"I believe, if you are going to be fair, you need to be consistent in setting up a course"

Newly engaged and already feisty, the Shark lashed out at the different condtions during round two in South Africa.

The 52-year-old Australian carded a 70 to finish in a six-man group on 145 that also included Britain's Darren Clarke.

But Norman was critical of the way the course was set up for the second round.

"It's been two totally different courses, the course was more difficult yesterday," he told reporters.

"They made a few adjustments to the tees and they did 100 percent irrigation last night so the greens, which they also did not cut, were softer and there was not as much release on the fairways.

"I believe, if you are going to be fair, you need to be consistent in setting up a course," added Norman.

Ah, the dreaded fair word.

Tournament director Mike Stewart defended the changes.

"Yesterday was very windy and the course was incredibly difficult as you could tell from the scores," Stewart told Reuters. "Some holes were exceptionally demanding.

"We felt we had to do something based on the weather forecast for today, which had wind speeds 5-mph stronger all day with gusts of up to 30-mph."

Stewart said the changes were made in order to make the course play as it did on Thursday.

"When we brought tees forward it was to make it play like it did on the first day," he said. "Despite the stronger wind players would be able to use the same club off the tee.

"We also had to slow down the greens because the ball was moving around in the afternoon yesterday. The possibility of an even stronger wind today put us in a very difficult position.

"If balls were moving around we may have had to stop play and we would look very silly if we brought the players in glorious sunshine."

Conditions were so difficult on Friday there were only 17 sub-par rounds, leader Kingston calling it a day for grinding out regulation figures.

"I was so solid on the back nine, I only missed two or three greens, but the wind was gusting so hard it was pushing you in all directions," said the South African.

"With the ball oscillating on the greens and the wind pushing you from behind it was so tough making a decent putt. It took a lot of energy just to stand still."

"Fairways are much tighter…and this is further evidenced by the fact that Fred Funk -- who is the benchmark for fairways -- is down in accuracy about 6 percent"

Bob Harig catches up with Hank Haney, who makes a long overdue point about Tiger's driving and the accuracy decline of other top players.

And the easy place to look was at Woods' driving accuracy, which had dropped from over 70 percent in 2000 to under 60 percent this year -- with varying degrees of difficulty in hitting fairways during that time.

"Wouldn't it be more relevant to compare Tiger to the other players?'' said Haney, who pointed out that most players have lost accuracy over the past five years.

Among the reasons Haney cites are the fact that players are hitting the ball farther, fairways are tighter, they are using more drivers off the tee in an attempt to overpower courses and they are using drivers with longer shafts (45 inches now, compared to 43).

"Simple geometry says that even a driver that averages one yard farther will miss more fairways,'' he said. "And Tiger is much longer" -- 293.3 yards in 2002 versus 302.4 yards in 2007 -- "than he was.

"Fairways are much tighter … and this is further evidenced by the fact that Fred Funk -- who is the benchmark for fairways -- is down in accuracy about 6 percent, despite the fact that he has lost distance since 2002.''

Remember, those in favor of grooves regulation suggest these guys thump away at the ball because they have grooves, yet have never mentioned that the decrease in accuracy could also be influenced by narrowing fairway widths.

"Interesting is fun, after all."

John Huggan profiled Mike Clayton's role in aiding Trever Herden in setting up The Australian for the Australian Open.

"Geoff Ogilvy uses the word ‘fun’ to describe what he looks for in championship golf,” says Clayton. "I’m not so sure about that, but it should certainly be interesting. Interesting is fun, after all.

"This is a difficult enough golf course, with the wind and the water and the way it is routed. So all we really tried to do was avoid the mistake of embarrassing the players or orchestrating a winning score by distorting the dimensions of the golf course. For me, that’s what goes on at the US Open; the dimensions of the course get distorted. And that is our role, to avoid that happening.

"So we don’t want fun in the sense that players are making birdies all day. I want guys challenged to make good decisions and hit good shots. I hate to see them hitting a shot a foot off the fairway and having to chip out sideways. All that does is eliminate decision-making."

