Whitten On Major Venues

Noticed this in the table of contents for July's Golf Digest:

Back to Royal O.B.
Royal Liverpool is no place for a major in the 21st century.
By Ron Whitten

It is interesting to see the continuation of Whitten's shift from defender of major venue changes to questioning the relevance of older venues in the modern game and attempts to set them up in the face of massive change over the last ten years.

You may recall his preview of Augusta's changes was less than flattering after having been an initial defender in 2001-02, while his Winged Foot preview appeared skeptical of the USGA's tiered rough and was marked by an underlying tone that rain may could easily render the course defenseless.

It's nice to see someone at Golf Digest putting their name on strong commentary. And it's great to see someone provoking reader thought on the technology issue, its impact on classic courses and setup, and the ramifications for the game in general. 

From Thursday's Memorial Telecast...More Furrowing Talk

KARL RAVECH: Baseball is a statistic driven sport and you get bunkers like this and the numbers are going to go down. Are the players concerned about those things?

JACK NICKLAUS: I never was, but maybe some of these guys are, I have no idea. But I don't see why they would be. A good bunker player is going to have a good sand save record. But I think the guy who can putt those four, five, six footers is the guy who is good at sand saves. It's not necessarily about how good of a bunker player you are.

IAN BAKER FINCH: The best bunker players on Tour are around 60 %, up and downs, and the average is just under 50%, so a little less than half is the up and down percentage.

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, if the Tour continues to do what we're doing here, which I think they will, they say they are going to, ah, then obviously the sand save percentage will go down.

PETER OOSTERHUIS: The average today is just over 34% from sand.

IAN BAKER FINCH: That's just today.

PETER OOSTERHUIS: Yes, 34.2%.

JACK NICKLAUS: I'll tell you what else will happen too, is that your driving accuracy will improve greatly on the Tour with bunkers like this in the fairway.

IAN BAKER FINCH: Because they'll have to take a club to avoid the bunkers and think a bit more about it.

JACK NICKLAUS: Yes, they're going to have to put the ball in play and I think it's going to bring the game back to level of...just a very simple thing, just a rake, brings the game back to where it's a little more controllable for the course and the guys putting on a tournament.

KARL RAVECH: What else? I mean, could you make rough longer during non-major events, what else can you do?

JACK NICKLAUS: Well, you know, Karl what I've always felt is that the recovery shot is one of the most beautiful shots in the game of golf and the norm has been now to make the rough higher, the fairways narrower and to me that makes the game more boring. Because all you do is hit it in the rough and chop it out. And the guys with the golf equipment today drive the ball must straighter so they can have narrower fairways. But when they miss they don't mind missing in the bunkers. But now if we make the bunkers such that you don't want to put it in the bunker, then you're going to start thinking, do we take teh driver out of your hand or do we leave in your hand to do what we're going to do. So I think it's only a plus for the game of golf. Equipment has made game much easier game, particularly for the pros. And I think there are ways to combat that and we haven't combatted that up until this time. Hopefully this will be used effectively in the future.

And this was a little later on...

JACK NICKLAUS: I want to try and equalize the game from power. I think that the game has gotten...it was about 80% shotmaking and 20% power when I played, power has always been an advantage and always will be. But I don't like to see it be 80% power and about 20% shotmaking. I think it's gotten too much where power takes over and you'd like to be able to get it a little more in balance. It takes guys that don't hit the ball nine miles a better opportunity to play the golf tournament and to be on par the guy who's a Tiger Woods...

Furrowgate Breaks Out At The Memorial

They're moaning and groaning about the groovy bunkers at Muirfield Village.  From what I saw on television, the bunkers looked about the way bunkers used to look, oh, 15 years ago when they were dragged careless with a sand pro.

Granted, furrowing is contrived, and this nonsense about going in a certain direction is brutal, but gosh, it didn't exactly look like the Oakmont silliness. Yet...

Mark Lamport Stokes reports that both Nick Price and Ernie Els are not fans.

"I heard someone say earlier in the week that this is the way that they used to rake bunkers way back when and bunkers have always been hazards," the Zimbabwean said after carding a 69.

