It’s back!
Twenty years later Tatra Press has kindly allowed me to bring back Grounds For Golf now that golf architecture is of more interest to the masses. A new Introduction looks at what’s driven the interest growth and two new chapters I had a blast adding (plus a few edits to keep things up-to-date).
The Amazon purchase page for the book arriving June 15, 2026.
Golf Channel airs the World Golf Hall of Fame Induction ceremony at (9:30 pm est and at other times in the night). I understand from a very good source that there is a video with testimonials to Alister MacKenzie from modern player-architects that is not to be missed. :)
It will be fun to see if there is a Bernard Darwin video and if so, who they got to talk about his legacy. Here's the World Golf Village home page with more on this year's nominees.
Kelly Tilghman interviewed Tiger Woods September 28th. Because a transcript was slow to appear and I was more interested in his surprising comments that he'll be getting in the course design business soon than expected, I missed this bit where he says there is "no doubt" that Hootie, the USGA and R&A want to roll the ball back. Thanks to reader Tom for the reminder.
And credit Tilghman for asking some fine questions in a tough environment (Nike plugfest). The entire interview is much more interesting than Tiger's usual game of press room Dodgeball. (Not that I blame him.)
Anyway, here's what should have made headlines:
Tiger Woods: Here's the deal, I have talked to Hootie and talked to the heads of USGA, also to Peter Dawson, they want to roll the ball back, no doubt about that. They want to put a speed limit and there is one now but they are making golf courses so long that you can't play some of the old championship venues. That's what they are afraid of. They are trying to protect the integrity of some of these major championship venues and the great golf courses, where they can still provide a great championship but not have us shoot 20 under par. But also to have it so that the average golfer can enjoy a round of golf. Well, that's the dilemma. New technology has helped the average golfer hitting balls slightly further and slightly more accurate. But for professionals, we have made leaps and bounds because our proficiency and to be able to make contact and launch the ball correctly each and every time. If you take the average consumer and they hit a driver, they have probably got old equipment five years ago to now maybe 10 yards, 12 yards carry, and we're carrying it to 25, 30 yards further than some of the guys. The further you hit, the more technology is going to help you. That's what they are looking at. They have got all these lists of numbers especially at Augusta, where we're landing the golf ball versus three years ago, and three years ago guys are hitting it 12 to 15 further in the air easily, everybody. That's what they are afraid of. That's one of the reasons why Augusta made some changes each and every year and are probably a leader in that.
I am sure there will come a point in time where they will have to slow it down because we can't play Merion anymore. You can play U.S. Amateur but a professional I think would probably shoot a little lower scores than they did. St. Andrews, if they have to change the course there to accommodate us, then you know things are changing. Hey, I am one of the guys that if they did roll the ball back, it would help me out a little bit. I would have an advantage. Any long guy who hits the ball long and high would have more of an advantage because now we're having to hit longer irons in the greens, other guys are having to hit hybrids and woods, so you have an advantage.
From a personal standpoint and competitive standpoint, I won't mind them rolling the ball back because I would have an advantage.
As usual, plenty of laughs and interesting observations from Frank Hannigan. He looks at Tim Finchem's corporatespeak, the networks, Tiger, etc... Enjoy.
Bios of Bernard Darwin and Willie Park Sr, 2005 inductees into the World Golf Hall of Fame. Tony Jacklin will be inducting Darwin*, Ben Crenshaw will handle the task for Alister MacKenzie.
*This article says John Hopkins will be inducting and accepting on behalf of Darwin, Jacklin is handling Willie Park Sr.
It took way too long for John Huggan to weigh in on the Tour's '07 concept and the state of the game.
Oh but it was worth the wait.
A season-long points series will lead to a play-off-style Fed-Ex Cup involving leading qualifiers that will, it is hoped, identify the biggest draws in the game. Otherwise, America's ever-diminishing attention span, and its desire to satisfy an out-of-control gambling habit, may switch from fades to football even earlier than it does now.
Ah he was just warming up.
As always when the PGA Tour is involved, this proposed change to a long-established status quo has nothing to do with what may or may not be good for the game. To the surprise of no-one, this is all to do with money. Instead of taking a long, hard look at an increasingly one-dimensional product involving the use of driver, wedge and putter, Finchem and his army of sycophantic minions have gone for what appears to be a short-term fix: dazzling disgruntled networks with big names and numbers in advance of imminent negotiations for the renewal of television contracts.
Oh heck, why am I interrupting?
Such a move, you won't be shocked to hear, is shortsighted, and pays no attention to recent history and the demise of tennis as a participation/spectator sport in the US. As bigger racquets and hi-tech materials removed entertaining 'feel' players, such as John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase, from the upper echelons, tennis became more and more a power game dominated by big-serving behemoths. And not surprisingly, the public rejected that tedium. From a peak of 34 million in 1975, it is estimated that only 13 million Americans play tennis and only rarely does it make it onto network TV.
Golf is going the same way. The numbers are not pretty, yet administrators on both sides of the Atlantic do nothing to stop the game becoming more about grunts than guile.
Oh I'll stop here because he goes into that tedious USGA/R&A Statement of Principles stuff which you know all too well from the last week. And the various stats also thrown in your face here and here this week.
