"Golf is a $65 billion industry"

Outgoing PGA of America president Roger Warren, talking to Tommy Braswell in the Post and Courier of Charleston:

"Golf is a $65 billion industry in this country. One thing we have been trying to do is raise people's awareness around the country about that industry. Not just the person that pays greens fee on Saturday morning to play golf. There's so much more to it, the real estate associated with golf, the tournaments, the manufacturing."

Anyone ever heard that $65 billion number before? I know PGA Tour Vice Presidents are making a lot, but...it seems a bit high. 

“We got too many people in leadership capacities that don’t understand the game at its core"

Gosh I love Hal Sutton's diatribes. This time he bent Rich Lerner's ear and it's his best state of the game indictment yet.

“I’m so disgusted with where everything’s gone I don’t even want to play the game,” he told me Thursday by phone.

And when asked about the Ryder Cup captaincy...

“There’s no captain that’s going to make the difference,” Sutton said with a tinge of resignation. Of course now, the phone call was no longer about Azinger.

“We’re in a vacuum in golf in America,” Sutton began, and I knew I was about to experience a strong Texas wind.

Okay, strap in, here he goes...

“We’re consumed by the almighty dollar,” he said. “We’ve forgotten that we all play the game because we love it. Greatness doesn’t worry about money. Greatness worries about bein’ great.”

“We’re a product of our environment,” he explained. “We’re playing a game that requires us to hit it high and long. In the old days we had to do more with different golf shots.”

Sutton emphasized that it’s not necessarily the fault of the players. “We got too many people in leadership capacities that don’t understand the game at its core,” he said. “We’re conforming to what they say the market wants and what manufacturers are giving us and it’s weakening our players.”

The market wants Tiger Woods. And therein, Sutton believes, lay a problem.

“Everyone’s trying to be like Tiger,” said the man who took heat for pairing No. 1 with Phil Mickelson in an experiment gone terribly wrong at Oakland Hills. “There’s no individualism. They’re all trying to swing like Tiger.”

“Look, Rich,” he implored, growing more animated, “it’s 400 yards to the other end of the range from where I’m sittin’ and if Jack and Arnie and Raymond and Lee and Gary and Tiger were hittin’ balls we wouldn’t need to walk down there to tell which is which. You could tell ‘em from 400 yards away.”

“Is that the players fault? No. It’s just that we’ve got it built in our minds that you have to be a certain way to be good.”

“I have respect for Jim Furyk because he doesn’t conform to anybody,” Sutton added. “He’s been doin’ it his way for a long time and he’s been doin’ it pretty damn good hasn’t he?”

Sutton puts some blame at the doorstep of America’s junior golf system.

“We don’t have world class players in their 20s,” he said. “That’s a failure on our part.”

“The greatest in the world learned the game on the golf course,” Sutton said. “People think you can learn it on the range. Mechanics make you tight. It will not free you up to play the game. There were many days when the great players weren’t hittin’ it their best and they still figured a way to win. You don’t need reinforcement after every shot.”

With the promise of PGA TOUR millions, youngsters and parents chase the dream, often spending life’s savings to attend intensive academies while traveling a junior tournament circuit that would wear down even a hardened veteran.

“We need to go back to investing in kids' futures with no agendas and no management fees, try to realign what’s important in the game. Everyone’s taking out of the game and not putting back in. I had people teach me the game and never charged me for a lesson.

“We all have an investment in this game.

“It took us a generation to get into this and it will take us a generation to get out of it.”

And then, Hal had to go, the competitor who once feared no golfer, not even Tiger, now in something of a self-imposed exile. The work of fixing the game too big for one man, he’s content to put the finishing touches on a golf course amidst the rolling hills of Texas, far from the profession he no longer knows.

"The ball got away from everybody."

Yes, add Michael Bonallack to the list of rehabilitating golf executives who wish they'd done more then so we would have the game we have now. It's touching I tell you to hear this kind of remorse, documented by John Huggan in his Sunday column:

"The most fun I've ever had was being secretary of the R&A. I was there when the Open was really starting to take off, in financial terms. We were able to use that money to aid the development of the game."

However, representing the public face of golf's rules-making body outside the United States and Mexico could prove uncomfortable. During Bonallack's tenure, the battle between administrators and equipment companies was joined in earnest, and it rages on to this day.

