When Does Difficulty Become Irrelevant?

[Mike Hendren]

I recently re-joined a club and have started playing somewhat regularly with catastrophic results.  This leads me to wonder:  Setting aside forced carries, is there a handicap range at which course difficulty is irrelevant?   Could I hack it around Oakmont as well as I do my local club?   A triple is a triple is a triple.


(Triple) Bogey

[Joe Hancock]

TBog,


As I age at the same rate as you, the one thing that I think will get more difficult, and eventually impossible, is deep bunkers, design dependent.

[Matt_Cohn]

I would think quite the opposite. A truly difficult course would magnify mistakes exponentially.

[Adam Lawrence]

I recently re-joined a club and have started playing somewhat regularly with catastrophic results.  This leads me to wonder:  Setting aside forced carries, is there a handicap range at which course difficulty is irrelevant?   Could I hack it around Oakmont as well as I do my local club?   A triple is a triple is a triple.

(Triple) Bogey

I know that 'it depends' is a pathetic copout of an answer, but I'm afraid it really does. This is entirely dependent on the source of the difficulty and the nature of the player's game. Put a 54 handicapper woman who drives it 100 yards on a good day on a golf course with no forced carries and she'll get round OK, even if the greens are super-crazy. On a course with rough grass -- any rough grass -- in front of the tees, more than the odd water hazard and bunkers fronting greens, she's likely to walk in after a few holes. By contrast if the player has a reasonably high swing speed and no control whatsoever, he's going to need the course to be as wide as Wolf Point to avoid losing a dozen balls in a round.

[Tom_Doak]

I recently re-joined a club and have started playing somewhat regularly with catastrophic results.  This leads me to wonder:  Setting aside forced carries, is there a handicap range at which course difficulty is irrelevant?   Could I hack it around Oakmont as well as I do my local club?   A triple is a triple is a triple.

(Triple) Bogey

I know that 'it depends' is a pathetic copout of an answer, but I'm afraid it really does. This is entirely dependent on the source of the difficulty and the nature of the player's game. Put a 54 handicapper woman who drives it 100 yards on a good on a golf course with no forced carries and she'll get round OK. On a course with rough grass -- any rough grass -- in front of the tees, more than the odd water hazard and bunkers fronting greens and she's likely to walk in after a few holes. By contrast if the player has a reasonably high swing speed and no control whatsoever, he's going to need the course to be as wide as Wolf Point to avoid losing a dozen balls in a round.

Correct!


Bogey, for you personally, it only depends if you care whether some of those triples end with the ball in your pocket (or in a water hazard).  I have the yips these days, and if I played Oakmont I might never hole out on some of the greens there.

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