"I think the difference now is that the greens are running at 13 or 14 (in putting speed). Back in the bygone era, when they did it before, the greens were probably running at about six.

"It's different hitting out of a bunker to a green where you've got no chance to get any spin on the ball. So I disagree with it. I don't like it at all.

"I don't think there's one player out here that does. It's a bit of pot luck, to be honest.

"You can get in there and have a perfect lie when it lands on top of a groove, then you can have another one that goes in the trough, in the bottom of it, and you've got no chance." 

Uh, they used to call that Rub of the Green. I know, I know...in his defense, I would add that there also wasn't as much rough on steroids as there used to be. If you read The Future of Golf, you know I argued that if bunkers were to ever get nasty again (preferably through no more maintenance crew raking after Wednesday play), it would also require getting rid of some of the long grass to at least feel more equitable.

Anyway, Els...

"You're either lucky or unlucky," the South African world number six said after three bogeys in the last four holes gave him a first-round 74. "If you're unlucky, you have no shot, basically.

"I don't care how good of a bunker player you are, you have no shot. But I guess that's what they want."

Sean O'Hair had a different take...

"A trap is a trap, it's a hazard," said O'Hair. "You're not supposed to be there.

"The bunkers here are not hidden, you know where they are. So don't hit it there. If you don't hit it there, you don't have to worry about it."

In this AP story, Jeff Maggert, a well known expert on bunker raking who likely will find himself in the USGA's $#@!* pairing in two weeks, was quoted:

Jeff Maggert suggested that if Nicklaus wanted to make the course harder, he should have narrowed the fairways. As it was, Maggert said, "to try to kind of manufacture something is Mickey Mouse."

And Robert Allenby wasn't a fan either, though I'm not convinced by his argument either:

This is the best-groomed golf course, and I can't believe they would do the bunkers like this," Robert Allenby said after a 71. "It already was hard to get the ball tight. I don't think anyone likes it who is playing this tournament."

Nicklaus said that the new rakes and method of raking was a trial run for other stops on the PGA Tour.

"I don't believe that," said Brad Faxon, who had a 73. "I just don't think these bunkers were that easy to begin with, you know? I don't mind, because I'm a good bunker player. So it wouldn't bother me, but I don't think this place is broken, either."

And if you're a  Nick Price fan, this is just painful to read...

"It's kind of a waste, because he [Nicklaus] has such beautiful sand in the bunkers," Price said. "Why put beautiful sand in the bunkers if you're going to rake them with these rakes? You might as well put crappy sand in there."

Mickelson On Winged Foot, Furrowing

PHIL MICKELSON: Over at Winged Foot, it's tough. It's a very tough golf course. Obviously we know the USGA is going to make it difficult. The rough is thicker and deeper than I've seen it. But I really like the layered rough. In the past you were rewarded for missing a shot with a larger margin of error. If you could hit it into the people, you were much better off than missing the fairway by a yard. Now with the layered rough it's imperative that you keep it, if you do miss a fairway, just off the fairway, because that thick rough is so high that there were sometimes it would take two or three shots just to get it back to the fairway. We'll see a lot of doubles and triples out of that rough, especially given the fact that they're going to keep the people further away. That thick rough won't get trampled down.

Q. (Inaudible.)

PHIL MICKELSON: I can always reach the people. If you reach the people now you'll be in the trees and it will be much more difficult to get it back to the fairway, because you have to chip it over the chick rough and get it stopped in a narrow fairway under the trees.

Q. (Inaudible.)

PHIL MICKELSON: It wasn't like Carnoustie like it wrapped around and they hadn't cut it for 1 year. They've ^money it perfectly right across the top, probably six inches, just like they said. Very consistent. But the third cut is. But it was thicker than I've seen it. It looks like when the ball would go to the bottom, the grass would just grow over it. It was very difficult.

Q. (Inaudible.)

PHIL MICKELSON: Well, yeah, the guy who wins won't be hitting it there. He'll be hitting it in the short stuff or if he ^dismiss it in the shorter cut. However, that thick grass was all around the green, they didn't layer it around the green, the six inch rough around the green.

