The Harvest at (Gulp) The Foot

In the May 26 Golf World (not yet online), Tim Rosaforte writes about Donald Trump, who he says is a "golf guy with a business sense and now the credibility that comes with a USGA stamp of approval."

He also writes about going to "The Foot" on Monday to test out the rough they are harvesting at yes, Winged Foot. (Branding it The Foot is part of his effort to come up with the cheesiest, least original golf course knicknames possible.)

Anyway, good news from, uh, The Foot. The rough is growing and everyone is so, so happy! 

Rosaforte writes that he'd like to have the ball concession when superintendent Eric "Greypok" cuts the grass after the Open. Well, when Eric Greytok cuts it, we'll let Rosaforte go for that concession too.

Online at GolfDigest.com, he offers a lengthier, more painful version of his rough harvest observations.

Walter Driver, president of the U.S. Golf Association and the man in charge of the upcoming U.S. Open, stood on the 10th tee of the West Course at Winged Foot Golf Club on Tuesday, and instead of doing what Ben Hogan said\ -- aim to hit it through the bedroom window of the house behind the green of the 188-yard par 3 -- Driver, a legitimate 2-handicap, struck a rare poor shot, flaring the ball out to the right, where it disappeared in a nest of grass.

It was fitting that the first shot hit by the man who will take all the heat for the deep rough at this year's Open required a search party and almost all of the allotted five minutes before finding his pellet. From there, the players in his group were given a snapshot of the chain reaction that occurs in an Open when a ball doesn't come to rest in the short grass. This is not like your basic tour stop, where the big boys can play bomb and gouge. This is wet wire-brush, wrist-spraining, ball-gobbling, destroy-your-mind vegetation, and so the clubface of Driver's wedge closed down, and the ball squirted back onto the closely mowed grass. From there he chipped on and two-putted for a double-bogey five.

Oh, joy! All of this rough is going to make the U.S. Open all about us, the USGA!  They're going to talk about us, and notice, and admire us for putting these Tour boys in their rightful place, which most definitely had better not be 350 yards off the tee!

The early scouting report: Better bring your straight ball. The nitrates, as Walter pointed out, have been working on Winged Foot's lawn. Mix the fertilizer with a wet spring, and a tree-removal program that gives the grass plenty of air and sunlight, and 7,264-yard Winged Foot West is in shape for another massacre.

It's been 22 years, but there is not an Open course that looks more like an Open Course than The Foot, and you can't believe how good the West course looks, how beautiful the green complexes are now that the tree huggers have lost their battle, and how terrorizing it's going to be that third week in June, when the contestants can't take a newspaper double and move with a smile to the next tee.

"Hitting the fairway is recommended here," said Driver at the driveable par-4 sixth.

Ha, ha! Bang fist on table! Such wit!

Halfway through the round, Driver got on his Blackberry and sent a text message to Mike Davis, the USGA's new director of competitions. He had driven into a clump of broccoli on the first hole and couldn't get a club on his ball. After moving it two feet, he expressed to Davis that the second cut was a little too lenient and the third cut a bit too penal. That will be tweaked in time for the opening round on June 15. After Shinnecock in 2004, the president doesn't want this one getting out of hand.

Shinnecock? Something went wrong there?

Annika at Sybase

Did anyone see what happened to Annika at the Sybase and Wykagyl's 9th hole? I didn't see it, but wondered if it was just bad course management or a screwy course setup?

Her post rounds comments are here.

Thoughts? 

Huggan On State of Euro Tour, Monty

John Huggan wonders if recent European Tour happenings are hurting the Tour. Starting with the weird Irish Open antics this week.

Then there was Thursday's opening round of the Irish Open at the Colin Montgomerie-designed Carton House. Serious questions need to be asked at European Tour headquarters about a venue whose topography is so flawed that a bit of wind is enough to provoke suspension of play. On a proper course - one where the 'architect' pays appropriate attention to the prevailing meteorological conditions in an area that he visits more than a handful of times - these sorts of things don't happen.