"The biggest problem was with Ping and the grooves on their irons. That was very unpleasant. I remember sitting at dinner after watching the Walker Cup matches at Peach Tree in 1989 and being tapped on the shoulder. It was a sheriff telling me I was served.

"The writ said they were suing for $100m tripled. They have what they call punitive damages in the United States, and it wasn't only the R&A they were suing, but me personally. That got my attention!

"We had good lawyers, though. They showed that the US courts had no jurisdiction over us. We were making rules for golfers outside America.

"The wider equipment issue was a problem then, and continues to be so today, at the top level of the game anyway. There are a number of things I wish we had done, but obviously we didn't do.

"The ball got away from everybody. The scientists said the ball could go only ten more yards, but they were wrong. New materials kept on coming out, and then along came metal woods. They have taken a lot of the skill out of the game for the leading players. As have the new wedges.

"The shots only Seve used to be able to play with a 50-degree wedge are now routine for everyone who buys a 63-degree wedge. All of that crept into the game without anyone really realising the significance. I wish we could go back, but we can't."

Perhaps sensing that he has already said too much about the one subject that golf administrators tend not to enjoy discussing, Bonallack pre-empts the next question.

"There is no use asking me what I'd do if I was in charge today. When I retired I said I wasn't going to get involved in any of these controversial things. Besides, if I started announcing what I would do, people could quite rightly ask why I didn't do those things when I was in charge. Certainly, we missed some opportunities with the ball and the metal woods, but they crept up on us."

One other sadness for Bonallack is the knock-on effect modern equipment has had on course set-ups. As so many did at last year's Open, he looked on askance at the amount of rough growing on the Old Course at St Andrews.

"It does upset me to see what they have to do to golf courses nowadays. There is no doubt that the modern equipment has caused many good courses to be altered. I hate to see long grass around greens on any course. I like the ball to run off to where players can hit all kinds of recovery shots.

"It is fascinating to watch someone like Tiger working out what shot will work best after he has missed a green. Long grass eliminates all of that, and takes a lot of the skill out of the game."

Fun Notes From Babineau

Jeff Babineau shows what happens when curious writers leave the press room and share a few notes, quotes and anecdotes. The entire column is interesting, but these bites caught my eye:

The Tour's Player Advisory Council assembled at Innisbrook this week, and one of the major issues (tabled to a later date, as most important issues are) was whether or not to pare down FedEx Cup fields with each playoff week (from 144, to 120, to 78, to 30 for the Tour Championship).

This is an encouraging development for those of us who would like to see the FedEx Cup work (it will not in the current configuration).

As it stands now, the current PGA Tour "playoffs" are structured to include the Durham Bulls and half the Cape Cod league along with the Tiger and Cardinals. The all inclusive approach might be more tolerable if they were actual playoffs, with eliminations occurring each week. But without eliminating players, they are not playoffs and the 144 number remains ridiculous. (I'd take 100 to the playoffs and go from 100 to 78 to 50 to 20, or something along those lines.)

I know, I know, what if, God forbid, one of the stars is eliminated in week one? Well, considering that they are passing on the Tour Championship like it's the B.C. Open, who says they are even going to play in the playoffs? And wouldn't some upsets along the way make it more fun?

Anyhow, this was also fun from Babineau's column...

Walking past Rory Sabbatini as he belted his new Nike Sumo, flying a few balls into a lake nearly 300 yards away at the end of the range, one veteran stared and mumbled, "Is this what golf has come to?"

Guess so.

"The thing is, how can you have 20-year-olds when all the old guys are holding on?"

Jeff Rude continues his look at the demise of the under-30 American golfer and gets some great quotes from Lee Trevino:

"That got me all fired up again," the Merry Mex said the other day by telephone. "The thing is, how can you have 20-year-olds when all the old guys are holding on?"

Year after year, the deck is heavily stacked against Tour newcomers, and it figures to get worse starting next year with the introduction of the shorter FedEx Cup primary season. If this were a poker game, you might suggest the dealer were more crooked than a drunk's stagger. The cards are that fixed.

Loved this. I wonder if Ponte Vedra fines for this kind of thing?

"If I put up $4,500 and grind my way through three stages of Q-School and pay for my caddie and for my hotel rooms and I'm out $10,000 or so and then the Tour tells me I can't play in the first tournament if I have the 30th card, I'd say, 'Uh-uh, we're going to the courthouse,' " Trevino said.

