[A.G._Crockett]

In the Sept. issue of Golf Digest, Hank Haney is asked if deep rough is "the best way to make golf courses harder".

His response:
"That depends.  Deep rough hurts the shorter hitter more than the longer hitter, which is probably the opposite of what was intended.  A shorter hitter like Fred Funk will have to play a longer club from rough--say 6-iron to Camilo Villegas' 9-iron.  That's a big disadvantage.  The other thing about deep rough is that it makes the course wider for longer hitters.  It stops wild shots from running even farther into trouble.  A course with less rough would probably be a fairer test for all types of players."

Discounting the fact that he coaches a relatively long and occasionally wild driver, I'll say a heartfelt amen.

[JR Potts]

As a self reported "bomb and gauge" player, I could care less about the rough.  However, where deep rough really effects scoring is around the greens.  In cannot be discounted how hard it is to get it up and down around the green with long rough.  As such, I don't think that long rough helps the short hitter or long hitter, it helps the guys with the best short games.

[Adam Clayman]

I'll second thyat Amen. Amen!

You newbies that still believe growing long rough as the way to combat the batter player should read Gib's In My Opinion piece, "Preserving Architecture as Art" where he states...

For in the end, the key to preserving Golden Age genius lies less in simply building or restoring a golf course atop the ground, but more in enjoining the texture of the Earth with an expression of art. An art that speaks less to the golfer, but more directly to the human soul.

[Tom_Doak]

Ryan:

When they change the grooves on your irons in a year or two, you'll probably have to reassess whether you care about hitting it in the rough.

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Tom,
Do you think that changing the rules on grooves would be a good thing for the game?

I see it as an endorsement of rough as a viable design feature and hazard, and important component in discouraging distance. I'd be surprised if you think that's a positive trend.

[Tom_Doak]

Geoff:

There's got to be some role for rough in golf course design.  Eighty acres of fairway is pretty expensive.  

I'm not in favor of four-inch rough, but maybe the ruling bodies won't feel the need for it, if you can't spin the ball as much out of the rough.  I also believe if the rules on grooves are tightened a bit, then approaching from the correct side of the hole will be rewarded more, whether you're coming out of the fairway or the rough.  And that would be a welcome change!

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Tom,
Good to hear you feel this way. I'd hate to see you advocating it for the reasons the USGA seems to (embarrassment that people can hit it out of their rough...ignoring that it's the 330 yard drive putting sand wedge in their hand!).

[JESII]

I'd love to hear more on this potential shift. Any details of what the plans are?

I also believe if the rules on grooves are tightened a bit, then approaching from the correct side of the hole will be rewarded more, whether you're coming out of the fairway or the rough.  And that would be a welcome change!

Tom, couldn't proper maintenance do this job as well as any rules change might?

[Tom_Doak]

Jim S:  I don't really understand the technical specifics of club and ball design well enough to answer your question.

If by "proper maintenance" you mean firming up the greens, certainly that is an aspect, too ... but from what I've seen lately the Tour players can generate way more spin with today's balls than the amateur, so the firm green has much less effect on them.  

The whispers I'm hearing is that instead of ratcheting back the ball to compensate for everything else, the favored approach may be to pull back three or four areas a little bit to achieve a compound effect.  The grooves issue would be one of the easiest to get support for (if the manufacturers are on board), because everyone from the players to the fans is sick of watching guys miss 65% of the fairways and still win.

[Brent Hutto]

The whispers I'm hearing is that instead of ratcheting back the ball to compensate for everything else, the favored approach may be to pull back three or four areas a little bit to achieve a compound effect.  The grooves issue would be one of the easiest to get support for (if the manufacturers are on board), because everyone from the players to the fans is sick of watching guys miss 65% of the fairways and still win.

In other words, the rumors are that nothing will be done to address the problems that many people on this forum are worried about. They're going to fiddle around to make scores higher on the PGA Tour and at elite levels of competition but we'll still have a golf ball that leads to continual revision of golf courses beyond 7,000 yards to contain the flight of the ball.