Q. Do you like it?

PHIL MICKELSON: Do I like it? I'm not in favor of it around the green as much, because it takes the short game out of play. But I think that if you miss it right or if you hit a number of greens you'll be okay.

Q. (Inaudible.)

PHIL MICKELSON: Yeah, oh, yeah.

Q. (Inaudible.)

PHIL MICKELSON: No, but I have a hard time seeing it being anymore difficult than Shinnecock in '04 on the weekend. And I think the USGA can make it as hard as they want. Winged Foot is such a good course that it won't require ridiculous things to keep par a good score. In looking at it now, I don't see how guys are going to shoot under par. Of course I say that every open, and every open guys are under par the first couple of rounds.

And on the furrowing...

Q. The sand traps, they're going to do something different for the first time here at this tournament, the raking. It's really going to be a penalty. What do you hear about that, what are your thoughts?

PHIL MICKELSON: It is a hazard and nothing says that the bunkers need to be immaculate. Bobby Jones, back in the 20s, I believe, played Oakmont when they were using those furrowed rakes, and he said that he didn't like it, because it took the skill out of the game. Now, it just depends how bad a lie. Is there a chance we can hit a shot out of it? Or is it going to be just ridiculous where you're lucky to get it on the green, and it takes the skill out of it? So it's a fine line between the two. But I don't mind making a bunker a hazard, because it is.

Well said. It's almost like...na! 

Howell on Furrowing...

David Howell talked about the bunkers at Muirfield Village and Winged Foot...

Q. To change gears one second, they're doing some different things with the bunkering out here. We always talk about how the Europeans, they play in all different conditions, do these bunkers differ for you, do they make a big difference, have you seen bunkers like this or worse?

DAVID HOWELL: No, I haven't seen the bunkers. We were talking about it last night with a gentleman that does the course design. It's going to be interesting to see how it works out. There's really different points of views. Ernie is one of the best bunker players in the world and feels his talent for getting in the bunkers is being questioned. If you don't have a great lie you can't play a great shot. So all of a sudden it's possibly favoring the guys that you've really seen them as hazards, and you have to stay away from them, and you have to alter your game plan. And it's going to be an advance to the guys that hit a lot of greens. If you get in bunkers, you're not going to get up and down all the time. It's going to take it back more to accuracy off the tee. If you want to see golf like that they're doing the right thing. And if you want to see them Tiger's form of golf or whoever, just goes out there or as Seve used to play, and see guys getting up and down to save par, you're not going to get so much of that. It's going to make people play slightly differently, I think. And I guess only after doing it a few different times or different tournaments will we see if it's the right way to go or the wrong way. It's certainly the easiest way to make the golf course harder is to change the rakes. It's the cheapest way.

Q. Have you been warned, if that's the right word, about the severity of the bunkers at Winged Foot, and how steep the faces are, has that been discussed amongst your peers?

DAVID HOWELL: I really haven't got a clue where Winged Foot is or what sort of course it is, I'll have to admit, so, no.

Achenbach Says Distance Changes Cause Costly, Unnecessary Course Changes To Layouts He Likes!

Look for a makeup column from Golfweek publisher Jim Nugent after yet another awakening column from Jim Achenbach:

Here is another good reason why the U.S. Golf Association eventually will cut back the distance of the golf ball: Eugene Country Club.

One of the best golf courses on the face of the earth, Eugene CC has followed an all-too-common path for bolstering its credibility and reputation.

Out of fear it was becoming too short and too easy, Eugene has constructed 10 new tees. Five already are open, and the other five will be playable by the end of the month.

The new tees will push the overall championship tee distance from 6,847 yards to about 7,050 yards. Among other changes, a new back tee will transform the fifth hole into a 235-yard monster of a par 3 –all carry, over a pond, with a green that slopes perilously back toward the water.

I love this golf course. While I am not opposed to additional yardage, I am sad that contemporary golf has forced courses such as Eugene to expand or perish. Courses that want big-time tournaments need big-time length.

