Tougher Courses, Better Balls And Lower Scores, Is It The Same Game?
The Age
Tuesday February 25, 2003
This is a tale of woe. During the late 1990s, the best golfing brains at the Lake Karrinyup Country Club, and I, conspired to lift this great course into the modern era and restore it to its rightful place as Western Australia's top championship course.
Eight of the greens were refashioned. Eleven new back tees added. All the bunkers were attended to while keeping to the same bold cavernous style that was the Mackenzie/Russell bequest.
No stone was left unturned to give the course some defence against the modern game. A week ago, Ernie Els played the back nine in 29 - twice - and finished his tournament at 29 under par. Craig Spence turned in a 63 to tie the course record set only a year earlier, and numerous others threw in 64s and 65s. We therefore wonder if the expensive effort was worth the agony.
How is it that a course of 6500 metres with all the golfing accoutrements of armament, weaponry and camouflage can be played with such ease and comfort that a par of 72 can be almost an irrelevance? How is it a journeyman such as Craig Spence, although one of obvious talent but recent poor scores, can reel off eight birdies in a row like shelling peas? Are we headed for scores in the 50s? Or will we have to distort the dimensions of the game as we know it to restore interest?
It is obvious the game at the highest level has changed over the last generation. More young people have set out to make a living at playing golf for the rewards in prizes and endorsements attached. More competition leads to better efficiency. The leading players put in more time in practising their skills, which in turn produces fewer mistakes in the field. Yet all of that allowed, it still doesn't explain the explosion of absurdly low scores. Lengthening Lake Karrinyup, building new greens with more intrigue, and adding bunkers in more strategic places had negligible effect under the onslaught of the modern ball.
Els, for one, consistently drives from the tee more than 300 metres. When it is more prudent, he gives away length in the interests of safety by driving with his irons, when he gains 230 metres or more! Today's golf balls fly astonishing distances. Are we watching an entirely new game?
Donald Steel, Britain's leading golf course architect, last year quoted an American observer of the last 18 US Masters events, one Robert Macdonald, who said: ``I hated to see the old game go, but maybe I'll get used to the new game and the amazing scores I shoot for an old hacker. The only drawback I can see for Tiger (Woods) is the asterisk in the record book, every line of which he will thoroughly rewrite, which reads `No longer golf'." Macdonald may have a point. But there is no turning back.
If balls and sticks are not to blame entirely, consider the recent perfection in turf grass technology that has provided such helpful concessions to the modern professionals. No bad lies any more. No bad bounces to upset the applecart. Greens of uniform speed from week to week, and a preparation of the sand bunkers so that they no longer do their job as penalty areas. What next - artificial grass? Something, of course, must be done about the ball.
Els confided last week that he was using a new model ball that has increased his length by 20 metres! Can he be serious, or is he just promoting his sponsor's product?
If it is true, the game's administrators must hang their heads in shame. Doing nothing about the ball is not in the urgent interests of all of us concerned.
A golfing machine such as Els, given helpful turf for his irons, receptive greens for targets and an absence of a stiff wind, can make any course look ridiculously short and easy.
Lake Karrinyup will have the sympathy of great courses everywhere. Macdonald says it for many. Is it the same game we knew?
© 2003 The Age
