[size=0pt]Links magazine quotes Darius Oliver as saying, "The best courses are challenging rather than difficult, and I think that's the chief difference between the great modern courses and the 1970's-early 2000's--a period when golf became longer, harder, and narrower, and more one-dimensional." He adds that courses like NGLA, Pine Valley, Royal Dornoch, and the Old Course are more generous off the tee and allow the player to use his imagination more. [/size][size=0pt][/size]
[size=0pt]I have to admit I am not of one mind on this dichotomy. I am not always certain about the difference between challenging and difficult. I would think that designing a course to be challenging yet not overly difficult would test an architect’s skill. It is easy to see that a course with narrow corridors, lots of water, and punishing rough would be on the difficult side of challenging. Maybe the trick is not to make a course difficult but to make it challenging but not boring. Boring might be the enemy of golf more than difficult. I played a new course this summer in Mississippi that the guys I was with loved. It was challenging, I guess, but I found it pretty boring. How does one strike a balance between challenging, difficult, and boring? [/size]