"Fans want to see big great scores and everything but they want to see people hit the long ball. That's one of the big draws of golf."

Thanks to reader John for The Age's Phil Lutton who quotes J.B. Holmes, who has this to say about about PGA Tour course setup:

Holmes, 25, is ranked third on the US PGA tour in driving distance behind Bubba Watson and notorious ball thug John Daly, averaging 285m every time he unleashes the driver off the tee.

Now his driver is starting to amass cobwebs as tournament bodies and courses shape their layouts to trap up the long hitters, narrowing fairways in strategic areas and carving out bunkers to entangle the heavy swingers.

Holmes says the moves, designed to make courses a more level playing field for the shorter hitters, robs fans of one of the great entertainment factors in the game.

"A lot of fans go out there to watch somebody hit it a long way. You get on some golf courses and it just takes the driver out of your hands. You don't want to disappoint anybody but then again, you're playing a golf tournament and can't just wail away on the driver every time," Holmes said.

"I'd like to see it opened up a little bit. Some courses out there you can do that. You just don't see people hit it 340 yards.

"Fans want to see big great scores and everything but they want to see people hit the long ball. That's one of the big draws of golf."

"That's where the course should be heading, not to provide 15-under."

Thanks to reader Mark for pointing out the tantrum by architect John Darby over a tee move forward and a subsequent course record at the New Zealand Open. Michael Donaldson wrote:

The hole, which is guarded by water and has a green that slopes away from a hill protecting one side of it, delivered some huge scores on Thursday after only 31% of the field hit the green with their tee shot and the average score was 3.6.

It was just as tough on Friday with only a third of the field able to stop the ball on the green, although putting was slightly easier and the field averaged 3.3 shots.

Yesterday, officials reduced the length of the hole from 167m to 152m and moved the tee slightly to the left where the green was more visible rather than being partially obscured.

As a result, more than 70% of the players hit the green and the scoring average came right down to 3.0.

Fowler shot a 10-under par 62, including a par three at the 16th hole.

"It's a great shame it can't be a course record because some of the holes were played off the women's tees, not the championship tees," Darby told the Sunday Star-Times.

"We designed the whole hole to be played, not part of it. That green is entirely appropriate from that [167m] tee."

The PGA disputed that claim, saying the course record would stand as it was common practice to move tees and pin placements throughout a tournament.

And the painful takeaway quote from Darby:

"We designed this course in the tradition of great opens and great links courses, to be played to par off the championship tees. That's where the course should be heading, not to provide 15-under."

Meanwhile, if you didn't catch John Huggan's column on Donald Trump, he wrote about Darby's design as precisely what the world needs less of and noted this about the "controversy." 

Just the other day, in fact, a young Australian professional, Michael Sim, called Darby on his design of the par-3 16th hole at the Hills when they played together in the New Zealand Open's pro-am. So perplexed was Sim - coincidentally, he was born in Aberdeen - by the position and angle of the green relative to the tee, that he spent at least ten minutes debating both with an increasingly-harassed Darby. The conversation did not go well, apparently.

All Darby had to offer was that he had tried to create a "defensive hole" between two birdie chances. For "defensive", by the way, read "stupid". Last Thursday, the field averaged 3.6, and at one point in the afternoon only one golfer out of 21 managed to hit the green.

Here's what I find most interesting about this little saga: that Darby takes it personally when someone goes low on his course.

And that is the essential difference between an architect creating something fun and interesting, versus something utterly boring.

The architects interested in strategy do not want to put golfers on the defensive. They want to encourage risk taking with reward for those taking a chance.

The architects interested in protecting par, protecting their ego and in general preventing great players from occasionally making a birdie, can easily accomplish their goal if they so choose. However it sure is boring to watch and most certainly boring to play. 

"I thought hitting the fairway was part and parcel of golf. Silly me."

Lawrence Donegan talks to Andrew Coltart about his struggles with distance and the flogging approach to course setup.

"When I played with Tiger he was a brilliant player but he was also very physically imposing, so I went away and tried to work on hitting the ball further. That was 1999. We're now in 2007 and I'm still trying to get more distance," he said. "If I don't try and hit the ball further, the way technology is going I'm going to be left way behind."

