I was with Tom yesterday at Pacific Grove. We played with Brian, who is a much better golfer than I am but we played a course that Huckaby and I are much more familiar with. It is a course where having knowledge of the course can really pay off.
Brian can hit the driver, and if you tell him where to aim, every time but once he hit it exactly where you tell him to aim. I obviously should have been pointing out much more aggressive lines for him than I did.
We got to the 14th hole at Pacific Grove. Whenever playing with a long hitter I would always tell them to hit less than a driver. The fairway really narrows at about 250 yards from the tee. I told Brian, and as usual he hit a perfect 4 wood to the perfect spot. But it did get me thinking about the strategy. He can hit the drive almost exactly where he wants, so why not bomb away? His strategy could have been hit the driver down the neck and face only a wee pitch to the green.
As it was, he hit 4 wood, I hit one of my few good drives of the day, we were close to the same spot, I hit on the front side of the green, he hit his iron about 12 feet from the pin. I sunk a bomb for a birdie and he missed his 12 footer for a tap-in par. Our match was already over, so I just chalked up my lone birdie as me performing better when no pressure is on me. But I did feel a pang of guilt as possibly giving Brian bad advice.
Then he hit his first wayward drive on 16 making me feel a bit better about my advice.
My feeling toward PG is that it is a course where it used to not make any sense to bomb away. But it has been a long time since I played with a really good player there. I was surprised by what I saw Brian do there yesterday.
So I'm curious, with the better younger players, would you hit a little less club when faced with a fairway that narrows around where you hit driver, or would you bomb away trusting you rarely hit it wayward? The different in approach, at least on this hole was probably about a wedge from 120 yards or a pitch from within 50 yards.
My feeling is more than length, the ball and equipment are straighter and more consistent than they used to be. In theory, that should help the hacks like me more, but what has happened is younger, good players swing different, much more all-out on every swing, with less fear than in days past. Davis Love as a youngster was just as long as any of the kids coming up, but he didn't find success on Tour until he learned to swing at less than 100 percent. Now there is much less reason to swing as anything less than a 100 percent.
Dan King
Fifty percent of the fairways we play on today are better than 90 percent of the greens we played 30 years ago.
--Jim Ferree