Thanks to everyone who forwarded Peter Kostis' latest piece of mindless drivel from the June Golf Magazine.
There is not even an ounce of wisdom to glean from it--unless you've been in a coma the last twenty years and want to see how far down the drain we are when folks like Kostis are given a place to write. But in defense of the folks at Golf Magazine, who regrettably give Kostis the space to peddle his views, the columns contradicting this latest doozy have disappeared.
And that, my friends, is why I copy, paste and archive!
Kostis' newest "How golf lost its way" premise is one that sadly has been popping up of late and is a convenient get around for those who don't want to upset certain manufactuers--maybe even the same once worked for--by suggesting that we never modify product and instead blame golf course builders for the game we have today.
Kostis says the architects and developers of the last fifty years, responding to a changing game, let us down with designs that were too hard.
Unfortunately, the reality of the game today is that it takes too long, costs too much and is generally way too difficult. How did we get here? The common perception is that this is a recent phenomenon brought on by modern equipment and the multi-piece ball, but in reality, this problem is nothing new. In fact, it's been slowly creeping up on us for more than 50 years.
Of course, Kostis wrote just seven years ago that golf had not lost its way, it was merely different and would survive just fine despite all of the cries that the game had lost its way.
Today's golf isn't better or worse than the golf played 20, 50 or even 100 years ago. It's just different, just as our lives and our world are different.
This concept of yearning for a return to better times has been around forever and coincides with a reluctance to accept change. Dismissing all change as bad is stupid.
So, lamenting this period of change, under Kostis' definition, makes him stupid?
Peter, Peter, don't be so hard on yourself.
Kostis then goes on an a whole anti-business creed about real estate developments, which should make for interesting fodder next time Peter sits down with the gang at Whisper Rock.
At PGA West, Pete Dye was asked to build the most difficult course possible. The developers wanted buzz, and Pete gave it to them. And all this happened before metal woods, graphite shafts, and the multi-piece ball. To blame golf's problems today on technology alone shows a lack of historical perspective. The real issue is that at some point we lost sight of what a course should be -- a fun, contiguous, walkable layout that can be played in a reasonable amount of time.
We! Nice that Kostis at least lumps himself into the mess, but the fact is the chase for difficulty is a product of the factors he mentioned, with technological changes expanding the bottom line yardage needed to keep a course relevant. That may not have been the problem alone, but it is a starting place for a solution.
Thankfully, John Paul Newport penned a cleansing piece in this week's WSJ that will make you feel much better should you choose to read Kostis.
On the eve of the proposed anchoring ban decision, Newport nails it in every respect about what matters in golf and how the pursuit of easy--whether via anchoring or the latest equipment--is not a cure for what ails golf.
One result of the huge advances in equipment in the 1990s and early 2000s, until the USGA and the R&A clamped down on further increases in distance, driver-club-head size (later than they should have) and club-head trampoline effect, was that courses got longer and more difficult (and thus more expensive) in response. They had to, in order to keep success and failure in equilibrium. There are many reasons golf has lost 30% of its avid players since 2000, but all those advances in technology, touted to make the game more fun, don't seemed to have helped.
More importantly, he reiterated his views on the proposed anchoring ban and suggested he'd like to see the a ban sped up for the PGA Tour.
Monday, May 20, 2013 at 11:49 AM