The truth is that Coltart, now 37, whose trip to tour school comes after his failure to make the top 115 in the 2007 European tour order of merit, may already have been left behind. Last year he was 181st in driving distance, hitting the ball 268 yards on average - a full 40 yards behind the longest hitters. In the Italian Open in the summer he had to play a five-wood shot into the green on seven of the first nine holes.

"How the hell can I get a five-wood shot close to the hole consistently? If I'd shot two under par I would have done really well - the winning score was 16 under par," he said sarcastically. "I don't want this to come over as bitterness but I feel technology has allowed guys to prosper who 15 years ago wouldn't have been able to make a penny. But because of technology and the way the courses are set up they are going to do really well.

"A guy might be able to dunt the ball 260 yards down the middle but that guy is constantly being outdone because the bigger hitter - the animal, for the want of a better expression - hits it 330 yards and it doesn't matter if he is in the rough because he has only got a wedge in his hands for his next shot. And the greens are saturated, so whatever he can lob up on to the green is just going to plug and stop somewhere near the flag.

"There is one statistic that is very curious to me - you have guys who are 150th in driving accuracy yet are 10th in greens in regulation. How can that be right? I thought hitting the fairway was part and parcel of golf. Silly me."

Interesting to note that he doesn't seem optimistic that a change in grooves will help him reverse his fortunes. 

"Floyd suggested that the club and the Champions Tour consider 'buffering' the greens so that players won't be penalized so drastically."

Don Markus reviews the Senior Players at Baltimore CC and it seems the players want faster greens.

"It's a great golf course, but if they want to take that extra step, they could probably speed the greens up and firm the greens up just a little bit if they wanted to," Loren Roberts said after shooting a four-round score of 13-under-par 267 to win by six strokes over Tom Watson. "I hope they don't hear me say that, but ..."

Roberts echoed the sentiments of many players who appreciated the old-style layout of the 81-year-old Five Farms course and the original design of legendary golf architect A.W. Tillinghast, but said that modern technology and the severely back-to-front sloping greens are not necessarily a good match.

Hall of Famer Ray Floyd said that when the course was built, "they were only mowing twice a week and it made sense to have that kind of speed and slope in the greens." Floyd suggested that the club and the Champions Tour consider "buffering" the greens so that players won't be penalized so drastically.

"Raymond could be right," two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw said. "The slopes are tough, there's no question about that. The first championship here to prepare something like this. I'm sure they're looking at the speeds, the play. They're tough, they're really tough."

I'm sorry. I was in the heat and sun too long today and my brain is fried. What does green "buffering" mean!? I'm assuming he means to flatten out contours.

If that club, with that gem of a course, touches those greens for the fifth of five senior majors... 

The Beauty of Short Grass

I celebrate the short grass at Southern Hills and warn Golfdom readers/superintendents that they should expect more courses to install short grass after yet another example of the tight stuff adding interest, challenge and fun to a classic course.

Some Southern Hills Setup Thoughts

The one glaring weakness of Southern Hills is a lack of flexibility that might have given the PGA's Kerry Haigh a chance to move up some tees and encourage drives at a short par-4 (the par-5's proved reachable thanks to the heat and the remarkable athleticism of guys like John Daly). Still, it seemed like the hole locations were nicely varied throughout the week and offered a great mix of both easily accessible and tucked.

However, two hole locations looked a bit silly Sunday, and I'd love to hear from those on site if they agreed.

Number 6 was tucked so close to the creek and shaved bank that there seemed to be no rational reason to attack it. It made 12 at Augusta on Sunday look accessible.
(click to enlarge)

Same deal with No. 12, which was hidden behind the front bunker.

To achieve some element of temptation, and therefore risk/reward scenarios that make for captivating golf, both holes probably saw their best Sunday locations on...Saturday. For round three, the sixth was cut in the center left while No. 12 was cut in the center back right near the shaved bank leading to the creek.

