Better golf on better courses???

[wildcorndog]

I've hit some of my best "shots" at nice courses but usally I keep score by the number of balls I lose

[imtomtomim]

I definitely play better when the condition of the course is better. The game is more predictable and it seems like it would be a missed opportunity not to play well on a well groomed course.

[Kcas77]

I typically dont play better because most of the time its a new course. But one course I play at alot in the summer I definatly play better.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

Most of us play courses which spend somewhat less than Augusta National in maintaining the fairways, greens, tees and bunkers. How can we possibly play like pros if we don't have the same opportunities to shave strokes off our games?

Most of us play without thousands of people lining the fairways and barricading trouble behind the green. Most of us play without caddies. We lose balls, are forced to putt on unsqueegee-ed greens, have to listen to golf carts, carry our own bags, and suffer any number of annoying conditions and distractions that would force a touring pro to storm off the course in a huff -- "Nobody can play under these conditions!".

If we're going make things fair, we need to play like "virtual" pros, treating each situation as if we were Ernie Els.

Rules for Virtual-Pro Play on Public Courses.

I. General pro-visions concerning actual course conditions.

A. Any area of the course not covered with a uniform, healthy, dry, perfect layer of high-quality turf will automatically be ruled Ground Under Repair.

B. Dense wooded areas lining the fairways will be red-lined as parallel hazards instead of being areas where a ball might be lost with stroke and distance penalty.

C. Traps and bunkers will be considered "de facto" raked and smoothed. Any ball settling into an old footprint or divot or depression may be lifted and replaced after smoothing the sand. (When's the last time you saw a pro play from an unraked trap?).

D. If casual water exists anywhere on the golf course, then the ball may be placed on a tee in the fairway, all day long. Under muddy conditions, the ball can be lifted cleaned and placed.

II. Pro-visions of the "virtual" golf course.

A. One cannot under any circumstances lose a golf ball. (When's the last time you saw a pro lose a golf ball? The last one I remember was Olazabal a lot of years back. He had lost his ball, possibly in a palm tree, but, being a professional, he was allowed a free drop with a clear shot to the green even though he couldn't find his ball. This incident may be used as a guide in determining how to proceed when
your ball may or may not be lost in a tree.)

B. Most of the courses we play do not have grandstands, so we need to "holodeck" them into the scenery. At the 9th, 17th and 18th holes there will be "virtual" grandstands. These grandstands will cover the worst trouble to the sides and behind these greens. Any ball landing beneath a virtual grandstand may be dropped 15 yards closer to the hole with a clear shot to the green. (One may use some Ernie Els incidents at the 1994 US OPEN as a guide in determining the drop area.)

C. No shot can reach a hazard that is behind a green, due to the virtual gallery. Any ball that overshoots a green may be brought to the back apron.

D. No sticks, stems, leaves or other detritus will be present on the virtual putting surfaces. Most of the courses we play do not have lackey-boys with leaf-blowers to clear off the greens before we putt. On
all greens covered with leaves and sticks, the player may try for a one-putt after which the ball may be pocketed for a virtual two-putt.

E. Any well-struck shot that fails to go the proper distance due to misjudging the yardage may be placed where it should have landed. This will emulate having Bones look up the yardage in his notebook. (Real pros do not have to be able to judge distance since they have caddies that do it for them.)

F. Every player will be given a "virtual caddy" deduction of 3 shots to make up for shots missed because of wet grips, dirty golf balls, mudpacked grooves that fail to deliver backspin, the distractions of
wrestling with umbrellas and towels and the hassles of chasing down thrown clubs.

G. Because pros do not have to be able to read greens (their caddies do it for them), any well-struck putt that misses due to a misread will be considered holed.

III. Etiquette and demeanor on the course.

A. Each player must throw at least one minor snit fit during the round in response to a virtual fan upsetting his swing rhythm.

B. Each player must delay play for at least ten minutes during the round waiting for virtual rulings from the virtual Marshals.

C. Any group finishing in less than 4:45 minutes will be penalized 2 shots per player.

D. All balls will be marked, lifted, and cleaned before every putt, no matter how short. Failure to mark, lift, and clean before each putt will be penalized 1 shot per instance.

E. Before each full shot, both on the tee and on the fairway, there must be a 2 minute virtual discussion with the virtual caddy. There must be at least one club-change decision per hole, i.e., the original club selected must be returned to the bag. (This does not preclude eventually using the original club selection, only that the club must have been returned to the bag at least once before striking the ball.)

F. All players should glare at the virtual camera whenever a poor shot is played. (No bad score is ever the failure of the professional, rather every errant shot can be blamed on the pro's source of income -- TV camera man, fan, or the host course/sponsor's failure to provide faultless playing conditions.)

So there you have it. You, too, can play like a pro. Whether you have found par a stretch or breaking 100 a life-long goal, I hope this post will provide the ticket to better scores. Master the techniques of the touring
professionals. Play like a virtual pro, and let's see if we can post some good numbers for a change.

(Edited from a old USENET posting of mine. This is not plagiarism.)

[flopdarock]

better golf on better courses?
a good player can play on anything...
with that being said...
i think its absolutely true to a certain extent...
its pretty tough to score low when over half of the areas your ball lands arent very good lies even if youre smack in the middle of the fw...
but when youre so used to playing a crap course and then you go to a decent course... its like night and day...
like going from surfing 3 foot mush on the east coast to 20 foot faces on the north shore...
some guys cant handle it and others eat it up...
i cant hit balls off of hardpan cuz the club just bounces off the ground... id rather pay the money to have better playing conditions

[kevin.chan]

Greens condition too.

If those green are sicked and having patches here and there , you putting will hurt !

