TPC Sawgrass

 We've just seen the Dye's dynamite enhanced work at Austin CC on the TV for an uninspired Match Play Bomb & Gouge event. Irish Walker Cupper and author Ivan Morris asked an internet question to which I responded that men's professional gold holds little to no interest for me. Watching putting to determine outcome is just not for me. So in contrast to Austin, today I'll offer more on the Dyes. I present TPC Sawgrass Stadium for you. It is a course of high intellectual design with much to teach you.

I'm a big fan of the Dyes and and am fortunate to have one out my back door for me to play almost daily. It remains one of the most underrated courses in Dye portfolio. I've played maybe 50 Dye courses since my first - Delray Dunes, Boynton Beach, FL  I loved it and my love affair personally dates from 1968.  Jack Nicklaus was tasked for Harbor Town and called on Pete and Alice, the two also did the Briar at the Playboy Club in Wisconsin. I have loved their uses of angles and creative deception from day 1.

I recently played Sawgrass again and just last week visited Heron Pines on HHI. Sawgrass is very special, I have more respect for it than ever, never mind that it is over-seeded for the professionals, it is resort course (A very expensive one) and Bermuda turf is what you will generally play it on, it is in overseen not for the Player's Championship.

It is a far better and more representative Dye Course that the perennially higher ranked Whistling Straits - which has at least two awful holes, perhaps the two worst on a single touted golf course world-wide (but I digress). 

So many Dye courses lose nuances when adjusted for the professionals, TPC Sawgrass is no exception. I recommend listening to Derek Duncan's Feed. The. Ball. podcast with Allan MacCurrach discussing White Oak, the newest most unobtainable course earning Golf Digest's Best New Private Course last year.  Allan discusses the evolution of Dye's approach to shaping and mentions Sawgrass specifically. Since it has been over 20 years since I first played Sawgrass, changes were apparent to me. 

We have an Iconic tournament venue geared towards better players to be best played with the greens lightning fast.  This is not what Pete's original task was and the greens have been modified for the professionals. Playing, the greens weren't up to tournament speed so they don't always present as clever as they are, the contours much more subtle than they could be. They have been softened (as has much of the course) since creation, the greens as a result of the PGATour obsession with lightning fast greens.

Lost in all of that is just how well-designed this golf course really is. The routing undergoes many changes in direction, some radically more than one gets an idea just from seeing this course on TV. I also find it extremely aesthetically pleasing, this trip around was my first time in person (I have always seen it with stands in place and that is a pity in retrospect) or seeing on TV what the course looks like without stands and tournament trappings. The 16th and 17th amphitheater is an extremely tranquil arena without all those artificial structures, obviously this is the highlight for most visiting and with it is so well-constructed and shaped - it really is a treat.

Looking at the course, it is masterfully routed with all those direction changes. Routing from Apple Maps my Dye is the header photo

one can see no two consecutive holes are in the same direction (Top left starts 1 and 2 and the second nine is easily worked backwards.

The Par 3 holes might be less impressive as a group but 17 is iconic and dominates many player's thoughts from the first tee - awaiting the inevitable. The putting surfaces are what makes the threes superior with run off areas and  feeding contours to the seemingly 275 yard long 8th.

The Par 4's are magnificent in their variety and use of angles, but the 12th has to be called out as a stinking pile of dogstuff created by the PGATour, a glorified long Par 3.5 masquerading as a "drivable par 4". Alice refused to endorse it prior to her passing. The modern equipment in the hands of the elite player negate some of the brilliance of design in Par 4 holes, yet holes 4, 5, 6, 10, 14, 15 all stand out in their exceptional design. 

 Par 5 holes everyone knows 17, but without crowds is not as fear-inducing as one might expect, it presented a variety of options to easily make a par 5 with a legitimate birdie chance on my visit lacking my A game. The Par 5 second is not so straightforward with but a small twist in fairway shaping - much more apparent playing it  (Most of us as a three shot) and again TV dulls what is here. Holes 9 & 11 are notably superior Par 5 designs, an area the Dyes truly excelled (And the type of hole that I feel strongly is the most challenging for an architect to create true excellence). Hole 9 is one example of why tree can usefully determine strategy in places, the angles created are sublime.

Slower green speeds with greater contour of the greens is usually seen in holes of similar intent on other Dye courses and would further increase the quality of this course. However - the missive of this course - to host and test modern elite golfers with every engineering advancement at their disposal negates that need. PGA professionals would howl with greater contour and slower speeds on these putting surfaces.

This is not a Mackenzian ideal course, it is an iconic TV course that exceeds its expectations, unlike some (Whistling Straits, MVGC and others) which just don't have the goods on the ground. This course is not a slog - it has real interest. It has to be considered a lifetime goal and bucket list course and I do recommend giving it a go with the recommendation to play early in the day to avoid the thunderstorms and try the Hilton over the Marriott.

Balls & Clubs

R&A and USGA finally issue a distance opinion and it comes at a time that the PGATour is having to change to meet LIV. Cutting distance is probably 20 and some would argue as much as 100 years late. PGATour pros are acting so imposed upon because some adjustment on their part is necessary; here’s where it’s really whacked. The PGATour or any form of men’s elite golf is NOT GOLF, it’s merely entertainment. This is multi-faceted and the unseen gorilla of equipment and subsequently balls going so far is how many ways golf cost far too much.

