GOLF Magazine, Head to Head, October 1982.
ARE TOUR COURSES TOO EASY?
YES
Robert Trent Jones
When I contend the pro’s play on relatively easy courses, I am taking into account the tremendous degree of skill exhibited by PGA Tour players. Such players need challenges far beyond what the average golfer would conceive as necessary.
Besides the large number of fine competitors, changes in equipment over many years are a factor in my reasoning. In the 1920’s, golfers used wooden-shafted clubs. Steel shafts being lighter, it’s a simple law of physics that the ball will travel further. And modern golfers can swing in a different pattern: with today’s shorter, more compact backswing they have an advantage in accuracy as well.
How much have shot making values changed? It’s amazing. In the 1920’s a 220 yard drive was considered a long ball. Today many pro’s average 270 or more yards with their drives. That’s 50-yard difference off the tee alone, and the pro will hit his irons commensurately longer as well. The end result is that a 400-yard hole back then would have required a drive and a 2-iron for the fine player; today it’s often a drive and a wedge!
Amateur golfers think a 7,000 yard course is terribly long. For them, perhaps it is, but not for the pro’s. Championship courses in the Bobby Jones era averaged about 6,300 yards. Although the 700 yard difference sounds like a lot, it averages less than 40 yards per hole, and that doesn’t make up for the technique and equipment advances.
Almost every Tour pro can reach the greens in two on par fives that are under 550 yards. At Augusta National’s famous par fives, most pro’s are hitting the greens with iron second shots. When Ray Floyd won the Masters in 1976, he was 14 under par on the par fives alone. That says it all. Given relatively flat terrain and normal weather, a par-5 must be 600 yards long to test today’s Tour players.
I am not advocating the middle handicappers tackle longer and tougher layouts as well. That’s the purpose of separate tees. A 6,400 yard course may provide ample test for the amateur, but the pro will rip it apart, as Bob Gilder did at Westchester and Tim Norris did at Hartford this year.
My philosophy of golf design has always been that each hole should present an opportunity for a hard or an easy bogey, with enough flexibility in length for all levels of golfer to receive this challenge. Yes, my courses are much tougher for the pro’s to play than the amateurs. But that’s as it should be.
END
RTJ’s opinion rings truer today than when written. The only disagreement is his contention that most pros were reaching 550 yard par-5’s in two. I’d say 550 yards was a 20 yard stretch for the time, but how common were 550 yard plus par-5’s. They certainly are more common today.
I find it interesting he went back to the wooden shaft era to illustrate how far golf technology had progressed in six short decades. The monumental leap to The Power Golf Era took only another 16 years, and its first seed for transformation, metalwoods, began about the time RTJ wrote his opinion. Now we have the culmination of solid ball technology with oversize Titanium heads married with extra long, ultra-light shafts. We have come so far that the One-Ball rule is meaningless.
RTJ’s hard par, easy bogey philosophy, designing courses to play significantly tougher from the back is generally crapped on by those on this site, but isn’t Pete Dye’s “kill the pro’s philosophy”, just the same but in other words. Don't most of his courses aim to "kill the pro's"? Mr. Dye’s work is visually more tantalizing, memorable and fun than RTJ’s, but does the end result really different from RTJ’s philosophy? Hasn’t Pete Dye been a proponent of this philosophy more than anyone else in recent architecture?
RTJ’s philosophy of 7,000 yards not being that tough (most courses…devoid of wind) is also hugely true today. The average drive on Tour is 280.7 yards. 17 guys on the Buy.com Tour average 300 plus yards, with 326 yards topping the charts. To get a 2-iron in the average pros hands the hole need be 510 yards. The long par-4 is dead at this level, yet 6,400 yards is still more than enough to challenge the average golfer. Torrey Pines, Bethpage Black, these are (like it or not) the courses of future championships. If the ball is not seriously rolled back, what will major championship courses look like in 2012? Augusta is also a member of the “21st Century School of Design”, where courses are being stretched to new lengths. Perhaps Purgatory will be a candidate soon… Merion…under current conditions…it could host another National Open…for women.