[Rick Shefchik]

The Bizarro thread got me to thinking...the elements suggested -- flat greens, banked "bumper bowling" holes that funnel shots back to the fairway -- would obviously make the game easier than it is now. Personally, it reminded me of that "Twilight Zone" episode in which the gambler goes to heaven and starts winning every game he plays. He loves it at first, but then gets sick of winning because there's no sport to it...and of course, eventually he realizes he's in Hell.

Is that how we'd come to feel about the game if golf were a lot easier than it is now? On this board, I'm sure the answer would be yes, but what about the masses who try the game and give it up because it's too hard? If "growing the game" is really the industry goal, why don't course owners build easier courses? I don't think golf is going to experience another boom if the watchwords for new courses are "challenging," "undulating," "wetlands" and "hardwoods."

Personally, I don't care if the game grows. I like it the way it is. But I can't believe those who stand to profit from its continued existence don't at least experiment with making easier courses for people who can't play the game very well, i.e., the vast majority of people who've ever held a club.

[Mark Brown]

Rick,

In the next 5 years you will see many innovative ideas in golf course design in an attempt to grow the game of golf. It hasn't grown significantly since the late 1980s. Per the Golf 20/20 conference last month many ideas are being kicked around including more player-friendly, strategic designs and countless configurations of 3 and 6 hole loops. The reasons the game isn't growing is because in our "progressive?" society people don't have enough time, money or playable courses near them.

[TEPaul]

Rick:

In my opinion, golf needs more of everything--both easy and hard. I really do like Frank Thomas's ideas and his stressing of the need for what he refers to as "Bunny slopes" for beginning golfers so they won't get completely depressed and give up the game on courses that're far too hard for them. On the other hand, the fabric of architecture also needs the extreme challenge ocassionally too. PVGC itself came just flying right out of the box on that unique concept alone. We can't forget that. Not only that but to their amazement they found , very early on, that the dub actually enjoyed playing the course and getting constantly beaten to a pulp by it, even though the club really didn't even want the dub to come there.

So, go figure! My idea, is the "Big World" theory on golf architecture----and that is that there always should be a very wide variety out there for anyone and everyone to go find and play whatever turns them on that day!

[A.G._Crockett]

Rick,
I've been thinking about this for almost 24 hrs. now since I first read your post, and I think it is a great question.

I read something years ago (maybe by Dick Coop?) that said that the attraction of golf is the "intermittent reinforcement" that it offers.  If it was much harder, nobody would play, and if it was much easier, it wouldn't pose a challenge.  The manifestation of this is those shots that even the worst duffer hits where, with no discernable reason, the ball is an airborne thing of beauty and a Walter Mitty moment ensues.  There are just enough to bring us back.  And back.  And back.

What part the difficulty of the course plays in this is hard to say, but if we take the same psychological principles, the course has to be difficult enough to be challenging, but not so difficult that the fun leaves the game.  It seems to me that a great deal of the slow, meandering thrust of this website is the need to return to courses that actually achieve this, with the added benefit that they are cheaper to build, cheaper to maintain, and so forth.

We've discussed bunkerless courses, for instance.  While this could be done, I'm not sure that there is a point to it.  It may be that at least some bunkers play into the equation of intermittent reinforcement, by giving us the chance for heroic recovery from seeming disaster.  Maybe what so many in this discussion group holds dear in what a golf course should be is the physical manifestation of the same joy and attraction that seeing the ball take flight gives us psychologically.

Maybe it isn't so much that the game should BE easier, but that it should SEEM easier, and this is what makes great golf course architecture, as so many observed at Cuscowilla last month.  

[Dan Kelly]

We've discussed bunkerless courses, for instance.  While this could be done, I'm not sure that there is a point to it.

I am one who has spoken fondly of the idea.

The point, in my mind (such as it is!), has never been to make golf easier. Some bunkerless courses would be harder than average; some would be easier.

The point, in my mind (such as it is!), has always been ... variety -- in terms of both aesthetics and "shot values."

Why should Baskin-Robbins have more flavors than golf?

Put me in the Tom I Big World camp -- though I doubt if it would be possible (without containment nets) to make a course easy enough to make it less than hard for the people Rick's talking about in his opening post.

[frank_D]

brother Rick

it is a terrific idea however it will never work

i can't describe my response other than it would be like engineering a more efficient toilet bowl - the psychological hurdle would never be cleared

without the universality of the inherent torture and subliminal knowledge of utter fruitlessness the "hard" courses provide - it wouldn't be the same - even for the "novice"

if i can't climb mt everest i don't want to climb a hill as a substitute

this explains why a relatively significant population of "participants" never ever play on a course at all - and are satisfied apparently to not venture beyond the driving range

[Dennis_Harwood]

Easier for who?

Most golfers would like to play a course with the reputation of Pine Valley so far as difficulty(for others), with a challenge (for their game) of "flatlands muni"--

Golfers will complain about architectural features that seems to create havoc with their game, while at the same time praising features that challenge the game of others and wondering why "their course" can not be tougher (for others)--

I am never ceased to be amazed to listen to good golfers addressing green committees and asking to change features on the course which create a problem for their game ("that bunker that forces me to lay up") while recommending other bunkers in areas that they can easily carry ("it will create challenge for our golfers if we put a bunch of bunkers out there at 240 yards")--

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