R&A Chief Architect Dawson: Anchoring Ban Distracted Us From Announcing Most Extensive Old Course Changes In A Century

Adam Lawrence previews a more extensive story he has coming in Golf Architecture following a tour of the controversial renovations with R&A architect Peter Dawson. Apparently, Martin Hawtree is using this time to renovate the Old Course...to be somewhere else. His hands-on attention to detail is quite impressive is it not?

Anyway, seat belts on. It's cringeworthy time...

But, though he acknowledges the communication of the works could have been handled better – “We were perhaps a little distracted by the announcement of the ban on anchoring”

Whoa, whoa, whoa...this renovation was in the works for seven months! It involves the most historic course on the planet and the R&A Chief was distracted by the anchoring ban?

On a serious note, if you are too distracted to publicly share the master plan, the Photoshopped images simulating the proposed changes and from sharing a basic notice to the golfers in town of planned changes as you did in 2009 with the Jubilee Course, are you maybe a little too distracted to be implementing architectural changes to the oldest and most cherished venue in the world of sport?

Anyway, before I interrupted...

Dawson is firm in his belief that the works will improve the course, both for day to day play and in championship mode, and that, far from being untouched for hundreds of years, the course has repeatedly been changed, though he agrees that the current works are the biggest in a century.

A century! Well at least he knows his place in history.

Again, the biggest changes in a hundred years earned a Friday news dump press release followed by work on a Monday morning.

And, although he is happy to confirm that the impetus from the works came from the R&A's Championship Committee, he is at pains to explain that toughening the course for the professionals is not the sole goal of the works. Of the filling up of the hollow in the middle of the seventh fairway, he said: “That is something the Links Trust has been keen to do for many years. It collected so many balls, and was thus so full of divots that it had to be roped off and played as ground under repair for a large part of the year, which was a bit of an embarrassment.”

Now, in the old days, so the legend goes, when divots or rabbits burrowed, they often evolved into bunkers? Robert Hunter wrote lovingly about this in The Links (note to Peter and Martin: it's a book on golf architecture, you might enjoy it.)

So wouldn't a more historically accurate change have been to put a bunker in this 7th fairway hollow? Just saying...

Dawson talks at length--because Hawtree was apparently busy with a more pressing project--about the second hole changes, but that'll have to be in a separate post. (I know you can't wait.)

This is just mind-boggling:

On the fourth hole, the low dune formation that creates the left edge of the fairway in the drive zone is planned to be reduced next winter. “Personally I am not sure about that change, and I'm glad it isn't in the first phase, so we have more chance to think about it,” said Dawson.

The architect doesn't even like his own changes.

“The impetus has come from the greenkeepers – it was covered in rough during the 2005 Open, and the result was that almost nobody tried to hit their drive up the right. To create more width, we shaved the bank down in 2010, but it is very steep, and the greens staff have difficulty mowing it at that height.”

I'm just going to ignore the depressing notion that the greenkeepers are making suggestions related to strategy, and try to figure out which mound, excuse me, "acute spur formation," is under attack here. Dawson seems to first be talking about the large leftside grassy mound (pictured below), but how its height would discourage someone from driving down the gorse-lined right side is beyond me. I'm going with the gorse being the problem in that case.

Your honor, I submit to you a photo from 2010:

4th hole center fairway view (click to enlarge)Then he's talking about the bump short of the green, which I take to be the acute spur formation that the maintenance crew can't mow. Your honor, I submit...

Pretty amazing after 400 years, and "before mowers were properly invented," that this bump was able to be cut. Maybe those modern mowers aren't that proper after all?

I thought this was a stretch regarding the 11th green:

“That pin is only used in winter at the moment,” said Dawson. “It's not just a question of being unusable at Open speeds – it can't be used even when the greens are at normal summer pace. The green would have to be slowed to six or seven on the Stimpmeter to make that pin usable.”

So the greens slow down four to five feet on the Stimpmeter during winter?

And it seems they are accentuating a feature on the Road hole, because that 4.6 scoring average last time wasn't enough.

Lawrence writes:

The widening to the right is frankly relatively uncontroversial – it will now gather shots from slightly further out. To my eye more surprising is the addition of a slight gathering contour on the left side of the bunker, presumably to make the shot to the back left of the green – a route popularised in the 1990s by Nick Faldo – more challenging. This looks fine from the fairway, but from the eighteenth tee, a slight mound can be seen, which appears a little out of place.

