Add Brandel To The Pro-Bifurcation List

Golf Channel's Brandel Chamblee, subject earlier this week of a New York Times story with some strong endorsements from his boss suggesting he could be in line to move up the NBC/Golf Channel ladder, penned a "Commissioner-for-a-day" piece for GolfChannel.com.  And he pegged bifurcation as the number one issue he'd address.

Two things have hurt the game and will continue to do so. Technology and slow play are related in that as technology has given all Tour players the ability to hit tee shots into tomorrow, courses have been stretched out and the game has become a dragged-out affair. Five- and 6-hour rounds can’t attract a new audience in a generation filled with short attention spans. One solution would lead to growth in the game, I am convinced, and simultaneously make it more interesting for Tour players and those consigned to dark corners and bad coffee whose job it is to describe the action.

The word people use to describe what I am going to suggest is bifurcation, which sounds to me like a word used to make palatable that which tends to smell. Perhaps, that’s appropriate, because when bringing up the idea of two sets of rules, most look like they have smelled something offensive. Ironically the very ones who are offended the most are the ones who talk about growing the game most fervently.

It is funny how that works!

Football, basketball and baseball all have different rules that separate professional and amateur competitions, and while arguments as to why may be circular, the sports have not suffered from this separation. Golf would benefit in many ways from a similar partition between the professional and amateur ranks. The long putter, which offers a great respite from putting woes and bad backs to many amateurs, has no place in professional sports. Its use, understandable in club golf, is corruptive at the professional level as it allows one to predetermine the path of the putter.

This is about where the Ponte Vedra eyes are glazing over, but go on Brandel, I'm enjoying it.

Drivers and golf balls could be scaled back on the Tour, which would allow holes to return to nostalgic lengths and records to be viewed more accurately. Amateurs could have access to bigger heads, thinner faces, longer shafts and hotter golf balls, which would allow them to at least feel some closing of the ever-widening gap between professionals and recreational golfers.