wouldn't have been enough, but I think it was the tightness of the overall layout that got into his head and caused him to lose his swing.

Wide fairways are more fun but I'm not sure championship golf is supposed to be fun.  It's a job for those guys.  Who said work is supposed to be fun?

Ed Tilley's data on the 13 guys who won more than six majors is really interesting.

[Jeff_Brauer]

I am going from memory, but I think the scores in the first year after Augusta introduced the first cut actually went down, perhaps confirming the trend of rough and narrow fw not being any harder for the pros.  I would think the first cut and spin loss would be a good key, but maybe not.

Like Andy says, I wonder why we go to the six best golfers of all time to determine what works for the 30 million rounds of non tournament golf played each year in this country.  The argument against wide fw all the time is that it favors the long hitter too much over the finess guys.  Even long hitting amateurs have trouble from rough, whereas the top of the top are stronger and more experienced.

Personally, I think a variety works.

[George Pazin]

Width for the sake of width is a waste of real estate!  I agree.  However, the reason many of us are advocates of width is because on well designed golf courses, width creates options and angles, and these aspects of the game are a big part of what makes golf interesting and exciting (even for the pros).  

I always like to tell a story about a course in Ohio that restored much of the lost "width” to their fairways.  Prior to the fairways being widened, many of the single digit handicappers were complaining that the golf course “was going to be ruined” and “was going to be too easy”.  They said the consultant/architect didn’t understand what he was doing.  The pro was diligent enough to keep a chart of handicaps prior to the changes.  A year later after the wider fairways had been in play for the golf season, the results proved very interesting.  The average single digit handicap at the club “went up by almost a full stroke”.  So if you were a six handicap, you were now about an seven.  On the other hand, the higher handicappers average handicap when down by almost the same amount.  How can you explain that?

Well, one of the reasons is that on many of the older well designed golf courses, play was meant to be along the edges and not necessarily down the middle.  When the fairways were narrowed, all play had to go down the middle or else the player was faced with a shot out of thick rough.  When the fairways were restored and widened, the hazards that had been left languishing out in the rough were all of a sudden brought back into play.  The better golfers who used to play down the middle were starting to realize that if they for example skirted the fairway bunker on the left or tried to carry it, they would be rewarded with a better line into a back right pin location.  These golfers started getting themselves in more trouble because they were tempted to take lines of play that were not available to them with the narrow fairways.  The higher handicappers on the other hand, just saw the widening as more fairway to hit to and the game became a little easier for them.  Everybody wins.  Needless to say, the lower handicappers who were complaining aren’t complaining as much anymore  

Education about these things goes a long way but it takes time and patience (and usually requires someone at the club to step up and lead it through)!  I'm sure a lot of us spent time talking about this topic when we are out at clubs.  I know I do.  

Hope this one example helps.
Mark

Terrific post.

[George Pazin]

Jeff, how can the greatest test in golf be hitting a tight target from the tee? If that were the case then why bother going anywhere else but the driving range? Even if you do hit the tight fairway, the job still isn't done yet. The game is still about getting the ball into the hole in the fewest strokes. Hitting the fairway doesn't guarantee the lowest score.

The Amercian obsession with straight cut narrow fairways and bordering penal rough is completely anti strategy and a blight on the game for players of any ability. If you kept it to yourselves I could care less, but its a dispicable disease which is spreading worldwide (along with compulsory carts, $200+ green fees, 7500 yard courses etc etc).

The US Open and its baby clone brother the USPGA are yawn fests from start to finish (except when an Aussie beats your homegrown gambling addicts). The US Masters is now almost as bad. Thank god for the Open Championship .

Shane

Another terrific post.

