My idea on making it harder for the pro's

[tsbrewers]

I will just add that I tend to like slower greens. Not the painfully slow ones that you really have to drive the ball, but I much prefer the slower ones. Mainly because the course I grew up on had slower greens. Plus when they are slow you can really give a good run at the hole without worrying about running it by 3' Once you get used to the speed it really is easier to putt. IMHO.

Brew

[walk18]

Well if your going to correct someone then you shouldn't be mistaken. After all the grammar Nazis should be good at grammar.

This is fun.

[walk18]

It's a pet peeve for some people, to the point of being distracting. Same thing with your/you're, their/there/they're, etc.

That and "loosing" instead of "losing". Amazing how often I see that!

[PrairieParson]

I think the courses are fine the way they are although Hazeltine is just too long. I would have liked the seen the par 5's hitable, but risky. IE, bad shot puts you in a hazzard.

Part of the problem is actually that the golf courses are manicured to perfection. It means fewer bad lies, nice fluffy sand to hit out of, greens without defects that will throw off the roll of the ball, things that most amateurs take for granted. All this perfection makes it easier. I remember years ago the PGA came to a course in Milwaukee, and in preparation had them take down several trees that were considered "too much in the way". That helps lower scores.

I don't think making the courses longer is the answer. I have a few others.
1.Don't make the sand traps so uniformly nice. Make them deeper. Many players are very good out of the sand and would rather be there than in the rough. Sand's not much of a hazzard any more then.
2. Make the greens smaller. This brings sand traps and water hazzards closer to the pin.
3. Keep the grass around the greens longer as at Hazeltine. That made missing a green a true penalty and this certainly affected the scores, as in the case of T. Woods.

4. I have another suggestion, but would have a major change. Growing up, I played the West Bend Country Club, West Bend Wis. Some of the greens on the front nine are quite elevated and have steep sides. Missing the green could be a major problem. You could find yourself 5-10, even 20 feet below the hole with a totally blind shot. Sometimes the ball didn't go all the way down because of long grass and then you had to hit up to the green standing in a terrible position. They didn't even need sand around the greens. The elevation of the greens made it plenty tough as it was.

Jmho
PrairieParson

[Three Putt]

Fast greens hamper the approach shot. They for the most part are eaisier to putt on though. JMHO.

[Shindig]

Well if your going to correct someone then you shouldn't be mistaken. After all the grammar Nazis should be good at grammar.

He wasn't the one doing the correcting.

[enduro]

Making the greens slow is a terrible idea since with soft greens they will just bomb the pin. Bad.

What Pinehurst has is interesting. When the course was built the greens weren't designed to be so fast. So you get these greens that are bowed up and everything ran off of them. but then it wasn't any fun to watch some would say.

As for the topic (this thread is so off topic now) I don't think carrying fewer clubs is a good idea. Golf is designed around having clubs that have distances and they get used as such. Part of the game is picking the right club and it happens often enough the player picks the wrong club.

Really the only problem with golf right now is bunkers that are lucky to bounce into, rather than rough. Apparently furrowed bunkers don't offer much of a statistical difference.

Once again, put poisonous snakes, scorpions, etc in the bunkers to really make them challenging.

[Shorty]

By the way, since when does an apostrophe mark an abbreviation? Were not saying y'all here, it's a real abbreviation, not slang.

It's, that's, we're, they're, you're, mightn't, can't, won't, didn't, wasn't,mustn't, wouldn't etc.

They are contractions. Hardly slang.

[alf174]

Once again, put poisonous snakes, scorpions, etc in the bunkers to really make them challenging.

This thread is no longer worth following.

[Chilli Dipper]

If the way Hazeltine played is any indication, 6-inch rough around the green, from just off the fringe. It's impossible to hit a good chip from those lies.

[golf_junkie27]

One way to make it harder is to change the ball. Make one ball, universal, for all tournaments. Every player has to use the same ball, no exceptions.

