Half Moon Bay is 7150 and that has never been unreasonable, it’s kinda wide open the first 15 holes but still interesting. It was 80 & bone dry at Cal & we only played 6 holes from the tips. It’s just about unrecognizable from the old layout & all the holes are shortsided in front. I don’t think it’d be playable in weather with old gear at all it’s so bombercentric. Everything there is set up to be attacked vertically, it’s not the length that’s the problem there’s just nowhere to fit shots into. It’s harder than Spyglass.
Another one bites the dust.
I’m trying very hard tonight not to hit delete on pushing two months worth of work & am in a very bad place, if you don’t care for meandering vitriol best move on…
- This whole nonsense with the Canadian Open, first of all this has never nor will it ever be a truly top tier event as long as the scheduling of it is sandwiched anywhere between the US Open & the PGA. London straight to Vancouver 3 1/2 days later?!?!? Who in their right mind would ever want to do that to themselves? For anyone who hasn’t traveled internationally there’s jet lag & then there’s reverse jet lag, the human body isn’t on a 24 hr clock, it’s on a 26 hr clock so when you fly 8 hrs ahead your body only really adjusts 6 but when you fly 8 hrs behind you have to adjust 10. Moreover when your in America for quite some time & fly over to Britain for a couple of weeks to play the Scottish & British Open & then immediately go back to Vancouver what you’re actually doing is giving yourself whiplash. If you are an elite physical competitor that’s the last thing you’d ever do if you’re trying to ever perform at your best even if they charter a plane. TM, would you ever play New Orleans, Augusta & the Aussie Masters back to back to back if you were still living in Melbourne?
Next this thing with the rough, umm does anyone care to join me on the planet earth in the year 2011 anno domini? The Pacific Northwest & maybe Nova Scotia are the only places left on the entire continent where you can grow that kind of rough in the middle of July without dumping massive amounts of water & petrochemicals to sustain it. Just in case anyone cares at all this is very last summer there’s going to be any polar ice cap. Go on Google Earth & get your screensavers now because next August it ain’t gonna be there no mo… Hey robbo how you doin in Dallas, my cousin Stuart lives in Arlington. What’s today, the 42nd straight day over 100? My empathy is wit you, I choose not to even imagine but how much water & fertilizer do you figure it would take right now to grow & sustain 6 inch rough at Colonial? Can’t be done, am I right?
So at what point does reality set in for anything? Bitching about no rough at Congressional, et al… really?? Y’all want to piss away those resources, those most scarce resources that enable this civilization to exist & function in the first place on overwatered overfertilized rough to make driving accuracy matter more in a stupid boring broken golf tournament? But then on the other hand y’all “claim” to clamour for natural, sustainable sensible short courses. In this day & age that means brown, dead & no rough. Congressional without the fake green paint. Time to pick a side kids & personally I could really care less right now about any of it. This is a serious question, how much do we have to lose before it’s time to just give up. At this point in time is it really worth having the game around at all? Is an enjoyable hobby worth spending capital & resources on in the first place when they are so desperately needed so many other places? At what point does this in its mere existance become wrong?
I forgot what number 2 was after reading that, I hate nights like this when I get stuck. Still legit questions though…
The very reason I switched to hitting from swinging was exactly what you are talking about. I knew that a guy playing in Europe the week before teeing off on Tuesday in Australia after a late checking was granted… had no business even being able to find the clubface coming straight from the airport with bags under their eyes and a body that had to be as stiff as a board. After I handed over $200 to the guy while a few of us were playing for a little action on Tuesday afternoon… it didn’t take much convincing that they had better technique than I had. Real tour travel is tough stuff… and the guys who had good hitting actions could still post a number under the most horrific conditions of traveling and no sleep. I wanted that!
I remember going back and seeing Gregg McHatton and telling him… this TGM crap don’t work on the road… and I never looked back.
As far as rough… well I played all over the states in July and August in the big amateur circuit … Porter Cup, Western Am, NE Am, Rice Planters, Eastern Am, Sunnehanna Am, Cardinal, Trans Miss, US Am… and the rough was always thick and tough to hit out of. Much more severe than the Congressional Classic. If water is not available… 15 inch dry straw will do just fine. I don’t care what they do… just don’t allow guys to miss fairways and then hit shots onto the green while spinning the ball back and making birdies. Not in any kind of major championship golf … am or pro. Hogan said the drive should be the most important shot while playing a hole and I agree 100%. I’d rather see fairways lined with that pumice decorative rock, and make guys carry a thrash club they could use to punch out of the stuff back into play. Errant tee shots need to be penalized one way or another.
