When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
The WSJ's Tim Carroll profiles Dick Rugge and the USGA equipment testing, writing:
But for all the hand-wringing over all the booming tee shots on the Tour these days, the distance wars are actually waning. In the past couple of decades, the USGA has introduced limits on the lengths of club shafts (48 inches) and the size and volume of clubheads (no more than 5 inches square and 460 cubic centimeters), as well as the overall distance that a tested ball can fly (320 yards). At the time those rules came into effect, some of these parameters seemed generous, and there was room for equipment manufacturers to exploit them to make the ball go farther. But it's getting much harder to eke out more distance from a ball and club and stay within the rules.
At the same time, a number of Tour players are gaining a greater appreciation for the value of the control game and are beginning to emphasize finesse over distance. The Tour pro who most consistently hit the farthest off the tee last year, Bubba Watson, averaged 315.2 yards, but that was down from 319.6 yards in 2006. It was the first year-over-year decline in distance in a long time.
Carroll's piece serves as a nice table setter for E. Michael Johnson's questions in this week's Golf World about the need for a groove rule change.
The USGA points out that nearly half the shots hit from the rough find the green, and that's true (it's currently 48.64 percent). But what it doesn't say is that number rises to 74.68 percent from the fairway. In other words, over 14 holes (throw out the typical four par 3s), if a player hits it in the rough every hole he would hit seven greens on average. If he hits it in the fairway every hole he would hit 10.5.
Accuracy, in fact, is key to how players such as Hunter Mahan and Jim Furyk compete for titles. From the fairway Mahan makes birdie 21.28 percent of the time. From the rough it's 9.60 percent. Furyk goes under par 21.10 percent from the fairway and just 9.82 percent from the rough. The correlation between accuracy and success is zero? Perhaps for some of the bombers, but not for everyone.
Distance is not increasing. Playing from the rough is appreciably more difficult than playing from the fairway. Is it really necessary to do anything at this point? Just asking.
I used to believe Johnson's point made above was largely correct, but at this point a change in the groove rule would do two things (in theory): restore the importance of firmness and return the flier lie to its rightful place in the game. And (in theory) this would make deep hay lining fairways something we see less often in tournament golf, replaced by flier lie rough. That would be a great thing for the game, even if it means changing equipment.
Oh, and it establishes the precedent of a major equipment "rollback."
Bill Simmons offers his fixes for tennis and makes plenty of golf references in this ESPN The Magazine column. All I could think was, as many issues as golf faces, at least it's not the mess tennis has become.
Thanks to reader Chris for this.
Doug Ferguson tackles my favorite subject, the increasing difficulty of PGA Tour setups and gets some fresh perspectives from Joe Ogilvie and Davis Love as well as a PGA Tour mandate from the 90s.
The problem is whether the PGA Tour is getting enough variety.
For all the complaining at Memorial, there were birdies to be made. Mathew Goggin made 15 over the first two days, along with his share of bogeys. Even so, Davis Love III has noticed the winning score getting worse in recent years.
"Scores should be going down, not up," Love said. "That's a pretty good indication that it's getting harder. Nobody ever shoots 20 under anymore. And players are a heck of a lot better. The fields are deeper."
Love said the course setup was a major topic at the players' meeting last month in North Carolina. Why are courses so hard? What kind of show can they put on for the fans and a television audience when they're scrambling for par?
And who's idea was this, anyway?
"It's a four-letter word," Steve Flesch said at the Memorial. "And he runs this place."
The mandate actually came from the PGA Tour policy board nearly 20 years ago, with only a few instructions. Firm, closely mown grass on the tees, fairways and greens. Thick, evenly dispersed rough (when growing conditions allow).
The summation of that 1990 document was to have all courses play as difficult as possible while remaining fair. Exactly what that means, of course, is subject to interpretation.
Are course setups getting worse?
In 22 stroke-play events this year, 10 winning scores were higher, 10 were lower and two were the same.
"I don't want to sound like the guy who's 44 and not playing good," said Love, who turned 44 in April and is not playing particularly well. "But it's really hard. It doesn't matter if it's hard or easy — it's the same for everybody. But is that what we want?"
