Are PGA Tour Courses Too Hard ... for PGA Tour Players?

by Mulligan Stu on Jun 4, 2008 1:05 PM EDT

We touched on this a few days ago with a post about the very thick rough at Jack Nicklaus' Muirfield Village Golf Club during The Memorial. Doug Ferguson goes much more in-depth in an article today about how some PGA Tour players are becoming increasingly vocal with their displeasure over course setups. Specifically, how difficult some courses are now set up.

But first, let me digress and give Joe Ogilvie the Quote of the Story Award for this nugget:

"Johnny Miller talks about equipment almost as much as he talks about himself."

Ferguson introduces the topic with this anecdote:

Bay Hill was brutal one year. Shots into the firm greens looked as if they were bouncing off a trampoline, yet the grass was so lush in front of the green it was hard to get the ball close. No one shot better than 69.

One major champion unloaded in the parking lot that evening, calling the course a joke and wondering aloud if he would return. Just then, tournament host Arnold Palmer pulled up beside him in a golf cart and asked him what he thought.

He looked at the King, shrugged and slowly nodded his head.

“Not bad,” he said.

Jack Nicklaus couldn’t stop laughing when he heard this story Sunday morning at the Memorial.

...

Nicklaus could relate to Palmer.

“Not one player said a word to me,” he said.

Actually, Jack, I think one player did: J.B. Holmes said quite a lot - without uttering any words - when he snubbed Nicklaus as Holmes left the 72nd green. Holmes looked at Jack, looked away, shook somebody else's hand and walked right past the Golden Bear. "What was that?" Jim Nantz asked on the air. That was a snub from a player coming off a rotten round and PO'd about how hard the course played.

But don't get the idea that only players like Holmes (youngsters, in other words) are unhappy with tough playing conditions. Difficult course setups were the subject of a player's meeting at one point. Veterans like Steve Flesch and Davis Love - two players with great respect for the game and its traditions - are on the record in the article, bemoaning what they view as tougher and tougher course conditions, conditions they believe produce boring golf. For themselves and the fans. And that produce golf they just don't enjoy playing.

Nicklaus says in the article, about the conditions last week at The Memorial, "don't blame me, blame the PGA Tour." Davis Love says:

“Scores should be going down, not up,” Love said. “That’s a pretty good indication that it’s getting harder. Nobody ever shoots 20 under anymore. And players are a heck of a lot better. The fields are deeper.”

But Ferguson points out that in "22 stroke-play events this year, 10 winning scores were higher, 10 were lower and two were the same." Yet it certainly does seem that courses are set up more severely. That more courses are going for the U.S. Open feel. Does it feel that way to you? It does to me, and it certainly sounds like it feels that way to growing cadres of players.

Maybe that's because the players don't have much fun on those courses, and so they remember those courses more strongly. (While the ones that remain easy - or become easier - don't stick in the mind.) Maybe it's because difficult course conditions are seen as something of a badge of honor by the courses, and severe conditions are something that gets talked about a lot during the television broadcasts.

Does the final score of the tournament matter to your enjoyment in watching it? Is a tournament where the winning score is even-par really more boring, less interesting, than a tournament where the winning score is 25-under?

If you had to choose one or the other for all tournaments - very difficult setup, or very easy setup - which would you choose for the PGA Tour? Most people would probably want a good mix of both, and plenty of tournaments in the middle area, too. But let's pretend our only choices are very difficult or very easy. What kind of golf do you want to watch?

Poll

What type of golf tournaments do you prefer watching?

Ones with very difficult course setups - where par is a good score

28 votes

Ones with very easy course setups - where 25-under might be required to win

6 votes

34 votes | Poll has closed

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Comments

more complicated than it looks

First of all – Joe Ogilvie wins “Quote of the Year” for that jewel !

There is a lot more to setting up a PGA Tour golf course than a lot of people ever imagine. Some of it drives us crazy – like the manicured bunkers that are supposed to be as alike as possible from week to week as possible so that “the greatest players on the planet” won’t be embarrassed. (by the way – the furrowed bunkers caused a 1% lower rate of up-and-downs than the regular bunkers over the year – the players adjusted just fine)

The hardest part of what the PGA Tour setup staff has to face is the uncertainty of weather. They start their work months ahead of time and hope that the weather cooperates and the balance of course conditions works out just right.

We see perfect greens where half the field says they are too fast (the guys who can’t make putts) and the other half wants them as fast as possible (to get rid of the half that can’t make putts).

We see a week of a course with almost no rough – followed by a week of what looks like impossible rough.

The players adjust, but the Tour has a great deal of say about what kind of scores they want to have at the end of the week. They bring in the rough – they water the fairways to slow runout to protect par 5’s from becoming easy par 4’s – they dampen the run-up areas to keep balls that land short off the greens where they land…lots of little tricks.

What I get tired of are the whining players who say that the course setups are too hard – when what the REALLY mean is – “the course is set up too hard for the way I want to play.” Boohoo. You’re a professional golfer on the toughest Tour in the world – keep the ball in the fairway.

I’m not totally convinced that the setup at The Memorial last week was to “embarrass” or be unfair to the field. I have wondered if Nicklaus’ setup was more of a message to the powers that be, that if they don’t scale back the equipment (especially the balls), then this is what future courses are going to have to look like just to keep guys from having to shoot double digits under par to make the cut. (notice, too, that these tough conditions at Muirfield didn’t start until AFTER Nicklaus stopped playing) :-) I do think that the players should’ve had some sort of heads up about what was coming. Then again – even more of these “greatest players on the planet” might have pulled out.

On the other hand, I think that the USGA goes way overboard trying to protect “old man par”. The thick, knee high rough is a bit much, though part of the reason it was so thick and deep was all the rain they had – making it impossible to trim back even a little. There is no reason to ever cut greens so tight that they are dead by Sunday. That is just wrong, and disrespectful to the host course that has to rebuild everything after the Tour boys move on.

I like what the R&A does at the British Open – they set up a course to be tough but fair, and if the weather isn’t terrible like it can be, or like they expect it to be, and the players find ways to make a lot of birdies – so be it. The lowest score still wins.

Courses can only be lengthened so much before they run out of land. Narrower fairways with longer grass, thicker and deeper rough, impossibly fast greens with hillsides shaved so that no ball will stay on even if there is water next to the green, and quicksand bunkers will be the only protection courses have.

If you put these guys on the courses played by the LPGA, there would be 59’s and less shot every week – they are that good.

About the poll – I wouldn’t want to see either one shot all the time. That would be boring. I want to see how low they can go sometimes, and other times I want to see just how good they can be when the going gets tough. Make it too easy and every Tom, Dick, and Michelle thinks they can play with these guys. Make it too hard and we’re burying bodies in the rough before the week is out.

"this ball will fit in that fairway"

by courtgolf on Jun 4, 2008 3:56 PM EDT reply actions