That's quibbling though. Once again, the PGA Championship left me feeling like the players faced a tough test and yet were able to display their skill at the right times. Sure, they were on the defensive quite a bit due to the narrow nature of Southern Hills and there were still plenty of irons off tees, but the opportunity was there to attack at times during each round, as opposed to select times chosen by the committee as we see more and more at the first two majors.

Thoughts? 

"At home all the miles I log on the road and run in that heat, granted it's not as hot as this but it's certainly more humid. And that's what you do. You pay the price. You go outwork everybody and days like today or weeks like this week, it shows."

Some great stuff came out of Tiger's post-PGA Championship win press conference, though shockingly, no one asked about the pressure of being the FedEx Cup points leader.

Q. This is a great victory on Thai Mother's Day. Would you like to make a special message to children in Thailand that look up to you?

TIGER WOODS: Well, every time I go back there it's been fantastic. We do junior clinics there and my mom helps with a few shelters there in Bangkok. So we try and help the kids as much as we possibly can. And what my mom's done back there no one really knows about it, but she's done a lot for a lot of kids. And awfully proud of her.

Tiger note to self: tell Steiny to send mom flowers asap for Thai Mother's Day.

Q. Just to get back to Steve's question earlier, the television crew seemed to indicate they thought perhaps you had hurt yourself when you fist pumped on 8 after that birdie and might have hurt you going into 9. Talk about that. Secondly, a local question: Your thoughts on Southern Hills, Tulsa, and Oklahoma hosting this major this week?

TIGER WOODS: As far as hurting myself, no. All good. The only thing that hurt me on 9 was I didn't trust the wind up there. The wind was right to left all day, and you look at the flags up behind 18 and 9, they were left to right. And Steve says the wind's off the right, you gotta trust it's off the right. I just kept telling myself, Look at those flags behind 18. It's off to the left. So we just shoot it more down the left side so the wind will bring it back and actually took it the other way, took it left. So that was my fault for not trusting Stevie and trusting how the wind was all day.

As far as Tulsa hosting the Championship, I mean, this has been a great crowd. For them to come out and support this event with the temperatures the way it was, absolutely phenomenal. I don't know how they could have been enthusiastic being that hot and that tired, but they were. And they were supporting all of us and want to see great shots and they applauded. It was just a great atmosphere all day, all week, especially today. Especially given the temperatures.

Hey, granted he was gimpy, but an admission that he hurt himself doing the fist pump would mean he's human. 

Q. You disproved the belief that your game wasn't meant for Southern Hills, do you believe that your ability to hit the 2-, 3- and 4-iron the way you did all week really made this a golf course that was really well-suited to your game?

TIGER WOODS: I don't understand why people kept saying that. If you watched the way I hit the ball in 2001, I wasn't hitting it very well. But if you look at where I was hitting it, I was hitting it to exactly the same spots I did this week. I just wasn't able to hit the fairways.

I played to the same spots, Stevie and I had the same strategy. Nothing's changed. The only difference is we're hitting less club because the ball's going so much further this year because of temperature and also the improvements in the golf ball in the last six years.

Uh, don't  forget to include the grooves. They make you more likely to bomb driver and, oh, I don't even know. Just remember, it's the grooves, not the ball!

Q. In hindsight, what advantage might you, your conditioning advantage have you in this heat, and also does this change at all your intentions to play all four of the playoff events?

TIGER WOODS: As far as the last part, yes, my intent is to play. As far as your first part of your question is physical fitness is always a huge advantage. And when you play any sport and you have heat and anything that wears you down mentally and physically, the more in shape you are, the more fit you are -- I feel when I walked up 18 I felt the same way as I did going off the first tee. I felt great.

At home all the miles I log on the road and run in that heat, granted it's not as hot as this but it's certainly more humid. And that's what you do. You pay the price. You go outwork everybody and days like today or weeks like this week, it shows. I felt fresh all week. And I felt great.

Other guys may have gotten tired and you see their shoulders slumping and dragging a little bit; I feel fine. I think that's how you should always be. You should always train hard and bust your butt. That's what a sport is, is to do that. And not everyone considers golf a sport and they don't treat it as such.

Take that boys!