The problem, he says, is that the Tour wrongly gives out more Tour cards than there are spots in tournaments. Trevino suggests a good remedy: Bring the exempt list down from 125 to about 90 so the new or recycled blood from Q-School and the Nationwide have a better chance to prove what it can do.

What's Growing?

While assessing my low self-esteem issues (as diagnosed by bloggers who cower under nicknames!), I keep going back to the gist of E. Michael Johnson's rebuttal to those of us concerned about the distance race in golf.

The game survives when it chooses to grow.  

Okay, set aside the fact that this line doesn't make any sense. Because the game is surviving right not even when all signs point to no growth.  But is "surviving" really acceptable or a healthy long term strategy? Of course not. 

Let's assume Johnson is saying that "growing" distances people hit the ball is good for golf. Now, as you regular readers of this site or The Future of Golf know, this "growing" thing has proven unproductive. Courses are growing in length, they are growing soulless in design, rounds are growing in length of time they take to play, rough is growing in length to compensate for distance jumps, fairway widths are growing in narrowness, cost is growing to play the game, and yet, by Johnson's own admission, longer drives fueled by equipment are not growing much for the average player.

Oh, and television ratings are not even close to growing. The number of rounds played, especially by avid players, has not grown.

So the growth that is occurring is almost entirely driven by deregulation.

As Frank Hannigan pointed out in his letter to this site the day prior to "Bomb's" big stand:

Clubs that want to entertain big events have done what clubs from time immemorial have done when the ball was juiced. They have lengthened their courses significantly and sometimes comically (see the Old Course at St. Andrews which had a tee added on another course.)

As for new courses with thoughts of grandeur, the standard has jumped from 7,000 to 7,500 yards in a short time. That requires more real estate and increased maintenance costs.

The USGA, charged with protecting golf, has caused it to become more expensive.

"Their skills are limited."

Jemele Hill in the Orlando Sentinel tackles the "why no promising young players" question and gets some interesting replies.

"Young guys just pick a driver out of a bin that goes 320 [yards]," said [Frank] Lickliter, who shot a blistering 62 in the final round of Disney's Funai Classic on Sunday. "They can't carve one on the fairway. They don't know how to knock down a wedge. Their skills are limited."

And Hill writes:

You could blame a lot of things for why golf is the latest sport lacking a strong presence of young American superstars -- the increased presence by talented foreigners is one -- but our obsession with flash is slowly killing U.S. dominance in sports around the globe.

Our kids would rather practice a 360-degree dunk a billion times than set one proper screen. They would rather obsess about home runs than learn how to stretch a single into a double. They would rather hit an 100-mph serve than develop a decent backhand.

In golf, it's all about the 300-yard blast off the tee. Michelle Wie has a big swing and an awfully hollow trophy case, but a mighty big bank account.

"It's kind of sad what's happened to the skill part of the game," said Scott Verplank, a 20-year pro. "The skills required to be a great player in this game are not near as important as they used to be. It's really changed the game."

This is just another depressing reminder of how much our sports culture emphasis on style has hurt the overall product.

Most of us were just fooled into thinking it was strictly a U.S. basketball problem. As it turns out, it's an American problem.

You can sit there and blame YouTube, MySpace and ESPN for the downfall of sports society, but we must take a hard look at ourselves first.

Most of us are more impressed with a teeth-rattling hit in football than a left guard's pull.

This is where you wish Jemile had floated her column idea by her colleague, Steve Elling. 

Golf course designers and PGA officials know we're hooked on Happy Gilmore-esque shots, which is why more courses are being built to complement power instead of finesse.

Ugh...yep, it's all the fault of architects. Now, why is it again that architects are lengthening courses?

Letter From Saugerties, October 23, 2006

It's been a while since former USGA Executive Director Frank Hannigan sent a "letter" (his previous correspondences are here and here). But thankfully he has broken his silence with a devastating appraisal of the current USGA that includes his reaction to the recent ESPN.com chat comments by Walter Driver.

Take it away, Frank...

I was fascinated, if not encouraged, by the passionate arguments on your site after the recent blowing of smoke by USGA president Walter Driver on the subject of distance control.

The central point was missed.  Rolling back distance is not a technical issue.  It’s a political matter centering on the retention of position without annoyance or threats.  