[Kyle Harris]

Of the 13 players that have won 6 majors or more, i.e. the best golfers of all time, their breakdown of major wins is as follows:

Open Championship   36 wins
Masters                  27 wins
US PGA                   25 wins
US Open                 24 wins

I'm not sure this would support the USGA's assertion that their set up identifies the 'best player', particularly given that the US Open is the only one of the 4 that these players would always have played (e.g. Ben Hogan only played one Open, the Masters came after the careers of Jones and Hagen). Interestingly, every one of theses 13 players has won the Open Championship and only Trevino (of the modern players) hasn't won the Masters.

if you looked at just the modern era (i.e. from Palmer onwards) the breakdown would be Masters 22, Open 21, US Open 11, US PGA 12.

IMO the two majors that traditionally place emphasis on creativity and shot making (The Open and Masters) over straight hitting have clearly had more success in identifying the best player.

Ed,

Hate to be a party pooper, but this is enormously flawed logic. It's self-referential.

You're defining the greatness of the player based on a breakdown of majors won. Then go on to say that the major with the most wins in that category is the one that best defines the player being great. There are several other explanations of less dubious logic that can also be true.

Hypotheticals that can reasonable be true: What if the setup of the Masters and Open Championship are such that they identify the same type of mediocre player? That mediocre player will of course win multiple times at those venues. Therefore, it could be argued that these setups are the LEAST likely to identify the greatest of players.

A major can only produce one winner, and by extension of your argument, only certain major identify great players. That being said, if the US Open is said to identify the great players and is enormously difficult to win, the instance rate of victory in a US Open would be less.

Just some food for thought.

[Kalen Braley]

I would 2nd the post about Carnoustie in 99.  That setup was a complete joke and it didn't identify the best player.  It essentially came down to luck!!  And not that Paul Lawrie had any business winning that thing anyways, but what he done since then?

Tight setups don't find the best player who has all the best shots in the bag, only the one who drives it the straightest!!

As was stated before, the USGA should just hold the tourny on the driving range, chalk some lines up, make a grid with points, and save themselves the hassle of tricking out an entire course!

[SL_Solow]

This is not the first time we have discussed this topic.  At the risk of repeating prior arguments I note that the increased distance which I believe is closely related to the new ball/club combinations have reduced the importance of selecting the proper option on courses that emphasize width and angles of approach.  Put simply, when most approaches are hit with short irons/wedges, the angle of approach is less important as a player can stop the ball from any direction when it is coming straight down with spin.  Thus if the goal is to maintain scores near par (the wisdom of which is another topic) one must find another way to make the course tougher.  Hard, extremely fast greens is one way but that can be defeated by untimely rain.  Narrowing fairways with very penal rough is another but it had better be very penal because 60 degree wedges with box grooves can lead to amazing things.  Better still, arrange for a lot of wind.

A question nobody has asked, which is more fun on the 51 weeks when there is no tournament and how do members feel about the changes to their course necessitated by holding a major?  Do their feelings change when their course is criticized either for failing to provide a tough enough test to hold Tiger or alternatively because the changes dictated by the governing body rendered the course uninteresting?

[George Pazin]

As was stated before, the USGA should just hold the tourny on the driving range, chalk some lines up, make a grid with points, and save themselves the hassle of tricking out an entire course!

Or they could just hire the folks at TGC to run The Big Break MMMCVLXIII, with all its silly little challenges.

It mostly comes down to what one views as championship golf. Is it ball striking? Putting? Scrambling? A combination thereof? Is so, what are the proportions?

I find beauty in both Hogan's robotic play and Seve's swashbuckling. I think people that favor narrow fairways somehow view golfers like Seve or Hagen almost as cheaters, like they got away with something.

[Phil Benedict]

Someone mentioned the contrasting styles of Seve and Hogan, citing the appeal of both.  But as wonderful as he was, it's hard to argue against the case that Seve was a flawed player whose weakness - ability to control his long clubs - was exposed in the US Open, where he hardly made a dent.  Hogan on the other hand was the supreme ball-striker who won everything.  If all of golf's majors suited Seve's style he might have won 8-10 majors and be considered the equal of Hogan, which of course we know isn't true.

The real riddle is why Faldo, the most Hogan like player, won only the Masters and Open Championship, when his game was so suited the US Open and PGA set ups.

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