Mike Aitken has an excellent profile of David McClay Kidd's design of the seventh course at St. Andrews.
Thanks to reader Josh for this nice Alister MacKenzie bio at PGATour.com. MacKenzie is going into the World Golf Hall of Fame Monday, Nov. 14.
An interesting item I missed (thanks to reader Peter for alerting me), came from Doug Ferguson's Tour Championship notes:
GLORY DAYS: For those who believe the golf ball is solely responsible for distance gains, the pro-am at the Chrysler Championship showed other factors at work. The wooden driver, for example.
As the PGA Tour reached a conclusion to its "Drive to a Billion" charity campaign, it had five persimmons drivers available on the first tee and asked players to give it a crack, then use their titanium drivers for the shot that counted on their pro-am scorecard.
Adam Scott hit it pure, a majestic ball flight with a slight draw to the middle of the fairway. Out came his Titleist titanium driver - same golf ball, by the way - and another beautiful swing. Stepping it off, it was 32 yards longer.
Davis Love III also ripped the wooden driver. His modern driver sent the ball 40 yards longer.
Guess the ball is overrated? Might as well just buy some run-of-the-mill Callaways since the clubs are doing all the work, eh?
Or maybe there is a unique ball-club synergy that allows players to exceed the Overall Distance Standard, and someone ought to test for that?
Add Peter Kostis to the list of those underwhelmed by Tim Finchem's announced intentions to fix the Tour schedule. He raises several points not addressed in other columns and offers this extreme idea, sounds much closer to something the Tour should consider to make this so-called "playoff" dramatic instead of a rich-get-rich pyramid scheme:
...if you really want to create some excitement, play the FedEx Cup finale tournaments with a $10 million purse—winner takes all.
You have to figure that if the Tour can't convince players to do something semi-radical at The International (daily cuts, start from scratch Sunday), it's going to be tough to convince the players that FedEx Cup will only work with something bold and brash. And this is why the FedEx Cup concept will continue to receive nothing but yawns and "why?"
Subtle segue in this question to Tiger from the press assembled in China:
Q. You had excellent golf today, I'd like to talk about your 18th hole yesterday, it was a fantastic hole, and you played well, great finishing. How do you rate your anger management?
TIGER WOODS: How?
Q. How do you rate your anger management?
Golf World's John Hawkins weighs in on the proposed 2007 concept for the Tour. He's mostly celebratory, so much so that the Commish will want to order reprints. But the story is loaded with mini-bombshells and interesting anecdotes may infuriate the rank-and-file player while creating new questions about how the framework of the schedule was put together.
With considerable help from the title sponsor, the FedEx Cup will offer a whopping $38 million payoff to the 30 players who make it to the Tour Championship, a source told Golf World. About 25 percent of that will go to the winner -- unofficial money likely to come in the form of a contribution to the players' retirement funds.
Hawkins will get a wine and cheese basket from the Commissioner for this line:
Though it may never rival the major championships in terms of relevance or do much to determine a Player of the Year, the four-week playoff series should resolve the tours late-season issues and bolster Finchem's bargaining power when he meets with the networks to negotiate the upcoming television contract, a process that is expected to begin this week.
Here's the part that may have the rank and file asking more questions:
It's hard to imagine a scenario where fewer than the top 70 would advance into the playoffs. Although the tour has developed a reputation in recent years for disregarding the best interests of its middle class, the FedEx Cup series will market opportunity -- the idea that No. 78 in the standings could get hot, play great golf under immense pressure and walk off with the $10 million. In a manner of speaking, he'll have earned it. "It will probably be like NASCAR, where it's hard to move up [in the Nextel Cup]," Woods surmised. "The research says 80 percent of the time, the winner comes out of the top five [in the standings]."
And this really caught my eye:
"There are going to be two sides to this," said IMG's Mark Steinberg, Woods' agent and a key player in the shaping of the tour's revisions. "A player who has a dominant year may get passed because of the reset. Having said that, a player who had a good year but not a great one will have a chance to make it great in the final month."
Tiger's agent was a "key player" in shaping the revisions? Hmmm. He also, amazingly, was complimentary:
In that sense, Finchem didn't exactly pull a rabbit out of his hat, but he didn't produce a goat, either. "I think Tim and Ed [tour executive VP Moorhouse] have done a hell of a job in creating a new system," Steinberg said. "They've done a great job of salvaging what could have been a very difficult situation."
Uh, they haven't inked any deals yet.
The television networks may be very willing to fork over a dollar total close to (or more than) the nearly $1 billion it paid to telecast the tour four years ago, but the long-term relationship between pro golf and TV could be irreparably harmed if Finchem doesn't deliver a series of tournaments that feature all the game's top-ranked players.
"It's a step in the right direction," ESPN's Wildhack said. "Player participation is what drives ratings. The three guys that make the ratings are Woods, Mickelson and John Daly."
Then Hawkins drops this, which doesn't exactly make the ESPN guy look too good.