Driver and his USGA know precisely what’s happened.  The average driving distance on the PGA Tour shot up 28 yards on average in 10 years.   The USGA wishes the clock would revert to 1994 so it could at least consider behaving correctly.  But it can’t even say so because that would be an admission it has bungled its most important duty.

Two distinct happenings accounted for the new yardage.  The first was the advent of excessive spring like effect in drivers in the mid 90s.  Everybody on the tour got 10 to 15 yards longer.

Then followed modifications to the ball that enabled the best players to pick up another 15 yards even though the new balls still conformed to the USGA’s critical overall distance standard test.

On spring-like effect, the Rules of Golf already said that clubs designed to produce that effect, akin to what you see with metal bats in amateur baseball, would not be acceptable.   There was no specificity however.  So the USGA Executive Committee in 1998 made a craven decision.

They correctly approved a new test to measure coefficient of restitution (COR) but instead of setting it at the level of the best metal drivers of the early 90s they chose to write the standard around what was already on the market.

Had the right thing been done there would have been hell to pay since a great number of existing drivers would have failed.  A prominent member of that executive committee later said to me, “We thought we were betting the franchise on that vote.”  He and others feared a rebellion by the owners of the springier drivers which would not then conform to the Rules of Golf.  But if you are billing yourself as the “governing body of golf” it follows that you will occasionally have to make unpopular decisions. For more than a decade the USGA has caved in the face of conflict, and by no means only on equipment.

When the longer flying balls came about the USGA was already equipped with a superb testing mechanism, an indoor device that, quite simply, can predict the outcome of any hit.

It was as clear as day that the changed balls were exceeding the intent of the distance tests.

Having capitulated on the driver, the USGA consistently bowed on the ball - announcing that no ball on its list of conforming products would be banned.  Instead, it went into its fake mode and changed the distance standard to accommodate the new and unexpected.

By the way, it’s ridiculous that the USGA should be held to a standard whereby its rules on  equipment have to foresee every conceivable change. The founding fathers of the nation did not anticipate that General Electric would poison the Hudson River, but GE is damn well going to have to pay for cleaning it up.               

Two points: 1. It was the USGA’s highest priority to put an absolute cap on added distance achieved by equipment changes while I worked at the USGA between 1961 and 1989; 2. Nobody HAS to play the USGA’s rules.   Its position should have been to reject the springy drivers and the longer flying balls while saying “We recognize golfers can go right on playing the other stuff but they may NOT  say they are then doing so under the USGA Rules of Golf.  Take your choice.”

Rolling back distance now can be done in any number of ways.  A simple alteration would be to say that as of January 1, 2008, the fail point for the overall distance standard would be 305 yards instead of 320 yards.   Assuming the PGA Tour accepted such a change (remember, nobody has to do what the USGA wants) driving distance on the Tour would drop immediately and considerably. 

The people who now run the USGA are unlikely to come close to making such a change because they want to appear in ceremonies as rulers and get to hang out with Arnold Palmer.  The time has long past when the USGA could enlist for its executive committee citizens of consequence willing to actually take care of golf rather than amuse themselves with toys like a leased jet.

A new and shorter ball would surely be made.  But manufacturers might very well keep on producing today’s ball.

In the pro shops of the hallowed member owned clubs - Pine Valley, Cypress Point, The Country Club - the USGA would be backed to the hilt with notices that only the USGA approved balls would be tolerated on their courses.   Ah, but what about Wal-Mart?  Offered the chance, how many of the long balls might it sell, and at discounted prices to boot?

What would be the outcome on daily fee courses everywhere?  Might there be chaos with two distinctly different balls in play?   I think, and over a short time, the USGA would prevail because there is an internal drive for uniformity in equipment among golfers.  It’s akin to the monkey grip in babies. The USGA should be more than willing to bet the franchise but it will not.

There is a great irony in all this.   The modern equipment changes are enablers only for a tiny percentage of golfers.  You have to be very good to take advantage of added spring like effect.   The average golfer prefers to think otherwise, willing to hit his credit card for a $425 driver that does nothing for him or her.  You have to be a low handicap golfer to get the added juice--good enough to make the semi-finals in a club championship.

But even if I’m wrong so that the average golfer is getting a few more yards, if there was a rollback in distance the matter could be leveled out by putting the tee markers up a few yards.

The USGA has been allowed to stand pat because what has happened is akin to a victimless crime.