This follows a year in which average birdies were way down from previous years, along with TV ratings, and players began asking if fans might lose interest watching the best in the world hack it around every week.
"I think Phil had the right idea when he said technology has gone two ways," Joe Ogilvie said. "We have better balls, better drivers, better equipment. Johnny Miller talks about equipment almost as much as he talks about himself. But 15 years ago, they couldn't grow rough 10 inches. John Deere makes a hell of a tractor that cuts the greens lower and lower and lower.
"It gets to the point when golf — even for us — gets pretty boring."
Next week is the U.S. Open, where the winning score has been 5 over par the last two years.
Ogilvie believes PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, the USGA and other golf organizations want courses to be tougher than ever so fans won't think "these guys are good" simply because of the better equipment.
"But at least," Ogilvie said, "they're not saying 'these guys are good' because of HGH."
That last point is definitely a new one. Is Finchem that clever and the field staff really taking such a directive? I don't think so. I'm more inclined to think that it's a combination of host courses raising the bar with thicker, higher rough, the PGA Tour's philosophy that a great tournament is major like (thus, more rough, narrower fairways and high scores) and maybe a slight overreaction to technology.
What do you think?
Alistair Tait isn't too wild about the Curtis Cup pace.
Put Carol Semple Thompson in charge of golf. The game would get a lot quicker if she was chief executive of the royal & ancient game.
The U.S. Curtis Cup captain was as fed up with the turgid pace of play for the afternoon four-balls as most in the crowd of 5,800.
The last match on the course, the contest that pitted Alison Walshe and Stacy Lewis against Liz Bennett and Florentyna Parker, took five hours and 22 minutes to complete.
By the time the match got to the 18th, the only one of the three four-ball contests to go the distance, most of the crowd had gone home. Semple Thompson might have high-tailed it out of the Auld Grey Toon too if not for her responsibilities as U.S. captain.
“I thought the pace of play was horrible,” Thompson said.
Beth Ann Baldry reports on the U.S. taking the lead in the matches, as does John Huggan, who has issues with the pacing and manners displayed.
One other noticeable feature of the first two days – quite apart from the disgracefully slow pace of play – has been an apparent inability to count, with players on both sides equally culpable. On day one, the Scottish duo of Watson and Michelle Thomson lay five to six feet from the cup on the Road Hole. Their opponents, Stacy Lewis and Alison Walshe, were four feet away after three shots. Clearly, a concession was the obvious course of action for the young Scots. Not a bit of it. Only after Watson had missed did they belatedly abandon a cause the equivalent of that faced by the Light Brigade.
A similar thing happened yesterday at the 9th hole. After three-putting from not very far away for a bogey, Watson and Thomson asked Lewis to putt from three feet when the Americans had two for the hole. And, just to show that the arithmetically challenged can be found on both sides of the Atlantic, Booth managed to lag her putt stiff from no more than four feet on the 16th green when she and partner Breanne Loucks had two to win their foursomes match against Kimberly Kim and Jennie Lee.
Jack Nicklaus weighed in on several topics during his Memorial Tuesday chat with the media, ranging from Boo Weekley to furrowed bunkers to the golf ball. For a summary of his lengthy Ryder Cup dialogue, check out Steve Elling's blog summation. Elling also offered this overview of the press conference if you don't want to read the entire transcript. Mark Soltau summarizes a Jack anecdote related to Tiger's decision not to play (it doesn't sound great with his knee) and also on the topic of thank-you cards from players.
And separate of his press conference, Nicklaus offered this to Doug Ferguson in response to a question about his support of the USGA's new deal with RBS.
Jack Nicklaus has been barking about technology for at least a decade, with seemingly no help from the USGA. But he took part in an announcement earlier this month when golf’s governing body in the United States and Mexico announced it had signed its fourth corporate partner in the last 18 months.
He was asked about any perception that the USGA is more interested in getting corporate support than governing the game.
“I wish I had a good answer to that,” Nicklaus replied. “I haven’t had a good answer from the USGA on it. I think their heart is in the right place. I don’t think they’re trying to avoid being a good steward to the game. They’re probably between a rock and a hard place.