 

The Ball, the problem of space to play and time to play (Skip to the * if you’re impatient) - finally, the ball gets an address, but so miniscule as to rile only the most pampered of the elite. The R&A and USGA has decided to put a spot Band-Aid on the problem 35 years in the making. Men’s golf (really it starts with the elite junior boys as they are arguably the longest hitters) with the aid of club and especially ball manufacturers have created the cheat code to change golf. The PGATour is probably most reliable to offer that any change to affect Men’s Professional Golf is incorrectly referred to as “The Game”. Nothing is further from the truth. The game is what the NGF suggests is what 25.6 million people who set foot on a golf course last year and an ADDITIONAL 15.5 million who went to Top Golf, Drive Shack and used simulators. PGATour has less than 150 participants weekly and worldwide there are 5-10,000 players a tick below in skill level. Why should we care? We should NOT. Keep golf affordable and faster to play.

 

My view? At age 71 now with several orthopedic challenges, I have not kept up to my maximum but can still hit drives over 250 yards. When I started playing in 1960, that was elite level stuff. Playing courses then from tees that the top players played then was maybe 20 yards a hole more (from the whites to the blues). 

 

Now 320 carries are not unusual with coordinated players of unimpressive stature, the trip back to the back set may be over 100 yards on some holes.  Saucon Valley CC, in Bethlehem, PA built some “orphan tees” about the size of 3-6 dining tables to provide the USGA their length. If they weren’t so tragic they’d be hilarious.

 

The gym and stronger players is a myth, Kim Si-woo is a talented Korean men’s professional player of 5’11” and 182 pounds, hardly a brute by any standards. His longest drive this year is 365 yards. His average of 296.1y does not reflect the fact that he is a long hitter.  What’s of interest is the narrowing of the gap between long-drive competitors and the PGA Tour drives – THAT’s the club at work. (At the 1949 PGA Championship long drive contest, Chick Harbert drove 340) So where is the problem?

 

Engineering has led us to balls that are more consistent and aerodynamically fly much straighter and spin whatever we want. Clubs, especially drivers have however led us to quarter-sized sweet spots instead of small #2 pencil eraser size of the persimmon era. Clubhead speeds over 120 have always been possible, with zero time in a gym ever, when swing speeds were first easily measured I was at 117 or so already in my 40’s. The difference now is the ability to miss the sweet spot half an inch and still actually hit it. Watching Justin Thomas jump on driver and then swing like anyone else with a wedge is jarring in its difference. 

 

So what’s the real problem for GOLF?

 

*The length the ball goes for the most skilled players creates a disconnect that has caused course design to incorrectly and unnecessarily adapt.  Those older (Classic if you will) courses trying to be “relevant” are pulling a Frankenstein on their courses, some landlocked such that the efforts are embarrassing. I offer that it’s far more of a problem for courses to adapt and continue to adapt than for a few professionals to do so. I am very concerned about the TIME it takes to play golf and the amount of land necessary to build a course. Wrongly identifying the men professionals as somehow representing “The Game” is just wrong. Courses at resorts have become hideously expensive - $250 not being unusual and up to $900 for a round, often pushing six hours. 

 

On the Golf Channel and Sirius XM PGATour Radio I listen to the former players-announcers lament how much the professionals will have to do to adapt to a new ball. Sorry, but most professionals who will go to play at a tournament in mountains above a mile or more adapt very quickly to the new distances (Granted some quicker than others) in the space of less than a week. It’s not even that hard to switch back and forth.  Being a former Colorado resident I am going to tell you it is NOT that hard. The adaptation excuse is a big lie.

 

Adapting classic courses so that the professional players can play them with modern equipment needs to go away, it’s a very expensive process and the outcome courses slow pace of play for everyone to a crawl. Far too many players try to play longer courses than they are capable and we all suffer. Still, the length is not enough as 4-6” of dense bluegrass is often seen lining these courses in the north coming within 3 feet of the putting surfaces.

 

Men professional players and especially the organizations do not care about the time for golf. There is a basic target time to fit into TV slots, but many can and DO want to play faster. The slowest players then set the minimum pace of play for those behind. It takes much longer to walk a 7600 yard course than a well-designed 6800 yard one. It just snowballs from there.

 

We can all adjust (and more easily than you think you will) to a ball that goes a shorter distance. I propose a ball that can generate a velocity of 180 mph when struck with a clubhead going 130 mph. This technological achievement ought to be rather simple. Distance is primarily determined by ball speed. If you cannot generate 140 mph ball speed you cannot hit the ball much farther than 250 yards on reasonably normal turf. The distances will all become linear, the aerodynamics and flight will be controlled by the cover materials and dimple shape and design (which can also be mandated) and we can stop building 8000 yard courses.

 

Golf is far too expensive and time consuming as it is. The shorter ball will allow courses to be shorter with differences in tee sets narrowed and one will not need to set out SEVEN sets of tees as my club does to coddle the egos of the weak and unskilled.  Golf is hard, it is supposed to be hard and it is unfair. The game the professionals play as overseen by Tour officials week to week is meant to be as fair and consistent as possible to provide an entertainment product. That is why the “Majors” remain the most interesting as they do not adhere to the formula providing the sanitized product.

 

With less turf to maintain, golf should cost less. The degree of conditioning (and especially the myth of fast faster fastest greens) is for another day. We should all be welcoming a ball that requires so much land to be required to play the game.

 

The golf for the 98% isn’t affordable for the 98%, that needs addressing and 3:300 not 4:00 is a better time target.