I don't understand the fascination with making the courses longer. For example, how did that 330 yard average off the tee help Al Quiros? He shot 76 and 77 this week.

The slower greens makes a ton of sense, too. I'd like to see these guys putting when the stimpmeter is running a 9.

[ArrrrJay]

One of the commentators during the PGA was saying that the next step for increasing difficulty should be to NOT allow players to use any line or marking on their ball for putting...

I know that's the only way I can putt, since I'm wearing glasses. When I get over the ball and look left, i feel like I'm aiming WAY right. Never had this problem when I didn't wear glasses, but back then I only played par 3's and still lost the ball in the air at about 150 yrds.

[Gioguy21]

courses all renovated to par 3's...150 yards with 15 foot circles with a hole in the middle, floating on water...no ties. in the water are sharks, jellyfish and electric eels. here's the catch, no ladder to the green, and one hole on the course, you hit a hole in one, you win, you dont...good luck gettin on to putt.

on a serious note, since they are indeed pr'o'sfessionals, i say, if you can shoot a 25 on a course...do it. go low, it's your profession...you can't honestly tell me that if freaks in the NBA can dunk on a 10 footer, or steroid addicts in the majors drop bombs out of 420 yard ballparks and mens tennis serves were over 150+ mph you'd change all those sports too?...just talkin out loud...speak amongst ya selves...

[denver_nuggs_15]

Johnny Miller said this about 2 or 3 years ago. If you slowed these greens down more these guys wouldn't make these 6-10 footers like tap ins. Makes a lot of sense to me. I hate slow greens. The further I take the putter back the more I push or pull the putt.

6-10 footers aren't tap ins for pros at all. I forget the stats that Pelz got, but it's like 55% from 6 feet and like 40% from 10 feet IIRC. That's not a tap in. Those aren't guaranteed like Johnny Miller may have implied. I'm sure the percentages would go down if they slowed the greens, but tour pros could just fire at pins w/o worry. Let's go with hard and slow greens.

I don't mind that tour pros go low. They're the greatest players in the world and they should be able to. NBA players play on a different court than "amateurs"; MLB players play on a different field than "amateurs"; golfers play on different courses than we do. They should be harder, but not impossible to conquer IMO.

[neophyte]

Put a 45 second timer on every shot. This would speed up play and cause more mistakes. And let viewers call in and give a penalty stroke every time a pro takes more than 45 sec. to hit a shot. I have watched pros take over a minute and 30 seconds to T off.

[iacas]

One way to make it harder is to change the ball. Make one ball, universal, for all tournaments. Every player has to use the same ball, no exceptions.

Dumb idea, I think. It'll benefit some more than others. Bowling still lets players use balls that fit their release. The ball in golf is personal equipment. What next - everyone has to use the same flex and length of shaft, and the same clubheads?

[DavidFehertysBike]

Tighter fairways, thicker rough and smaller greens is the only way youre going to consistantly slow tour caliber players down. If you just make courses longer and longer, they'll find a way to compensate. The tours need to start challenging tour players accuracy more, instead of the length of their johnsons.

[goblue107501]

One thought that I had was to make changes to the course for each round. Most of the courses have 4 or 5 tee boxes that they could use. Maybe one day you have a par 3 that plays 220 and the next day it gets moved to 175. Or a par 4 is 490 on day one, but day two it is 405, then day three it is 440, then day four it is 475. A par 5 might be 600 yards and hard to reach in two, but one day it gets shortend so they can reach in two, but it brings more hazards into play off the tee.

I think by doing this, you will force the players out of a comfort zone. How many times do you hear an announcer say on Sunday that player A has "hit a 3 iron just short of the fairway bunker each day this week". It might challange the player to at least think about the shot that they want to hit each day on each tee. If the tee is pushed back maybe they hit driver, if it is forward they might hit an iron. Either way, they can't just stand on a tee box and hit the same club every day. It might bring a little more course management into each round.