This next part landed on my lap like a big Christmas gift, since I was searching for a July Golfdom column topic:

The club maintains a committee called The Top 100, which helps promote the course among the various publications that rank courses.

Lengthening the course is just as important for rankings as it is for tournament play, so the 10 new tees serve a dual purpose.

The issue of distance has affected Eugene and many other courses. Some members of the USGA's 15-person Executive Committee – the body that makes all final decisions for the rulesmaking organization – are known to be supporters of reducing the distance of the golf ball.

According to the Joint Statement of Principles, issued in 2002 by the USGA and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, Scotland, rules changes can be made at any time to confront the threat of increased distance or any other factor that might alter the historical foundation of the game.

No one should be surprised if the USGA and R&A ultimately decide to cut back the performance of the modern golf ball.

This would make it more important than ever for golfers to play the appropriate tees. While macho men would continue to head to the back tees, many golfers would realize that the joy of the game can be enhanced by playing the forward tees.

Golf does not have to be all about length.

Now This Is Furrowing...

From The Golden Age of Golf Design, Oakmont circa 1929.

 

Jack's Memorial Press Conference

I'll spare you of reading the transcript which was filled with several nice rally kills. Here's Jack Nicklaus on the new fairway mowing patter, the new bunker raking concept, and other things he's done to the course (there's more hole-by-hole talk if you go to the full transcript):

The other thing that we did one thing we did with the fairways, was that about for the last couple, three years, I keep looking on television and seeing the checkerboard on the thing and I said I just don't like it. It's pretty, but it doesn't look like a golf course, it looks like something else. You know what I'm talking about? The way we cut the fairways in the cross cutting.

I liked the look of Augusta, but I don't like cutting the fairway into you, because I think that's I don't like that, because I think it makes you hit flyers, because the grass is lying into you, and I think it's not a it slows down the golf course, that's why they did it was to slow down the golf course. I felt like the other way around, I like my golf course fast, and I felt like it's much nicer lie to play with the grass lying down towards the hole. It's a much better shot, the fairways will play faster, so the balls can run farther. I don't mind that the course kept playing shorter, because it makes the fairways shorter. We cut the fairways all in one direction.

The last thing we did is a couple of weeks before the tournament I called and I said, "Would you make a call to the Tour and ask them what they want to do with the bunkers?" We spend money every year, to try and deep even the bunkers, do different things and the bunker has ceased to become a penalty. And I said if we came back actually even if we raked them the way we did when we started the tournament, we'd have an uncertainty of what the lie was. We were probably the cause of bunkers being perfect today. They used to rake them with a pretty good sized rake and it was clumpy, and the ball really never set very well in the bunker. And we started working here, how do you make a bunker so it really is a nice lie so you really have a clean lie out of it, and so that everything is consistent. We developed that rake that is used, the round rake, and that was our development here. And we took that and that's what everybody uses today.

Now all the bunkers are so perfect, there's no penalty anymore. Bunkers are really supposed to be a penalty. I don't care about them being a penalty, penalty, right now guys look at a par 5, if I don't get it on the green, and put it in the bunker, I know I can get it up and down and we move on.

I asked the Tour, and they have been telling the guys all year, the honeymoon is over, the bunkers are going to be a penalty. I said, "When are you going to do that?" We haven't done it yet. I said, "We can start it right here if you want to." And they said, "Fine."

We developed a rake here that put us on I think I think it's center of the middle of the tines are like two and a half inches, when means two inches spread between the spread of the rake. And it gives you a little bit of a waffling in the bunker, and it can be you can get a good lie or you might not get a good lie. And particularly in the fairway bunkers, if you hit it in the fairway bunker, you've got an option before you hit it in the fairway bunker that's most of the bunkers that were changed, to have a penalty off the tee shot, if you hit it in the bunker they hit it so far, and it doesn't make any difference, unless the bunker is 25 feet deep. I'll never forget the one they did at 5 on Augusta, and hoot I said no one is going to knock it out of here. I said, "That won't make a difference." And so anyway, that was sort of the issue. And so rather than having to change the bunkers all the time, we'll continue to change our bunkers, now we've got to get them consistent to all the bunkers on the golf course, we continue to change a few every year, but now I want them so when you hit the ball they say, "I don't really want to be in that bunker." But if they get in it then they have a chance of having a penalty. That was sort of the idea.

