Coronagolfman

Nicklaus had McGregor design a golf ball with aerodynamic limitations some 25 years ago - he had a course at Grand Cayman with limited property so he designed the course to be playable at 9 holes with a regular ball and at 18 holes with his "Grand Cayman Ball". I've got a few sleeves of that ball someplace in my garage - they have a very soft feel and go about 2/3 the distance of a regular ball - freaked out the starter at a local executive course when I took out a driver on the first hole which was a 160 yard par 3 (put it on the front edge). The ball felt more like a regular one as you got closer to the green but was a bit light in feel on the greens. Point of all this experimentation is that no pro playing for his living would feel comfortable with a ball that felt that different from what he has always played with. Might be easier to limit clubhead size or design or shafts to control length of shots than mess with the ball. As it stands now, you might see courses longer than 8000 yards on the tour if you really want to have pros hit anything other than short irons on par 4s or have real 5-shot par 5s - that situation will sure force a lot of good older courses off the tour if they don't have room to push back their tees

Hard to understand how the folks at St. Andrews allowed the building of the Old Course Hotel practically in the right side of the fairway of the Road Hole - prior to the hotel being built there were some old wooden sheds that supposedly were where a local clubmaker would put the wood to cure for his wooden clubs (I think the chaps name was Laurie Achterlonie?) But are the Brits the ones that have the clubhouse at Royal Lytham in play tight behind the green there? As far as the road on the Road Hole, isn't there a leaded road right in the middle of the first and eighteenth fairway that is in play (Granny Clark's Wynd?) Isn't there an OB road just to the right of number 18 or a stone wall OB right next to the 14th? Seems like that is just the charm of St. Andrews.

If you do make it to Tacoma to play Chambers Bay, there is a great restaurant called El Gaucho there that features flaming filet mignon served on large swords - great food and quite a show. Ruth's Chris or Morton's level of pricing but worth it.

Since I've played a lot of golf in Hawaii over the past 30 years have collected a lot of books about about courses over in the islands. What is kind of interesting these days is how many private courses have sprung up on the Big Island, Maui and soon on Kauai. Some 20-25 years ago folks in Hawaii were only concerned with just getting people over to the islands to play golf - green fees were very minimal even for the biggest name courses like Mauna Kea, Princeville or Kapalua - golf then was treated as just another activity to help entice visitors to make the long flight over to the islands and stay a luxury hotels with nice courses on the property. These days there is now a group of private courses around Hualalai on the Big Island which has kind of become the new home of the "Rich and Famous" who have second residences there or even live there year round. Far cry from the '60s when Trent Jones first figured out how to crush the lava to build a foundation for a golf course in the lava fields and build Mauna Kea in a then out-of-way location chosen by Lawrence Rockefeller simply because it had one of the best beaches on the Big Island. Nowadays it appears that many of the more monied folks on the west coast from LA or SF areas just hop their private jet or grab a first class airline ticket to make the easy 5 hour trip to Hawaii as opposed to hopping in the car to drive to Monterrey or Palm Springs to find warm weather golf in the wintertime. Also have a fairly substantial collection of books on golf course design and old Shell Wonderful World of Golf VHS tapes found over the years

Used to design lots of courses on the old Jack Nicklaus Course Designer Software from Accolade. Great piece of software - pretty much allowed you to build whatever terrain features you wanted simply and easily (latter versions of course designer software way too complicated). Then you could play the course using the Nicklaus game program. Loads of fun - perhaps when I retire I will take a run at trying to get that older program to work on current systems (I'm guessing that older software will not just easily drop into more modern systems) or just find some older system to run it on again.

There is sometime quaint and charming about the 18th at St. Andrews where it practically is in the town itself with hotels, pubs and stores just across the street. Yes, as finishing holes it isn't in the pantheon of the toughest in all of golf - but with the Valley of Sin it certainly is not a pushover birdie or even a certain par if the pin is tucked up close to the valley. As in perhaps the best traditions of links golf in the Isles, the hole just kind of happened because it is in the most logical place - in this case returning to the clubhouse. That Old Tom Morris had the ingenuity to make the most perfect use of the one golfing hazard available to him on the hole is just another indication of the brilliance of the man as a designer in making the best hole with the least amount of earth to be moved.

Regress from winning two in a row, almost a grand slam? Most likely Not win any major 2016? Wouldn't bet against JS winning at least one - guys that have figured out how to win at Augusta usually are better bets to contend there going forward than newbie contenders there; Oakmont greens require a good lag putter being firm and spacious - JS is good at that Will be an exciting year for the majors as there are now a cadre of good players at midpoint in their careers (Day, McIlroy, Stenson, Johnson, Fowler, A. Scott) with young guys like JS or older guys like Phil or Zack or Furyk still in the mix