I've pointed out before that a golf ball which has the same CoR as a ProV1x (at high clubhead speeds) but which spins like a wound ball is going to require more acreage to contain, not less. And if wedges are modified to spin the ball less out of the rough I think it's a very debatable assumption that long hitting players are going to throttle back and try to hit fairways.

I just love it when people choose to look beyond obvious, verifiable realities (i.e., the fact that a ProV1x hit by a strong modern player flies way, way further than any ball did 20 years ago) and choose instead to react to purely speculative fantasies (i.e., that modern distance will be taken out of play by fiddling with wedge grooves and ball spin). Take the square grooves off Vijay Singh's wedges and make his golf ball spin 40% more and I'll bet you a Pebble Beach green fee that he still hits driver just as often as he does today.

[Brent Hutto]

...everyone from the players to the fans is sick of watching guys miss 65% of the fairways and still win.

Tom,

I'm not trying to start and argument with you because I know you're quoting what you perceive as a widely-held opinion among golf's ruling classes. But I think for everyone who gives a shit whether Tiger Woods can win hitting it in the rough two out of three time there are two or three people who are heartsick about seeing their classic golf courses lengthened and lengthened again on an ever-quickening schedule of "updating" to deal with modern distances.

[Geoff_Shackelford]

Tom,
What would make your life as an architect easier: a ball rollback or the rumored combination package of grooves/driver size/club length?

Are you really offended by guys missing 65% of fairways and winning when they are 25 yards wide?

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Surely the premise of the rough favouring the longer hitters only applies if they are hitting the ball into the rough at the same percentage as the shorter hitters?

We had our state mid am this weekend at Texarkana CC, A Langford/Moreau design built in 1914, where the Bermuda rough was a neat and tidy 3 to 4 inches in depth..as such not excessive but punishing enough whereby if you were in it, reaching the putting surfaces was a major challenge.

The final outcome was clearly in favour of the straighter hitters in the field, with eveybody commenting that if you hit it in the rough, par was hard to achieve.

I am not in favour of the nasty USGA rough, but there is certainly a very valuable place in the game for rough as a deterrent to simply smashing the ball off the tee

[Jim Nugent]

Does anyone really miss 65% of fairways and win?  

[Wayne_Kozun]

Does anyone really miss 65% of fairways and win?  

I think you're right - this is very rare.

The lowest accuracy on tour is around 50% - that is for the season and not one event.  It is hard to believe that you could be below your season average and win.  That being said all of the big 5 are between 138-167 in accuracy: 138-Goosen, 145-Els, 148-Mickelson, 150-Woods, 167-Singh.

[Michael Wharton-Palmer]

Please dont tell me that anybody is really okay with those stats...should it really be okay to be that poor in accuracy and win?
Is precision not an integral part of this marvelous game..or at least should that not be the case?

I think the current trend of inaccuracy going  relatively unpunished is horrible for the game..blame it on equipment or whatever you like..I believe it goes against all that the game speaks for.

Precision has to mean more than he who makes the putts!

[Wayne_Kozun]

Please dont tell me that anybody is really okay with those stats...should it really be okay to be that poor in accuracy and win?
Is precision not an integral part of this marvelous game..or at least should that not be the case?

An interesting question is would we have different winners if there was more of a premium on accuracy?  Tiger should at Hoylake that he can throttle it back, hit the fairways and win.  The US Open demands accuracy and Phil should have won there.  

But if rewarding accuracy means having every course set up like the US Open then I am not in favour of it.  I don't mind seeing it a few times a year, but not neccessarily every week.

If it means the old Augusta or links golf where you have to put yourself in position to hit the optimal spot on the green then I am all in favour of it!

[Jim Nugent]

I was curious how many fairways the winners this year on tour actually did hit.  So I compiled the stats.  This includes all PGA events in 2006, except the Match Play tournament...

Ave:                  67.8%
Ave first 3 majors:     68.7%
Highest:        85.7% (Tiger Woods, Open Championship)
Lowest:      46.4% (TW, Doral and Torrey Pines; and Sabatini at Riviera)
Above 80%      6 tournaments
Above 70%      13 tournaments
Below 60%      7 tournaments
Below 50%      3 tournaments

Courses where winners hit over 80% of fairways:  Pebble Beach…Hoylake…Muirfield Village…TPC Sugarloaf…TPC Southwind…TPC Avenel

Courses where winners hit under 60%:  Riviera…Doral…Torrey Pines…Colonial…Winged Foot West… Waialae CC…TPC Scottsdale

Tiger Woods has both the highest total and the lowest.  His first round at TP North he hit 7% of the fairways.  