“Their efforts in the grassroots of the game, being involved in youth, certainly has been good,” he said. “They do so many good things. It’s just the one thing they aren’t having success at is controlling the length of the golf ball.”
Okay, now the highlights from the press conference.
Q. Furrowed bunkers again this year?
JACK NICKLAUS: We went to about halfway between what we were. I think that the first year we probably were a little severe. Probably the second year we were probably too light and this year we're somewhere in the middle. It's about the same exact same thing that basically I was at Birkdale last week and the rakes are almost identical to Birkdale. So I think it's pretty much the standard rake. It's just not a smooth surface.
And the intention is, as I've said in here many times, the intention is not to make it a penalty, but to have it in a player's mind that it could be a penalty. And so if you're going to hit the ball, you got to challenge a bunker and you're going to say, you know, well, if I hit in there what difference does it make, I'm just going to take my whatever club it is and knock it out and knock it on the green. The players don't worry about it.
But if you got it where you might not get a perfect lie -- and you can get a good lie in the bunkers the way we got them, but you can get a bad lie. And if that's the case, then you're going to think about whether you want to really challenge that bunker in a way that you wouldn't even consider. So it's just forcing the players to strategize, to play the strategy of the golf course.
I came up with it, the reason I did it was we just kept changing bunkers and lowering them and it didn't make that much difference. I always go through what they did at the Masters and there's two bunkers at the fifth hole at the Masters and, you know, you can't hardly shoot a gun out of them over the top, but -- they're so deep. And but Hootie saw that and didn't know if they could get out. And I said, Hootie, I promise you they're going to get out. There will be no problems. The first round Mickelson knocked it in the bunkers, knocked a 9-iron out of the bunker onto the green and made birdie. End of question there, end of subject.
So if you keep taking the bunkers and keep doing things to them, you just are destroying your membership. The membership can't play out of those bunkers. The membership is having a hard time playing, a hard time playing out of a lot of them over here. So I said basically let's not make the bunkers any tougher. Just one week a year rough it up a little bit. They call it rough raking it. And that's what we have done and that's -- I don't think they will find it to be much of a deal.
It certainly will not be a big deal around the greens. That's not where they have to worry. It's more in the fairways, because the fairway bunkers here have always been fairly easy to play out of because the guys will take whatever club they need and just pop it out of them because we just have them so perfect. And we'll just sort of rough rake them a little bit.
I loved this question. Now if we could just get Jack and the field staff on the same page!
Q. You talked about 14, a couple weeks ago about practicing, preparing your driving for the U.S. Open there. Have you ever thought about maybe one day during the tournament moving it up, moving the tee up just a little bit to put the thought in their head to give it a crack?
JACK NICKLAUS: I don't control the tees. The tees are controlled by the TOUR. Would I object to it if they put it up? Probably wouldn't if we would talk about it ahead of time so I could prepare the hole so it would play for that, as far as the occasional guy who stands back and whacks it today, but I haven't really -- I really haven't prepared and thought a whole lot about the second shot, that landing area up there as relates to receiving a tee shot. And I would bet there are going to be 10 players this week who will take a run at that. If they do, then I probably will prepare the fairway a little differently and probably -- meaning would I probably eliminate any rough that comes along the edge of it. So if you're going to take a run at it and you don't hit it where you're supposed to, you're probably going to get a little bit more -- the water will come into play a little bit more. But it's never been a big issue yet. But that would be what we would probably do.
I went out there, I used to practice from the ladies' tee and it was a perfect tee shot practice for me because it was left-to-right slope hitting up the left edge, and sort of working the ball I could run it up into the green there. And I thought that was good practice. And the guys today, I mean, you know, they could go back on 13 fairway and drive it up there they hit the ball so far today.
And the proverbial technology talk turned interesting when it came to Augusta National.
Q. You were talking about equipment.
(Laughter.)
JACK NICKLAUS: Well surprise there.
(Laughter.)
We talk about the game has changed tremendously because of equipment and I think largely the golf ball. And yet we're asked to play the same golf courses.
So I mean obviously if the golf ball goes further and equipment hits the ball straighter, and the guys are bigger, all those combinations would only, common sense would say, duh, scores are going to be lower.
