TEPaul,
An update.
I played with him again yesterday.
A vital fact that I forgot to mention is, he's 48 years old, stopped playing golf for 11 years and then started up again
4 years ago. After we played, some fellows were sitting around, including two pros who played with us, one a former PGA Tour Pro, the other a Pro who's playing in the Senior PGA
Tour Championship at Aronomink, and according to THEM, he's gotten 20+ yards longer with this new combination of equipment in the last month. And remember, his drives are all carry, with little or no roll, so it's not the condition of the fairways. He's also very straight.
On # 14, 370, he drove it over the lake 15 yards short of the green.
On # 15, 350, he drove it into the greenside bunker.
Both of these holes parallel each other, going in the opposite direction.
As we were playing I thought, how do you architecturally defend the golf course against this aerial assault off the tee without penalizing the other levels of golfers.
The only thing I could think of were small to medium sized centerline fairway bunkers at the 300-350 mark.
This fellow told me that he played at Pine Tree with Hank Kuehne, and that on the 16th hole, a par 5, from 670, Kuehne hit driver, 4-wood, over the green.
I know what you're going to say, but let me insert one last piece of information. Another fellow in our group, age 55,
a 10 handicap was hitting it 260+ and on # 17 hit it 300 yards
TE, it's systemic, not isolated, and it is becoming a real problem across the board, at every club.
The architecture is being rendered obsolete.
I listened to these fellows discuss how golf courses are getting their greens to 13+ on the stimp and hiding the pins in every effort to offset the distance revolution, but in doing so, these clubs are advocating goofy golf.
Golf is becoming a power game, and the architecture, like the maginot (sp?) line is being circumvented.