Sweet dreams, Tom...............zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
OK, now that TEP is asleep, does anybody else out there (Tommy N.?) agree with me on the analogy between a US Open set-up and the actions of the French general staff in WWI (as portrayed in Kubrick's "Paths of Glory")?
Yes, it is "strategy" to send young soldiers out of the trenches and over the barbed wire to capture an "Anthill" and see how many, if any, come back alive; and depicting this act can be great theatre and possibly high art; but, is the act itself the noblest expression of the art of strategy? I think not.
Let me add, since I had to edit a tyop or two above......
To take the WWI anaolgy a bit further, wasn't the Shinnecock 2004 Open am eye-opening example of a technological stalemate between the attackers and defenders of "par?" One one side you have the players and their equipment, who have been developed into finely tuned attacking machines. On the other side you have the preparers of the course--USGA offcials and local groundstaff--who take the architecture they have been given (by Flynn or whomever) and strive to make it as impregnable to the players as possible. Because of technological advances in agronomy (as well as new "doctrine", i.e. the obsession with speed) the defenders have reached a point where they can frustrate any attacker, if they wish to, by making any course virtually unplayable. And, in doing so, don't they vitiate most if not all of the strategic options available to the player/attacker?
I think yes, and this is why I think that this year's US Open was not any sort of celebration of golfing strategy. Rather, it was a paean to anti-strategy, much like WWI, and I, for one, would rather watch man using his brain to soar above nature than being forced to crawl in the mud (sic) and die in the trenches. But, to each his (or her) own.......