Well, okay. But then you take the golf courses and we keep changing them and changing them and changing them and spend millions of dollars to protect almighty par. Is that really the right thing to do? I think that we're trying to, we try to take today's golf courses and make them -- we take equipment, which has no relevance whatsoever to the equipment that I played or we played versus what Jones played. Yet we want to make the golf course play, to be relevant. Does that make sense?
I mean why would you want to take -- I mean it's a different game, it's different equipment. Why would you worry about that it's relevant? Though we spend millions of dollars trying to make it so. And so that doesn't make a lot of sense.
Augusta is the perfect example. I think Augusta is a, to what it is right now, frankly, I think it's a great golf course. And I think what they have done to it is what they had to do to it if they wanted to protect par. Would Bobby Jones have liked that? Probably not. His philosophy was very much the St. Andrews philosophy. And that's wide fairways, second shot golf, put the ball in the right position, you got the right angle to the hole. You do that, you take advantage of the golf course and you can score it. Okay. Well obviously with today's equipment you just take a golf course apart.
But they have changed the golf course and probably rightly so. I have two thoughts on it. Rightly so. They changed the golf course to fit today's game. But they have taken the golf course away from Jones' philosophy of what the game was to him.
So you got two things happening there. Which do you protect? And they could have had the -- they're the only place that had the option probably to say, okay, we can do, take the golf ball and make them play a certain golf ball there. And they could have gotten away with that.
But I think they did the right thing there again, as I said to you before, in not putting themselves above the game. So I don't know what the answer really is. What was your question? Was that your question?
Nicklaus made similar complimentary comments regarding ANGC to ESPN.com's Jason Sobel in this interview. Well, complimentary if you read it a certain way!
Seems Peter Alliss upset the Euro Tour boys with his on-air criticism this week, Lawrence Donegan reports.There was much grumbling in the locker room at Wentworth during the week over comments made by the BBC commentator to the effect that the golf on display was of a poor standard. A neutral could argue such criticism was slightly unfair given the course had been exceptionally difficult until yesterday morning's heavy rainfall produced conditions more conducive to good scoring. Nick Dougherty, on the other hand, was inclined to a harsher assessment.
"I thought it was very sad. In fact, I thought it was disgusting," the Englishman said of Alliss' criticisms. "He was talking about us being bad putters. I don't know whether it's because he has been out of the game for so long but I didn't think it was right and he ought to show us more respect. I wish we could take him out there and show him how difficult it was."
Needless to say Alliss did not take kindly to being upbraided by a young upstart, albeit one with a reputation for being amiable, and his response will have done little to repair relationships or diminish the broadcaster's image as a 19th hole curmudgeon, forever wailing that it was better in the old days.
"I am not here to do anything but say what is going on and they didn't play well," he said. "I know it [the game] is hard. I won 21 tournaments, played in eight Ryder Cups. If it is not all perfect now they all complain.
"There is too much sand in the bunkers, there is not enough sand in the bunkers, the greens. The courses weren't manicured years ago and you had to make the most of it. Bobby Locke won at Oakdale years ago when the greens were like bloody concrete. He won by 10 shots because he knew how to do things. They are so thin-skinned nowadays. It is quite extraordinary. They all say they can take criticism and they don't mind constructive criticism but they do."
Paul McGinley continues to use his fine play to push an anti-course butchering agenda at of all places, Wentworth (didn't Ernie mess it up?).
Jeremy Whittle reports:
But he bemoaned the emphasis on driving distance that has become so dominant in modern golf course design. "It’s not just about 7,500 yards," he said. "It’s about run-offs, firmness, ball control and course management.
"I’d love to see the game go that way. Distance is important but there should be more to it. It’s an over-reaction to technology."
"I’m not going to change the world," he said. "I play what I am given. Length is a very important facet, but you have got to have ball control and course management and I don’t think there’s enough of that in the professional game at the moment."
Great to see Peter Kostis calling out the higher-ups in the game over the race to the fastest green speed, though I'm sure I buy the argument that messing with pre-shot routines is really a major ramification compared to other side effects.
