Golf Course Architecture - Issue 62: October 2020

60 in the world a true par 72 to play on. Or we stay on this current path – we remove the strategic elements of our classic designs, we add trees or grow up the rough and make our fairways the width of bowling alleys and pray that next year the best golfers can’t drive the green. Path two – the ruling bodies in golf roll back the technology. The last time the ruling bodies took action on the distance debate was in 1930. In 1930, the USGA decided that it would break away from the R&A and roll back the golf ball on its own. When many of us think back on the hickory era of golf (1900-1930) we conjure up images of men in plus fours (‘knickers’, in the US) barely hitting the ball out of their shadow. This is a false narrative; Bobby Jones was known for hitting 300- yard drives in his prime. In his book, Down the Fairway , Jones recounts: “I remember that at the eleventh hole, Charlie Hall – the famous Birmingham slugger – with whom I was paired, got away with a 360-yard drive and I nearly matched it with one of 340 yards; the two pokes aggregated just 700 yards. And I got a longer one, potentially at the fourteenth hole of the same round, where the drive goes straight against a sharply ascending hillside leading up to the green, 340 yards away. With no help whatever in roll, my shot there was just off the corner of the green.” Or you can compare two famous drives from the 1930 US Amateur vs the 1950 US Open at Merion. We all “No matter the direction our ruling bodies take, we are bound to repeat history – we will either do nothing like we did with the Haskell ball or we will roll back technology like we did in 1931” Ben Hogan needed more club for his famous approach to Merion’s final green in 1950 than Bobby Jones did in 1930, when golf was played with a smaller, heavier ball Photo: USGA Photo Collection