Corey Pavin hit 23% of fairways when he shot 61 last month.

[Brent Hutto]

Corey Pavin hit 23% of fairways when he shot 61 last month.

The littlest FLOGger?

[Doug Siebert]

I've pointed out before that a golf ball which has the same CoR as a ProV1x (at high clubhead speeds) but which spins like a wound ball is going to require more acreage to contain, not less. And if wedges are modified to spin the ball less out of the rough I think it's a very debatable assumption that long hitting players are going to throttle back and try to hit fairways.

I just love it when people choose to look beyond obvious, verifiable realities (i.e., the fact that a ProV1x hit by a strong modern player flies way, way further than any ball did 20 years ago) and choose instead to react to purely speculative fantasies (i.e., that modern distance will be taken out of play by fiddling with wedge grooves and ball spin). Take the square grooves off Vijay Singh's wedges and make his golf ball spin 40% more and I'll bet you a Pebble Beach green fee that he still hits driver just as often as he does today.

Brent,

I believe you are wrong here because you are ignoring two things.  First, making a ball that spins much more off a driver is not going to let guys carry it 320 yards any more.  The ball will balloon (especially into any wind at all) so the high trajectory that gets maximum distance today will need to be lowered to get maximum distance with the spinnier balls of tomorrow, which will result in a shorter flight.  Yes with a spinner ball a slice goes further offline, but it is carrying less distance so I don't think it increases the acreage requirements (houses too close to the fairways would be hit even if hooks and slices are eliminated, I've seen some amazingly big OTT pulls for instance)  It wasn't that long ago that everyone played persimmon drivers and balls that spun mightily off the driver (pre Top Flight era) and unless the driver heads shrink as well they'll still not get nearly as much sidespin as they used to.

The second point is that when there is talk about increasing the spin rate of a new ball (new rule, tournament ball, whatever) its the spin rate off the driver we're concerned with.  You may get a ball that spins 40% more off a driver, but it won't spin any more off a wedge.  The reason the ball goes further today isn't because the Pro V1x has a COR that is really any different than balls from the 80s (if it did have a higher COR it would violate the initial velocity standard that has been in place since the late 70s)  By using multiple layers with different characteristics they found a way to make the ball spin a lot less off a driver while still spinning well off irons and for short shots around the green.  If we take that back via a rule change, there isn't any reason for the ball to spin more off the wedges, unless players want that (and there are good reasons why the pros probably don't want a ball to spin 40% more off a wedge)

So if you have 1) a ball that flies lower and less far (i.e. still no roll in the rough but more roll in the fairway) 2) same spin rate off a wedge and 3) V grooves mean less spin can be applied from the rough, then it seems to me that's going to discourage flogging and encourage players to try to hit it straighter with their drivers or hit fairway woods or irons if they can't find a way to hit straight drives (thereby rewarding golfers who can hit it both long and straight, versus just long)

[Brent Hutto]

Doug,

I do understand that the ball will upshoot with greater spin. But I also think they'll (eventually) change their swings and the rest of their equipment to ameliorate that to a certain extent. And in the future players are going to get stronger and better than they are today, to boot. Now if you want to talk about a ball that's less springy and spins more off the driver that would be a different matter.

My own speculation on the effect of a return to V-grooves still differs from the obvious one. For sure the combination of changes you mention would "discourage" flogging in as much as it stiffens the downside to being in the rough. But the fact is that for the strongest players on super-long courses flogging is the sensible strategy unless the rough is hugely long and thick. Fiddling around the margins of the flogging tradeoff will not make it a bad idea, it will just (slightly) change the balance of when it is called for and when a different approach works better.