Or, at least, they don't on courses where the greens are built to receive good shots rather than to repel them. Witness the third round of the Open Championship at Muirfield in 2002. In squally weather that was a million times worse than we saw three days ago, the world's best course was certainly difficult, but remained playable - although it was sometimes hard to ascertain that fact, so loud was the squealing from various competitors. Equally, it is hard to imagine golfers being asked to leave the premises at one of Ireland's premier links, say Portmarnock, when the breeze rises to no more than a little gusty.

And he quotes a player, who isn't too keen on the quality of events or fields:

None of the above nonsense is, of course, helping the European Tour at a time when pressure from its main competitor, America's PGA Tour, has never been so intense. Nor will it change the view of at least one well-respected Ryder Cup player that the quality of the product is slipping.

"One of the great myths on the European Tour is that the standard of play is rising every year," he says. "You hear guys saying stuff like: 'Yes, I have to keep improving just to stand still.'

"What a load of rubbish. The real truth is that, apart from the few really top-class events we have each year, tournaments like the BMW Championship at Wentworth, the general quality of the fields week-to-week is falling. Which makes sense if you are paying attention. Look at the number of top guys who have disappeared off to the PGA Tour over the last five years or so. Not just Europeans, but Australians too.

"The harsh truth is that, if you are any good at all, the European Tour represents increasingly easy pickings."

Huggan also looks at Monty's consideration of the two-driver strategy:

Speaking of Monty, the eight-time European No.1 - good job Tiger's winnings are ruled ineligible by his failure to compete in 11 counting events! - is apparently considering following Phil Mickelson's lead and carrying two drivers, one for fading, the other for drawing.

While this nonsense is a logical extension of the distances that the leading players now hit the apparently turbo-charged ball with their turbo-charged clubs - who needs a 3- or 4-iron after a 330-yard drive? - it is also more than a little depressing. Rather than a game of skill and technique, golf is turning into a mere test of power. Purchasing power, that is.

Let me see, shall I buy a hook or a slice today? Shot-makers of the past, men like Ben Hogan who viewed golf as an art rather than a science, must be spinning wildly in their final resting places.

Hale The Tiered Rough

Hal Hale Irwin, that beacon of wisdom and joviality tells Dan O'Neill that he's all for the USGA's new tiered rough, especially if it means they could narrow fairways even more. 

“Well, I’ve suggested to them that I think it would be great if they narrowed the fairway even more and made the first cut relatively tame and then graduated from there,” Irwin said. “(It would) really put a premium on putting the ball in the fairway. Obviously there's a point up to the ropes where you can do that. Once you get outside the ropes, then it becomes very quickly trampled down.

“That could be what they're doing, trying to say, OK, the farther offline you are, the greater the penalty. There's a point to where that stops -- just happens to be right where the rope line is. Once you get down to where the grass is downtrodden, if you have no trees in your way, it becomes relatively a straightforward shot again.

“They say they're going to extend the ropes out farther than customary to accommodate it. I think that's good. That might try to harness some of these big long bombers that are going to pump it out there regardless of where it goes.”

This would all be so much easier if we just eliminated the short grass. It would cure the groove problem, the flogging problem and the distance problem.

Bomb and Gouge!?!?!

Peter Morrice has the first Golf Digest feature/instruction story on flogging, only he employs Chuck Cook's "Bomb and Gouge" label instead of Johnny Millers' "just flog it out there" line. 

I guess flog does have that negative semordnilap thing going against it, after all, it is...golf backwards. And why ever contemplate the negative when you can milk it for an instruction piece AND run photos of pros from the 18-34 demo! 

Today's tour bombers are not only crushing drives, they're establishing a new style of play: Bomb & Gouge. The thinking goes, bomb driver as far as you can and, if need be, gouge the ball out of the rough and onto the green. Golf's long-held ideal--fairways and greens--is giving way to this aggressive new style. Even from the rough, these power hitters say they can take advantage of shorter approach shots and create more birdie opportunities.

"I like hitting driver as much as possible because it gets me closer to the hole," says J.B. Holmes, another super-long rookie and winner of the FBR Open in February in just his fourth start on tour. "Hitting driver gives me the advantage of being 50 yards past other guys. If I hit 3-wood, I'm back where everybody else is."

