Friday
02Jun
More Muirfield Moaning
As much as I'd like to side with the players, their cause is hurt by a consistent inability to articulate why bunker furrowing is a bad idea and by their reluctance to address the distance issue that has led to situations like this.
Ken Gordon had these comments in the Dispatch:
"They’re not very good, that’s about all you can say," Jeff Maggert said. "We don’t play any other tournament like this. I think you’ll see players looking to pop this event off (their schedule) if they keep doing it."
And..
The idea was to make the course more old-school. But Mark Brooks thought the change actually hurt shortgame artists more than the bombers.
"If a guy’s got a good short game, he can play more aggressively if he’s got reasonable opportunities to recover," Brooks said.
"It’s about (losing) the art of the recovery shot. (Ben) Crenshaw, (Seve) Ballesteros, those guys didn’t drive the ball great but won tons of tournaments from hitting it all over the place because they were great at recovery shots."
One of the biggest issues was the element of surprise. Players said they did not know about the change until they showed up this week.
"It’s something that I think kind of shocked us this week," Steve Flesch said. "Some of the players are like, Wait, wait.’ We’re used to hopping in there with a perfect lie and knocking it on the green."
Joe Ogilvie is one of four players on the PGA Tour policy board.
"It’s a communication issue," the Lancaster native said. "I don’t think there would be nearly be the controversy here if the PGA Tour and the Memorial Tournament had communicated to the players. We’ve got terrible communication on the tour, period."
Later, that was the major concession made by PGA onsite tournament director Slugger White.
"We’ve taken some criticism and we’ll just look forward," White said. "It’s change, and everyone is a little bit stubborn when it comes to change. We all are.
"Looking back, probably we should have prepped these guys (players) a little earlier, and I’ll take the blame for that."
Not everyone was hot and bothered. Sergio Garcia said it made players think a little more, changing clubs to avoid hitting bunkers, "so it’s good."
And Dave Hackenberg in the Toledo Blade:
Pro golfers don't react well to change, and the reaction to the bunkers was overwhelmingly negative.
Davis Love III was so angry - despite a 3-under 69 - that he blew past media members after making a double bogey out of the fairway bunker at No. 18 and declined comment.
Shaun Micheel spoke for Love, who is one of four players on the PGA Tour Policy Board.
"I had breakfast with Davis this morning, and he told me that the policy board had approved a standardized rake used for all tournaments," Micheel said.
The columns, they just keep on a coming! Actual, a breakfast of complaining and Tour policy board political chat between Micheel and Love is just too easy, even for me.
"Are we not supposed to make anything?" [Micheel] said. "Hey, fill 'em with water and paint hazard lines around them. There's a lot of frustration. [The players] had no warning. We showed up Monday, and they were furrowed and raked sideways. Today, every trap is raked parallel to the fairway. So they changed the conditions.
"They used to have the most beautiful sand here. What's wrong with guys shooting good scores?"
I'm with him on the last point. That would be a good question for the Commissioner.
Friday, June 2, 2006 at 08:25 AM
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Reader Comments (5)
you're the best players in the world. suck it up. adjust.
I see absolutely no trend toward improving ratios of sand saves in the past decade or two - so why do bunkers need to become more difficult if they continue to be just as much of a "hazard" as they have been in recent years?
Because there is a huge trend toward hitting the ball further - and since there is a limit to how high one can grow rough (without becoming absurd) and also a limit to how narrow one can make fairways (without becoming absurd) and also a limit as to how radical pin placement can become (without becoming absurd) - PGAT is now encouraging Jack to spearhead an attempt to make the bunkers more penal.
If PGAT doesn't want to fight added ball length by simply adding length to the courses it sets up - then they need to ROLL THE BALL BACK.
All this other happy horsecrap is just a bunch of bandaids that threatens to turn PGATour into the oldfarts and girls tour by making distance irrelevant and accuracy all-important.
BTW, if the ball is going further, then why is Jack responding by also mowing the fairways all toward the greens - to make them roll harder and faster - which serves only to further shorten the effective course length?
If I was the 46 or 49 year-old that won the last two Players Championships - or a future female hopeful like Michelle Wie - I would love it. But, just how much "driver removal" from the long hitters is really in the best interest of the game?
Maybe this week's event at Celtic Manor is the "solution" - a 6700 yard par 69 where everyone can have a legitimate shot at 59 - although Thursday and Friday only turned up one 60 and two 61's - along with a gaggle of 62's and higher - they still have the weekend :-)
What needs to be standardized is the core of the golf ball, with a bit more compression put back into it, so we can get away from all the "Mickey Mouse" set ups.
Maybe Jack wants the ball struck down the correct angle off the tee with driver. If its not the right angle, the faster fairways will ensure that the ball runs off into the rough, kind of like a hard baked out green only being receptive to a crisply struck iron.