QuestionI can find many opinins about what increasing the difficulty of courses does for the overall sport of golf. However no one can speak on the driving factor of increasing the difficulty of the course. People say because players are hitting a longer ball, better equipment, and better technique, but that still doesn't explain why the need to lengenthn a course. Why the need the keep players scores from getting to low?
Answer
Robb Nunn - PGA Profes
HI Ty;
Well you may want to get a drink, this is a bit of a read. Sorry, but better to much info than not enough and I hope this explains it all to you.
I am not to certain as IF the powers at be, do not want people to shoot lower scores. Actually they do as that increases participation in the sport. But it also serves the sport well to keep things on an even keel.
With the advances in technology, it seems as though it only makes sense to lengthen the golf courses, though I am not too sure it is a natural progression for every golf course.
The primary courses that are lengthened, are normally those on which the tours play, and even they have limitations due to land availability. Not every golf course is going to be lengthened.
A really good question to ask yourself is this. Have you ever played cross country golf where you combined two or three holes and made up a different par number. Let's say that you played a Par Four and a Par Five and instead of having 9 for the par maybe you made it 8 or even 7?
As far as the driving aspects and especially with the New drivers out in 2012, it is obvious that at least the driving areas had to be lengthened. Some people are now hitting their 3 woods around 300, that's huge, but again it is not everyone.
Lengthening the driving areas of the golf courses, especially on old traditional tracks is what keeps the original hazards and designs into play. Provided the tees are moved back. And that is what is looked at. Put yourself in the golf course owners shoes. Here you have this fabulous golf course that was built by one of the old masters, and all of the hazards are non effective because everyone hits it past them. What do you do?
You really only have 4 choices, lengthen the driving areas, add in extra hazards which is not cost effective in long run due to maintenance. If you are a tour stop you risk losing that event as the course is to easy, lastly you could just shut down, no one wants that. Can you ever imagine the Masters not being played at Augusta? That is why they lengthened it! they had to adapt to the situation at hand. Much like a round of golf where you have to adapt also.
New golf courses being built are already instituting longer driving areas into their design features, but they also have to add in an extra tee box or sometimes even two for shorter hitters. When I was growing up, there were primarily three tee boxes, blue, white, and red. Or whatever colors they choose for a tee box.
Now days I have seen a few golf courses with as many as 6 tee boxes. Adding features always adds maintenance costs things like more sod, or seed, fertilizer, mowing times, WATER, payroll, insurance, etc., and that in turn raises greens fees. We won't go into the greens fee thing. But you could do your own cost study as to maintenance costs per round of play and get a great picture of things.
We are talking a Multi-billion dollar industry here, what manufacturer wants to scale back on their R&D to make the best product available just for the sake of distance and keeping the distance game pure. Especially when everyone wants to hit it longer. None that I know of, they would become extinct. And let's face it the number one selling point for golf manufacturers is DISTANCE, everyone wants to do one thing more than anything else, HIT IT FARTHER.
I guess the best thing to do is to put yourself into the shoes of the owner(s) of any tour stop. How do you make sure that your golf course maintains the standards set by the tours for the playability of the golf course. When the tour comes into a city and a specific golf course, it generates millions of dollars in revenues, it takes a lot of time and preparation to host an event.
For those who have only gone to see a tour event, but never worked at or played in a tour event, you don't see the behind the scenes stuff. But if you want to see it, go volunteer at an event and you will see what all is involved. It is fun, as high class as you can get, and a very enlightening experience. It is such a big business, tour stops cannot effectively operate without volunteers. Gratefully I have seen a tour event from all sides of the event, player, worker/volunteer, and spectator. It really is quite something.
Sorry did not mean to go off on a tangent there, but you really need to look at everything involved before you come to any conclusions as there is a lot more involved at work then just the lengthening of a golf course and scores. Then again, we are really just talking about score and how far a person can hit it aren't we.
All in all mostly they are protecting course records I guess, they want to make sure that if you go out and play and shoot the course record, you did so under anything other than artificial circumstances. How would you feel if you worked your rear end off and posted a course record somewhere, and then someone came along the next day and beat it only because he could hit it longer, thought there is always that possibility anyway.
Again there are many things to take into consideration in this discussion, but when golf course designers are building golf courses, they are more concerned with playability and a fairness to par versus the distance factor, this is not to say that distance is not a factor, only that it is not a factor for anything other than par.
Oddly enough, to my knowledge and that I know of, neither the USGA nor The R&A have changed the recommended distances for par on a given hole within the rule book for what seems to be forever. Again this is at least to my personal knowledge.
You can see this information via the following page.
http://www.usga.org/Rule-Books/Handicap-System-Manual/Rule-16/
Well I hope this helps, and I wish you the best in your quest for more information. Again sorry for the long dissertation, but It was really the only way to get the message across.
Robb Nunn
PGA Professional
http://robbnunn.com
