Thread: The 80% solution

Thanks to Scott for sending me this link

Links Golf Magazine | The Best Source On Golf Courses, Travel and Lifestyle: Teeing Off: Little Pine Valley

It's a lengthy article but well worth a read.
(Summary - Technology's making a mockory of classic golf courses and developers can't afford or find enough land to keep building longer golf courses. Recommendation - put limits on golf balls!)

A couple of excerpts:

"Last month, Ping CEO John Solheim made headlines when he approached golf's distance issue with a “three-ball solution,” suggesting that governing bodies adopt a set of new “Ball Distance Ratings” for not only the spheres we use right now, but also hypothetical new models that travel both thirty yards longer and shorter than those currently on the market. "

"John Solheim writes that “it is far simpler to adjust the ball to the course, than to adjust the course to the ball,” he's not wrong. He's thinking of classic courses bending over backward to find yardage and in some cases butchering their designs to defend against the modern game."

Interesting link, but I don't see how modern equipment + shorter courses makes for an uninteresting game. I'm sure it does in the sub-10 HCP range but that's not where most people are.

As a counter example to this article's argument, look at our results from the Red White & Blue tournament last year. I think most of us would argue that our scores were not helped (and may have been hurt) by playing holes off the red. So why not make shorter courses anyway? I would argue most players lose far more strokes around the green rather than tee to green, so course design could easily make for compelling, shorter courses by making more challenging green complexes.

Wasn't the recent USGA recommendation that most players play on more forward tees anyway?