Q. You've won your last three majors using a long iron off the tee, a 5-wood off the tee, primarily Medinah. Here you made your birdies with irons. In the back of your mind, do you get frustrated with your driver and the driver swing, and is it any different, could you explain to the rest of us, than your regular swing and why is it a struggle?

TIGER WOODS: I feel the same. The only difference is when you're hitting it, especially this week, 330-, 340-yard fairways 20, 22 yards wide, that's not a lot of room.

And most of the tournaments, if you look at the configuration of how they design the golf courses now for us is that they pinch the fairways in about 280. 280 to 320 is kind of like the major number where they start pinching fairways in.

So a lot of times they're more narrow at that distance than they are shy of 280. And sometimes I see a lot of guys hit driver down there try to play out of the rough. Some golf courses you can, some golf courses you can't. And as far as my swing being different, I feel it's the same.

The only difference is not a lot of room for error when you're hitting it that far. And that's one of the reasons why you see a lot of longer hitters hit 3-woods off the tee because the 3-wood nowadays goes as far as it used to when I first came out here as far as a driver went. I had no problem hitting 3-wood this week over 300 yards, just because it was so hot. And every week is different. It really is. It's kind of a feel thing.

And a groove thing too, right? No? It can't be the combination of narrow fairways and a ball going longer. Just can't be!

Q. You said a little bit earlier you feel by far you're a better player than you were in 2000 which is the year when you won the last three majors, and people were wondering if anybody else would win another tournament you were entered in. This year you had to grind it out in the last major of the year to get your first major and I'm wondering just what that says and maybe in terms of the challenge that it becomes over the years to keep winning these majors?

TIGER WOODS: Well, everyone's not going to stay stagnant. Everyone is going to try to improve and they all have. Everyone's worked hard to improve their game through technology, through fitness. Look back when I first came out here on Tour, how many guys had personal trainers. I don't think any of them did.

Now going to the fitness van everyone has a trainer there. So the game has changed and everyone's gotten stronger, more fit. They're hitting the ball further. Technology has certainly helped that out. Your dispersion patterns aren't as wide.

Well that'll all change in 2009 when you are playing with V-grooves!

And guys are shooting a lot better scores. And it has become a lot harder to win tournaments. And that's the fun of it. That's the challenge.

And finally, a jab at the scribblers...

Q. Stephen Ames said there wasn't as much craziness inside or outside the ropes when he played today. He said there just wasn't the mayhem. Has Tiger mania changed that much or has everybody's concentration levels so much more concentrated now?

TIGER WOODS: No, I think you guys are lazy (laughter). I didn't see a whole lot of you guys walking with us like you normally do. It's a little hot. And I think maybe the buffets are good in here and air conditioning is nice (laughter).

No, it was different. We didn't have as many media inside the ropes, being whether it's you guys or it's photographers or TV crews. There weren't just as many.

"It May Be Damned Hot, But It's Heartening Too"

Geoff Ogilvy's look at Southern Hills for Sunland In Scotday Scotland On Sunday is notable for several reasons, mostly because it's just so fun to read a modern day player so eloquently stating why the direction of the Masters and U.S. Open is so absurd.

Instead of the silly thick rough and ultra-narrow fairways the USGA come up with in a misguided attempt to 'protect' par, the USPGA officials have clearly decided to let us play a more strategic and interesting form of golf. By not trying to engineer a winning score, they gave themselves the opportunity to set the course up properly. If you do try to manipulate the winning score - level par in the case of a typical US Open - you have no chance to set a course up properly.

And that's from a former U.S. Open champion.

All of which has been doubly nice after last week at Firestone, where we played the WGC Bridgestone Invitational. The course set up there was probably the worst I have seen all year. Not only was the course really narrow, the rough was ridiculously thick - injury thick. Which is no good. Firestone's holes are all basically straight up and down and somewhat boring, so it needs a more imaginative set up to make the course even remotely interesting.

Now, you're probably wondering why, if Firestone is so bad, Tiger Woods seems to win there every year. Well, the reason is simple. Tiger is the best player we are ever going to see from long grass. So when everyone is in it, he is going to win.

