Someone Appreciates The Plantation Course!

Larry Dorman of the New York Times, writing about Daniel Chopra and his play through two rounds at Kapalua:

The winds on Maui’s northwest shore alternately howl and halt, testing a golfer’s ability to work the ball and control its trajectory. The imagination required to solve the nuances of the course created by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore is something Chopra possesses.

“I don’t think I hit a single shot all day long that was, except for maybe with a driver, that was a normal up-in-the-air shot,” Chopra said Thursday. “Every iron shot I hit I knocked down, took loft off of it, cut or drew it in there. I manufactured pretty much every single shot I had to hit today, other than my normal, standard stock which you just hit on the driving range.”

That comes as sweet music in an era of bomb and gouge, where many golfers simply blast the ball with their driver as far as possible without regard to rough or bunkers, then gouge it from the rough on to the green with square-grooved wedges. Young Daniel Chopra, who is working with the old-school instructor Butch Harmon, is attuned to the importance of creating shots.