Bob.
Here it is.
How soft are modern golfers?
Everywhere around us there are signs indicating just how soft the modern golfer has become.
Clubs revered for their condition luxuriate in the compliments and the knowledge their members will never again face the strain of having to dig a ball out of a less than perfect lie on the fairway.
Yardages are stamped on every damn sprinkler head – or worse, they have those dopey little 150m trees planted at the sides of the fairways. Even Royal Melbourne, the last bastion, has submitted to the screams of the modernists who insist the information will speed up play. Rubbish. Another battle lost to the nouveau riche golfer.
When we were kids the only question we asked was ‘ what club do you think it is?’ Now all you ever hear is ‘how far is it?’ Steve Williams caddied for me during the 1984 season in Europe and I got used to him saying to pro-am partners ‘ mate, just keep hitting that 3 wood until you get eighty yards away then pull out the wedge’. Williams is a brilliant caddy who uses his instinct and his experience as much as his yardage book when assessing a shot and a club. Our English Pro-am partners usually laughed and took it in the spirit it was meant. The Germans however always struggled with our antipodean brand of humour.
I want to scream at them. ‘Just have a bloody look. Figure it out. Train your eyes. Use your judgement. It’s a seven iron shot !!!- What else could it be? – it’s not a six and it’s not an eight. It’s so obvious – just look. You are not going to find the answer on the sprinkler and you will never teach yourself the most important part of the game – judgement. Teach yourself what a seven iron shot looks like – or a three iron shot. Good players know what every shot looks like and when to use them. Peter Thomson was a master at it and even the modern pros cannot match the intricate levels of judgement of the Australian master. He just shakes his head at it all, filled with exasperation that his lifetime of campaigning for the purity of the game has come to this. Not surprisingly, he largely blames the Americans for it – and not without justification. Who else could have managed to take a game predicated on walking and turn it into a game played in stupid little cars? Or determine golf was a game to be played almost entirely through the air? What happened to trying to figure out what the ball would do after it hit the ground? And, what about those infuriating little balls on the flags to tell you if the pin is in the front, middle or back of the green? Who did think of installing GPS systems in carts to tell you everything including the location of the nearest hamburger stand?
We Australians have just blindly followed the trends. ‘There is money in those golf carts, can’t make a profit without them’ and ‘The pro’s have all that information, why shouldn’t we?’ On it goes and the traditional game nearly always loses.
Ask a room full of members if the bunkers ought to be consistent and the answer will be a resounding 95% for 2.376 inches of sand in the bottom of every bunker. Never mind that some parts of the course may have very little indigenous sand and other parts may have feet of it. The right hand bunkers at the 5th at Kingston Heath have never had more than the merest spread of sand yet the bunkers high on the hill between the 14th and 15th holes have always had more than an abundance of sand to test good players. They of course prefer less sand as opposed to the poorer ones who want it thick so they can thump the club in behind the ball in an attempt to excavate everything including, hopefully, the ball. To hell with trying to get it close or even spin it a little. Just get me out before the greenkeepers start laughing.
The last thing they ought to be is consistent. Good players should have he chance to show off their versatility and the diligent poorer players can expand their repertoire and perhaps learn how the sole of a sandiron actually works. It’s broad and it has bounce for a reason.
What relevance does all this have to golf design?
Spring Valley is a suburban Melbourne sandbelt course just down the road from Kingston Heath and it was designed by the greenkeeper at The Heath, Vern Morcom.
Morcom’s father, Mick, had built all of Alister MacKenzie’s bunkers at Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath and it was a skill he passed down to his son and he built some beauties at The Valley.
The club rerouted the driveway to the new clubhouse in the late nineties and it necessitated building a new 10th hole. Previously it had been a 150-metre par three to a medium sized green surrounded by some of Vern’s typically excellent bunkers. It was a terrific hole but you could hit the green with a marginal shot. That was not to its detriment but after sixty years the 6100 metre course was feeling the ravages of technology especially on the many dogleg holes where players were forced to resort to long irons from the tees to avoid running through the fairways.
The alternate site for the new hole was not particularly wide and it afforded the opportunity to build a hole of only 135 meters. Perefect. The 10th at Kingston Heath is a similar length hole to a long, narrow green surrounded by bunkers and it asks for a good, but not great shot to hit the target. That job is afforded to the great 150 metre, 15th where only a fine shot works. Many a big championship has been lost on the final day as those with great hopes missed the green. Nothing marginal ever hit the green on the wonderful hole MacKenzie himself built with Mick Morcom during his twelve week tour of Australia in 1926.They surrounded it with the most fearsome bunkers on the sandbelt and saving par if you miss the green is not impossible but most fail.
The new 10th was to be an amalgam of both holes. It is the length of the 10th but with a green not quite as long and bunkers left and right that were intended to determine whether a player could handle a sand club with a reasonable level of competence. Anyone who cannot hold the face open throughout the swing and slide it under the ball at the requisite angle is in trouble. In other words anyone who has a poor grip that almost always conspires to shut the face on the backswing necessitating a scoop through impact in order to put any loft back on the club. Anyone who has tried that method will attest to its futility.
The hole turned out really well except the members seemed to hate it. Too hard they screamed. We can’t get out of the bunkers they cried.
It is infinity easier than the 15th at The Heath but because that hole is recognized for what it is no one dares suggest alteration so Mrs. Jones on 36 handicap can get out of ‘Big Bertha’ on the left. The late Ted Ball, a fine Australian tour pro, once took six to get out in a big tournament in the sixties so the committee reason if he had to endure it so can Mrs. (or Mr.) Jones. A recent attempt to redistribute the sand in the floor of that bunker met with derision as members cried it had rendered the famous hazard too easy. Now that is a spirit you have to love.
The new hole however exemplified to me how much the game has, at almost every turn, resorted to softening the challenge for the golfer. Every hole has to be ‘fair’, whatever that means. Everybody has to be able to play it no matter they have made no attempt to learn the basic grip or stance or fundamental of a swing plane.
High handicappers are the lifeblood of most clubs but does that mean we dispense with the important challenges that stimulate the good and diligent (but not necessarily good) players?
There, of course, needs to be a balance but in an age of amazing equipment advance- 60 degree wedges, huge headed drivers (even the hackers are convinced they are hitting 30 meters further) and wonderful balls that spin but don’t cut – why are we doing everything we can to make it even easier?
And please don’t tell me it is to make the game more fun.