“I don’t know if it should be a one-shot penalty for a guy who lands his tee shot in the fairway and two-bounces into the rough."
/Cam Cole wonders if the excessive setup at the Canadian Open--rough for rough's sake--will hurt the already fragile tournament's chances of drawing name players in the future even though sponsor RBC is already essentially paying appearance fees to several.
He talks to Paul Goydos, who does not think the course needs so much rough and tries to explain why taking away the recovery shot makes the golf less interesting to watch, and perhaps even easier for elite players.
Goydos’s tee shot at the ninth Friday, his final hole, was four inches into the primary rough, and he had to gouge it out across the fairway, and made bogey.
“My argument there would be if you give me a decent lie, I might try to hook it around a tree and I might make six, I might make seven, or I might make three,” he said. “The way they have it now, I’m going to make four or five. Everyone’s doing the same thing. There’s no particular skill in chipping it sideways.”
But perhaps, after all, there is. The golf course, at 36 holes, is starting to identify the best players in the field.