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.
Colin Phillips, the Tom Meeks of the southern hemisphere, was hired by the R&A to be their new head of something having to do with Australia and Asian golf. Phillips recently retired from the Australian Golf Union after masterminding yet another Australian Open setup boondoggle. You may recall that Phillips and good buddy Wayne Grady recently exchanged loving words, as Mike Clayton wrote in this Golfobserver column.
Southern Hills makes up for accepting the 2007 PGA by taking the 2010 U.S. Amateur, laying the groundwork for a post-2013 U.S. Open. August in Tulsa. Ugh.
John Huggan lets Darren Clarke do the talking.
Mike Clayton reports on Robert Allenby's impressive sweep of the three biggest Australian golf titles.
Mike Clayton, writing for The Age (thanks to reader Graeme):
In Australia, we have nearly always played our best events on our best courses, but in America and Europe, commercial considerations usually win out over the quality of the golf course.
How dare he! Of course, it's true. And my favorite line:
Rough is a curse that clever design should be able to do without and we should take no notice of what we see from America on our televisions. It is moronic and one-dimensional to think the game is better when it is played from long green grass.
As a former USGA member, not only do I receive golf-themed address labels at least three times a year, now I get the USGA Annual!
At this pace of non-membership, next I'll get the sharehol..err...the newsletter and, what else? Oh yes, first opportunity to volunteer.
SI's Chris Lewis does an excellent job analyzing the PGA Tour's television ratings to help us understand why the "FedEx Cup" has been born.
Peter Kostis explains why he believes there are so few burgeoning American stars compared to the rest of the world.
He doesn't mention the sense of entitlement guiding most American youth. Nor does he bring up the lack of diversity in playing conditions they face, particularly firm ground and thought-provoking designs. Nor does he mention the overall lack of imagination that American golf presents, thus failing to provide our kids with the kind of experience that European and Australian golfers are exposed to.
Mostly he blames the state of American college golf programs. (Actually, after reading about coaches endorsing a brand of rangefinder, maybe he's on to something.) He also believes the Tour school structure is an issue too.
Collegiate golfers who do turn pro are often met with the harsh reality of Q-school, where changes are needed as well. Exemptions past certain stages of Q-school should be abolished. Everyone should go through three stages, thus evening the playing field for the younger players (only 10 of 32 Tour cards earned this year went to players who survived all three stages).
Not sure about you, but I'm detecting some trends here. This is the fourth article by someone who has seen the changes at Augusta National, and by golly, the similarities are striking. Potential talking points here? Links to the previous three are here, here and here. You be the judge.
Actually, this unbylined piece takes the analysis in new directions compared to the previous stories, serving up some real headscratchers. Thanks to reader Pete for the heads up.
Augusta National officials, who declined to be quoted, deferring to the “Big Three” or chairman Hootie Johnson, say the changes will restore the course’s “rhythm and shot values” as designed by Jones and Mackenzie.
The fourth hole is longer now (though hardly the longest par-3; Oakmont will have a 285-yard par-3 for the 2007 U.S. Open), but carving the new tee out of the woods created an expanded area for spectators. The real benefit? Making Tour players have to decide which of their four wedges to ditch from their bags in order to carry a 2-iron or 3-iron for the tee shot.
It would be interesting to know the unbylined writer concocted that one or if that came from the club. It's so pathetic on so many levels, I don't know where to begin. Oh let's begin. First, the 2-iron is just about gone from most Tour bags, replaced by the hybrid. Even Tiger shelved his. Second, how many people really carry four wedges, and even if they do, is it really the place a tournament committee to change holes in order to create 14-club decision predicaments?
The most dramatic change is at the 450-yard par-4 seventh, where 90 yards have been added since 2002. An old maintenance building was removed for the new tee, 40 yards back. Fans now can stand behind the tee and see the length of the funnel-like fairway, which “can be classified as narrow,” Roberts wrote in splendid understatement.
Yes, splendid. Wasn't Cliff Roberts the one who turned No. 8 into that hideous flying saucer green that had to be rebuilt by Byron Nelson and Joe Lee? Same guy, right?
Players can bomb a drive into the narrowest part of the fairway and risk being in the right-hand trees, or lay back to 175 yards, where the fairway is flat and wider, and hit a longer approach to an elevated green, guarded by five bunkers. Changes to the green created new pin positions in the back left and back right, bringing those bunkers into play.
Yes, just as Jones and MacKenzie envisioned it.
By reworking the 11th hole, Fazio brought the leftside pond back into play on approaches. Players in the past “bailed out” right, then played approaches into the length of the green. That likely won’t happen now.
And what genius it takes to eliminate options. Here I was thinking it took genius to create options and now I realize my thinking was all wrong.
I don't know about you, but with the Masters on the line, I'd much rather hit over the pond from the leftside with short grass beyond for the over-struck shot, than try to hit into the length of the green from a hanging lie.
The bottom line? Augusta National took steps to stay current, and appears to have succeeded. Players today are better than in 1934, and so is the golf course. Jones, Roberts and Mackenzie no doubt would approve.
Or, no doubt Jones and MacKenzie are spinning in their graves.
Gary D'Amato looks at the possibility of steroids and other performance enhancing drugs in golf.
Strolling around Sherwood on a cloudy, cool (gosh it never hit 70!) day, I took in some of the Target World Challenge. This is the first time in six years I've seen tournament play at Sherwood after never missing the 11 Shark Shootouts played there.