The PGA Tour, God knows, has not been harmed economically by the distance explosion.

The Tour exists only (forget the First Tee nonsense) to enrich its members and it has done so sensationally. The USGA, on the other hand, exists to define golf.

Accordingly, there is no pressure on the USGA to act honestly.

I do not blame the manufacturers.  They too have one purpose - make money for their owners.   Many are not tortured by brilliance.    When it comes to balls, one company, Acushnet, dominates the market.    The rest fight over slices of market share.  It would be in the best interest of every ball maker save Acushnet to jump all over a new ball, to start the game from scratch with ads proclaiming “our new ball is more like the old ball than X’s ball.”

The contributors to your site made much of the 2002 Statement of Principles issued jointly by the USGA and its partner in victimless crimes, the R&A of Scotland.  They proclaimed they would not tolerate any “significant” increase in distance. To clarify when they meant to clamp down they used the word “now.”

The very next year, 2003, witnessed an enormous increase in driving distance: 6.5 yards.

By any reasonable standard, that increase was “significant”.  It happened because the manufacturers were playing out the law of physics. They’d gone as far as they could go.  The USGA and R&A did nothing.

Driver has fallen back on saying that distance has been “nearly flat the last 3 years.”  He’s right, but all the horses have left the barns.     

I think stability is likely for some time.  In honesty, though, I must report that if someone had asked me in 1989, when I was managing the affairs of the USGA, if spring-like effect was likely to have an adverse consequence, I would have said “No chance.”

There has been no upside to the collapse of the USGA on distance.   Golf, as a recreational activity, has been flat nationally for a long time.    But in terms of being both artistic and competitive courses like the San Francisco Golf Club, Colonial and the Chicago Golf Club, they have become toys and museum pieces. I fear the same has happened at Shinnecock Hills which was tortured by the USGA at the 2004 U.S. Open in order to produce high scores.

Clubs that want to entertain big events have done what clubs from time immemorial have done when the ball was juiced. They have lengthened their courses significantly and sometimes comically (see the Old Course at St. Andrews which had a tee added on another course.)

As for new courses with thoughts of grandeur, the standard has jumped from 7,000 to 7,500 yards in a short time. That requires more real estate and increased maintenance costs.

The USGA, charged with protecting golf, has caused it to become more expensive.

The only way the fervent minority who care about the failure of the USGA could grow and become effective would be to mount a direct challenge to the USGA as it is.   That means ousting the current executive committee.  A revolt.

The USGA by-laws specify that any 20 USGA clubs, out of 10,000, can submit a slate of 15 to oppose the 15 nominated by the establishment.   (The number used to be 5 until I called attention to the by-laws a few years ago).  

The slogan for the slate should be “It’s the distance, stupid.” An actual ballot would have to be sent to all member clubs.  (Potential insurgents take note--the deadline for submitting a rump slate is Nov. 30.)

Internally, the USGA is a mess.  The Executive Committee, instead of intensely monitoring the work of the staff and establishing policy, is in a hands-on mico-managing mode.   They like to play at golf management and pretend that their presence is essential whereas, in truth, all they should be doing is read what’s sent to them and attend three meetings a year. 

Would an effort to get this crowd out, however noble, succeed?    Not at first.  But it would scare the hell out of those who drool at the thought of traveling on the leased jet.  Above all, it would cause there to be a debate on the subject. The USGA has been more than effective in keeping its malfeasance quiet.

Shareholders revolts sometime work, even in non-profit entities.   The eastern division of the US Tennis Association, its largest, has had a splendid internal fight which has already reached the court and appeal stages.

Even the American Civil Liberties Union is in a quarrel on the issue of who should be on its board. If the ACLU can tolerate a touch of democracy, why can’t the USGA?

Another Reason For Ryder Woes...

...Jeff Rude says it's the all-exempt tour and makes a pretty compelling argument that if nothing else, the timing of its creation and the decline of American supremacy appear intertwined.

Regulating Driver Head Size?

Reader BillS writes:

In my opinion, the easiest (and cheapest) way to control distance would be to limit the size of the head.  Back in the days of persimmon, there were guys who could hit it a mile but the small margin of error made bombing it a risk.

With giant heads, the bombers can swing for the fences without penalty.

So I'm curious what everyone thinks about the driver head's impact on the 10-yard PGA Tour increase since 2002 when the USGA and R&A drew the line in the sand (well, on paper anyway)?

