Classic courses....todays advances??

[Mike_Young]

Attached is a list of variables that have changed the game since the advent of many of the classic courses.

Player Equipment:
Cavity back
Metal woods
Graphite shafts
Shaft length
Grooves
Ball, consistency and distance
Head volume

Agronomic advances:
Perfect putting conditions
Lower fairway heights of cut
Lower greens HOC
irrigation
Irrigation of rough
Fertilization of rough
Consistent sand in bunkers

Changes in swings and play:
Shot of choice with driver + high fade vs. older low draw
Air game, carry to destination vs. rollout
No more wrist putters



When you take these changes and others that I might not have mentioned into consideration, how would you “adjust” the classics?  Ex:  Does the advent of perfect putting conditions without much grain dictate that the old steeper slopes at faster speeds should be acceptable?  Probably….
Just for discussion IMHO I think that short grass manicured to today’s conditions are a much better method of protecting these old sites than high rough.  Ex: If you have ever played 14 at Oak Hill…I don’t think you would hit driver to that green if you knew it could disperse, as it would in short grass.  With today’s conditions the only way to put into play many of the green surrounds is with short grass.  Lob wedges aren’t made for short grass.  And the "short side" on the older greens is deserves much more thought than on many of the week to week  tiered greens that the guys play.
Any other examples of compensations for todays  advances?

[Tim_Weiman]

Mike Young:

The obvious answer is to avoid even thinking you have to "adjust" the classics. I can't think of a single "classic" that isn't fine for 98-99% of people playing golf.

To even suggest these courses need to be "adjusted" only fuels the golf technology arms race. We all need to unite against that kind of thinking. It only leads to endless cycles of wasting money and doesn't make the game any better.

[Mike_Young]

I agree for 98% of the people.  But not for 2 handicapper and below. I am not saying to adjust "classics" through lengthening etc.  I am saying that with the technological advances in the game and agronomics there are methods that exist within the design of the "classic" that allow one to compensate for equipment advances.  example:  IMHO I don't think the players of the past were not as " pin focused" as the modern player.  Just this year tour has started to place pins within three paces of edge.  Those kinds of adjustments make up for tech advances in grooves and other elements.
Compensate might be a better word than adjust.
Mike
 

[RJ_Daley]

Yes Mike, I see what you are saying.  And, I think you have said a lot just in the observation that changes in mowing practices or patterns would do much to help older classic courses continue to be relavant and challenging for all levels of players.  Surrounds of greens mowed wide with a fringe cut or selectively mowed in back or at the short sides and leading to bunkers where the missed shot can scoot away a good distance rather than get hung up a foot off the green in rough is a great example, as I think you are saying.  The same with fairway mowed up to the fairway bunkers rather than a wide swath of rough impeding the ball to get into them.  

Wasn't it Rees Jones or RTJ Jr or maybe Forrest who gave the not so tongue in cheek speech about eliminating the wooden tee and go back to wetted sand boxes to build a sand pitch.

How about a 9-10 club rule?

Of course, just a 10% toned down ball would also help a great deal, I think.

[A.G._Crockett]

But its all relative, isn't it?  If we adjust courses for 2 handicappers and better, the courses don't just become more difficult (and expensive) for them!  They will still be the best golfers, and we're right back where we started, except that we are paying more, having less fun, and losing the game's history as well.  Tim Weiman's "arms race" term is completely appropo, and to be avoided diligently.

[A.G._Crockett]

I also think Mike's list in the original post, plus whatever other items like launch monitors and stronger, fitter athletes, is the exact reason that nobody at the USGA has been able to figure out what to do about technology, since it is only one of the variables in play.  I also see very few items on the list that seem to still have large amounts of room to change at this point.  Radically altering classic courses in response to a anticipated constant continued rate of change makes a faulty assumption, IMO.

[RJ_Daley]

But AJ, would you agree that just mowing the green surrounds and firming them up in most cases is getting back to original intent.  If you agree with that, then it isn't radically altering classic courses, it is presenting them as they were meant to be played, no?

[TEPaul]

Mike;

This is a good subject and one that should serve to give some on here who may get too doctrinaire about ever doing a thing to classic courses some pause to reconsider complete doctrinairism.

When I first got interested some years ago in architecture and specifically so-called classic architecture (the old pre WW2 courses) and their restoration possibilities I had lunch with one Jim Finegan--a free thinking lover of classic courses if ever there was one!

We talked all during lunch about the glories of restoring many of the old courses to what they once were before basically being corrupted in mostly the same ways.

But as we were on the street departing from one another Jim surprised me by saying that one should never forget the possiblities of using advances in particularly agronomics to make some of those old classic courses even better than they had ever been at their best decades before!

That was a general statement only on his part and he just left it at that. But in the ensuing years I've had the good fortune to spend plenty of time on some sites and also talking to Ron Prichard (among others) about these very possiblities of combining some of the new with the old to make these old courses even better than at their best many decades before.

In Ron's case the specific example was the "chipping area" and all that could accomplish in the form of mutli-options and thoughtful golf.

Ron is one of the best architectural and maintenance historians, in my opinion, and he basically said if some of the old guys such as Macdonald, Wilson, Crump and Flynn could see the advances in agronomics today and the possiblilities it offers to make golf's playability even more thoughtful and interesting they would fall over and faint with excitement!

One only needs to read some of the 2000 letters between the Wilsons of Merion and Piper and Oakley of the US Dept of Agriculture from 1911 to 1924 to appreciate the battles they were fighting in the dark ages of no knowledge (nothing but OJT learning) with agronomics with things we today take for granted or frankly don't even need to concern ourselves with!

[A.G._Crockett]

RJ

[A.G._Crockett]

RJ
I'd love if it everybody firmed up greens and surrounding surfaces!  In fact, at my club we have had a superindentent change, and I think the new guy (who really, really hustles and works hard, and whom I like a lot personally) has badly overwatered our greens!  

THAT change would be way within the realm of maintaining, rather than altering classic courses, and I think we're in agreement.  New tee boxes, 8 inch rough, 25 yd. wide fairways, and so forth are not.  Technology be damned...

[Mike_Young]

AG, RJ,
I don't wish anyone to think I mean radical in adjustments.  Follow me for aminute.
IMHO the only way to prohibit one from scoring whether long course or short course is to create difficulty in placing the ball close to the pin in regulation.  That has nothing to do with ground game or air game.  It has to do with the green complex.
Now if you take an average older course with greens that slope from back to front in general there is much that can be done to protect pin placements through agronomic advancements.  For instance where the surrounds dictate dispersion around the green then short grass will allow the greenside areas to come into play much more than long grasses...and where areas are designed to help contain a shot(especially above a surface) then perhaps long grasses help in protecting the pin.  While there will be days when a superb player is able to shoot at all pins on a short course and never get above it or short side it, I bet most can't do it for four days in a row.  The answer is to emphasize the green surrounds that have always been there.
While we look back and view the older venues from the tee we have to accept the fact that long drivers of that era usually carried about 190 to 200 with a roll out that could go to 270 and sometimes longer.  With the ball on the ground that long then fairway contours definitely played a more integral part of the game.  Whether we try to alter venues or design these feature into newer works the distance today will remain air time.  But the old green surfaces and surrounds can be brought out an enhanced to make up for this.
An example: Our pro Ed Hoard is one of the top rules officials and was involved at PGA Championship.  They had determined that back half of 13 was just too severe for pins....was it...possibly pins closer to these severe areas create much more of a question for the good player than distance.