"That's not my idea of sustainability in golf."
Dottie Pepper did not leave Chambers Bay a fan, writing in her SI column that while the course is "big on ideas, it's not quite ready for prime time." Her reasoning:
• The sandy soil dried out last week, and the course got out of control. The Open will be played in the softer conditions of June, but managing the firmness will be a challenge.
• The extreme slopes around the greens make the penalty for hitting a poor shot greater than the reward for hitting a good one. The Open should identify a golfer's skill, not his luck.
• A true links doesn't have elevation changes like those at the par-3 9th or 15th. More important, the slick, dry rough and steep slopes are a dangerous combination for galleries.
• It's a terrific site for match play, where making a huge number means losing only one hole, but attempting to shoot a 72-hole score on such an extreme course could get ugly. I saw more four-putts than I thought possible from the world's top amateurs.
• With so many holes playing so many different ways, practice rounds become a guessing game, and play approaches six hours. That's not my idea of sustainability in golf.
Now this last point about practice rounds is one you hear a lot from high-level golfers. Many believe that you should be told and able to practice every possible course setup scenario. I'm not sure I agree or understand that mentality since varying setups isn't any different than major changes in wind direction that can't be prepared for. But that's me.
Thursday, September 9, 2010 at 12:36 AM
Reader Comments (38)
DOTTIE, WHAT ARE YOUR QUALIFICATIONS IN TURF SCIENCE; WHAT EXPERIENCE DO YOU HAVE IN GROWING GRASS TO MAKE THIS STATEMENT?
• The extreme slopes around the greens make the penalty for hitting a poor shot greater than the reward for hitting a good one. The Open should identify a golfer's skill, not his luck.
I FOR ONE AM GLAD TO SEE THAT THE USGA IS WANTING TO ADD SOME AMOUNT OF LUCK TO THE MIX. WE'VE HAD TO ENDURE RIDICULOUS SET-UPS FOR YEARS UNDER THE MEEKS ERA. AT LEAST MIKE DAVIS IS WILLING TO PUT THE ELEMENT (AND SUSPENSE) OF LUCK BACK INTO IT. BRAVO!
• A true links doesn't have elevation changes like those at the par-3 9th or 15th. More important, the slick, dry rough and steep slopes are a dangerous combination for galleries.
DOTTIE, QUITE OBVIOUSLY YOU HAVE NEVER BEEN TO ROYAL DORNOCH, BRORA, (WHICH SITS ON HIGHER GROUND) AND LUNDIN GOLF CLUB. YOU SHOULD READ ROBERT PRICE'S BOOK, SCOTLAND'S GOLF COURSES FOR A MORE THROUGH DESCRIPTION OF WHAT LINKS EXACTLY IS. (BY DEFINITION)
• It's a terrific site for match play, where making a huge number means losing only one hole, but attempting to shoot a 72-hole score on such an extreme course could get ugly. I saw more four-putts than I thought possible from the world's top amateurs.
I COULDN'T AGREE MORE. ITS A GREAT MATCH PLAY COURSE.
• With so many holes playing so many different ways, practice rounds become a guessing game, and play approaches six hours. That's not my idea of sustainability in golf.
I COULDN'T AGREE MORE. ITS ALSO NOT AS FULLY ACCESSIBLE AS THEY MADE IT OUT TO BE BEFORE THE PLACE WAS EVEN BUILT!
The climate of the Pacific Northwest almost certainly will dictate a softer course in June. They're barely out of winter in June. The hard part will be making the place firm enough!
I don't care what anyone says, there is no reason...and I mean NO reason...why a pro golfer should take 6 hours to meander around a golf course.
