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
Richard Gillis files an interesting WSJ piece (thanks reader John) about distance where Nike's Cindy Davis preaches the joys of pursuing longer drives and selling the next great driver.
Thankfully, my colleague Gil Hanse brought some sanity to the discussion.
"We're at a point where something has to be done," Hanse said. "We're talking about a tiny proportion of golfers where distance is an issue, a small handful of tour players and accomplished amateurs. Whether its bifurcation or rolling the ball back I don't know what the answer is, but the environmental question is really the one that is difficult for the manufacturers to refute."
The new normal in golf course design is the 8,000-yard layout.
"Two hundred acres is the new standard for a golf course compared to 150 acres a few years ago," Hanse said. "And 120 of those acres have to be maintained and watered as opposed to 80. You really are going down an unsustainable path. From a manufacturers standpoint, how can you argue against that? They can talk a lot about marketing, about player endorsements and how there's always been the same set of rules, etc., but the environmental argument is the winning one."
Ron Sirak offers good common sense ideas about the state of the game and what needs to be emphasized to "grow" (really sustain at this point) the game. The question I have though as I read it is: which of the five families will have the desire to guide the sport to a healthier future?
Sirak says the emphasis should be on the four f's, fast, fitness, fun and family.
On fun:
We need to focus on the Fun in the game. My father was a 35-year-old steel mill worker when he took up golf. The factory had a nine-hole league -- inspired by our local working class hero, Palmer -- and that league got my Dad hooked on the game. He started playing nine holes on Tuesdays and eventually was playing 18 on Saturday and Sunday, and soon he had a club in my hands.
These sorts of fun, social/competitive events are also a way to get more women in the game. Only 18 percent of rounds played in the United States are by women. The growth potential there is enormous. How about courses encouraging that growth by having daycare centers or play areas so Moms can bring their kids to the course?
Larry Fine on the PGA of America's outreach efforts and its new President, Ted Bishop, not supporting any kind of distance rollback that might impact the average player.
"If you do anything that's going to cause the rank and file amateur player to not hit the ball as far, there's no way you're going to enhance their enjoyment of the game," PGA President Ted Bishop told reporters on Tuesday.
And...
"I'm not so sure that's the greater issue we have to deal with," Bishop told Reuters. "This game is a hard game and anything we do to make the golf course play longer, play more difficult, is certainly going to deter from the enjoyment of the game for the average player."
Pssst....Ted, it's all taking longer and is more difficult because we're after this distance thing like a dog chasing its tail.
Bishop has already spoken out against the USGA/R&A ban on anchoring.
The Denver Post's John Mossman on the paltry price paid by Rose Holdings LLC for Cordillera's Fazio, Nicklaus and Irwin 18's along with a Pelz practice area, though developer David Wilhem only opened the Fazio course the last two seasons.
Donald Trump lost out in the bidding and according to Risa Wolf-Smith, an attorney with Holland & Hart of Denver that represented the unsecured creditors, he put on a good show.
"Auctions are always interesting, and this one was a little bit crazy," Wolf-Smith said. "It really was fun to listen to Donald Trump. He has a personality even on the phone.
"He wished the best to the other bidders as he passed on his last opportunity to bid. He muttered here and there that he didn't think it would go this high. There's always a possibility that he may try to work something out with Wilhelm on the back end."
The bankruptcy case was complicated by litigation between Wilhelm and 610 club members.
Last spring, Wilhelm promised to open all four golf courses but — for the second year in a row — opened only Fazio's Valley course. He also laid off dozens of workers.
Back in January at the PGA Show, Jack Nicklaus floated some ideas about golf in parks, youth leagues and some other peculiar sound ideas.
But after reading John Paul Newport's story on the Golden Bear's endorsement of SNAG Golf, the ideas become crystallized and make a lot of sense. Throw in the nagging issue of injuries in football (something not touched on here), and there seems to be a genuine opportunity to start kids in golf at a young age thanks to the concept.
