"Does it really matter if once a year the traveling circus comes into town and they reach all four par 5s and never hit more then a 9 iron into the par 4s. Why do we spend so much time grading our great courses based on how less than 1/10th of 1% of the golfers play them? If any of us where at Royal Melbourne this week, would we walk away saying to ourselves, “this course is not much of a test anymore.” I doubt it."
Don: Your post loosely implies all is well in the world of golf and that the USGA need not make a stand on the ball to make the game a test for all players?
Certainly, design alterations don't matter for most courses and even many of the best courses, but many of the courses we treasure weren't only designed to provide pleasure for just the average member, but all golfers...the great ones included...they were brutally tough, but aren't any longer. That test has been diminished and to make up for it added length and narrower fairways have become the answer. I don't like the ribbons for fairways, but the length I can understand...the ball is out of control, and these new tees aren't the members tees they're lengthening. It's no different from what Tillie had written (I think he wrote about this but don't have his book at hand) about courses of Championship standard becoming obsolete because of advances in ball development. They didn't narrow the fairways, just made courses ever longer.
Having said that, I don't like what they've done to Augusta, and if I were decision maker at a club of stature I'd just take my name off the list for consideration for any major until the ball issue was satisfactorily answered; so in part we agree. Let the Torrey Pines and Valhalla's of the world take the majors and let them butcher their courses when needed. Perhaps then the USGA will wake up when their choices will only be looong modern courses with no history, no tradition and little character.
It would be great if a 6,700 yard inland course devoid of wind (and an un-Pine Valley like design) would be a real test for the best players? Instead those first numbers are fast becoming reversed for US Open tests. Torrey...7,607
The game was attractive 20 years ago when we used butter knives and whittled down tree branches at the end of steel shafts for golf clubs...when the ball had 336 dimples, weren't designed by NASA physicists and flew much shorter distances.
Are golfers so additcted to the drug of distance that they don't want to give it up? Would the average member notice if the ball were rolled back 10% and nobody told them? I don't think so.
The game for better players no longer consists of long iron approaches from the fairway, unless it's to a par-5. I remember Crenshaw laying-up short of the bunkers on the 17th at Royal Melbourne when he teamed up with Mark McCumber at the World Cup. Els and 47 year old Norman beat 336 yard drives last week (perhaps conditions were different, they has a slight cross-downwind on the tee shot) and easily reached the green with irons...(can't remember where the hole falls in the new configuration...9th?). Did anyone see a player lay-up on this hole during the entire tournament when in the fairway? 560 yards isn't what it used to be. So eventhough we may not like it when a course undergoes lengthening, it's sometimes necessary if they want to provide a test, and these changes don't effect the members...it's not their tees that are being moved into the next county.
TEPaul: You like the Finchem conspiracy theory. Mr. Czardine of golf. How about this for an Oliver Stone conspiracy theory. The USGA and ASGCA are behind this. They want the ball to go looooong because it will 1. allow them to get tons of remodel work and 2. when they've made tons of cash in this arena, the USGA will roll the ball back and the archies can "restore" all the courses.