The late 80s Nicklaus-designed greens, while generally reflective of the dreadfully overdone stuff he built in that era, feature some interesting backslopes, tiers and other banked features that allow the player to play away from the flag to funnel a shot down to corner hole locations.
While not exactly a stellar example of architecture (and certainly not conditioned like it used to be), Sherwood has always been a fun spectator course thanks to the greens. Players have traditionally used the supporting features to work balls down to the hole, allowing the crowd to root balls down a slope and to see players occasionally show flashes of creativity.
Several hole locations today provided fine opportunities for the creative shotmaker to throw a ball to a safe spot away from the hole, and then let it find it's way toward the cup. And every time a player had the opportunity to use these features, they passed.
The most painful example came when Padraig Harrington missed it right of the par-5 fifth green in two, and then he attempted to lob it next to the hole. He ran his third shot right past the hole and off the green. If he had played ten yards right of the hole, a backstop would have slowed his ball down and then sent it toward the hole, leaving him a 10-footer for birdie.
Afterwords, I asked a veteran writer if the players just weren't as creative as they used to be, or if it's a lack of local knowledge. He believes the players are just used to playing shots straight at holes and having them hold. They don't know any other way of playing anymore.
So there you go architects. Are you hoping to separate shotmakers from the rest? Then create wing and peninsula hole locations that require the placement of a shot landing in a certain spot away from the hole.
Brian Silva suggested that he'd love to see more of this concept on TPC for a Links story, and his observation is looking wiser by the day.
Not the last time he'll be asked this between now and April:
Q. They've changed Augusta again. Does that take care of you? Have you talked about that at all, had any reaction to the lengthening of the golf course?
TIGER WOODS: They're lengthening the golf course every other year it seems like. I can understand why they lengthen it. Also, then again, they want us to hit the same clubs that we used to hit to the holes. Then if that's the case, make the greens as slow as they used to be. The greens are running 12 and 13. They never ran 12 or 13 back in the '60s, '70s, '80s. It just wasn't that way. But hey, we've all got to play it, that's the thing.
Since 2002 when they made the big change, we have yet to see it dry for a tournament. We played the practice rounds this year with it lightning and then all of a sudden it dumped rain again. It'll be interesting to see if we can break par if it stays dry the entire week.
Q. Do you think that's what they want? Are they in the business of protecting par now?
TIGER WOODS: I don't think so, no. They're actually interested in making not just the greens a challenge at Augusta but overall play. Now you have to position your drive, drive it out there with some length, and they brought that back into the game.
Position? Ugh...I can just imagine Hootie reading that and congratulating himself for making guys drive into a 20-25-yard wide area, selected by he and Tom Fazio.
RIDGELAND, Miss., -- Only weeks after the USGA and R&A's decision to allow the use of rangefinders as a condition of competition, SkyGolf, makers of the SkyCaddie "next-generation" GPS rangefinder, has been chosen by the Golf Coaches Association of America (GCAA) as the organization's preferred GPS rangefinder. This means any of approximately 9,000 men's NCAA Division I, II or III, NAIA or junior college golfers could be some of the first to employ SkyCaddie for critical distances during competition once the new ruling takes effect in January 2006.
Hey coaches, how about helping us by selecting a preferred driver, ball, wedge, and political persuasion too?
"The Golf Coaches Association of America is comprised of some the most respected teachers in the game today," said SkyGolf CEO Richard Edmonson. "These individuals do a tremendous job preparing talented young athletes for competition at the collegiate level, as well as life after college. We're delighted to have the opportunity to help support this organization and its members, and believe our product can play a key role in helping them best position their athletes to succeed."It's all about positioning. I wonder what they get for this positioning?
Edmonson said SkyCaddie's technology provides instant access to the vital course information golfers need to play their best golf. Now golfers have at their fingertips information that was previously unavailable, without slowing down the game by pacing and calculating, allowing them to spend more time focusing on their next shot. According to RankMark, an independent golf equipment testing company, SkyCaddie improved scores of test participants on average by 5 strokes per round and saved them up to 25 minutes per 9-holes.Wow, no kidding?
"The GCAA is excited about the impact range-finding devices will have on college golf and potentially the pace of play," said GCAA Executive Director Gregg Grost. "We believe SkyGolf's innovative SkyCaddie GPS range-finding system will be beneficial to college players and coaches at all levels."
It's a wonder that the game survived the pre-GPS era.
Nascar's new TV deal: $4.5 billion for 8 years.
"The bottom line is, Nascar is a national sport with very large ratings," George Bodenheimer, ESPN and ABC Sports president, said yesterday in a conference call with reporters. "Secondly, obviously the sport is extremely fan-friendly and sponsor-friendly. We're very bullish on the sales prospects of this property."
And...
"We at Fox believed in it, the folks at Nascar preached it and it was just a matter of Madison Avenue catching up, and it was really in black and white," said Ed Goren, the president of Fox Sports. "All they had to do was see the ratings that Nascar was generating on Fox."
No mention of demographics. Just ratings.
Alan Shipnuck poses 10 questions and answers for 2006. All are spot-on (well, I'm not sure how many of us are wondering if Jay Haas is tough enough to rule the Champions Tour). This is his final question:
10. Will there be a throttled-back ball for pro competition? A definite maybe. Woods has been talking as if such a ball is inevitable, and he always seems to be the first to know.
If you want to see where Tiger talks if such a ball is inevitable, here's the link to the interview.
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