As for sustainability, that just means being able to do the same thing indefinitely, or for a very long time, without causing irreversible damage and foreclosing other options and activities. Community-based golf in Scotland (private and otherwise) and elsewhere in the British Isles is obviously sustainable. Typical American country club golf? It all depends. My course costs me $229 a month for unlimited play and it doesn't seem to be an environmental snake pit, largely because the local climate is suitable for the growth of grass. Municipal/public golf? It all depends. Rustic Canyon is worth a trip to California all by itself. Lexington, Kentucky is public golf heaven; everywhere else I have lived, meh. Country Club-for-a-Day golf? We know how that has worked out. Golf throughout the Great American Desert plus California and around the world? That's about as sustainable as a Liz Taylor marriage. The climate is right in Tacoma, but will be local community continue to pay >$100 per round on weekends and outsiders pay $175? That seems to be a very real question as our economic world shrinks back to a manageable size.
I get what you are saying about sustainability, but what is she saying? Is the point she attempts to make is that the top 150 golfers in the world playing overly long practice rounds will make golf unsustainable? Or the course unsustainable? Or what?
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Let's play the tournament and see what happens. . . Credit the staid and conservative USGA leadership for taking their event to Chambers Bay. . . The cream rose to the top at the Amateur . . . Are critics concerned about a "lesser player" winning a major championship at Chambers Bay since that could never happen at a great course like St. Andrews? . . . Oh, wait, I forgot.
Fair?
No such thing.
"Golf" is mostly about the ability to deal with bad luck.
With respect to links courses, there is no such thing on the North American continent. The manufactured "links style" courses like Bandon and Chambers do not have the springy turf found in the coastal geological features of the British Isles.
The other problem with Chambers as an Open site is that its fairways are HUGELY wide. I don't think the grass combinations are going to allow for them to be narrowed via fescues or whins. So we're probably going to be stuck with another faux links like Whistling, with Americanized/parkland-style rough (although I thought the USGA did a nice job with a Am setup, at least what I was able to see on the weekend). Basically I think Chambers is a decent course, but compared to a place like Shinnecock, I'm not sure it belongs in the rotation...
How about suggesting a pace of play for practice rounds? Tell players they have 4 hours to play...if they only get through 15 holes...too bad. Maybe a bit of peer pressure from other pros (waiting) will actually promote some changes in pace of play.
Some of the fire will be extinguished with time, as roots take hold and knowledge of proper grasses evolve. It should be a better course for strokeplay for a week in June of 2015.
America isn't ready to display high quality links golf. That may be fifty years off. But they've made a good beginning. Three cheers for the red, white, and blue.
You got me, friend. :) I simply saw red at the thought of 6 hour rounds that I missed on the whole Am/Pro item.
My take: No top players, amateur or pro, should take that long. Personally, I go nuts when it takes the mid-range handicaps (myself included in that group) in my weekly gang to go more than 2 hours a side. 3 hours a side? Aieeee.....
If I had the time and the inclination, I could have fun dismembering Dottie's points on the other issues.
Here's one thought, though. Sustainability has become perhaps the most overused and mis-used word out there today. As someone in environmental consulting, I have seen it abused outright in an effort to use the current buzzword to gain attention. Did Dottie mean financial sustainability, environmental sustainability, corporate, public relations? Regardless, I think that a course with a 6 hour pace of play would go under....quickly....and deservedly so.
Now, back to billable work, so my paycheck is sustainable. :)
When you grow up in California, everything east of the Mississippi is the East Coast.
It will mature, and unless tfe USGA douches it up like they did Pebble Beach, and if they can take preventive measues for spectators , well it's all good.
digsouth
I know what the weather is like in Tacoma in June, especially right near University Place as I used to live on American Lake.
Chambers is on sand, sand that drains faster then 5 bottles of Drano poured down a kitchen sink. Everything they said in relation to fescue greens at Chambers--all of thew worries--well, the earth's axis didn't tilt, and even if it did pour, well it rains in Scotland too. (I think)
Chambers Bay come US Open time will be fine. The chances of rain are in the hands of the Gods, but the golf course is in able hand of Dave Weinecke, (sp) and from what I've seen of his work and efforts, he'll have the place in prime condition.
Look at the history of Oakmonts creation.