All of that aside, I think the obvious and best way to keep huge increases in distance from requiring hugely exapanded golf courses is to make the ball fly less far by making it less resiliant at high swing speeds. Of course that presumes that one is interested in the effect of modern swings and equipment on golf courses as opposed to being concerned about how low scores are on the PGA Tour  

[Tom_Doak]

Brent:

The only reason anyone is lengthening golf courses is the PERCEPTION that the game is getting easier, which comes straight out of your TV screen.  Members are not out there tearing up the course and shooting 61.  They are asking for their courses to be lengthened because they are afraid it will be considered redundant, even though that's not the case.

If you fix the problem on Tour and you extend those rules back to the top amateur players in the country, eventually it will pull back everyone else, too.

Geoff:

I'm offended when it gets to the point that no one cares where they hit it between tee and green.  But overall, the life of a golf course architect is not too hard regardless, and I can wait and see what approach is taken, as long as they actually do something.

[Doug Siebert]

I do understand that the ball will upshoot with greater spin. But I also think they'll (eventually) change their swings and the rest of their equipment to ameliorate that to a certain extent. And in the future players are going to get stronger and better than they are today, to boot. Now if you want to talk about a ball that's less springy and spins more off the driver that would be a different matter.

I think that changing one's swing to spin the ball less off the driver is easier said than done.  Even in the 80s players were well aware that reducing backspin on tee shots was desireable for distance and how well the ball travelled in the wind.  But there's only so much you can do to reduce spin and maintain the same ball speed.

Even with the lower spin ball there are few if any players with high swing speeds who wouldn't benefit from further spin reduction with the driver.  That's kind of the whole reason for the existence of the Pro V1x -- if you can't reduce spin yourself, you reduce it by technology.  The V1 is marginally better around the greens (OK, its not a huge obvious difference, but it is detectable) so if one could easily change his swing to generate 500 less rpm with the driver, the V1 would go as far as the V1x and there'd be no reason for the V1x.



A bit OT here -- I've had an interesting lesson on this subject this summer, because my driver broke in the early spring.  Since it was a 7.5* driver, I had assumed I was using a driver with too little loft since even guys like Tiger were using more loft than that.  So I bought a different driver at 9* (just a cheap no-name clone for $100 until I figured out what I really wanted)  But I'm not hitting it as far: it balloons a bit instead of flattening at the apex, rolls less and the distance loss is really apparent into the wind.  I was tested by a Nike rep on a launch monitor in June and he said I should be using an 8 or 8.5* driver and a shaft no lighter than 75 grams, so I'm violating both with my current driver so maybe its no surprise I don't hit it as far as the old one!  I'm still using it though since I'm swinging so inconsistently I don't know if I could borrow a demo club for one round and evaluate it fairly, and in my mind that's kind of a prereq before considering laying down the cash they ask for today's brand name drivers.

[Troy Alderson]

As a self reported "bomb and gauge" player, I could care less about the rough.  However, where deep rough really effects scoring is around the greens.  In cannot be discounted how hard it is to get it up and down around the green with long rough.  As such, I don't think that long rough helps the short hitter or long hitter, it helps the guys with the best short games.

Ryan,

How deep does the rough have to be in order for you to care?

A.G. and GCA's,

We have seen examples of great golf courses that do not require rough to be challenging.  And some that have great terrain to make it challenging.  So how does short grass challenge the high and low handicappers?

This is my 200th post!!!  

Troy

[JR Potts]

It could be 10 inches deep and I still wouldn't care.  I can fly it around 290.  It I miss it right, I usually miss in 10 yards right.....same for missing it left.  Usually, the rough isn't as long there.  Worst case scenario though, on a 490 yard par 4, I bomb it into the rought, I hit my next shot 80 yards and try to get it up and down from around 100.

If I hit in in the fairway, I will make par or better.  Usually that translates into a 75 or so.  If I'm hitting it well, I'll shoot 70.  If I'm hitting it poorly, I'll shoot 80.

That is why courses with trees and hazards (read Medinah) have their place in this world too.  

As a pretty good putter, take me to one of these Doak courses with 50 yard fairways and I'll eat them up.  Who cares about angle of play when you have sandwedge in your hand.  

And I understand that everything I just wrote is what is wrong with the game...but that is the game we are faced with.  I'd be an idiot to play it any other way.

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