[Patrick_Mucci]

"The difficulty of your shot should be the position the ball is in, not the lie that the ball is in.

Has architecture failed to keep pace with evolving talent and improvements in I & B ?

Has failure to control I & B diminished architectural functionality ?

Or, has the "golfer's spectrum" widened to such a degree that architecture can no longer serve mulitple masters, especially at the fringes ?

I've noticed exceedingly difficult rough this year at the majority of courses I've played.
CC of Fairfield was a nice exception.

While I'm aware of how wet this season has been in the Northeast, it doesn't account for the LENGTH of the rough.

Are clubs gravitating toward the dark side in the presentation of their roughs ?

[Brent Hutto]

I think in an attempt at a simple, pithy statement Ogilvie's formulation gets it wrong. He is using "lie" to mean whether you're in short or long grass. If we say that only position should matter that eliminates the use of up-, down- and side-slopes along with fairway and greenside bunkers. A literal reading of "...position, not the lie..." would lead to golf courses built on huge, flat sod farms of short grass with heavily contoured green complexes to punish certain "positions".

Don't get me wrong, I love playing courses that are somewhat consistent with the Ogilvie Formula and I think you can have something close to that as a venue for a major championship that's compelling. But I reject the idea that the use of long grass as a penalty for certain shots leads to bad golf or bad tournament golf.

[Ronald Montesano]

Clarify I and B, please.  I'm a little fuzzy this AM.

[Bill Brightly]

With today's equipment, and the ability to spin the ball from the fairway, I don't see how there is any way to defend the pin from the best players without penal rough. (Wind works, but I assume that is not part of this discussion.)

[Brent Hutto]

Of course one way to defend against the ability to spin the ball is to cut the hole one yard onto an elevated green with a false front and make them hit off an upslope. Make that easy spin work against them a la the 10th hole at ANGC with a front pin. Or to a lesser extent just give greens a bit back-to-front or even front-to-back tilt and take them out of their comfort zone of flat, makeable birdie putts when they're pin high and 15 feet left or right.

[John Kirk]

Hi Patrick,

Although I didn't study Hazeltine quite as carefully as the other majors this year, I thought the golf course is quite good at creating a best line of attack.  The fairways averaged 32-34 yards wide, narrow but still 30-40% wider than the typical U.S. Open venue.  In order to get that best line of attack, you needed to be very accurate, plus or minus a few yards.  Perhaps that's too much to ask, even from a top professional.

I would mildly disagree with Geoff Oglivy here, though he is one of my favorite analysts of such things.  Ignoring the setup, Hazeltine National appears to reward the proper playing angle nicely.

[TEPaul]

"Are clubs gravitating toward the dark side in the presentation of their roughs?"



Pat:

I don't know if calling it the dark side is the thing to do but there is no question at all that the number of courses that now treat rough very differently compared to the old days is pretty staggering!

How do they do differently and why do they do it differently now than in the old days?

Well, for starters the rough areas in the old days were pretty much whatever the seasons (weather) made them where today so many courses are looking to overcome that "season difference" with the goal of "consistency" throughout the season.

How to they do it? By irrigating (and often fertilizing) rough areas, something that was NEVER done in the old days for very obvious reasons (they couldn't do it back then).

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

I think the desire or ill conceived notion of "uniformity" is the primary difference between the roughs that you and I grew up with and today's roughs.

The incremental penalty for hitting into roughs that hadn't been irrigated is that the ball was usually propelled further off line instead of "caught" by lush rough.

To a degree, rough has been used as a safety net in some feature configurations.

[Bill_McBride]

This kind of deep rough right around the green also results in a very one-dimensional game, i.e. the "chunk and run" hack is about the only play.  Tiger had very difficult shots on #17 and #18 although he was barely off the putting surfaces.