It's time for a rule change. Tournaments seem to be competing in a constant game of one-upmanship to see who can make their greens the toughest. In both the Masters and the Players Championship, players were penalized when their balls moved in windy conditions after they had grounded their putters. With greens rolling to 12 or 13 on the Stimpmeter and 35 mile-per-hour gusts blowing, it's going to happen. Folks, there is a reason why the greens at St. Andrews never roll very fast.
It's not fair that players have to adjust their pre-shot routines or risk getting penalized. The USGA should change the rule so a player can ground his putter and not be penalized if the wind moves the ball. The player would simply putt from the spot where the ball comes to rest. The current rule makes windy conditions a no-win situation for the players. Not grounding the putter can be just as dangerous because the wind can push the putterhead into the ball.
Tournament officials are making things hard enough by pushing greens to roll this fast. How about giving honest athletes a chance to make a good putt when things get tough?
Douglas Lowe talks to Richie Ramsay about the negative influence of growing up a links tournament player, and what he's doing to hit the ball higher.
I caught up with the 25-year-old Aberdonian last week on the range at the Tolcinasco Castle course near Milan where he was preparing for the Italian Open with a row of some 20 different drivers behind him.
His shots were being assessed by a radar device that was designed originally to track missiles but which has been subsequently modified for golf balls.
"I am trying to hit the ball higher and this kind of technology helps," confirmed Richie, who learned his game on the Royal Aberdeen links and made his way right through the international ranks to the Walker Cup. "I can change my swing a little bit to achieve that, but altering the shaft and the weights in the clubhead can do the same."
Ramsay was a Walker Cup contemporary of the Americans Anthony Kim and JB Holmes, both big-hitting, high ball-flight winners on the PGA Tour this year. While such victories are inspiring, he was quick to point out that any suggestion that he and Lloyd Saltman are slower developers is not entirely fair.
"These guys are coming from college golf where they play top-class courses week-in, week-out," said Ramsay. "Then they go on tour and they play the same courses. People sometimes don't realise that when we played amateur golf, it was on courses like Royal Lytham and Royal Aberdeen. Then you come out here and it's completely different.
"For players like me who were brought up on links, it is a total change. I have to learn to hit the ball higher, especially with the driver. I also need a better flight for approaches to tight pin positions. That's the stuff I've been working on. I had a good result at the US amateur, but since then it's been a case of re-learning what I'm doing."
Sigh. What have we done to the game when growing up playing firm, windy links isn't the recipe to making you a better player?
Marisa Lagos in the San Francisco Chronicle addresses privitization rumors for the San Francisco city courses while Tod Leonard in the San Diego Union Tribune does the same thing for San Diego's crown jewel, Torrey Pines.
At Torrey it's the same old story, with Lodge owner Bill Evans seen as the likely operator, even though he flat out denies it and doesn't play golf or apparently, even like it. Especially because he's (claiming) that the U.S. Open won't be a cash cow.
However, Evans does have strong opinions about the matter.
“There is a responsibility to run the golf courses in the most profitable manner we can,” Evans said. “Golf is such an island among Park and Rec. It doesn't benefit the overall general citizens of San Diego. A large percentage of the owners of the golf course will never play golf.
As for the U.S. Open, Evans said he is “sick of hearing that it benefits me more than anybody else.”
Evans would not comment about the possibility of striking a similar deal with the USGA for future U.S. Opens here.
“This benefits all citizens. This is a worldwide event that they'll be talking about in the pubs of England. Maybe those people will want to visit. Maybe they'll move a business to San Diego. Not everything people do is motivated by greed.”
No, just most things!
Thanks to reader Mark for this Tom Kite interview from last week. He appeared with Steve Czaban, host "The First Team On Fox," a nationally syndicated Fox Sports Radio show.
After the usual small talk Czaban asked Kite if he's longer now than he was in his prime. Kite says he's about 10 yards longer now than at his peak.
