Your favorite course Rendered Obsolete for Touring Professional Play by Restricted Length?

[Shambles]

Simple fact of life is that anybody with pro ambitions must first develop adequate length and maybe a little more if he is capable. More or less about the time he develops some reasonable length he discovers he also needs better accuracy, control flight shape, height, backspin, bite and roll, fairway reading and green reading. I fondly remember watching a jun golfer practicing hitting an iron upside down and from the opposite side in case he ever got on the wrong side of a tree or some other obstacle. He developed it to where he could reasonably hit to somewhere in the area of 180 yards.

Less length does not render a course obsolete or unfit for the pro. It just reduces the winning score and increases the number of dreamers. A short course, if well designed, exposes the new guy to shots he needs other than length. For example, you can shoot a 200 yard target easily, but do you know what height your ball will be at 175 yards on the way to that 200 yard target and is that distant tree suddenly an obstacle capable of snagging your ball ? Do you have a reliable fade or draw that can avoid that danger and is that club you rely upon still going to find that 200 yard target or possibly fall short or if the ball becomes a roller because of your chosen shot shape, might it fall off the green and by how much ?

One of the nice things about a short course, or teeing it forward, is that you get the Pro experience and problems in more manageable distances. All you need is to find a well designed course.


Shambles

[joker2]

The problem is using pro's as the standard for golf.
Where else is the top 1% (or less) used to measure anything?
Jobs? Don't care what un employment is, the top 1% is doing fine. USA and R&A need to look at golf globally, and stop worrying about how the beast in the world have learned to excel.

[Tcann32]

Keller GC here in Ramsey/St. Paul MN falls into the category of "not long enough" for tour anymore. The PGA championship was hosted here in 1932 and 1954. It plays under 6700 from the tips.

I am taking the OP's POV as more of nostalgia than an actual realistic perspective. There's no point in lengthening most courses as most courses aren't played by the pro's anyways, and what's the point in lengthening a course so that the tour could play it once every decade. Is it sad that some beautiful, history-rich courses may now be obsolete for TOUR? Sure, but what's the difference really? We can't watch them play it on a rare occasion is about it. Not too many golfers would have a walk in the park with these courses even if they played a mere 6,000 yards vs 7,200.

[TomWishon]

[quote name='teejaywhy' timestamp='1440797417' post='12226446']
With golf, the lack of oversight from the ruling bodies has allowed equipment makers to change the balance of the game.
[/quote]

Hey. . . easy there. You're being misled into the same thing the USGA was when they started all this legislation of equipment starting in 1998 to restrict it more than ever before when they realized the average driving distance on the PGA Tour had increased by some 28 yards between the 70s and the late 90s and immediately began to blame advances in equipment technology for the increase.

What went virtually unnoticed to the USGA was the sheer fact that between the 1970s and the late 1990s, the average driver clubhead speed on the PGA Tour had increased by some 7mph from 105 to 112mph. Today it's 114mph. For each 1mph increase in clubhead speed, carry distance with the driver increases by 2.8 yds. 7 x 2.8 = 19.6 yds. The rest to get to the 28 yd increase between the 70s and late 90s came from titanium drivers and their higher COR. In terms of the rest of the bag, loft decrease on the irons accounted for the lion's share of the distance gains with the irons over that time - the avg 5 iron loft in the 70s was 32*. By the late 90s it was 26-27*.

But equipment, or rather, "technology" sure seems to be blamed or all of this distance increase when the majority has come from the players being much better golf athletes with far higher clubhead speeds than previous. That and the very "Un-technical advance" of just plain lowering iron lofts.

[farmer]

Well, here goes TomW, throwing some water, ie, facts, on the fire. Love these posts.

[hammer0503]

"Amazingly, venerable Oakmont held to that original 6900-some yard [color=#FFA500]Donald Ross [/color]design through US Open wins by Nicklaus (his first PGA victory, and first major), Nelson (1983) and Els (1994). "

H.C. Fownes designed Oakmont.

Please do not think Oakmont has been rendered obsolete. It is a stern test at any length. It was and will always be a beast. Remember they had to stop furrowing the bunkers and slow down the greens for the pros. They still have a huge old rake up on the wall in the clubhouse. Those bunkers are nasty enough, I couldn't imagine them with those furrows. And Jonny Miller only shot 63 because it rained the night before.

I would think Chicago Golf, National Golf Links of America, and Myopia are gems that cannot be lengthened...but that is a blessing so that no one will screw them up.

If you want to see a short course give the pros a fit read up on the Pro-Member at Seminole when the wind is blowing 30mph and the greens are running at 12-13