Although SNAG golf can be played in any large open area, like a park or a beach, the Nicklaus Learning Leagues will use municipal soccer fields. A six-hole course takes less than 30 minutes to set up. Each player carries a rubber tee pad, to elevate the ball before hitting, and two clubs. One is the "launcher," which kids can use to knock a ball 40 to 50 yards. The other is the "roller," a putter equivalent, for the delicate shorter shots that finally "snag" the ball to an aboveground cylinder at the base of the flag. This so-called Flagsticky is covered in adhesive material.
The Nicklaus Leagues will build on a two-year pilot program in 15 cities run by the National Recreation and Park Association. For 5- and 6-year-olds in the Nicklaus Leagues, the emphasis will be on whacking the ball around and having fun, with snacks essential. Seven- and 8-year-olds will get more instruction and compete with partners in best-ball format against other teams. Nine- and 10-year-olds will use slightly smaller, Super SNAG clubs and balls and compete as a team with stroke-play scoring. Plans are afoot for leagues involving older kids and even adults.
There is also this supplemental video feature with the story.
I'm beginning to think the anchoring ban was a clever ploy by the governing bodies to unlock previously muted opinions on the distance issue!
Royal and Ancient Golf Club member Michael Bamberger is the latest to note the Old Course changes with little enthusiasm but says "the real problem is that the R&A/USGA have consistently lacked a 'staff futurist' to anticipate how various issues would spiral."
The R&USGA should be focused on how to make courses far shorter and easier to maintain. As modern layouts approach 8,000 yards, maintenance becomes incredibly expensive (a cost that's passed on to golfers), and the courses become excessively punitive and excruciating slow.
So, where to start? Brown, for starters, should truly be the new green. Augusta National, ridiculously verdant, sets a terrible example in this regard.
But where the governing bodies absolutely blew it was by allowing big-headed titanium drivers almost 20 years ago. It's because Dustin Johnson can use modern weaponry to drive the ball 370 yards that the Old Course is getting these pointless renovations.
And add him to the bifurcation camp.
The modern ball, coming off the face of the modern driver, flies way too far for golfers on TV trying to break 60. But it doesn't for us, shooting our newspaper 89s. The solution is two sets of rules. Rory and Co. should have a ball they can call their own. Bifurcation. That's the word they don't want us to use.
"I think it's kind of dumb," said pro golfer Chip Lynn of Lillington. "There's a lot of other stuff that they could ban that affects the game more."
Lynn is a former Fayetteville State golfer who now plays on the Egolf Tour and got through the first round of PGA Tour qualifying this year. He said he tried a belly putter in "six or seven events" this year and found it didn't help him.
"I didn't putt any better," he said. "I don't think the belly putter gives you that much more advantage. I didn't notice anything different. My putts weren't better during the round."
Lynn said technology has affected the game more than anchored putters.
"I agree with Webb Simpson who said there are a lot more things that have affected the game than just the belly putter," he said. "I don't think it's that big of a deal.
"If you're going to change that rule, you probably need to do something about the balls, the driver heads and the technology that has really affected the game instead of the belly putters."
And Adam Scott continued to press his case on this theme Wednesday, asking for some consistency from the governing bodies
Maybe, just maybe, all of this crying out for a distance solution was part of the plan to start with when the anchoring ban came about? I know, they aren't that clever. But the unintended consequences of screwing with the Old Course and moving first on anchoring could ultimately work out in the favor of the governing bodies.
**Thanks to reader PMDF6 for this Frank Deford NPR commentary on the same theme. The link includes an audio version of DeFord reading it.
Now understand, modern golfers have kryptonite drivers with club heads as large as prize pumpkins, and steroid balls that would not pass the drug test, even if the hapless International Cycling Union were doing the random sampling.
Golfers are slugging the dimpled rockets so far that all sorts of classic courses have had to be lengthened — even the sacred Old Course at St. Andrews. This is like if baseball bats and balls had been supercharged so much that Bud Selig decreed that now it had to be 100 feet instead of 90 between bases.
But never mind the bazooka transcontinental drives. No. The golf honchos have issues with the little itty-bitty part of the game called putting. If the U.S. Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient were in charge of nuclear proliferation, they would handle things by legislating the size of bayonets.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
