The fallacy of graduated rough

[Mike_Young]

forget all the rough...let angles determine the winner.....if the green surrounds and the roughs are all fairway height then approach angles will become even more critical...IMHO

[DMoriarty]

forget all the rough...let angles determine the winner.....if the green surrounds and the roughs are all fairway height then approach angles will become even more critical...IMHO

I agree.  Imagine how much fun that course would be if the whole place were clipped tight.

[Troy Alderson]

Mike,

I hear ya, keep it short.  In fact, short grass gives the golfers a sense of security and swing away freely often getting into trouble as the short cut takes the ball away.  Tall grass only allows the ball to stop from going into a worst hazard, saving an automatic penalty stroke.

Troy

[Matt_Cohn]

While the idea of graduated rough is nice, I have to agree that it didn't seem to work, or at least didn't seem like it was worth the extra effort and attention. I can't imagine that it really affected the outcome.

[Dave Bourgeois]

Personally in my highly uneducated view the graduated rough didn't do all that much.  The star of the show at WF is the greens.  If the fairways were wider, kind of along the lines of what Tom D. had said, I think there would have been more interesting shot making and the architecture would have been highlighted over the conditioning.  I have never seen greens like that and I think we would have seen more of their brillance if players had the opportunity to go at them from a greater variety of angles.

Bad shots would still be punished, and I think the best player would have still won.

[BCrosby]

MikeY nails it.

Being out of position, with greens as severe as WF, is punishment enough. Without six inch rough there will be fewer double bogies, the winning score might actually be under par, but please god, spare us from any more of these hit and hope US Opens.

TomD also nails it on proportional roughs.

The desire to obtain equitable results is all well and good for some things. Our criminal justice system ought to be equitable, for example. But it has no business on our golf courses.

Bob  

[TEPaul]

"Because graduated rough just doesn't work.  Hit it 10 feet out of the fairway and you've got a flyer; hit it 10 yards offline and you can barely dislodge the ball; but hit it off a tent or into the gallery and you've got a clean lie.  If there aren't any trees out there, you're in position A."

TomD:

You are undeniably right about that.

However, there are at least a few reasonable explanations and even potential solutions that would allow even for tree removal.

The first solution is for the USGA to ban all spectators and all corporate tents from the course property. This would allow them to grow rough three feet thick out past the primary 6-7 inch rough. And it would also allow them to remove the trees out there.

Is it possible for you to deny that that's an effective solution? I didn't say it was a reasonable solution but it certainly is an effective one.

On this website we deal in effective solutions, not necessarily reasonable solutions.  

[George Pazin]

Just out of curiosity, had those trees not been there, would that really have been position A?

Seeing as how Monty doubled from the fairway, I'd be inclined to think that hitting from that extreme left angle of a bare lie wouldn't have been a gimme. Obviously it would've been an easier bogey, but how tough would that green be from that angle?

I can't say I even noticed the graduated rough. It seemed like evrey other US Open, rough-wise anyway.

[Mike_Sweeney]

Tom P,

However, you could still potentially have player drops from TV towers. That would be unfair in the eyes of Tom Doak, so we would need to get rid of the all of the TV equipment and the spectators!

Perhaps Tom is positioning for having the US Open at Ballyneal. At least we would have Clayman to report the results to us here on GCA!

[Anthony Butler]

Personally in my highly uneducated view the graduated rough didn't do all that much.  The star of the show at WF is the greens.  If the fairways were wider, kind of along the lines of what Tom D. had said, I think there would have been more interesting shot making and the architecture would have been highlighted over the conditioning.  I have never seen greens like that and I think we would have seen more of their brillance if players had the opportunity to go at them from a greater variety of angles.

Bad shots would still be punished, and I think the best player would have still won.

I can see moving the rough back one group... i.e. the "rumble strip" as Tom D called it would be mowed down to fairway height and move the primary and second cuts back from there. Would that mean the first cut would be a slightly different grass mixture? If so might produce slightly different spin on approach shots just by growing to a couple of inches. Obviously which side you missed the fairway would become more important, as you would not be able to stop approach to the green if you were in the 'rumble strip' but on the wrong side.

Scores would likely be in the mid 270s, even if players couldn't stop their balls on the greens from these lies, they would be more likely to put their second up around the green and rely on their short game. This would move emphasis onto the short game from accurate tee shots.

The USGA would probably say too much emphasis.

[TEPaul]

TomD:

I've got another great solution that would allow for the removal of trees and also allow the USGA not to ban spectators and corporate tents.

That would be for the R&A and USGA to remove all "obstruction" relief and TIO relief from the Rules of Golf for the US Open. And furthermore, they will need to include a new "Local" or "Special" or "Specimen" rule under the "Conditions of Competition" that all spectators MUST stand in place precisely where they were when the player's ball came to rest out in the trampled down spectator area and corporate tent area.

If that were instituted, as it should be, Michelson would've had to hit his second shot out of a plastic beer cup inside a garbage can (or play stroke and distance).

Phil is perhaps one of the greatest recovery escape artists in golf's history but I would like to see him try that one.

