How to fix the game, by Mark O'Meara
At least Mark O'Meara honestly sums up what all of the arguing over lengthening and narrowing courses is really about: scores, and prevention of low ones.
"What they should do, if they want to fix the game, is look at the places with the highest scoring averages," said O'Meara, who dabbles in course design. "Make courses drier and faster, with more trees, make it more penal. Make players think a little more instead of just reaching for the driver and swinging as hard as they can."
Fix the game, look to the places with the highest scoring averages. What a great idea!
As for his comments about addressing flogging (add trees, rough, etc, etc, etc), haven't they already done that? (Except fast and firm, which is difficult when the Tour seems to be followed by rain every week.)
Thursday, October 20, 2005 at 08:44 AM
Reader Comments (9)
Geoff, does O'Meara qualify as a "Player Architect" per your description in Grounds for Golf? Not to fluff you too much, but it is in my opinion one of the best books I have read on the subject, and I have read them all.
O'Meara isn't able to compete against players like Tiger, hitting it 50 yards past him? They have access to the same technology... Tiger's just a better athlete. That's not "broken," to me. That's evolution - of the sport, of fitness... and it's aging, too.
I'm all for firm and fast too, but when the fairways are narrowed to 20 yards, it becomes silly. Wide corridors with firm conditions and architecture that requires placement off the tee to secure the best angles would be ideal!
Ned,
Thanks, appreciate the kind words. O'Meara co-designed the TPC at Valencia, so he counts!
Erik,
The sarcasm sailed right over your head. I'm not one who thinks low scores are a bad thing. It's the governing bodies who think so, because as you can imagine, it's a rather shallow way to judge whether equipment has changed the way the game is played.
Scoring has not seemed to matter to the R&A, nor has it seemed to matter too much to the PGA Tour, which actually seems to enjoy seeing a lot of birdies.
So it's really only sarcasm if it's grounded in reality, and "the governing bodies" (of which there are really only two) aren't always set up to favor high scores. The R&A being 50% of those governing bodies, for example...
The winning score really doesn't see much of a decline, and the PGA Tour doesn't care about that, from what I've seen and read. They do, however, want the cream to rise to the top more often than not, regardless of what the overall winning score is.
The straw man is that they care about the score and that they make changes to the course to protect the score. That's an assumption I'm not able to make, and one I counter quite strongly having worked with and talked to PGA Tour reps and the folks that help set up their courses.
I really don't understand what you are saying at this point. You won't make assumptions but you can counter quite strongly that setups have changed to identify the best players, not to suppress scores in the face of dramatic changes in the game?
I think your manufacturer sponsorship ties are clouding your vision here.
Ned, I've played in a number of shotguns on the Monday after the Western, and I agree that the course is brutally hard, but that's because we struggle to keep the ball out of the rough. . . which hasn't been cut for 10 days to two weeks. Two weekends before, when the fairways are fast and the rough is "normal," scores -- at least for the three tee times we used to have -- were always much, much lower.
Geoff, twenty yard wide fairways may be a bit much, but only if the terrain and topography permit can the fairways be wider, so long as modern balls and clubs permit the players operating at the highest level to hit it so far. Thus, at a place such as Medinah, where you have mature trees defining holes, and new sprinklers which will allow rough to grow in those trees, hard and fast fairways which are hard to hit will penalize the inaccurate.
Cog Hill on the other hand, will (if Rees Jones apparently has any say about it) require a huge renovation process -- apparently, for example moving the 3rd green to make that hole a dogleg (really bringing the creek/pond on the right into play), and the 4th tee to the left, making that hole a dogleg as well.
Having played Dubs forever, and having been out to watch where the pros hit it on a course I'm so very familiar with, I have to say that it's almost a joke as to how far the ball goes, and how little club the pros now hit into what continues to be (for a bunter like me) a long, demanding golf course. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Maybe not. All I know is that shooting 16 or 20 under for four days at Cog Hill is some pretty amazing golf, and I for one wouldn't mind if these guys had to hit a 5 iron into a par 4, and a wedge third into a par 5 on occasion.