Last month's WGC-American Express Championship featured a near-perfect competitive scenario on Sunday afternoon: Woods vs. Daly in a playoff televised by ABC, whose parent company, Disney, also owns ESPN and has an endorsement deal with Woods. Despite a marquee leader board (Sergio Garcia and Colin Montgomerie also were in contention), the WGC emblem and the Woods-Daly showdown, the final round ranked 21st in sports programming shown on national TV that weekend.
Did I miss a media day? Now AP's Doug Ferguson weighs in from Augusta (these guys must know a lot of members!) and reports on the "attempt to restore the rhythm and shot value the way Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie designed it."
Rhythm?
Ferguson employed the Bobby Jones quote describing what the greatest of them all expected players to hit into No. 4 from then until eternity.
Jones gave Sports Illustrated a hole-by-hole description in 1959 and said of the par-3 fourth, ''The shot is usually a strong iron, or even a 4- or 3-wood.''
Here's what Jones wrote:
This hole can be varied a great deal, depending on the use of the back tee or the rear portion of the forward tee. From the back tee the shot is usually a strong iron or even a four or three wood.
In other words, he expected both tees to be used to create the day-to-day variety that he loved in St. Andrews (and wrote about extensively). Hopefully the committee will do the same this year.
Regarding the first hole, Ferguson writes:
The tee box has been moved back about 20 yards to make the hole play 455 yards, although change at Augusta National is not all about length.
The eye-opener is that cavernous bunker down the right side, where a finger of turf now dips into the sand and creates the appearance of a double bunker. Balls rarely will be in the middle of the sand, allowing for a routine escape; now there will be steep lips in the way.
Here's what Jones wrote about No. 1:
This hole can be played straight away from tee to green, although the fairway does expand on the right as it approaches the green. Ordinarily, the fairway bunker on the right presents no problem for the tournament player. With a heavy wind against, however, as often happens, a half-hit tee shot may catch this bunker.
He went on to write mostly about the strategy of the green complex, which thankfully retains its brilliance today (until Tom Fazio convinces Hootie he can reproduce it 10 yards back and 30 to the right.
But no mention from Jones of teeing off from Butler Cabin if necessary to get the bunker in play. And nothing about adding bunker tongues to discourage those heroic recovery shots. In fact, in the chapter on Augusta he noted:
...the elimination of purely punitive hazards provides an opportunity for the player to retrieve his situation by an exceptional second shot. A course which is constructed with these principles in view must be interesting, because it will offer problems which a man may attempt, according to his ability.
Those democratic golf values are so last century Bobby!
Ferguson lets Dow Finsterwald sum up what the changes are really about.
Augusta National is longer and harder than ever. Players hit the ball longer and better than ever.
''Their ability is so marvelous,'' [Dow] Finsterwald said. ''It's not that they're so much longer, they're straighter. And there are more good putters than there were. So I don't think the test has changed. But players have risen to the changes. But the scores stay pretty much in the ballpark, don't they?''
The normally jovial Kraig Kann sounds skeptical in posing ten questions about the proposed 2007 Tour concept.
And Seth Soffian reports that Greg Norman says what a lot of writers have come close to saying:
"The PGA Tour plays things close to the chest," said Norman, taking a not-so-veiled shot at Finchem, who offered only a framework for the proposed schedule changes last week after a year of speculation.But see Greg, if you make an announcement without really saying anything, and no one likes the sound of the announcment, then you can say you never really made such an announcement!
"You don't really know what's going on until Finchem decides to say something, and then when he says something, he really doesn't tell you anyway. If you're going to make an announcement, make an announcement and tell the world what's going on."
Oh no, not more stats! Sorry, but it's fun to see how flogging is the way to play the PGA Tour. (For you newcomers to this site's rantings, flogging is the bomb it out there and worry about the consequences later. You can read more about it here and here.)
Flogging has become such a big part of the sport that the graphics department here at gs.com developed a logo.
Anyhow, here is a list of the top 30 money winners, with their driving distance rank followed by their driving accuracy rank. I've included where Padraig Harrington would have ranked if he had enough rounds to qualify for the final statistic lists.
8 Retief Goosen 44 157
9 Bart Bryant 147 6
10 Sergio Garcia 10 153
11 Fred Funk 197 2
12 Justin Leonard 128 74
13 Davis Love III 8 165
14 P. Harrington 54* 188*
15 Adam Scott 23 175
16 Scott Verplank 59 9
17 Luke Donald 135 75
18 Sean O'Hair 23 127
19 Ben Crane 61 182
20 Chad Campbell 52 122
21 Tim Clark 140 58
22 Billy Mayfair 103 21
23 Stuart Appleby 19 155
24 Ted Purdy 45 88
25 Mark Calcavecchia 91 49
26 Olin Browne 173 4
27 Brandt Jobe 11 178
28 Tim Herron 65 122
29 Charles Howell III 56 170
30 Lucas Glover 12 138
Top 30 Average: 70th in Distance, 105th in Accuracy
Top 10 Average: 69th in Distance, 111th in Accuracy
It's alive! Semi-timely content appears at GolfDigest.com. The techies strike must have ended.
Bob Verdi on the FedEx Cup: "I have incentivized myself to find the wisdom in this concept, and I have failed."
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