Secondly, on Phil's second or third shot with all spectators having to remain in place where they were when the ball came to rest Phil would've had to risk taking some spectators' heads and arms off with his recovery shots.

I think this kind of thing would be an excellent addition to US Open golf because it would definitly not only severely test and examine a champion competitor's mettle to play under extreme stress and pressure but also his ultimate will to win at all costs----including injuring spectators or even killing them.

(Face it, the days of Rome were one of the most sophisticated in human history despite their gladiator penchant, but we today are doubtless more sophisticated than the early Romans were which gives us every right to turn the "mayhem for sport" on the spectators rather than the participants).

What would the penalty be to the competitor (or to the spectator) if a speactator refused to stand in place during the shot?

I don't know that yet----but I'm working on it.

[TEPaul]

"Tom P,
However, you could still potentially have player drops from TV towers. That would be unfair in the eyes of Tom Doak, so we would need to get rid of the all of the TV equipment and the spectators!"

MikeS:

No way. TV towers and TV personnel would also be "an integral part of the golf course" like all spectators and must "Maintain their exact position" under the Rules of Golf when the ball came to rest".

Let's see how humorous David Feherty or McCord could be under that scenario.

Look, if it's true what they say that many of these USGA Executive Committee members are high powered lawyers and such and they volunteer their time to golf for free let's at least give them a little legal liability business on the side, for God's Sake.

Let's at least see how dedicated golf fans really are to golf. This "For the Good of the Game" motto of the USGA is wearing sort of thin these days anyway.

I think the new USGA motto should be;

"Are you willing to give your life or at least your right arm to the Great Game of Golf?"

[BCrosby]

TEP -

The problem with making punishment "proportional" is that it doesn't solve the problem it is supposed to solve. It's supposed to make the punishment fit the crime. But proportional hazards mean you are just pushing the old, unsolved problems farther from away from the centerline.

A ball hit x yards off line should be punished less than a ball x+10 yards off line.

Sounds good in theory, no? The problem is that you are forced to draw artificial boundaries somehwere. You have to create a line where mild punishment ends and really really severe punishment begins. Those boundary lines will always be arbitrary. It's uavoidable.

Wherever you draw that boundary, you are still stuck with the problem that my ball, one foot farther off line than yours, can't be advanced and you can go for the green. You still have shanks clanking off the concession stand that get a better lie than a gentle push. The parade of horribles is endless.

The real solution is Mike Y's solution. Minimize the importance of roughs.

Bob

[Matthew Mollica]

Graduated rough would work much better if they didn't allow galleries, or at least didn't allow them to walk in the rough.

After Tom's initial post, this, as reply number one, is quite sad. I sincerely hope it was tongue in cheek.

I find graduated rough comical, and indicative of all things wrong with golf. I have refrained from saying it is an Americanism, as sadly, courses in other lands are sometimes presented in this terrible fashion. It does however, in my mind anyway, embody so much of what goes on with golf in the US distorting it's true essence.

Graduated rough is an ineffective, ugly, unnatural attempt to reward accuracy, eliminate luck and promote 'fairness', whatever that is in our great game. The practice is totally at odds with what makes golf what it is. Never mind that such maintenence elmininates the design intent from almost every golf course to which it's applied. I rue the day the practice was ever conceived.

Matthew

[TEPaul]

Bobzee;

Poobah!

Proportionality is nothing more than a spatial thing----there is nothing that logically connects to it regarding playability or penalty when it comes to my new idea of "spectator/gladiator" US Open golf .

You have the first cut fringe rough, the second cut 3 1/2 inch rough, the 6-7 inch primary rough and then outside that US Open competitors have to deal with a random smattering of 6'5" male adults, 5'6" female adults or even 3' children potentially standing on top of your golf ball. Outside that the competitor must take on corporate tents themselves or perhaps whole buildings.

I'm not sure yet about port-o-potties. I've checked the old rules of Golf and even back in the 17th century they gave golfers relief from dung and such but they were apparently whimps back then too. I would not make any special relief consideration if Phil's ball found its way to the bottom of a port-o-potty. If he hits it there, then that's his problem, and the Rules of Golf should have nothing to say about it.

[Mike_Cirba]

Mike Young is correct here.

THe whole idea of imposing regimented progressive discipline to the splendid chaotic forces that make up a golf course is defeated at the start because it's based on illogical and ill-considered hypotheses such as the possibility of maintaining the desired effect once you introduce 40,000 people onto the playing surface..  

Beyond that, how many balls did you see stop in the first cut?  Virtually everytime I saw the ball would just bound on through into the deeper "cut".  When I first saw the title of this thread, in fact, I thought Tom Doak was speaking of the fact that it's not "graduated" unless a ball can actually come to rest there, which very, very few did.  

[Mike_Sweeney]

I am not trying to pull a Wardism here, but in person, I thought the graduated rough worked very well. The players seemed to agree, but of course here at GCA that means it must be screwed up!