Czaban then asks if this is a good thing. Kite's reply:
A: No, it's very detrimental to the game. All you have to do is look all over the place and you can hear all of these comments about how the game is not growing. Why isn't the game growing? It takes too long to play golf. It's too expensive to play golf. Those are the two most comment things that are cited for why the game doesn't grow. Well it takes longer to play an 8,000 yard course than it does a 6,500 yard golf course. Why does it cost more? It takes more money to maintain an 8,000 yard course with wider fairways and wider golf course envelopes than a 6,500 yard course. The fact that architects are forced to design golf courses...to try to build a golf course that stands up to the technology and what does it do? It makes the courses more expensive, you need more land to build the courses on and consequently the game is more expensive and takes longer to play and those are the two reasons why everybody keeps saying the game is not growing.
A rollback in equipment, which probably will never happen, but a rollback in the metal woods, in the graphite shafts and specifically the ball, would be a huge boon to the golf industry in my opinion.
Q: Who out there right now is really leading the push for that.
Nobody. Nobody. Right now the manufacturers are the ones running the game. The USGA basically lost the war when they didn't stand up to Karsten Solheim on the square grooves issue years and years ago. They backed down, they basically said if you have money and have sharp attorneys, the USGA will back down and they have ever since. Unfortunately they and the R&A are the rulemaking bodies and it's not going to happen in my opinion.
Well, glad Tom's already picked up that Bobby Jones Award from the USGA.
Can they revoke those? Let's hope not.
E. Michael Johnson reports that the proposed rollback on grooves for competition is all but dead for 2009 and not looking good for 2010.
A call to the USGA last week for a status report on the proposal produced little in the way of news, as senior technical director Dick Rugge declined to comment on specifics -- except to say there was "no set timetable for a decision on grooves.""Too much" to the R&A is defined as "any action whatsoever."
However, industry sources familiar with the situation tell Golf World the Condition of Competition as proposed is no longer on the table, meaning tour pros are likely to be able to use current grooves in 2009.
Meanwhile, USGA and R&A officials are set to meet again this month to discuss the groove proposal, with one industry insider characterizing the ruling bodies as still somewhat apart. "The USGA is ready to go, but the R&A believes the proposed rule is trying to do too much," said the source.
Meanwhile in this week's SI Golf Plus, PGA Tour pros were asked:
If the USGA bans U-grooves, will you sacrifice distance in favor of accuracy off the tee:
Yes: 25%
No: 75%
While I've never believed the U-groove change would impact player thinking off the tee, I do believe it would alter the aggressiveness of their approach shots and restore the importance of firm greens. Too bad the R&A does not agree.
Thanks to reader Nick for Blaine Newnham's story in the Seattle Times about the comeback of the caddie.
To get an idea how big the caddie renaissance is, Bandon Dunes has nearly 300 caddies in its recently erected $1 million "shack" near the practice facility. It has a high-tech TV and large lunchroom and locker room for the employees.
At Chambers Bay, where there are 170 caddies, the lure for the older guys is the chance to play one round for every five you caddie.
For the kids there is chance for a college scholarship.
There are 19 students attending the University of Washington on an Evans Scholarship, money dedicated for tuition and housing at the UW or WSU for kids who meet the entrance standards and have worked in the golf industry, historically as caddies.
Very nice spot by reader Mark reading an Economist piece on Callaway CEO George Fellows, who apparently endorsed bifurcating the sport to save it.
Another obvious strategy, though a more controversial one, is to make golf more “consumer-friendly”—meaning easier. Golf's rulemakers have tended to focus on maintaining the integrity of the game for the best players, which has made life tough for the rest. Callaway has to conform to a welter of arcane specifications: there are regulations about how far from the centre of the club a ball can be hit and still go straight, for example. These are intended to stop Tiger Woods shooting 30 under par, but also make the game less fun for less gifted players. Golf needs to “bifurcate” into a professional sport and a game for the masses, says Mr Fellows. One opportunity is to think outside the old 18-hole, four-hour box. Callaway has recently invested in TopGolf, a business that turns a driving range into a sort of dart board, where players aim at targets and scores are calculated with the help of radio transmitters in the balls.
It's amazing that it took a major company this long to endorse the concept. But at this point, other than grooves, is there really much that could be done to make equipment so much more user friendly that it would encourage growth?
Perhaps if Mr. Fellows had noted bifurcation could lead to less expensive equipment thanks to less emphasis on spending ridiculous marketing millions to convince people that they can get the same benefits from technology as the PGA Tour's best, then he'd be onto something.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