After having gone over there and seeing links courses, the CD clearcut the land to emlate a links setup., then the trees gree, then they cleared em again.
i have to run, but I'll try to get a link posted....
play well.
ds
It's always hard for me to blame the course for the pros doing poorly. The course is an inanimate object that (essentially) is identical for all players.
It sounds like the closer a course plays to a flat driving range, the better pros like it. Lame.
Thanks. Will get all my facts regathered in the next day or so.
I do know that, as you say, the de treeing was to return it to it's original cleared state.
Anyway, Yes , I admit to having a bit of a 'bone' about Oakmont. I am certain it is wonderful and really my main 'gripe' as such, is that it has all these 'hazards' right next to fairways, that were done for drainage a hundred years ago, that french drains and modern drainage would better facilitate.... and on a muni this same 'ditch feature' is cursed.
anyway , I'll read your suggestion ,and look for the link related to the early design, and , Hey if I'm full of it, I certainly will 'fess up.
have a great evening.
digsouth
i just love how DP makes a statement abt elevation change and you guys throw back WAY off the beaten path "Golf Club Atlas specials" like Cruden Bay, Brora and Dornoch.
I think she's talking about championship venues. You know, places that are chosen to host 40,000 people a day, not 40. Name the ROTA course that has major elevation change, and no Portrush doesnt count --i'll stick to courses that have hosted an open more than once and in the past 50 years.
CB has a lot of luck in it, but no one being reasonable can tell me that at least three green complexes dont need some surgery prior to a 72 hole stroke play event. Stroke play qualifying is a great dry run for an open, but the players are just trying to make the 64 man match play--they dont care about being medalist unless thay get hot early--and the good ones not even then. a Stroke play tourney would get REALLY boring really fast if set up the way CB was set up for stroke play, as everybody goes for days living in fear ofthe big number.
all courses need some work early in their lives--this myth that a great course is untouchable is nuts. Jones radically tweaked ANGC in the early years. same with every course. its like rewriting a Broadway play. they all get it prior to the premiere (but not the revival--thats different)
as for statements like.."will be local community continue to pay >$100 per round on weekends and outsiders pay $175? That seems to be a very real question"
answer to that one is --they arent paying it now. Chambers in hemoraging money right now. Most players in the area play chambers as a treat, as the other choices nearby are $60-$75 or so. Nobody is coming into Seattle to play at CB, as few people have heard of it, is a "one hit wonder"--why go there when Bandon has four courses to choose from-- and there is noplace to stay nearby (at least no place like the lodge at Torry Pines, etc.)
The hope is that the Amateur and Open will generate enough buzz and publicity to attract the destination golfer, and that the economy will rebound to make building a hotel there a decent bus. proposition. right now the course loses money. I hope it works.
it take a pro six hours to play a round...because he is slow! but also because he is trying to stuff 20-40 rounds of learning for the average guy into two-three days. CB is going to promote slow play by pros. in practice and tourney play. and thats not good for a sport thats trying to attract players. nobody has 6 hours for recreation away from kids and family.
However most US Open players never play links golf. NOBODY at that level plays links golf with the 100 yard roll-offs we saw at CB. Keep in mind 1/2 the field are qualifiers.
Absolute nonsense. I am privileged to live and play on the West coast of Ireland.
Elevation changes are always a part of links courses here. I can give 2 examples of holes on both Carne and Ballyliffin where the drop to the green is further than the distance to the flag. Don't tell me that these courses or Rosses Point, Lahinch, etc., are not true links courses. In many cases they are the template for the "faux" links being created in America, Whistling Straits, Chamber Bay, et al. These elevation changes are dependent of course on natural terrain and the large dunes which prevail on the linksland of the West course of Ireland. Made by God. Upgraded by Craddock, Ruddy, McKenzie, Morris, etc..
and in most of these cases, there are no/few places near a green where a ball can be carried 100 plus yards away from a green--carried away yes, but not to Connemara....
She is arguing about the lack of elevation changes on "true links courses". These are true links courses with these elevation changes. The prosecution rests.