Thankfully, the same mistakes have not been made at Southern Hills.

This next part makes me wish Geoff had seen the rough a few weeks ago, when it was closer to the ideal he described. But the rains stopped and the grass took off, so at least Kerry Haigh gets points for seeing that 2 3/4 was going to be plenty tough. 

Apart from the fact that the rough is maybe half an inch too long - that bit shorter would have encouraged more aggression from the players and taken the spin off the ball, which is all rough really needs to do anyway - the course has been presented almost perfectly. I like the design, too. It has lots of doglegs in all the right places. And we are able to hit a variety of clubs from many of the par-4 tees. This week I've hit everything from driver to 4-iron, depending on where I want to be for the approach shot. So it's an interesting test.

Even better, there is a lot of risk versus reward decisions to make on almost every tee. The bunkers tend to be on the inside of the doglegs, so you can play short of the sand, go over it, or play away from it altogether. But the greatest thing is that, if I wished, I could hit driver off every tee. It would be risky, of course, but I could do it. John Daly did that on the first day and shot 67, so it can work too.

That's the best aspect of this golf course. There are multiple ways to play every hole and every one of them is correct, depending on what you want to achieve and are comfortable with. To me, that's what makes any golf hole good and what allows almost any type of player to have a chance to contend for the title. So, while the long-hitter has had an advantage here this week, his edge has been in proportion. The guy who hits it straight off the tee has also enjoyed an appropriate advantage, as has the player who can move the ball both ways in the air. No-one attribute has outweighed any other though. Which is as it should be.

And...

As for the greens, they have been terrific, despite the heat. The pin positions have also been sensible. None have looked contrived. And the bunkers have been a revelation, compared with what we typically see at the US Open. There is no rough growing around them, so the ball is allowed to run into the sand unhindered by long grass. They look fantastic, too, like those at Augusta. And because there is sand in the faces of the bunkers, you get to see a lot of the sand from the tees. I like that look.

Still, the best aspect of this week is my hope that the obvious success of this type of course set up will have a positive effect on the other American majors. My feeling is that Augusta National will have been paying attention to what has been going on. They are a proud club and, while I'm sure they will never admit it, they do listen to the world of golf. They won't like the fact that there is currently such a negative impression of their course, so over the next three or four years I can see them moving the Masters back to what it once was.

"If it's set up straight, it shows that it's possible to have a great score and it's possible to have tons over par. That's...that's what we're all asking for."

From Geoff Ogilvy's post round chat with the media, talking about Tiger's secound round 63 and not particularly well transcribed based on what I saw on Golf Channel:

GEOFF OGILVY: Birdie on 18 for 62. I think that would be cool. No one has done it in a major. Justifies the setup. If it's set up straight, it shows that it's possible to have a great score and it's possible to have tons over par. That's what we're all -- that's what we're all asking for. We can't ask for any more than this, we're playing in this week.

And this was interesting...

Q. When you won the U.S. Open you didn't even have to worry about Tiger being there on the weekend, would that affect your attitude tomorrow because you go out knowing that given past history he's probably not going to come back, you're going to have to go get him?

GEOFF OGILVY: Makes it easier, doesn't it, because now you've got nothing to lose if you don't win. No one expects you to. If you do, you go out and do it. That's the way I look at it. You know you'll have to play well. He's the best front runner in history. Probably.

So you don't want him to get too far in front. If you've got someone to chase, maybe you play a bit freer. Maybe it's a good thing.

KELLY ELBIN: For the record, Geoff's best finish in the PGA Championship was a tie for 6th in 2005 at Baltusrol.

Thanks for that Kelly.

"But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

Doug Ferguson looks at the results of the PGA Tour's increasingly difficult course setup approach that made it a lot easier for me to TiVo the Women's Open instead of Firestone.

But as Steve Stricker noted last week, “It seems like every week we’re getting one of these.”

“The golf courses are so much harder,” Woods said. “Stevie (Williams) and I were talking about this. Have we played a tournament yet where you had to go low? With our schedule of tournaments I’ve played in, that hasn’t been the case at all.”

Fast forward...