Dry courses are fine… I don’t mind playing all day off hardpan… and although the ball runs our farther… it the course had lots of doglegs… then there is no advantage to running the ball through the fairway into the straw and trees. Dried out greens are fine as long as the architect was wise enough to allow some kind of run up… this is why I despise Nicklaus courses in general… because they only play properly with perfect manicuring, no wind and greens that must hold.
A great course can play fairly under most any conditions… even near total agronomic neglect.
Where I play at Mare Island… I can play it hard and dry in summer and wet and foggy in winter and shoot the same scores.
In the winter it plays much longer, but the greens hold much better so it really offsets itself. All but two holes allow for a run up if needed. The other two you could play to one side of the green or the other and have a reasonable chip to make your par.
Rant for Rant!
I’m sorry but these kind of premises cannot be contorted into the same argument about mechanics, it doesn’t apply. It’s not 1985 anymore and while I know this is your business and you don’t have any desire for political debate here it just isn’t anymore. Every single one of us as golfers is by definition an outdoorsman. If there is any individual here who at this point still refutes climate change then I am offering a personal invitation to meet me at my place or in Sonora, CA and I will take them on a personal touup to the top of the Sonora Pass up Hwy 108 and I will show them the snowpack as compared to exactly twenty years before on datestamped photographs from 1991. I’m a licensed professional educator, it’s an absolutely breathtaking place & this is 100% sincere offer. If anyone isn’t convinced I will show you & explain it scientifically and fully to your satisfaction, this year the snowpack is about 15-20% what it was in 1991. The only way to grow rough at Merion, Baltusrol, Medinah etc in July 2011 is to dump water & petrochemicals far in excess of what was necessary in 1985 or it dies & turns into Congressional. Hell that’s what they did back then. Back then it was just wasteful, doing that now is borderline criminal.
Sure dried out tracks can be plenty tough, if it’s set up right even tougher but again that’s not the point. The point is what if anything is the breaking point, spikes, trajectory, length, green structures, at this point what’s left? Why bother? And most of all is playing golf at all in this day & age selfish and wrong? I’m not saying it necessarily is but my gut is telling me it’s getting pretty close. I’m proposing a grown up question that I don’t know if there even is any answer to but that I think deserves debate. It’s depressing but legitimate.
Kinda hard to make my point without talking politics, but still:
The economy, the environment, golf => Depressing? Yes.
But giving up is not an option!
If you take the least important subject (golf) as an example; things that start out small can make big difference.
This is one of the reasons why I believe that initiatives such as the TRGA have a huge potential.
Scale things down, simplify and give back the power to those who actually play the game. Play courses that don’t need a lot of irrigation. Make courses compact enough to walk them in 3 or 4 hours. Limit the interference of technology in the game.
That’s constructive thinking, it’s similar to you trying to eliminate the usage of petroleum based products. It’s inspiring and will make a difference. Spread the word 
Cavity backs, milled faces, 46 inch titanium frying pans, and laserscopic range finders don’t make better golfers any more than drum machines make better drummers.
As far as global warming’s effect on golf… I would say that golfers tend to migrate more than other sports, and certainly an international touring pro is really on the loose bouncing around the planet. Certainly many fish and birds choose the migratory route to accommodate their needs, and run away from severe weather conditions… just like Canadians head to Florida in the winter. Native American Indians where often nomadic drifters who followed the sun or where the buffalo roamed.
What I don’t see as sustainable long term is 7 million people living in Phoenix who are digging in and refusing to ever relocate.
If it was not for the invention of freon, I don’t think you would see those kind of numbers of people living in such a stark, hot, arid environment. When I lived in Las Vegas, I would flee north to Vancouver or Seattle from June through September.
Obviously not everyone has the luxury to move around due to work and kids in school and so on… but it’s easy to forget that these are ultimately collective decisions we are making as a society, just as other cultures of human nomadics choose more flexibility in their ability to relocate fairly quickly if not for just basic survival.
How does this relate to golf? To me it is learning to adapt, and not fearing any situations such as wind, rain, heat, and certainly the PGA Tour has had a history of following the sun… starting on the West Coast while everyone else is buried in January snow.
What I am trying to do with students here ultimately is teach them how to golf their ball and arm them with top shelf technique, and the ability to play the game under a much wider array of conditions than say the PGA Tour would offer.
Homogenizing golf is not in the games best interest if you are looking purely at the skill set needed to conquer golf courses
then we need not play only under perfect conditions, pristine fairways and greens taking only whip cream divots off level lies. This here…is more like bootcamp than a stay at the Four Seasons Hotel where everything is handed to you in an tidy and convenient manner.
So my bigger point is that the human skills needed to play golf need not be watered down or forgotten any more than our basic survival skills to deal with what nature throws our way such as changes in weather or global weather patterns whether permanent or not. History has not shown us a guarantee of consistent climates for any geographical static location.