Eh no one will notice. It's just the Road hole!

Meanwhile, Graylyn Loomis posted some high quality images of the work in progress.

What's Guan Going To Do At Augusta?

Sean Martin brings up the question that has to be of some alarm to the Lords of Augusta: based on his play in professional events, what is 14-year old Tianlang Guan going to do when he has to play Augusta National in Masters conditions?

No one wants to see the young lad suffer undue humiliation but his play on some not particularly grueling golf courses has to be a concern heading into his April appearance. His latest was an opening 82 at the Emirates Australian Open.

Update on 2012-12-07 06:53 by Geoff

**Guan fights back with a nice -2 70 during a calm Friday morning in Sydney!

IOC Expresses Concern Over Rio 2016's Lack Of Progress, Golf Course Included

An unbylined ESPN report notes the Olympic golf course and its land dispute as part of the IOC's "time is ticking" (translation: get your act together!) statement.

"Our message remains: There is time, but time is ticking, and they need to carry on attacking this one with all vigour," IOC spokesman Mark Adams said.

AJGAers Get To Use Their Precious Distance Measuring Devices

This Golfweek.com report'll put to rest any questions about whether or not this is a tour for children of means...

“We are excited to introduce the use of rangefinders in all of our events in 2013,” said Mark Oskarson, AJGA Chief Operating Officer. “With all the information we gathered over the course of the year, we feel this is the right direction for our organization.”

The studies gathered information from parents, juniors and staff about types of rangefinders that are most popular among juniors players and how allowing their use might affect pace of play. In 2012, the average 18-hole pace of play for all AJGA events was 4 hours and 23 minutes. AJGA studies showed there was not a major impact, positive or negative, on pace of play where rangefinders were used.

That's a load off!

Man On The (St. Andrews) Street: It Had To Be Done!

Alan Bastable talks to the man on the street in St. Andrews (by phone) and two themes emerge:

(A) few people knew changes to the most revered public course on the planet were about to be made and...

(B) too many people of St. Andrews live in a bubble free of actual information or apparent awareness of what they have.

First, the lack of transparency issue, talking to local golf shop manager Andrew Donaldson:

"A lot of people like me didn't really hear about it until the last minute," he said. "You see, the golf courses here are all public, so they're owned by the public, basically. They're counsel courses, so there should be a public consultation before anything major happens — that's how most people would feel. And there really hasn't been. It seems they just bypassed the public, who have the right to walk on the course, whether they play golf or not."

An innkeeper in town who has been playing the Old Course for 30 years, but who asked to remain anonymous for fear of upsetting his friends and associates, corroborated Donaldson's account. "There was no public consultation at all," he said. "They just did it. But that's life and you get on with it." (Peter Dawson, the R&A chief executive, told the BBC this week that the alterations were, in fact, roundly embraced by the townspeople.)

By the way, the R&A still has not released the Photoshopped images that were put out on the Old Course grounds showing the proposed changes.

This next part is where you start to worry about what the townspeople genuinely understand the sacred ground they've inherited.

Same anonymous shopkeeper:

"If you want to talk about tradition, there was not one single piece of gorse on the Old Course going back 30 years, yet there's gorse there now," he said. "And now they're complaining about the gorse going away."

Anyone see complaints about gorse going away? Actually most of those upset about the changes would hail that move! But it'll never happen for the same reason we are in the mess we're in: some people don't like low scores and will go to amazing lengths to prevent them.

And there was this from Emily Griffiths, captain of the ladies golf team at the University of St. Andrews:

"Typically the R&A are criticized for being stuck in their ways," says Griffiths, who is also president of the St. Andrews Athletic Union, "and now they're doing something which is moving with the times and they're getting complaints the other way."

Uh, that's because (A) the only people who see the times as having passed the Old Course are those charged with protecting the game and (B) not to be repetitive, but no one was crying out for this upgrade. No one! Nada! Zilch! Which brings us to Niall Scott, a St. Andrews University employee:

"A lot of the golfing press was full of articles about the fact that the Old Lady had become too easy," Scott said. "They were honestly asking the question, Was it appropriate to play the Open at the Old Course anymore? The Links Trust, I think, responded very thoughtfully to that."

If anyone has a link to the golfing press calling the Old Course outdated and inappropriate for The Open, I'd love to read the stories!