"Ihe idea of hanging the back right of the famed 16th green out over the water befits a second-tier TPC, not a classic course like this."

While there has been the usual gushing over the Rees-toration of Oakland Hills, Bradley Klein offers cringe-worthy details in his analysis...

Ambitious plans to move several greens were shelved, but the course has been lengthened by 296 yards from its Ryder Cup muster. More significantly, many fairway landing areas have been made harder through additional choke-point bunkering, a steepening of some bunker faces and a narrowing of fairways to 24-26 yards.

The original boldness of the holes and of the putting surfaces remains, even if tee shots and approaches now are played through narrower defiles on this 7,395-yard, par-70 layout.

Too bad some of the work looks misplaced. New back tees on the par-3 ninth and 13th holes are misaligned to the right. The new greenside bunkers on the fourth and 16th holes have absurdly excessive shaping. And the idea of hanging the back right of the famed 16th green out over the water befits a second-tier TPC, not a classic course like this.

Comments

[Chuck]

Brad Klein's comments were contained in an article in the Detroit Free Press by Carlos Monarrez, who has been the Freep's assigned golf-beat wirter for a few years now.

Monarrez is no Herbert Warren Wind. He's not even Rick Reilly (which isn't saying much, in my view).

Brad Klein's comments, as reported by Monarrez, were as flippant as they might have been insightful. I have no doubt that if the Freep had bothered to ask Klein to write a review of the course, it would have been much clearer than what Monarrez produced.

I just spoke to an OHCC member who was frosted that some of the quotes from Klein-as-quoted-by-Monarrez were just plain wrong. (The new 11 tee isn't "across a road"; it is across a cart path. The new 9 tee is actually on line with the tee that Hogan played all four days in 1951.) But I digress. (Actually, the Monarrez story left out a true abomination, the mauling of the single center-fairway bunker at 15.) Nowhere in Monarrez's article did it mention or acknowledge the reason for all of this plastic surgery to a great golf course -- the fact that technologically-assisted distance gains are the cause of virtually all of the architctural alterations.

I think Carlos Monarrez may be bucking for his next job, at Golf Magazine or Golf Digest, where the subject of lax equipment regulations must never, ever be discussed.

[Chuck]

Edit., sort of -- I see that Geoff had linked to the Carlos Monnarez/FreePress story earlier, which is good because I failed to do so.