Here's where it gets fun:

"The biggest factor in distance is that players are just now learning how to launch the ball at optimum conditions," says Tom Stites, chief of product creation at Nike Golf. "It's the technology of the equipment, yes, but it's also the technology of the selection process."

Another major factor is the modern ball. Tour players today hit multilayer, urethane-cover balls that spin less off the tee than wound balls of a decade ago. With the right impact conditions, players launch the ball high but with a lower spin rate, which lengthens but also straightens the flight (reducing spin reduces sidespin as well).

"With the [Titleist] Pro V1, the longest hitters went to bed one day and woke up the next 20 yards longer," says Jim McLean. Ball manufacturers continue to isolate the best flight characteristics, and ball-fitting has become a standard part of the equipment-fitting process. "Matching the ball to the driver being used has been a bigger variable than the equipment itself," says Dave Phillips, co-founder of the Titleist Performance Institute.

Of course, these people are all delusional if you believe the USGA.

Speaking of them, to your right is a Golf Digest chart that the Far Hills group would look at and say, "it's the grooves." (Instead of understanding that greens in regulation will go up when you are hitting more lofted clubs into the holes!):

Then there's this from Morrice and Jack Nicklaus:

As hot as the power game is, it's hardly new. Top players have often had a distance advantage, but they've usually used it cautiously. Jack Nicklaus was the bomber of his generation, but he played a decidedly conservative game. Nicklaus was famous for plodding his way around with 3-woods and 1-irons off the tee until he needed a big drive. Then he'd hammer one 50 yards by his playing partners. "I played a power game," Nicklaus says, "but I always believed the game of golf was a game of power when you need it, but placement and positioning was the more important part of that game. Today, the game to me is power. I don't think the other part is even there."

And this from Hank Haney:

"A few wild shots have always been an acceptable price for Tiger to pay in exchange for dominant length," says Woods' coach, Hank Haney. "The top players play the power game--and prove over and over that distance is king, especially when you have the ability to hit great recovery shots."

This is where things get weird:

Many golf insiders argue that course setups play right into the power player's hands. "Until the tour and other events narrow the fairways to 25 yards and grow the rough to four or five inches, they'll continue to bomb it," says Butch Harmon. "Golf used to be driving and putting, and it still is, only getting the ball in play doesn't matter anymore."

I guess Butch hasn't been watching, but uh, the more they narrow the fairways and grow the rough, the more it encourages flogging!

Don't you just love watching golf turn inward on itself, all to protect the...ah I won't go there.

One idea for putting a premium back on driving accuracy would be to "lower the floors of fairway bunkers so that they're real hazards," says White. "We can't just grow up the rough to six inches. The members at [our tournament sites] would not be able to play their own golf course."

Hey, those will drain well!

Really, how long before we start putting alligators and snakes in the roughs all to protect the...I said I wouldn't go there, and I won't.

Television analyst David Feherty, a former Ryder Cup player, agrees that shotmaking has changed but thinks it's for the better. "I stand up on the tee [at tour events] and look out at a fairway 350 yards out. I put my thumb on one edge of the fairway and my finger on the other--it's like 2 1/2 inches, and these guys are ripping it down the middle," says Feherty. "If that's not shotmaking, I don't know what is."

Now, wasn't he the guy who just last week advocated changing the ball to restore shotmaking?

"Major" Course Pleases Appleby, Induces Naps Here

Andrew Both reports:

In-form Stuart Appleby had no complaints about a solid, even-par 72 in the opening round of the US PGA Tour's Wachovia Championship today (AEST).

"It's playing like a major, not a low scoring course at all," said the Victorian, who trails clubhouse leaders Trevor Immelman and Bill Haas by three shots with half the field back in the Quail Hollow clubhouse.

Wow, give 'em narrow fairways and high scores and it's a major! The game is so sophisticated these days.

Huggan On Governing Body Setup Ploys

John Huggan returns from Open Championship media day and his Geoff Ogilvy chat thinking about the course setup "shenanigans" employed by the R&A and USGA in hopes of masking their regulatory complacency:

All of said shenanigans have had two results: winning scores have remained within what the officials would describe as a respectable range, and at times the players, the courses and the game have been made to look stupid, thereby severely compromising the integrity of the competition.