The Tour liked it, the Tour supported it 100 percent, and that's what we're doing.

And, this is where it gets kind of silly when you really think about it...

Q. Jack, is there any strategy to raking the bunkers with these rakes? In other words, having the furrows run parallel toward the green or perpendicular?

JACK NICKLAUS: We had it going the other way, but the Tour said they wanted it the other way. I don't care how you do it, I could care less. I think the Tour probably said it's not quite as much a penalty if you go towards the hole. I don't care which way you go. All I'm trying to do is make the guy think he doesn't want to be in the bunker, and it's not the place to aim for. To the right of 18. They don't want to be in the water, guys have tried tried to drive over the bunker, some still can, but they didn't mind being in the first bunker to the right, because it was a fairly flat, low profile bunker and you could play the ball. I can't figure out a way to deep even that bunker, so let's just make the lie uncertain. That way the guy is not going to just want to be in that bunker.

And...

Q. Compared to Oakmont type bunker, how do they compare?

JACK NICKLAUS: When I played in '62, you took a sand wedge and hit it out, that's all you could do. That was much deeper than what we have now. That was a big that was probably that deep (indicating), probably a ball deep and it was sort of like that (indicating). This is two inch spread, actually from edge of the rake to the edge of the rake, and it puts a thing but not nearly as severe as that.

And...

Q. You talked about when you played at Oakmont you had to hit them out with sand wedges, would you like to see them back to that, or do you think that's too dramatic now?

JACK NICKLAUS: It would be okay. Why do you put a bunker on a golf course? I think there's two reasons three reasons, one, is esthetically it's very pretty, it gives you a framing issue. Two, it guides you around the golf course or three, it's penal. It could be one of those three. To this point in time they've been esthetically pleasing and they guide you around the golf course, but they haven't been penal. So I think that third element needs to come into it. I thought that for a long, long time.

The proverbial technology question...didn't even get out before Jack jumped in, followed by a nice rally killer...

Q. I was going to ask you what, as technology keeps on you have guys hitting

JACK NICKLAUS: I hope in technology, somebody wakes up, eventually, to technology.

Q. On the subject of psychology, has that changed the art of shot making, does that still exist, or do people just hit it as far as they can?

Unfairness of Furrowed Bunkers

(click to enlarge)A few of you emailed to ask about yesterday's Bobby Jones quote on furrowed bunkers.

Since some form of furrowing is taking place at Muirfield Village this week, I thought you might want to read the entire article, which appeared in The American Golfer and was later reprinted in a magazine style publication called Bobby Jones On Golf, which was reprinted again by Sid Matthew. It's a must if you don't have it and love Jones's writings (though I'm afraid it's out of print looking at Amazon).

Anyway, click on the window to read his take on Oakmont's furrowed bunker raking. You'll probably have to print it out, as I had to resize it to fit the screen.
 

Furrowed Bunkers at Muirfield Village!?

Bob Baptist in The Columbus Dispatch has the details:

Acting on an initiative to which the tour so far has only given lip service, the Memorial Tournament has switched to longer-toothed rakes to create small furrows in the bunkers on the course. The hoped-for result is less-consistent lies in the sand and tougher shots out of it when practice rounds begin Monday.

"Bunkers were meant to be a penalty," Jack Nicklaus said yesterday while playing the course, "and they haven’t been for quite a while."

Nicklaus, who designed and built Muirfield Village, said he has been thinking for a while about furrowing the bunkers as one more way to protect the course against never-ending technological advances that are propelling balls ever farther.

He said when he asked tour officials this past winter what they thought of the idea, he found that they were considering the same thing. They had not implemented it, however, until giving the Memorial the OK.

"The players wear us out (complaining) about the conditions of the bunkers, that they aren’t perfect," said tour official Frank Kavanaugh, who was on site yesterday setting up the course. "We’ve gotten to the point where they expect a perfect lie every time. We’ve got to change their attitude.