Contrast this to the wonderful setup at the Valley Club of Montecito, where the club has cut every square yard of grass within 50 yards of the 15th, 18th, 1st, 14th greens and several other areas of the course down to tight fairway cut.  There are literally half a dozen different ways to play every shot from off the green.  The one-dimensional 6" rough a foot off the greens is really a cop out to my way of thinking.  Imagine how much more fun it would be watch a tournament played on a Valley Club set up where the player has creative options!

[Jason Walker]

Or, has the "golfer's spectrum" widened to such a degree that architecture can no longer serve mulitple masters, especially at the fringes ?

in my opinion this is EXACTLY what has evolved.

[TEPaul]

"To a degree, rough has been used as a safety net in some feature configurations."


Pat:

Sure it has. ROUGH has become very much accepted globally as one of the few primary standard "hazard" features in golf and architecture.

I'm sure you know that Behr and apparently Mackenzie in the late 1920s began to make noises about creating courses that did not use ROUGH (high grass) at all. It was apparently their attempt or idea to take strategic architecture to another or different level.
 

[TEPaul]

"TEPaul,

I think the desire or ill conceived notion of "uniformity" is the primary difference between the roughs that you and I grew up with and today's roughs."


Pat:

The whole idea of a greater push in golf and architecture towards "uniformity" (consistency, definition, standardization) not just with rough areas but pretty much all things to do with golf and architecture is the very reason some of us have been so interested in the philosophies of Behr, MacKenzie et al on the one side and the philosophies of a Joshua Crane et al on the other side-----and the debate between the two sides.

To a large degree the whole concept of "uniformity" (or not) was what the whole debate was about.

[Bob_Huntley]

This kind of deep rough right around the green also results in a very one-dimensional game, i.e. the "chunk and run" hack is about the only play.  Tiger had very difficult shots on #17 and #18 although he was barely off the putting surfaces.

Contrast this to the wonderful setup at the Valley Club of Montecito, where the club has cut every square yard of grass within 50 yards of the 15th, 18th, 1st, 14th greens and several other areas of the course down to tight fairway cut.  There are literally half a dozen different ways to play every shot from off the green.  The one-dimensional 6" rough a foot off the greens is really a cop out to my way of thinking.  Imagine how much more fun it would be watch a tournament played on a Valley Club set up where the player has creative options!

Bill,

I played the Valley a couple of weeks ago and I must say I was taken aback at the first hole when I saw the shaved surrounds. I was pin high right and had a delicate wedge over a bunker, this was not the easiest shot off of that piece of turf.

As an aside, is there an additional maintenance cost having different grasses on so many holes?

Bob 

[Bill_McBride]

This kind of deep rough right around the green also results in a very one-dimensional game, i.e. the "chunk and run" hack is about the only play.  Tiger had very difficult shots on #17 and #18 although he was barely off the putting surfaces.

Contrast this to the wonderful setup at the Valley Club of Montecito, where the club has cut every square yard of grass within 50 yards of the 15th, 18th, 1st, 14th greens and several other areas of the course down to tight fairway cut.  There are literally half a dozen different ways to play every shot from off the green.  The one-dimensional 6" rough a foot off the greens is really a cop out to my way of thinking.  Imagine how much more fun it would be watch a tournament played on a Valley Club set up where the player has creative options!

Bill,

I played the Valley a couple of weeks ago and I must say I was taken aback at the first hole when I saw the shaved surrounds. I was pin high right and had a delicate wedge over a bunker, this was not the easiest shot off of that piece of turf.

As an aside, is there an additional maintenance cost having different grasses on so many holes?

Bob 

I heard an announcer say yesterday at the PGA how much the pros prefer to hit shots off tight turf.  I'm with you, that is a toiugh shot, especially if you were down below the green to the right.

If the bunker hadn't been in the way, you wouild have had some interesting options.

They do a lot more mowing with all that short grass, so I'm sure there is additional maintenance cost.  That has never seemed to be a problem at the VC, where there are usually a few guys out pulling kikuyu volunteers!

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