Desert

[footwedge]

During the balata and persimmon era, guys like Nicklaus, Norman, Palmer and Snead had a tremendous length advantage over their peers. They still hit it in the fairway, though, because the equipment and courses didn't reward a Bomb and Gouge strategy.

They missed their fair share of fairways and when they did they had a distinct advantage because they were hitting shorter irons to the greens than the shorter hitters. The advantage for the long hitters is when they miss the fairway then and now ,so i still say it's all relative, regardless what equipment they use, anyone and everyone has the ability to take advantage of the equipment shorter hitters can use the same equipment as the longer hitters but their still going to be shorter hitters.

I say the courses they play and how they set them up nowadays is the difference, it's to the advantage of the long hitters.

When they started to "Tiger proof" the courses it actually worked in favor of the long hitters not against them, because the equipment factor was not really the difference like i said but if you make the courses longer it hurts the shorter player a lot more than the longer player, funny how that turned out.

 

[mgranato]

This is a fun debate. My two cents? I think mgranato is making a straw man argument when he claims that Dariusz is advocating fields of 64 Corey Pavins. Imagine if, 25 years ago, the USGA and R&A forced golfers to stick with persimmon woods and balata balls. Tiger Woods still would have happened. HDTV still would have happened. And a huge flood of baby boomers still would have begun to retire and take up golf. In this alternative scenario, professional golf still would have been enormously lucrative. So there's definitely a strong case to be made that the USGA and R&A should have done exactly that.

I definitely lean more in favor of Dariusz and John Erickson than mgranato on this one.

Love serving 15.

Good catch on the straw man, very astute. Using a straw man to illustrate a straw man... absurdity to illustrate absurdity... sometimes it's necessary.

The original straw man was "freaks vs true artists". As if the two are mutually exclusive. How is it that only a true artist is someone who plays from the center cut, while yipping on the greens? Yet someone who doesn't play from the fairway, but can get up/down from the ball washer is a lesser skilled golfer. I'm guessing DJ would say Hogan was the true artist. However, I'll also say that Seve was every bit the artist that Hogan was. A blacksmith can wield a big hammer, beat the hell outa the metal, and still produce beautiful art. A mechanically deft player can have deft feel. And it's not "good touch for a big man", it's just good touch, etc, etc.

Does it take more artistry to hit a large swatch of closely mown grass with the ball sitting perfectly on a tee, or does it take more artistry to hit a small quadrant of the green from a terrible lie? And which makes for more entertaining TV? If I want to see a clinic on hitting fairways, I'll go buy a ticket to a LPGA event.

Out of the top 1,000 artistic shots in golf history, how many of them are tee shots that landed in a fairway?

 

[Lifter]

mgranato, I'm not sure you quite have your finger on the pulse of the average TV viewer. I think they're interested in one thing above all: birdies. If a course is really easy and it yields a winning score of 40 under par, they get really excited.

When club members began toughening up Augusta National in the late Nineties, they were probably much more motivated by ego (Resistance to Scoring) than the need to draw TV viewers. In fact, I bet CBS was disappointed that there were so much fewer birdies to be had as a result of the changes.

My attitude is very different than the average TV viewer's. I like to see the winning score be as high as possible. I actually loved seeing the borderline-impossible setups of Shinnecock in 2004, Winged Foot in 2006 and Pebble Beach last year. Fascinating as hell. I want the players' butt cheeks to tighten with fear on every other hole. The challenge of having to place the ball on a dime shot after shot or else suffer a severe penalty with a major on the line is more exciting than anything.

 

[mgranato]

Really? 2004 at Shinnecock, you enjoyed? Really? Didn't find anything wrong with that setup?

 

[Kevin Shields]

Four of my least favorite tournaments ever to watch were last years US Open, 2004 at Shinnecock, 1999 Carnoustie, and 1992 Pebble Open. All because the course set up got out of hand and made the entire event a joke. Throw in 1998 Olympic while ur at it.

 

[johnnymarlboro]

Did Dariusz J. seriously call Arnold Palmer and Phil Mickelson "poor ballstrikers"? Come on man, that's ridiculous. If you do believe that, I just feel bad for you. 2 of the greatest players to ever pick up a set of sticks, poor ballstrikers. Poor ballstriking does not net you 11 majors.

 

[Lifter]

No question that tournament officials messed up the setup of hole #7 at Shinnecock in 2004 and hole #18 at Olympic in 1998. However, I actually thought the setups for the rest of the holes were generally good. Like I said, my attitude is very different from the average TV viewer's. mgranato, Kevin, what have been your favorite setups?

Think about Shinnecock 1995, where the winning score was Even Par vs. Shinnecock 2004, where the winning score was 4 Under. Clearly, the difference in course setups between 1995 and 2004 was overwhelmingly due to the golf ball / golf club innovation that was achieved between those two Opens.

 

[mjstrong]

I think it's important not to lump the entire event's setup together. There is more of a theme, nowadays, to let the course get much tougher by day 4 than it was on day 1. I'm not sure if that was the same more than a dozen years ago. I've got no data/proof to back me up, but I suspect as much. I think changing a course's setup during the tournament is less fair than having it fairly tough the entire way through.

That being said, I don't have a problem with very tough course setups, as long as the seem somewhat fair. It's hard to argue that Shinnecock was too unfair, when your top 2 finishers were Reteif Goosen and Phil Mickelson (pretty quality players). Although, that one par 3 was absurd; you were better off in the bunker than pin high middle of the green... Using this argument, you could say that '99 Carnoustie was lacking; playoff between Justin Leonard (no disrespect), Paul Lawrie, and Van De Velde...