"There’s no more smooth ice. They’re on rough ice now."

Nicklaus said the bunkers will be reminiscent of how tour bunkers used to be and how they were the first few years of the Memorial, which started in 1976.

"The lies will be not as consistent," he said. "You’ll now have to look at your lie and play a bunker shot according to your lie.

"The guys that are good bunker players will like it more. The guys who aren’t as good won’t like it as much."

Now, I'm all for returning the hazard to bunkers.

But I'm curious why the Tour, as reported in this story, is looking for ways to make their setups more difficult? Shouldn't they be looking at the ratings and wondering how they can make their setups more entertaining? Do they even know the difference?

Either way, this ought to make Muirfield Village interesting...until it starts raining. 

The Harvest at (Gulp) The Foot

In the May 26 Golf World (not yet online), Tim Rosaforte writes about Donald Trump, who he says is a "golf guy with a business sense and now the credibility that comes with a USGA stamp of approval."

He also writes about going to "The Foot" on Monday to test out the rough they are harvesting at yes, Winged Foot. (Branding it The Foot is part of his effort to come up with the cheesiest, least original golf course knicknames possible.)

Anyway, good news from, uh, The Foot. The rough is growing and everyone is so, so happy! 

Rosaforte writes that he'd like to have the ball concession when superintendent Eric "Greypok" cuts the grass after the Open. Well, when Eric Greytok cuts it, we'll let Rosaforte go for that concession too.

Online at GolfDigest.com, he offers a lengthier, more painful version of his rough harvest observations.

Walter Driver, president of the U.S. Golf Association and the man in charge of the upcoming U.S. Open, stood on the 10th tee of the West Course at Winged Foot Golf Club on Tuesday, and instead of doing what Ben Hogan said\ -- aim to hit it through the bedroom window of the house behind the green of the 188-yard par 3 -- Driver, a legitimate 2-handicap, struck a rare poor shot, flaring the ball out to the right, where it disappeared in a nest of grass.

It was fitting that the first shot hit by the man who will take all the heat for the deep rough at this year's Open required a search party and almost all of the allotted five minutes before finding his pellet. From there, the players in his group were given a snapshot of the chain reaction that occurs in an Open when a ball doesn't come to rest in the short grass. This is not like your basic tour stop, where the big boys can play bomb and gouge. This is wet wire-brush, wrist-spraining, ball-gobbling, destroy-your-mind vegetation, and so the clubface of Driver's wedge closed down, and the ball squirted back onto the closely mowed grass. From there he chipped on and two-putted for a double-bogey five.

Oh, joy! All of this rough is going to make the U.S. Open all about us, the USGA!  They're going to talk about us, and notice, and admire us for putting these Tour boys in their rightful place, which most definitely had better not be 350 yards off the tee!

The early scouting report: Better bring your straight ball. The nitrates, as Walter pointed out, have been working on Winged Foot's lawn. Mix the fertilizer with a wet spring, and a tree-removal program that gives the grass plenty of air and sunlight, and 7,264-yard Winged Foot West is in shape for another massacre.

It's been 22 years, but there is not an Open course that looks more like an Open Course than The Foot, and you can't believe how good the West course looks, how beautiful the green complexes are now that the tree huggers have lost their battle, and how terrorizing it's going to be that third week in June, when the contestants can't take a newspaper double and move with a smile to the next tee.

"Hitting the fairway is recommended here," said Driver at the driveable par-4 sixth.

Ha, ha! Bang fist on table! Such wit!

Halfway through the round, Driver got on his Blackberry and sent a text message to Mike Davis, the USGA's new director of competitions. He had driven into a clump of broccoli on the first hole and couldn't get a club on his ball. After moving it two feet, he expressed to Davis that the second cut was a little too lenient and the third cut a bit too penal. That will be tweaked in time for the opening round on June 15. After Shinnecock in 2004, the president doesn't want this one getting out of hand.

Shinnecock? Something went wrong there?

Annika at Sybase

Did anyone see what happened to Annika at the Sybase and Wykagyl's 9th hole? I didn't see it, but wondered if it was just bad course management or a screwy course setup?