And...

It is heartbreaking, year after year, to watch the greatest of games being diminished by a failure on the part of the sport's administrators to cap distance. And it will be the same again at Hoylake come July. Given the narrowness of the fairways already and three more months of grass-growing weather, look for a lot of tedious hacking out and not enough opportunity for the better players to separate themselves from the rest by dint of their superior ability to create shots from off the fairway.

For "tricking up", read "dumbing down".

Frank Thomas: 10 Clubs and More Rough

I'm not sure what's more disappointing: that former USGA technical director is advocating more rough and 10 clubs, or that the New York Times continues to print his pieces, even putting the latest column on the main Op-Ed page. 

In an email sent out to his subscribers, the headline read "THOMAS PROPOSES TEN CLUB SOLUTION FOR TOUR," and the subheader said, "Limiting club selection and focus on course set up can help allay technology fears."

In "Golf's Power Failure," Thomas writes:

Now officers and elders of the golf association — which, along with the Royal and Ancient Golf Association of St. Andrews, Scotland, writes the game's rules — have asked manufacturers to study the feasibility of a ball that would travel on average 25 yards less than those used now.

This idea is wrongheaded in several ways. To begin with, mandating such a ball would affect all players, and the vast majority of golfers don't hit the ball too far. (Nor do we hit the ball nearly as far as we think we do; well-supported data indicates that the average golfer hits a driver 192 yards — while thinking that he hits it approximately 230.) It's safe to say that for most of us the great layouts created a century ago still provide plenty of challenge.

Which is why Thomas is advocating change, but not before questioning recent action taken by the USGA to mop up for many of the things that got by his watch:

Even before addressing the ball, the rule-making bodies took several foolish steps. They instituted limits that allowed some spring-like effect from the club faces of high-tech titanium drivers (a phenomenon that let the club itself enhance the ball speed at impact for the first time), while restricting both the length of a driver (which will affect few players) and the permissible height of a tee (which is downright silly). They have also explored limits on how much a club can resist twisting at impact; such a change, like the reduced-distance ball, would have a much greater effect on the average golfer than on those who play for prize money.

Ah, so since this debate has always been part of the game and we should relax a bit, Thomas suggests doing something about it:

The goal should be to keep professionals from mindlessly bombing away while not unnecessarily hurting the average player. I have two suggestions. First, tournament courses should be set up to punish long but wayward hitters by narrowing fairways and growing higher rough (the longer grass along the margins of the hole).

Yes, it's worked so well and cures many sleep disorders. And really, when you consider that fairways are now 20-25 yars, they have so much room to get narrower. I saw the width of a ball would be fair.

The other major change would address the imbalance that today seems to favor power so strongly over touch and finesse. To place greater emphasis on the old skills required to work the ball and to hit less-than-full shots, professional players should be restricted to 10 clubs in their bags instead of the current 14.

What do you think manufacturers would hate more, a ball rollback that doesn't impact anyone under 110 mph, or Tour pros only uh, "branding" 10 clubs instead of 14?

And they say I'm anti-technology!

Trial Balloon

Watching players struggle with 6-8 inch rough at TPC Sawgrass that Tiger Woods took issue with because it compromised Pete Dye's design concept, I couldn't help but wonder what will happen when a player is injured by such a setup tactic.

Imagine an injured wrist, elbow or shoulder caused by rough that was harvested to take driver out of the players hands. And why? Because players might make a few too many birdies and hit 350-yard drives, causing people to notice that the game is out of balance.

Readers of The Future of Golf know that I wrote about the possibility of a player someday suing a governing body over a Meeks-like setup boondoggle, but I think injury is going to come first.

If a player is injured trying to hit out of ankle high, over-fertilized rough watered differently than fairways, will this be shrugged off as a "rub of the green," "that's the risk they take" situation? 

With the USGA's David Fay suggesting at last year's SI Roundtable that he would like to see 8 inch rough heights for shorter holes like Winged Foot's 6th, it seems that the anti-birdie, anti-distance rough is going to be coming to major championship golf. Inevitably someone will get hurt.