Just look at the Ice Ages, volcanic activity creating or removing real estate, earthquakes, tidal waves. Some come quickly others slowly. But the idea that children now need to always carry a GPS device to find their friends house for an after school game of kick ball is treading on dangerous ground in my humble opinion.
So whether or not we are responsible for global warming certainly is an issue, but I would rather have the skill set to know how to survive, live off the land, hunt, fish, and know what to eat and not eat, and how to build a fire to keep warm and where to cool off in the summer… than only be able to rely upon internet resources, GPS, cell phones and Mc Donalds.
If things ever get that bad… I wouldn’t mind playing golf with a carved up hickory branch, a golf ball made from a rubber tree, and a course mowed by goats with a plugged up gopher hole for a cup. I’d still want to beat my bearded ape looking comrades. 
I doubt if many here are unaware that golf is unimportant compared to the elephant question in the room: Is there time to achieve healthy sustainability locally, regionally, and globally, or have we already passed an irreversable tipping point?
Should we get busy right now and shut all artificially sustained recreation locations like golf parks, baseball parks, football parks, soccer parks, volley ball parks, picnic parks, public swimming pools, and other artificially sustained recreation? Or do we just scrap golf courses? Will “savings” really be reallocated efficiently to solve big troubles?
Monuments and art use resources too and maybe produce little tangible benefit if we discount the value of lifting our sagging spirits; so do we ban monuments and art too?
Will shutting down recreation parks leave us crazier?
Are we choosing to finish a difficult round, this epoch, responsibly or like jerks?
When guilt and other trouble begins to inflate, I feel lucky when I remember even saints took restorative breaks and Mother Teresa liked a cookie from time to time, but that never lets me off the hook entirely.
When I see you on the golf course or in some park, I know when we leave, you and I still have a lot of work to do off the course and might even do it a bit better for having the chance for our break outdoors.
FORE in every direction.
Cheers.
Two excellent posts there, Lag and 1teebox. In the current climate of climate change, it always amazes me how we’ve constructed huge cities right on the edge of where nature is waiting to swallow it up, like a ticking bomb, and then blame climate change for their impending doom. At the moment I’m in the camp that says that climate change is happening, it has always happened, and it’s probably not man-made, except perhaps on a more local level where water resources are diverted to build dams, etc. That makes me a holocaust denier for some people, but really, only time will tell. Enough of politics! I’m willing to bet anybody here though that next year, and the year after, there will still be arctic sea ice. Regarding the rough at the Canadian Open - I’m no expert, but I notice in the dry months here in Rome, where sometimes we don’t get rain for 3 months straight, while the grass doesn’t grow without copius amounts of daily water, there is plenty of “rough” growing everywhere if I don’t tend to it. Would it be so difficult to let nature take care of the rough, while manicuring the fairways and greens?
Man-made climate change is crap. Junk science for the left to push carbon credits, redistribution of wealth, and global New World Order economies/government. Even if I haven’t looked at the issue from both sides - all I have to know is that if the U.N. is pushing the agenda then I know something isn’t right. Bunch of f’n crooks with a platform to spew why they hate the West. Climate is cyclical and man’s impact on climate pales in comparison to his ability to alter his environment.
I’ll say no more on this issue as this is a golf forum.
Captain Chaos
It is a shame to see a useful thread fall to such a level. We (or at least I) would love to learn from the experiences of a former touring pro, but listening to political ramblings and environmentalist panic is not particularly relevant to the discussion of improving one’s golf game. It’s too bad someone with valuable experience to share has decided to instead attack golf itself on political and somewhat irrational grounds.
That’s exactly true…Courses spend far too much time and money and pesticides on the rough and hazards…let it grow and be free… the fairways and the greens and tees are the true playing field. Take as much care of them as you desire but the rest needs not be worried about too much… the only people that worry about rough are the ones who stray far too often from the proper playing surfaces. They will complain they lose their ball in the rough, but hey you shouldn’t be playing golf from the rough…theoretically we could stick a water hazard slap bang in the same spot as the rough and they wouldn’t complain one bit and say that’s a beautiful looking ‘hazard’ because it has a waterfall cascading down it.
I played a course in Tenerife (Canary islands) on The European Tour back in 1990…the entire course was volcanic ash…the rough was volcanic ash and rock and played as a lateral hazard. Fairways and greens and tees were fine. That’s where you had to be as you were penalized if you weren’t playing from those spots. Precision was rewarded. I shot 2 under and came 7th even putting like Stevie Wonder… great event.
If a golfer is given less options for failure then he focuses more on the reward he will receive for his excellence
… meaning if it is permissible to miss often in many spots you won’t care about being precise…yet precision is truly the name of the game… NOT recovery
Good one!
