I would like to thank Pete Galea for posting that article on green grass by Brad Faxon , I loved it .
I decided to store it in a folder I keep ,with all my other favourite articles . While there I started reading some of them again and being a "newbie" decided to share this one with the group .
It was in a UK version of Golf World and is a rant on long grass by Greg Turner.
Brian Ewen
GOLF WORLD SEPT. 2000
GREG TURNER
Why do we have an obsession with long grass ?
It is the bane of what is usually called the modern game.
Today it goes under the name of the "long rough" and is generally accepted as a legitimate hazard. Of course this was never really intended to be the case, indeed with most courses developing either by the sea or on acidic heathland soils, the grasses that proliferated were liable to grow either long or lush.
Course designers in those days were forced into that long forgotten tradition of using guile to create difficulty. The idea was to lure the unskilfull or tactically naive player out of position, thereby creating increasingly difficult circumstances or recovery. This requires real tactical appreciation and subtlety, neither of which seem to be present in abundance on many of today's courses. The long-grass-flanking the fairway approach, on the other hand, produces golf for dunces.
There are a couple of reasons for increasing incorporation of rough as a playing hazard. With many of our newer courses being built on farmland, on soils proficient to growing nice juicy pasture, the Type of grasses that proliferate are of the broader-leafed variety. If just left alone, these quickly develop into the kind you dare not lay your bag down for fear of never finding it again.
The other reason for growing long grass is that if you happen to have a course of little character or definition, cutting grass at different ,levels creates some of that missing definition. And it sure looks pretty to the eye - all those Wembley stripes and different shades of green! The main culprits of course have been our western cousins, those from the land of the free and the home of the brave. The American psyche seems particularly suited to the punitive punishment that long rough provides. The idea that if thou err off the straight and narrow thou shalt be punished is like caviar to the American palate.
Perhaps their puritan ancestry is at the root of it, but any society that still thinks state-sanctioned murder an appropriate deterrent (and believes that the right to carry a gun makes you safer) just loves the idea that, if you hit your golf ball somewhere you shouldn't, it ought to be buried deep in impregnable foliage.
There is a number of glaring flaws with this flow of logic. Firstly, the game is actually supposed to be fun! Now I don't know about you, but for my money the only thing I can think of that's less enjoyable than searching for someone else's ball in the long hay is searching for your own. If you do find it, the sideways hack is about as much fun as a jellyfish in a wet suit.
Secondly, if there is one great leveller in the game it is long grass. Through much personal experience I have found that I'm every bit as proficient as Colin Montgomerie at the 20-yard slash with a lob wedge back to the fairway. Ah, but Monty doesn't get into the stuff as often as you do, I hear you say. True, but when he does, he usually suffers the added difficulty, of being close to the fairway - and that is where the rough is generally at it's worst. This quirk occurs because of the proximity of the watering system, the spillover of fairway fertilizers and the fact that the gallery ropes tend to be well into the rough.
Let's face it. If we took the philosophy behind long grass to its conclusion, we would end up with 30-yard wide fairways flanked by lines. If you strayed outside these lines, a mandatory drop within them for a one shot penalty would result. Totally equitable and every bit as ludicrously un-golflike as long grass!
As I see it, the ability to escape from trouble is intrinsic to the game. The idea should be that the better the shot, the greater the reward, rather than the worse the shot the greater the penalty. The catch with implementing this philosophy is that it requires careful thought being given to course design.
Alister MacKenzie was one designer who defined this strategy in his work. His basic philosophy involved placing various hazards, usually bunkers and sandy wasteland, on the direct line to the green and then angling the green in such a way that the further your tee shot finished from the ideal position, the more difficult your approach shot would be. By doing this MacKenzie ensured that the test would be as cerebral as it was physical, and that there would be plenty of room for those of all skill levels to enjoy the game. Essentially this meant that any hazard placed well away from the desired line of play would be not only redundant but unfair - it created a double penalty. Anyone who had executed their shot so poorly deserved sympathy rather than further ignominy.
The bottom line is that if a course needs to be flanked by great swathes of long grass to be sufficiently testing, it's probably not much of a course at all. Ultimately the game will only become more enjoyable by dint of improvements in design rather than agronomy.