This discussion group is best enjoyed using Google Chrome, Firefox or Safari.
Patrick, I think you are assuming cause and effect. I'm sure most anyone would agree that hidden bunkers are incompatible with many people's ideas of "fairness". Okay, you're off to a good startBut from that one cannot infer that a requirement for visible bunkers means all the remaining part and parcel of "fairness" must come along with it.I never said that.But, the requirement for a high degree of visibility and the quest for fairness are intricately connected.I asked if Flynn's mandate for visibility was the genesis for the quest for fairness in American golf. You certainly can't disconnect or distance the twoThere are many possible holes where everything is visible but it isn't "fair". Just create a shallow hard green that falls away from the golfer and stick a bunker in front, or heck just a bunch of small mowed mounds that cause the required ground shot to bounce totally randomly. I'm sure people can come up with plenty of examples here, but not everyone would agree....some people have said here in GCA they feel the approach to Jubilee's 15th is unfair, I wouldn't agree with that but to coin a phrase I guess fairness is in the eye of the golfer. Even if you don't believe in fairness as a requirement or something desireable you certainly know it by its absence.Just because other features are deemed to be unfair, doesn't mean that the early mandate for a high degree of visibility wasn't the beginning of a trend toward "fairness' in American golf.What you're also missing is that you are defining specific, non-recuring features on a golf course. Visibility is a universal, a global concept that would have far more reaching consequences then a particular "unfair" feature.I would say that visibility could have been the linch pin or spring board of "fairness" movement