[flopdarock]

Greens condition too.

my brother is a pretty good player but he hates muni greens... he's used to really fast greens and cant putt on slow ones

[B-Con]

I find that I play better on better courses. I find the greens easier to putt on [...]

I have to agree. Green quality can make a noticable difference, especially on 5-ft putts. I've had so many 5-ft putts on poor greens that were not unreasonable to make, but the green caused the ball to bounce around and end 6in from the hole. It's maddening.

I don't want to blame missed putts on the green, but I've had quite a few that I could easily say I would've made on a different green. I don't play courses with bad greens. I'm not snobby or even have high standards, but bad greens just aren't worth it.

[jdjanda]

I'll test this theory tomorrow. I've never broken 100 and I'm playing a fairly nice course. It all hinges on keeping the drive in play, I worked on my 3 wood today but I hit the driver more consistent.

[Dr. Strangeclub]

Apparently, my above attempt at humor (playing like a "virtual pro") did not have the success here that it did back in 1996, on the old USENET rec.sport.golf group. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that, back then, almost all the internet computers were at university computer labs, research labs and military installations, and the home internet connection was in its infancy. Anybody with a home computer connected to the internet back then was probably a geek or a nerd, like me, and those connected at work or in school were generally college graduates or college students. In other words, I was among people with a shared background. Now, just about everybody has access to the web, and thesandtrap membership is more representative of the population at large. (Indeed, I haven't been here long enough to know, but there is almost certainly a larger international presence here than in rec.sport.golf as well.) My apologies for boring you.

But this thread seems to be a place to say what I have to say about the discrepancies in course conditions between rich and poor, pro and amateur. The "joke" above contained certain elements of truth, at least from my perspective. Rich (by my standards) people suggest that I play a "good" course instead of the ones I do play. A) There are waiting lists for these courses, B) The people who play at them are annoying snobs, for the most part, C) My regular playing partner is female (4time low gross club champion) and at least one of these "good" courses does not allow females on the course on the weekends until after 2 in the afternoon. Yeah, I REALLY want to join there. D) The really nice public courses around here, of which there are quite a few, are packed with hackers and golfing know-nothings. Being a member at one of these public courses is a total waste of money, since between the leagues, scrambles and junior golf matches, the course is closed half the time or more, and when you can play, it generally takes over 5 hours.

So what's to be done? While what I said before was tongue-in-cheek, the fact of the matter is that most public courses are not particularly well-maintained in my experience, and far more beat up and over-played than private ones. We might not be able to afford better conditions, but I don't see why we have to suffer with bad ones. The "winter rules" of the USGA, which are there to accommodate poor conditions at the beginning of the season, should apply all year to many courses. In professional tournaments, similar conditions would lead them to tee it up in the fairway, as they do from time to time in wet weather that many of you would slog through playing it down.

Let's face it, the game is sadistic to its core. Most of my playing days were spent playing it down for money or in tournaments, so I know whereof I speak. I almost got to +1 before I had to go in the service, in 1966, so I was once a decent player -- scratch was a bit harder to come by back then, I think, maybe because good instruction wasn't so readily available. The past 20 years (although I won the senior division of the city amateur here a couple of years in a row when I became eligible), I have quit playing in individual tournaments completely and go for scrambles instead (MUCH more fun!). But I've also stopped putting up with the frustration of lousy conditions. The pros and rich people never face them, why should I? I always bump the ball these days, unless I'm playing a course with nice fairways.

What's been said here is pretty much in line with my experience. Better courses have better greens, that not only putt better but hold shots into the green better. The sand is better, so bunker shots are easier and your odds of landing in a footprint are less. The fairways are generally more closely mown (and where there is no grass, they politely spray paint a circle around it for a free drop), so iron shots are more predictable and bite better. All in all, private courses are easier to "play" than public ones, it seems to me, although the groomed courses seem also to be a bit more difficult layouts in general.

Better golf? Almost certainly, for me. Better scores? Maybe not.

[flopdarock]

played today on a course that... lets just say it was more beneficial for you to hit your teeshot into the first cut of rough rather than the middle of the fw's... the first cut of rough had some what of a cushion/ the middle of the fw's were like cement... if you could keep your drive relatively straight it was easy to get a long one leaving you wedges to the greens... but actually hitting the ball with a wedge off of cement was pretty tricky...
i hit 10 of 14 fw's... the 4 i missed were in the first cut and i made par or better on those holes...

the condition of a course makes a huge difference... but some guys that play great on a crappy course might not do as well on a decent course and vice versa

[WUTiger]

Yes and no.

On great courses, you get fewer weird bad breaks.

I remember a lesser course I played: Hit a drive right down the middle of a tight, 428 yd. par 4. Lands in center of fairway, and then richochets 90-degrees left into the treeline. Turns out a clay drainpipe had surfaced in the fairway for about 15 feet; found brick-red mark on my ball. After a penalty stroke to drop my ball from behind a tree, and a too-strong approach, I ended up with a double bogey.

On another lesser course, they had trouble with turf on the No. 12 and 14 greens. They had shored up the left third of each green with a big sheet of plywood, and then covered it with astroturf. My wedge shot on both holes hit with a woody clunk, and then took off across the greens which had a Stimp reading of about 14.

Or, the courses where half the tee boxes haven't had true turf grass for several months. Crazy hanging lies on tee shots.

That said...
* The great courses play better for average golfers from the middle tees. I played Pebble Beach from the tips many years ago, and shot 101.
* Great courses besides having healthy turf grass, also have much healthier rough than the troubled courses I mentioned.

[Maxxthedog]

With better courses come better greens. I think that makes a big difference.
I also noticed that in my mind I get psyched up when I'm playing a harder course.