Significant?

Would regulating driver head size on the PGA Tour make a big difference?  

Distance Now And Then

Thanks to readers Mark, Ken and Chris for the head's up on George White's column on distance changes in the game.

The normally eloquent White draws no conclusion, ends the piece abruptly and in general, dances around the cause of the problem, but what's more interesting is that it's been a long, long time since anyone wrote one of those silly pieces about how distance hasn't changed much in recent years. Glad we finally cleared that hurdle. 

"Players need to bring the spirit back"

Greg Norman continues to pass on the Kool-Aid by daringly pointing out that the pro game is not in the best shape.

"Players need to bring the spirit back," Norman said. "There has always been great players to bring people to the game to lighten it up so that it's not so serious.

"Look at what (Rafael) Nadal has done for tennis because of the way he is, like a boxer. You never hear anyone coming out and saying I want to beat Tiger Woods - I haven't heard that," Norman added. "Nadal comes out and says he wants to beat Roger Federer because he's No 1 and that's great for tennis."

Norman, who has played little golf - and watched even less - since making his senior's tour debut last year, also said the technology used in making golf clubs should be reserved for amateurs only.

"I have a problem with someone winning a golf tournament without using a driver," Norman said. "The game has always been dominated by power-hitter players, but today you can't tell the difference between the players because of the technology."

"College golf eats its young"

Gary Van Sickle looks at the best under-30 American golfers, and notes:

College golf eats its young in the U.S. Coaches aren't eager for their players to make big changes to improve -- they need a good finish at next week's tournament. And since the college season almost never ends -- September to mid-November, February to June -- there isn't time to worry about long-term goals. It's all about next week's or next month's tournament.

In Australia, regional sports institutes do just the opposite. They provide coaching -- mental and physical -- and nutrition and conditioning and competition. It's all about building better athletes. The result is, Australia is flooding golf with far more top-level players than a country of its size has any right to produce. American players need more resources and more down-time to focus on getting better for the long run.

Now, American collegiate golfers are playing quality events on decent courses, while also competing prior to those events through team qualifiers. They get free equipment. Most are following conditioning programs laid out by school trainers.

Meanwhile, international players are still populating the college ranks, with Paul Casey and to a lesser extent, Camillo Villegas having breakout years after U.S. college golf careers.

But does Van Sickle have a point about the long term approach issue? After all, this is a short term, instant gratification culture.

I still contend that the international players are more imaginative and talented all-around players because they've been exposed to a variety of designs and course setups.

Thoughts?

"They kill off imagination. There is only one shot."

John Huggan profiles Jose Maria Olazabal, who goes off an enjoyable rant about the state of course setup in America:

Now competing basically full-time in the US, the Dunhill represents for Ollie a rare opportunity to escape the seemingly-endless tedium of life on the PGA Tour. Never a fan of American culture, the proud Basque, one of golf's most accomplished shot-makers inside 150 yards from the hole, is increasingly frustrated by the on-course sameness that he endures almost every week.

"What I don't like is that there is less artistry in the game now," he sighs. "And the set-up of the courses contributes to that. When you have rough that is five inches high, not even a magician can create shots.

"I do believe players still have the skill. They can shape the shots, hit them high or low. But we don't find ourselves in situations where creativity is encouraged. As technology has advanced, players have hit more and more fairways, so the courses have adjusted. One seems to have led to the other, in an attempt to keep scores up.

"Now we have rough right up to the edge of the green. There is no imagination in that. All the long grass hurts people like me. I don't mind rough off the tee so much; there should be a penalty for being in the wrong place. But around the greens, it is silly. You can hit a shot to 15 feet from the hole and be just off the green, and another guy can hit to 45 feet, but on the green. He has the better chance. That is not right.

"They kill off imagination. There is only one shot. You don't have to think. Miss the green? Give me the 60-degree wedge, and I'll flop it up there. All the touch and finesse is gone.

"The great sadness is that you can make courses just as difficult - and so much more interesting - without any rough. And there is no need to have courses that are 7,500 yards long. I look at guys like Justin Leonard and Corey Pavin and wonder how they can compete most weeks. I'm not sure we are on the right path. Courses are getting longer and longer, and we see fewer and fewer where length is not the biggest factor in success. Which doesn't make it fair for everyone."