One indicator that has surprised everyone from players to rules officials is birdies per round. The PGA Tour leader in that category has averaged at least 4.4 birdies per round every year since 1999. Going into the PGA Championship, the leader is Jonathan Byrd at 3.85.

If the trend continues – and it doesn’t figure to get easier the next month – it would be the first time since 1990 that no one on the PGA Tour averaged more than four birdies per round.

Woods, who has never finished lower than fifth in that category, is currently at No. 39.

“It just gets to the point where every course is a long, long golf course with deep, deep rough,” Davis Love III said. “It gets a little stressful. You can’t get away with very much, and you have to be right on perfect. You miss a fairway, you’re hard-pressed to get it back on the green. They keep lengthening courses that are already long. It’s just tough.”

I think Davis should take this up with the Tour Policy Board!

Adam Scott was asked how many majors it feels as though he has played this year. He used his fingers to start ticking them off, and he wound up using both hands.

“Probably seven,” he said, and this was before he went out for his first practice round at Southern Hills.

He mentioned the three majors that already have taken place. There was the Wachovia Championship and The Players Championship in consecutive weeks. The International, which produced birdies and eagles galore, was replaced by the AT&T National at Congressional.

And don’t forget Firestone, which several players figured was suitable for a U.S. Open without any gimmicks from the USGA.

“You’ve got to play for par these days,” Scott said. “You used to have that one or two times a year, and that was a challenge. But every week it starts to get boring. It lacks imagination.”

But Adamn, it makes bad golfers feel good about their games to watch you struggle. It's all about ME!

PGA Tour rules official Slugger White says nothing was changed, and he was surprised to hear the average birdies for round was significantly down from last year.

“We don’t think about birdies and bogeys,” White said. “We’re trying to give them the fairest and the best test. Our general philosophy is difficult and fair every day. There’s not one ounce of difference in our philosophy this year at all.”

And...

“It’s gotten that way a little more as time goes on,” Mark Calcavecchia said. “It seems like years ago, it was just kind of easy. The rough was never this deep week in and week out. I think the pin placements have gotten tougher over the years. Obviously, we’re playing courses longer than we ever have. They’re trying to combat technology a little bit with course conditions and course setups.

“But that’s kind of a good thing,” he added, “to know you don’t have to go out and shoot really low.”

Oh sure, and boy don't the ratings support it as a sound vision for the future.

Woods also is a fan of the tougher conditions. He often says he doesn’t like tournaments won at 25 under par, where making a par means losing strokes to the field.

But is such a steady diet of pars good for the entertainment value of professional golf?

“I think it’s great,” Woods said. “You’ve got to be smart. The golf ball doesn’t go as crooked as it used to, so you’ve got to do something overall – making pins closer to the edges, the rough is certainly higher. You’ve got to do it, or guys will go low. If you give them a golf course that’s pretty easy, they’re going to tear it apart.”

Thanks Tiger. You're a big help.

Huggan Scoop: Crenshaw Regrets Brookline 17th Green Antics!

...and next week, John Huggan learns from Roberto De Vicenzo that regrets signing an incorrect card at the 1968 Masters!

Sheesh, now I know why Ben has avoided the Senior Open Championship!

Seriously, once we cleared up the earth shattering revelations from three Ryder Cup's ago, Huggan got Crenshaw to say some interesting things about the state of the game, technology, the PGA Tour and Augusta.

"What mystifies Bill and myself is seeing courses being built that hardly anyone can play properly," he observes. "We want our courses to be enjoyable for as many people as possible. We would not know how to set up a course for a high-end tournament. That would just mystify me. If you do that, how can you reach anyone else?

"In America the set-ups are becoming unbelievable. They are trying to stay ahead of technology, and sometimes that doesn't produce enjoyable golf. The danger is that the PGA Tour can become stylised a little bit. They are just so difficult week to week.

"The road we are on is a dangerous one. It's one thing to build five different tee boxes, but somewhere along the line you lose the feel of the hole, and what makes it interesting. You compromise the hole. If you don't go straight back and start changing angles, things get a bit off.