Her post rounds comments are here.

Thoughts? 

Huggan On State of Euro Tour, Monty

John Huggan wonders if recent European Tour happenings are hurting the Tour. Starting with the weird Irish Open antics this week.

Then there was Thursday's opening round of the Irish Open at the Colin Montgomerie-designed Carton House. Serious questions need to be asked at European Tour headquarters about a venue whose topography is so flawed that a bit of wind is enough to provoke suspension of play. On a proper course - one where the 'architect' pays appropriate attention to the prevailing meteorological conditions in an area that he visits more than a handful of times - these sorts of things don't happen.

Or, at least, they don't on courses where the greens are built to receive good shots rather than to repel them. Witness the third round of the Open Championship at Muirfield in 2002. In squally weather that was a million times worse than we saw three days ago, the world's best course was certainly difficult, but remained playable - although it was sometimes hard to ascertain that fact, so loud was the squealing from various competitors. Equally, it is hard to imagine golfers being asked to leave the premises at one of Ireland's premier links, say Portmarnock, when the breeze rises to no more than a little gusty.

And he quotes a player, who isn't too keen on the quality of events or fields:

None of the above nonsense is, of course, helping the European Tour at a time when pressure from its main competitor, America's PGA Tour, has never been so intense. Nor will it change the view of at least one well-respected Ryder Cup player that the quality of the product is slipping.

"One of the great myths on the European Tour is that the standard of play is rising every year," he says. "You hear guys saying stuff like: 'Yes, I have to keep improving just to stand still.'

"What a load of rubbish. The real truth is that, apart from the few really top-class events we have each year, tournaments like the BMW Championship at Wentworth, the general quality of the fields week-to-week is falling. Which makes sense if you are paying attention. Look at the number of top guys who have disappeared off to the PGA Tour over the last five years or so. Not just Europeans, but Australians too.

"The harsh truth is that, if you are any good at all, the European Tour represents increasingly easy pickings."

Huggan also looks at Monty's consideration of the two-driver strategy:

Speaking of Monty, the eight-time European No.1 - good job Tiger's winnings are ruled ineligible by his failure to compete in 11 counting events! - is apparently considering following Phil Mickelson's lead and carrying two drivers, one for fading, the other for drawing.

While this nonsense is a logical extension of the distances that the leading players now hit the apparently turbo-charged ball with their turbo-charged clubs - who needs a 3- or 4-iron after a 330-yard drive? - it is also more than a little depressing. Rather than a game of skill and technique, golf is turning into a mere test of power. Purchasing power, that is.

Let me see, shall I buy a hook or a slice today? Shot-makers of the past, men like Ben Hogan who viewed golf as an art rather than a science, must be spinning wildly in their final resting places.

Hale The Tiered Rough

Hal Hale Irwin, that beacon of wisdom and joviality tells Dan O'Neill that he's all for the USGA's new tiered rough, especially if it means they could narrow fairways even more. 

“Well, I’ve suggested to them that I think it would be great if they narrowed the fairway even more and made the first cut relatively tame and then graduated from there,” Irwin said. “(It would) really put a premium on putting the ball in the fairway. Obviously there's a point up to the ropes where you can do that. Once you get outside the ropes, then it becomes very quickly trampled down.

“That could be what they're doing, trying to say, OK, the farther offline you are, the greater the penalty. There's a point to where that stops -- just happens to be right where the rope line is. Once you get down to where the grass is downtrodden, if you have no trees in your way, it becomes relatively a straightforward shot again.

“They say they're going to extend the ropes out farther than customary to accommodate it. I think that's good. That might try to harness some of these big long bombers that are going to pump it out there regardless of where it goes.”

This would all be so much easier if we just eliminated the short grass. It would cure the groove problem, the flogging problem and the distance problem.

Bomb and Gouge!?!?!

Peter Morrice has the first Golf Digest feature/instruction story on flogging, only he employs Chuck Cook's "Bomb and Gouge" label instead of Johnny Millers' "just flog it out there" line. 