How absurd is that?

Tiger On Sawgrass Setup

More from Tiger Woods after Sunday's final The Players Championship, before it becomes THE PLAYERS:

TIGER WOODS: Since I've played here, I've never liked the way they've set it up with the rough high because the golf course wasn't meant to be played that way. I've talked to Pete Dye, and it wasn't meant to be played that way. It's supposed to be hard and fast and all the palmetto bushes are supposed to be coming into play. When we played the Amateur here in '94 that's the way it was, but they've cleaned it up and changed the golf course and changed, I think, how Pete wanted it initially to be played.

Hopefully when we come back here in May, it will be playing like that. Hard and fast is great, but six, eight inch rough, I don't think that's the right combo.

A Blueprint For...?

Steve Elling talks to Arnold Palmer about possible changes to Bay Hill in response to modern day driving distances, something that first came up in his Sunday NBC interview.

Also on Palmer's might-do list is an overhaul of the sixth hole, a par-5 that curls like a semicircle around a large lake. After watching a couple of players blow 300-yard drives across the pond and hit short-iron approaches into the 558-yard hole, he wants to move the green back a few yards. "I think he'll mess that hole up if he does," Retief Goosen said. "I don't think he should mess with 6 -- it's a great hole as it is. It's all about excitement and going for that green [in two] and you'd see more guys laying up."

And this...

His two-year experiment with longer rough seems to have been a mixed bag. By forcing long hitters to play from the fairway, he placed a bigger value on shotmaking. But he also widened the number of potential winners.

Sunday, Palmer wasn't necessarily buying the argument that he had opened the door for pack of middle-tier players at the expense of the big boys like Woods, Vijay Singh and Ernie Els -- all long hitters with lengthy pedigrees at the course. Nor did he necessarily agree that he had retreated to a setup that could produce more winners such as Paul Goydos and Andrew Magee, journeymen who each claimed their lone and biggest tour titles, respectively, at Bay Hill.

If Palmer reins in the bashers, on balance, he likely will have to accept a few middle-tier players as winners.

"You are saying that, I'm not saying that," Palmer said when the notion was posed. "I can't answer that. I don't know. I honestly thought that Tiger would do well [he finished 20th], that this would be a good week for him."

Life In The Fast Lane Not What It Seems

Now posted is my February Golfdom column on green speeds, their impact on scoring and comments about putting made in a recent Nick Seitz story.

Hard Equals ?

Ernie Els at Bay Hill, talking about The Masters:

 "If we have tough weather conditions, it's going to be a very tough week," the world number five said. "It's becoming one of the toughest of the majors now.

"Where it used to be the most fun of all the majors, it's becoming the hardest one now."

I know a lot of people take pleasure in seeing the pros struggle because it makes them feel better about their own feeble golf games.  And I have no problem with that once a year at the U.S. Open.

But I keep wondering if it ever occurs to the folks running the game that when a course is set up just tough enough and still vulnerable to attacks by the best players, it translates to fun for the players, and most likely fun for the fans.  

The point here is rather simple and not a new one, but as you can see, I feel it's worth repeating:  the folks at way too many golf courses make setup about them, and not about the players. It's about producing a certain score, and producing a post-event reaction that has 20 handicappers patting each other on the back for putting those spoiled Tour boys in their place.

Nothing new here, just kind of sad when you realize how intensely selfish it is. 

Tiger On Augusta: Interesting, Very Interesting

Translation: yuck, very yucky.

Amazingly (or is frighteningly), I read all of Tiger's press conferences and continue to marvel at his ability to answer the same questions over and over again. He's also become quite good at acting like he's enjoying some lame question about a player he's played with twice. And he can be so positive when talking about a course he probably thinks is mediocre at best.

So I think it's safe to say--lacking much in the way of complimentary talk--that this is a not-so-flattering assessment of Augusta:

Tiger at Bay Hill:

Q. Speaking of The Masters, now that you've had a chance to play the course firsthand, what do you think of the changes?

TIGER WOODS: Interesting, very interesting.