"We are trying - and failing - to come up with interesting ways to combat how far the ball goes. You put obstacles out there at certain distances, and players just fly them. I don't know what you do. We try to make doable holes. I like players to shoot really good scores. That's fine with me."

How Crenshaw would definitely not go about tackling the technology issue is by the mindless growing of long grass, which is how the green jackets at Augusta National have chosen to 'protect' their course.

"I heard this a long time ago, although I'm not sure who said it first: 'Interest supersedes length.' If a course is not interesting and you don't bring people back, what is the point? I look at the way Augusta was set up this year, and everyone was forced to play more defensive golf, no question about it. There's now a limit to what the top players will try there.

"To an extent, I can understand what is being done. I'm not saying all of it should be thrown away. There is no question the course needed to be lengthened. But I've never really agreed with the growing of the rough. That is so entirely different from the way it used to play.

"To get players to try shots they maybe shouldn't try was what used to set Augusta apart. Now it's different. A lot of the places I used to aim for off the tee are now in the rough. Those spots used to open up angles to the pins. But now the course is more prescribed. All the shots are decided for us.

"That's not what [Bobby] Jones and [Alister] Mackenzie intended. They wanted it to be reminiscent of St Andrews. To open up those angles, you had choices to make. And to have choices, you need width. There's no choice when the fairway is narrow. I can't believe some of the set-ups on the PGA Tour. Everything is so narrow."

Still, one thing too much rough and longer holes cannot affect is the famed Crenshaw putting stroke. Into his 50s, he has retained the silky touch that carried him to those two Masters titles - most of it anyway. Only last month he was runner-up at the US Senior Open.

"I don't putt quite as well as I used to. I have days where I feel just a little tentative. At my age I sometimes lack the authority you need to putt well. I hit a lot of nice putts that have about a foot less speed on them. That often makes the difference between making and missing."
 

"Why is it that tournament organizers insist on reducing every player to the same hack-out when they miss a fairway? I don't get it. I bet the spectators are bored watching everyone do the same thing."

I know it was like, soooo last week, but remember this is my personal clipping archive and I had to grab these comments from Golf World writer John Huggan's Senior Open Championship game story:

Actually, Watson isn't quite right there. On a Muirfield all but covered in long grass -- "It is worse than Carnoustie in 1999," he had said earlier in the week -- there were plenty of other nasty spots he could have found on that 18th hole. The level and extent of the rough, in fact, had come in for almost unanimous criticism over the four days of an event that will shift to Royal Troon next year under new sponsorship, MasterCard replacing Aberdeen Asset Management.

"It's serious -- six inches of rough under two foot of hay fescue," shuddered senior debutant Nick Faldo before shooting an eight-over-par 292 that left him eight shots adrift of Watson in a tie for 14th place. "Very severe and very narrow."

Others were less circumspect in their opinion of a course set up that some felt was more difficult than that at Carnoustie one week previously. Former Open champion Sandy Lyle, a spectator at Muirfield, was just one calling the length of the rough "ridiculous."

"It misses the point of links golf, which is to create a variety of shots and allow players to hit recovery shots if they are good enough," said the 1985 Open champion, who turns 50 next February. "Why is it that tournament organizers insist on reducing every player to the same hack-out when they miss a fairway? I don't get it. I bet the spectators are bored watching everyone do the same thing."

If there was any doubt the people running the game have no golfing souls, this should do it:

Lyle wasn't alone, either. Many players shared his bemusement at the level of point-missing achieved by tournament organizers who had ignored a request from the Muirfield greenstaff to cut the rough as much as two months before the event. "There was no decision to make," insisted championship committee chairman, and Muirfield member, Alistair Low. "The wet summer produced the rough we have this week, and the course would be this way whether we had a tournament on or not."

But, of course, they did have an event to run, one that sadly lost some of its luster for most of the field.

"I think if you go [in]to the rough, you are dead," said a prescient Eduardo Romero of Argentina, who finished T-4 despite hacking his way to a double bogey at the 71st hole. "Just play sand wedge and lob wedge and put the ball in the fairway and try to make bogey, that's all. It is more severe than Carnoustie because it is so wet and very thick."