Golf Course Architecture - Issue 62: October 2020

WELCOME 1 Simple maths G asping with disbelief at what the very best can do is an important part of the appeal of elite sport. So, when new US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau launches another of his enormous drives, it is natural for us to suck in our breath at the sheer distance he is able to propel the golf ball. But another role of elite sport is to be a ‘skunk factory’ for developments that, in time, will feed through into the way that normal people live their lives. Titanium drivers, wedges with razor-sharp grooves and the like all appeared first in the professional game, as the manufacturers sought to prove to us ordinary golfers that their technological advances would be good for us too. It is unarguably true that much of the technological advancement in golf has benefitted elite players far more than it has the mid-handicappers who are the heartbeat of the game. But as generations move on, we will see the emergence of a generation of golfers who have absorbed the lessons of DeChambeau, though inevitably, most will have only a fraction of his ability. Already at club level, we see players who give the ball a fearful swipe and can easily propel it 300 yards, though not always in the right direction. This is where the real technological crunch will hit the game. The problems of excessive distance in championship golf are fairly well understood. The true test of the champion golfer has always been hitting long approach shots to tightly guarded greens, but this shot barely exists at the top level any more. Championship courses have been disfigured in an attempt to keep up with the distance race, and this is a great shame. But, in the final analysis, it is a small number of courses and a small number of players. What happens, though, when every club has several dozen members who can drive the ball more than 300 yards? Unlike the pros, they can’t be relied upon to be reasonably straight, and simple trigonometry tells us that the same angle of error means a much bigger miss on a 300 yard drive than a 200 yard one. In time, every single course will be too small, too tight and too dangerous. We need a ball rollback, and we need it soon. ADAM LAWRENCE