And we’re back to getting better at this game…
Is the best way to cope with the ‘problem’ of having a very wide fairway in front of you just to focus on a smaller target or is there more to it than that?
Alister MacKenzie was a huge proponent of using the natural terrain as hazards in as much of a seamless way as possible. Cypress Point has lots of ice plant lining the playing surfaces. If you have never had the opportunity to get up and down from ice plant… I wish you well.
This is obviously nothing new…but here is how I played EVERY shot
See pic below…(forgive the crap golfer on tee…couldn’t be bothered super imposing a respectable figure in there.)
Where would the normal player aim?
somewhere in the yellow area displaying the fairway???
Where does the focused professional player aim?
I would pick out a limb or even a branch or sometimes something as small as a leaf on a tree (in line with my target)…and make that my focus (see yellow star in tree)
The smaller you make your target and focus on that as your destination…the more margin for error you have.
I never just aimed at the green, I would pick out a spot on the green that was discolored… I wouldn’t just aim at the flag I would select the top right corner of the flag… I wouldn’t just aim at a bunker, I would pick a specific blade of grass I could see in that bunker
The more general your area the more general your chance of getting ‘somewhere near it’…sort of shooting a pistol at a target or archery…would you aim just AT the target or would you zero in on a specific curve of the inner circle of the target
Amazingly even if you do miss your ‘little focused target’…it is never by as much as you would think as opposed to just trying it it out there somewhere on the fairway. Somewhere then can become anywhere
This is all visual imagery and brain work…getting my eyes to see…I was certainly never trying to be too specific with my alignment…just focus on a minute target, and feel that target by shuffling my alignment in my mind’s eye until my brain said …STOP…YOU HAVE IT and then fire away with my trained swing that I have trust in.
Thank you everyone for taking the time and the courage to engage in a real debate, I truly appreciate it. My own crisis of conscience (along with my wife) comes now as our oldest son is going off to college and I as the introspective one find myself asking what is the true nature of the world I am sending my child into… My particular field of expertise is Classical Studies and I would hope at this point we are able to exercise in real debate about real problems the way our Athenian forefathers did.
The game of golf has intrinsic value, no one especially here would ever debate that. Its value lies with the pure enjoyment we take from, the lessons we learn from it that are so applicable so many other places and the social connections we create through it amongst others. But it also has costs like anything else namely time & resources both physical & capital. If we are an enlightened people we must balance the value of everything we do against its total cost and make sure we only do things that provide a value that is higher than its cost. It seems at first glance a cold purely economic view of life but it is where the soft sciences converge. The crisis that I find here is the true value of the game which is high but fixed and struggling to compare that fixed value against the costs which are more scarce all the time and needed for other uses. Golf has its place for sure but I wonder if its proper place is right here & right now. Maybe it’s broken because it’s out of place & out of time right now. It’ll be there later… hopefully…
So adding to the picture from my previous post I have added an orange line directly toward my target I selected (my small visual target- bottom limb hanging from tree) and then 2 pink encircled areas either side of my intended target. There is reason to this.
You can see now how very easily:
I can select a club that will not go thru the fairway.
I can select a club that will certainly carry the fairway trap.
I can pull the shot and still be fine.
I can push the shot and still be fine.
I am playing aggressively but smartly by selecting a target that allows me room for error if it doesn’t come off 100% and if I do hit it as planned I am right where I wanted to be with the perfect angle approach up the green opening for my next shot.
I know this sounds very simple and basic and logical but many forget it when they are out playing.
I wouldn’t hesitate to say that if I could walk around with a 15-20 handicap player…EVEN without giving them any swing advice… but… by only pointing them at targets and making their club selections for them and handing them a club and say hit it, it would be VERY easy to shave several shots off their score without much trouble at all. Hopefully then they could understand course management is about what you leave yourself with each shot not just what you try make for yourself with each shot you play
Twomasters,
Thanks for posting! I never thought of it that way. I will have to give this a try and put into practice. Im sure the results would be beneficial for sure. Like you said, if we can only REMEMBER to do this while playing. 
On the flip side if the pin was on the left side of that green I may well look at hitting a 4 iron down the right side of the fairway from the tee and give myself a good look at the flag from that angle…It then allows me a back stop behind the front left flag location coming from that angle and also allows me to feed my 2nd shot in from right to left and use the tier in the green to get the ball close…In other words I could play the hole entirely differently whilst giving myself more options along the way.
Many ways to skin a cat…although Capt Chaos may not agree, as he has an impact bag full of them 
PS…I have no idea where this hole is and have never played it…just googled golf holes and that one popped up…but that should give some insight into how to view a hole and use the layout to your advantage