I guess flog does have that negative semordnilap thing going against it, after all, it is...golf backwards. And why ever contemplate the negative when you can milk it for an instruction piece AND run photos of pros from the 18-34 demo! 

Today's tour bombers are not only crushing drives, they're establishing a new style of play: Bomb & Gouge. The thinking goes, bomb driver as far as you can and, if need be, gouge the ball out of the rough and onto the green. Golf's long-held ideal--fairways and greens--is giving way to this aggressive new style. Even from the rough, these power hitters say they can take advantage of shorter approach shots and create more birdie opportunities.

"I like hitting driver as much as possible because it gets me closer to the hole," says J.B. Holmes, another super-long rookie and winner of the FBR Open in February in just his fourth start on tour. "Hitting driver gives me the advantage of being 50 yards past other guys. If I hit 3-wood, I'm back where everybody else is."

Here's where it gets fun:

"The biggest factor in distance is that players are just now learning how to launch the ball at optimum conditions," says Tom Stites, chief of product creation at Nike Golf. "It's the technology of the equipment, yes, but it's also the technology of the selection process."

Another major factor is the modern ball. Tour players today hit multilayer, urethane-cover balls that spin less off the tee than wound balls of a decade ago. With the right impact conditions, players launch the ball high but with a lower spin rate, which lengthens but also straightens the flight (reducing spin reduces sidespin as well).

"With the [Titleist] Pro V1, the longest hitters went to bed one day and woke up the next 20 yards longer," says Jim McLean. Ball manufacturers continue to isolate the best flight characteristics, and ball-fitting has become a standard part of the equipment-fitting process. "Matching the ball to the driver being used has been a bigger variable than the equipment itself," says Dave Phillips, co-founder of the Titleist Performance Institute.

Of course, these people are all delusional if you believe the USGA.

Speaking of them, to your right is a Golf Digest chart that the Far Hills group would look at and say, "it's the grooves." (Instead of understanding that greens in regulation will go up when you are hitting more lofted clubs into the holes!):

Then there's this from Morrice and Jack Nicklaus:

As hot as the power game is, it's hardly new. Top players have often had a distance advantage, but they've usually used it cautiously. Jack Nicklaus was the bomber of his generation, but he played a decidedly conservative game. Nicklaus was famous for plodding his way around with 3-woods and 1-irons off the tee until he needed a big drive. Then he'd hammer one 50 yards by his playing partners. "I played a power game," Nicklaus says, "but I always believed the game of golf was a game of power when you need it, but placement and positioning was the more important part of that game. Today, the game to me is power. I don't think the other part is even there."

And this from Hank Haney:

"A few wild shots have always been an acceptable price for Tiger to pay in exchange for dominant length," says Woods' coach, Hank Haney. "The top players play the power game--and prove over and over that distance is king, especially when you have the ability to hit great recovery shots."

This is where things get weird:

Many golf insiders argue that course setups play right into the power player's hands. "Until the tour and other events narrow the fairways to 25 yards and grow the rough to four or five inches, they'll continue to bomb it," says Butch Harmon. "Golf used to be driving and putting, and it still is, only getting the ball in play doesn't matter anymore."

I guess Butch hasn't been watching, but uh, the more they narrow the fairways and grow the rough, the more it encourages flogging!

Don't you just love watching golf turn inward on itself, all to protect the...ah I won't go there.

One idea for putting a premium back on driving accuracy would be to "lower the floors of fairway bunkers so that they're real hazards," says White. "We can't just grow up the rough to six inches. The members at [our tournament sites] would not be able to play their own golf course."

Hey, those will drain well!

Really, how long before we start putting alligators and snakes in the roughs all to protect the...I said I wouldn't go there, and I won't.

Television analyst David Feherty, a former Ryder Cup player, agrees that shotmaking has changed but thinks it's for the better. "I stand up on the tee [at tour events] and look out at a fairway 350 yards out. I put my thumb on one edge of the fairway and my finger on the other--it's like 2 1/2 inches, and these guys are ripping it down the middle," says Feherty. "If that's not shotmaking, I don't know what is."

Now, wasn't he the guy who just last week advocated changing the ball to restore shotmaking?