[TEPaul]

MikeS:

I'm not so sure GCAers automatically disagree with something the players might endorse but there's not much question they seem to automatically disagree with anything the USGA endorses. To be honest, it's almost becoming comical. It's just about automatically the "theory of contrary opinion."

[Jason Blasberg]

My point is, if the rough is going to be trampled down, then the deeper rough inside of it is the unfair part.

Tom:  

While a understand your point, I think one could say the same thing about shots that are hit so far off line they end up in adjacent fairways (the shot Tiger hit on the 72nd hole of the Masters comes to mind) with far better lies than had they been less of a miss but endend up in rough or behind trees.

Given the various bounces one could get off a grand stand, tent or gallery member's head for that matter (I recall the tourney where Fuzzy, I think, hit it off a guy's head backwards over the green and into a water hazard!) I would disagree that getting a better lie by hitting it further off line is necessarily unfair.

Since hitting it further off line brings far more variables into play I see no unfairness with trappled down gallery areas.  

In fact, understanding that hind sight is 20/20 on the 72nd hole Phil was clearly worse off by hitting it off the tent and ending up on the trappled down area with a good lie because had he hit it better (less offline) he would have been in the primary rough, forced to hack it down the fairway in play and would have most likely got up and down to win or made 5 for a playoff.  

Jason
 

[Phil Benedict]

My point is, if the rough is going to be trampled down, then the deeper rough inside of it is the unfair part.

In fact, understanding that hind sight is 20/20 on the 72nd hole Phil was clearly worse off by hitting it off the tent and ending up on the trappled down area with a good lie because had he hit it better (less offline) he would have been in the primary rough, forced to hack it down the fairway in play and would have most likely got up and down to win or made 5 for a playoff.  

Jason
 

I think Tom's original point is that the only thing that made Phil worse off were the trees.  Cut down all those trees and Phil would have been way better off than had he hit a less offline shot into untrampled rough.

[Anthony Butler]

My point is, if the rough is going to be trampled down, then the deeper rough inside of it is the unfair part.

In fact, understanding that hind sight is 20/20 on the 72nd hole Phil was clearly worse off by hitting it off the tent and ending up on the trappled down area with a good lie because had he hit it better (less offline) he would have been in the primary rough, forced to hack it down the fairway in play and would have most likely got up and down to win or made 5 for a playoff.  

Jason
 

I think Tom's original point is that the only thing that made Phil worse off were the trees.  Cut down all those trees and Phil would have been way better off than had he hit a less offline shot into untrampled rough.

The one thing the US Open taught me is that no matter how hard the USGA tries, you can't take luck out of the game and still call it golf. It also proved to me you can't remove the urge to take stupid risks from a person and still call him Phil Mickelson.

[peter_mcknight]

One would have to suppose that, if there is going to be graduated rough as part of the course set up, and there will be significant tree removal done as part of the set up, then the tree removal program would have to work with how the graduated rough would be set up.  If Phil and G Ogilvy are going to miss the 71st hole as bad as they did, then the trees should be coordinated to effect the same type of punishment that missing the fairway by 7-10 yards would extract.

Whoever commented about Oakmont is right--there aren't any trees there anymore that can impact play.  I have long believed that trees should be used sparingly and, if they can't be used strategically, then don't have them there at all.

[Bryan Izatt]

THe whole idea of imposing regimented progressive discipline to the splendid chaotic forces that make up a golf course is defeated at the start because it's based on illogical and ill-considered hypotheses such as the possibility of maintaining the desired effect once you introduce 40,000 people onto the playing surface..  

I'd certainly agree that hosting a tournament of the size of a US Open automatically impacts either the natural or the intended "regimented progressive discipline" set-up state of the golf course in question.  

But, I'd disagree that there are "splendid chaotic forces that make up a golf course".  Aren't all golf courses designed and architected and imposed to a degree on the natural environment.  And, aren't they maintained with fairways, bunkers, greens, and rough that is not natural or chaotic.  Certainly tournaments affect the "natural" state of the course, both by the way the USGA sets it up and in the impact of gallerys and tents etc.

Does a course in its natural state not impose progressive discipline normally?  On most courses I play there are unmaintained areas that are clearly within the field of play.  At this time of year, fescue up to the armpits makes for pretty severe discipline.  Oh, how many times have I wished for a gallery to trample down some of these areas and find my ball.

[Mike Hendren]

Apparently there was no graduated rough at the 6th.  Seems silly to tailor the rough to the hole, no?

Mike

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tom Doak,

I like the concept of graduated rough.

Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect world, and as such galleries and corporate tents have become an integral part of the golf course.

You're point about PM being one tree away from the title is a valid one.

But, absent removing spectators and facilities, how do you address graduating the penalty for mis-hits ?

Do you think Ed Furgol would have one the 1954 Open at Baltusrol with today's Open set ups ?  Probably not.

I think the scope of these events is causing more and more facilities to become invasive to the field of play.

When a tournament was recently held at Inverness I thought the 18th hole bleachers were highly intrusive to area of play, and that the designated drop zone gave a competitor a far better position from which to play his next shot.

It's clearly a dilema, but, I don't think graduated rough is the culprit.