Shaughnessy Lovefest Continues

Ken Fidlin in the Toronto Sun talks to a few players and gets some great quotes.

"I love this," Jesper Parnevik said. "It just shows you that today's architects are pretty sad. They're building golf courses that are approaching 8,000 yards and it takes 15-under to win. Then we get these old traditional courses and no one can break par."

Well, that wasn’t quite the case in round 1.

"I wish we could play a course like this every week," John Cook said. "So much of the game has been lost because kids get up today and just bomb it.

Now, is that the fault of architects? That the kids bomb it? I don’t think so! 

The reaction of virtually all the players in the field should be food for thought for the one-track minds who can't seem to come up with any fresh answers to the problems that technology has created for many golf courses.

Instead of just creating more and more monster courses, architects should take a long, hard look at many of the traditional layouts that demand shotmaking, not just length.

Or, someone could actually govern the game so that the courses don’t continue to be asked to mask a job not well done.

They Love Shaughnessy

From the Brad Ziemer of the Vancouver Sun:

Jerry Kelly was not in the mood for chit-chat, so the PGA Tour veteran was succinct and to the point when asked for his opinion on Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club.

"It's a great golf course and I don't think we play any better on Tour, period," Kelly said after his pro-am round on Wednesday.

And this:

"This is one of the top-five golf courses on the PGA Tour already after just one practice round," said Andrew Magee. "You hear all the rumblings in the locker room and on the driving range and the players are saying this is the kind of golf course we all think we should be playing every week on Tour. This is just fabulous.

"It's just got long holes, short holes, views, trees, dogleg rights, dogleg lefts, it's got a real versatile mix of holes. It's just a beautiful place."

"It seems like you are going to have to have all of your wits about you here," said former PGA champion Jeff Sluman. "It's a shotmaker's golf course, for sure. It's not one of those courses where you can smash it and grab it. If we could play something like this every week, it would be unbelievable."

The premium this week will be on keeping the ball in fairways that have been pinched to an average of 26 to 28 yards wide. Once finding the short grass, players must then hit approach shots to greens that are tiny by PGA Tour standards.

"You have to really drive your ball straight here," said Magee. "Nobody who hits it off the fairway is going to play well this week. You have to hit it straight, you have to hit it below the hole. The greens are fast and it's just a classic golf course. It's a very fair course, but it's just tough."

"You hit it in the rough and I would say from any more than 150 yards out you are not going to be able to get to the greens," added DiMarco. "Fairway is premium this week. The greens are sneaky quick. You get on the wrong side and they can be really fast. It's playing tough."

Now, I don’t want to pick on these guys because they’ve really only seen the horribly shallow modern form of narrow fairway and high rough golf. You know, tightrope walking golf. The kind that's supposed to put a premium on ball striking and ends up turning things into a putting contest.

Anyway, wouldn’t it be neat to hear of just one course where the players say something like this:

"Placement off the tee is at a premium this week. The greens really ask you to place your tee shot depending on the hole location. There isn't much rough, but because the bunkers are such nasty hazards, you don't know what kind of lie you might get. So you really have to be careful flirting with the hazards."

Ballyneal Article

Thanks to reader Joe for this David Holland article on Rupert O'Neal's Ballyneal, a Tom Doak design 3 hours outside of Denver on the way to the Sand Hills of Nebraska. I think I'm touring the course in October and hope it is as promising as it looks. The long predicted "Prairie Trail" of courses in the Sand Hills region is finally happening.

It's The Only Way You Lear

Thanks to reader Josh for this from the Telegraph. Writing about Colin Montgomerie:

Design is something the Scot has become more interested in. He said: "This is the first course in the UK which has my signature and for it to be in Ayrshire, just 10 miles up the road from where I first played golf, is really special.

"This is something I very much enjoy. To see this project from the start to completion in two years will be remarkable.

"I've been involved in dozens of courses all over the world now and we are ever expanding. I've played enough bad courses and enough bad holes in my time to know what is good and what I want.

"I've spoken to players past and present about golf course design. It's the only way you learn."

In Living Color

My latest Golfobserver.com column on "color" in architecture is now posted.

You'll notice that the latest Michael Miller masterwork is included with the column. It's titled "Approaching Weather at Bandon Trails, #17."

For you Bandon Trails fans, Mike can produce beautiful Giclee prints of the painting, with the cost ranging from $100 to $350 in price depending on size. Or he can do prints of his other works, which can be seen here. You can email him at MichaelMiller861@msn.com.

How Did It Get This Way?

That's what Travelgolf's Tim McDonald asks about the cost of a round.

If He Just Called It Bedminster...

Here's a story on Donald Trump wanting to add another course to his Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. It seems he's doing everything right to lure the USGA event he so badly wants (after all, the second course is ultimately for parking cars and corporate tents).

But does the place ever have a chance as long as it's called Trump National? Hard to imagine that being sandwiched in between an Oakmont and a Pebble Beach?

Merion 14 Redux**

Courtesy of reader Richard:

The 14th hole in 1930 (left) and an aerial of today's hole, with an overlay in green showing the 1930 fairway width over today's setup (minus the wood chip nursery left, or whatever that gray area visible on TV is). Note how the risk/reward element of flirting with the road left is eliminated in an attempt to put a longer approach iron in the player's hands.

**On closer inspection, and with the help of TiVo, the block of stuff between the road and left rough appears to be a dead fescue farm. Or maybe it's Featherbed Bent? Either way, it used to be fairway in the old days before the guys started working out so much, forcing people to create strange fairway contouring.

Mr. Sand Man

Now posted is my Golfdom feature story on Jeff Bradley, Coore and Crenshaw's bunker guru.

Just Another Golf Course!?

Walker Cup Great Britain/Ireland's Gary Wolstenholme:

Q. Can you tell us your impressions of Chicago Golf and the way you play?

GARY WOLSTENHOLME: I would say that the way things are going nowadays, we've got players that are competing in the states and colleges on a regular basis, plus the rest of us all competed abroad on a regular basis as well. So, this is just another golf course. As far as the way that it plays, the fairways are very soft. Obviously, I'm not sure that's probably the way it was initially intended. I think they would have liked to have a bit of run on fairways to create more of a test in that respect. We're used to playing virtually every type of golf course there is to play. This is just the way it's playing at the moment. It's pretty much drop and stop.