 Hey, at least he didn't say it was the best of its kind! Sorry, continue...

I didn't hit enough club to No. 4. I needed wood to get to 4. 7 is certainly changed. It's a totally different hole now. 1 is 300 yards just to get to the bunker now. If we get any kind of cool north wind like we have today, you won't be able to see the flag. You won't be able to see the green. Some of the changes are pretty dramatic and certainly going to be very interesting if the wind ever blows.

Q. Do you think they accomplished (inaudible)?

TIGER WOODS: I've talked to some of the older guys who played there back in the '50s, '60s and '70s and they never had to hit wood into 4 before, but you'll see a lot of guys hitting wood in 4 this year.

Q. What do you think will happen if there's rain?

TIGER WOODS: It will be brutal because now you're hitting some really long clubs into the holes. Again, we haven't seen the greens hard and fast either. With the rain, with or without rain last year, we were thinking in the practice rounds that over par is going to win the tournament. If you can keep it around even par, you're going to win it easily.

So, you know this, year, if it stays dry, probably the same thing.

Q. Did anyone ask you about Jack's comments, and do you agree that there's only ten or a dozen or so guys that are capable of winning because of the changes, because of the length?

TIGER WOODS: It eliminates a lot of guys, yeah. If you hit it low and rely on your game that way to get the ball out there and hit your irons not so high, if you have a flatter ball flight, you're going to be struggling there.

Q. If even par were to win there, is it a shame in a sense that you guys already have a U.S. Open?

TIGER WOODS: It's just different. I think it they should get rid of that second cut and get rid of and bring the pine needles and the pine trees back into play. But they see it differently than a lot of us do as players.

I remember pulling that ball off the first tee and it's going straight through the pine trees. Now you have a chance of it stopping in that second cut. They think it's harder to play out of that than it is out of the trees.

Q. Ernie was saying how The Masters used to be most fun major and now it's become the toughest, do you think it has gotten up to that?

TIGER WOODS: Without a doubt, it's gotten so much more difficult now. With the added length, with those greens being the way they are, it just makes it so hard out there. You're hitting clubs that, granted, they are trying to get you to hit clubs like the older guys used to hit, and yeah, but the greens were not running at 13 on the Stimpmeter either. So it just makes that much more difficult now.

With the speed of these greens now, each and every year, it all depends if they are firm. I mean, if they are firm, that golf course is probably the most difficult golf course you'll ever play.

Q. Could you have imagine them dialing some of those changes back a little bit, get rid of the rough or move the tees forward a little bit?

TIGER WOODS: They may move tees around. I think that's what they did with some of the tee boxes. Like on 4 and 7, they are really long tee boxes, so they have the ability to move it around and play with the tee markers a little bit. Because if you get soft, yeah, you can go ahead and move the tees up a little bit and give the guys a chance. So I think that's one of the smart things they have done. 

More Setup Flexibility...

In his latest Golfonline column reviewing the West Coast Swing, Peter Kostis makes this comment:

Speaking of course setups, the PGA Tour needs to give more leeway to the field staff at each tournament to respond to competitive realities and alter the way a course plays. Right now the 54-hole lead is critical! At Pebble Beach, Luke Donald was six shots behind co-leaders Aaron Oberholser and Mike Weir after 54 holes. But the way Pebble was set up that Sunday, with super-difficult pin positions and tees pushed back, there was no way someone was going to shoot a 64 or 65 to make a late charge. That wouldn’t be the case if the PGA Tour field staff had more flexibility. That’s why I love the setup on Sunday at the Masters. If you are playing well, the course can be had and even a six-shot lead isn’t safe.

So what does this mean about the PGA Tour field staff needing more flexibility?

Just typing out loud here, but it sure sounds like Kostis has talked to some of the field staff and that the directive for the Sunday anti-birdie setups is coming from above (that narrows it down to about 400 overpaid VP's!).

Why would those running an entertainment vehicle like the PGA Tour think that a full security lockdown of the hole would make final rounds more fun to watch?

Do they just not get it?

Or is there something else at play here with scoring averages and the technology debate?