I’m down on Tour golf. I’m down on how far the golf ball goes. I’m down on how easy it is to hit a driver. My daughter asked me a good question that gets to the root of why I’m down. “Dad, you have all these architecture books. You love looking at pictures of ground slopes, when I try to watch golf with you, why do the pros simply hit over everything you are interested in, and simply stop it where ever it lands? I mean…why does golf even have slopes? Shouldn’t there be a big bucket… and the game is, who can land in the bucket?” She is right, and we have that game already, it’s called TopGolf.
Thanks to spinny balls, launch monitors, MOI drivers, double row irrigation, larger soles, perimeter weighting, range finders, the game has become hit it high, hit it far and stop it on a target. Lame. She is right, why do we need slopes, why do we need golf courses at all? Let’s just have a bunch of buckets we try to land it in. We are now at least two generations removed from what golf really is. Golf is supposed to be played using the ground! That’s why designers make slopes, find slopes, use slopes, when designing a golf course. People are mimicking what the pros are doing. That is not golf, that is target practice.
Personally, I think it’s the ball. It has to stop. The stupid ball needs to be knocked back. I’ll give you something to try… play a round of golf where you are not allowed to land the ball on the green. You must purposely bounce it on. Don’t tell me it’s too firm or its too soft, figure it out. I’m not going to explain what happens to your entire game when that is the goal, but once you do it….you will be playing “golf” for the first time, and you will love it.
