Duncan : Who are designers appeasing?

Travelgolf.com's Derek Duncan asks “Who are designers appeasing when they lengthen golf courses?”

He writes, “The mistake in all of this is that both architects and owners assume a foregone yet faulty conclusion, and that’s that longer golf courses are somehow necessary. They aren’t.”

He goes on to explain the essence of the distance problem. As these things tend to do, all paths lead back to Far Hills. If Duncan plans on covering a future U.S. Open, he can count on an especially chilly greeting from the USGA’s cranky media man, Craig Smith.

“When enough audiences turn off the television because they’re tired of watching the pros play pitch-and-putt on our heralded courses, when millions refuse to tune in to view another middle-of-the-road pro win a major because the equipment masks his relatively marginal skills, and when sponsors and advertisers then begin to get itchy and pull their support, then maybe the USGA will rethink its policy.