Lived in OC/IE area for most all of my 60+ years - there is a huge variety of courses available for all pocketbooks and purposes (full round or just 9-12 holes twilight) Here's a quick listing for above areas based on price: 1. Expensive ($200+) Pelican Hill (two courses) - ocean views, Fazio designs, top of line golf experience - Newport Coast/OC Trump - ocean views, nice facilities, Pete Dye course - Palos Verdes Peninsula/LA 2. Upper Mid-range ($100+) Oak Creek - classic Fazio design, very good conditions, minimal dining facilities, nice practice area - Irvine/OC LA National - Nicklaus target course built in river bottom terrain - on grass on rocks - Sunland/LA Monarch Beach - Seaside Trent II course, two holes right on ocean, rest is condo golf - Dana Point/OC Pechanga - Arthur Hills layout, some huge carries off the tee, next to big casino - Temecula/IE 3. Lower Mid-range (60+) Black Gold - Arthur Hills course, hillside with lots of forced carries, very tight - Yorba Linda/OC Empire Lakes - fun Palmer design, lots of water, open off the tees, easy walk - Ontario/IE Eagle Glen - mountain goat course, very large and nice greens, lots of forced carries - Corona/IE Mile Square Golf Course (two courses) - traditional golf design, easy to walk, ocean breezes - Fountain Valley/OC Griffith Park (two courses) - busy LA munis, lots of mature trees, easy to walk - Griffith Park/LA Oak Quarry - built in old quarry, some amazing views - Rialto/IE Brookside Park (two courses) Right next to Rose Bowl, mature trees, easy walk - Pasadena (of course)/LA 4. Bargain El Prado (two courses) spotty fairway conditions, greens are not too bad, $10 walking twilight rate - Chino/IE Los Serranos (two courses) South is a long and tough test, North is less so - Chino/IE Costa Mesa (two courses) Traditional layouts, one is very short, afternoon breezes - Costa Mesa/OC Leaving out a whole bunch of courses but these should give you an idea of whats there

One of the earlier Shell WWOG shows was filmed at Banff - it featured some Canadian pro and ......... Jack Burke. For some reason back when VHS copies of the Shell shows were available this was one that was never available. Never any reason given for why it wasn't released like most of the others.

Go play Chambers Bay in Tacoma - the course is so firm there that they allow you to take your trolley right across the greens and tess. By the way, they only allow electric carts on the course for those who can provide medical evidence of need (be it a player or a caddie!) - all others walk. So bring a small bag and put it over your shoulder or on one of the complimentary trolleys.

Find the Hualalei Resort on the Big Island, its just a little ways North of the Airport on the coast highway - then go across the highway from Hualalei and you will find a golf course there - that is the Tom Fazio private course for the Kukio residential complex which sits next to Hualalei - then go even further up the hill from the Kukio course and you will find Nanea. You can find some photos of the course on David Mclay Kidd's golf course architecture site. Another fun search if you are looking at the Hawaiian Islands from your favorite mapping site is to go to Kapula and see if you can find the remnants of the Kapalua Village Course which was closed some 15 (?) years ago - real shame as that course had some of the best views of Molokai from a very pristine environment with only one or two houses on the entire golf course. Best day of golf I ever had was on this course - 55 holes in one day (I guess the lack of business was why they ultimately closed it as most resort guests wanted to play the brand new Plantation course). Too bad though - the Village was a Palmer design and Arnie had a number of long par 4's with extremely elevated tees which really allowed one to hit out and see a very long ball flight (something Coore and Crenshaw copied at the Plantation) Here is a homage to that course: http://bdavidcathell.com/LAHP/Archives/2010/LAHP_100426/Life_After_HP_100426.htm

Forget Augusta - CBS has pretty much televised every blade of grass of that course over the years. What about Cypress Point where the only view that most of us get is behind one of those nice little wooden fences with the "friendly" placard saying Stay Off - Private Property ..... Or Seminole in Florida which is supposed to be one of Donald Ross' finest courses Or perhaps Nanea which is Charlie Schwab's private course on the Big Island open only to him an his cronies (and apparently sometimes kids on the golf team from a local high school)

Regarding the comment that Jack or Arnie or Tiger or Norman can design an easy course for average players and a tough course for players in the same design is a statement that I would quibble with. I think for highly skilled golfers like the foursome mentioned you will find that generally the greens on their golf courses will be more heavily fortified with mounds or sand or water or all three and regardless of how short the shots to those greens might be for players playing from shorter tees those courses will still be tougher than ones where there are "open" sides to the greens or where the greens are extremely large and easy to hit (as you see in many of Tom Fazio's designs for instance). Additionally, persons hiring any of the above 4 as designers will most likely be expecting a design that will generate some buzz or interest in the golfing community for some signature hole or design features or some natural setting not found elsewhere. Great example of the theory that shortness of a course does not make it that much easier is Chambers Bay - played it two years before the Open and even with all the par 3s being played at yardages under 150 yards, the slopes in those greens as well as their speed and firmness made par still challenging even hitting a short iron into them; on the par 4 holes the ones uphill were still very long with the slopes eating up a lot of roll on the ball and on the downhill ones the carries in genear were very tough to judge and led to layups where the shots to the greens become longer and tougher. A very tough course in the Open and a very tough course even from the white tees without anything on the line.

I've been trying to gear up my game and my bank account to make another trip back to Pebble - last time I was there to play golf was with my late father in the early 90's - we shared a room at the Lodge and as luck would have it it was in the wing of the Lodge that looks out on the 18th green from behind (I think it was called the Sloat wing). When we got up that morning we grabbed our coffee and walked back up the 18th fairway out to the 17th green watching and listening to the otters in the bay (that's the one nice thing about a golf course that doesn't have any way to start on the back nine - nobody hits #18 until around 10AM!) Have played Pebble 3 times - was a single digit index back then and best I could do was 81 so hovering now on the low end of double digits (10-12) figure I need to work a bit more on consistency off the tee before taking on the demands of PB (or Spyglass for that matter). We paid about $165 a round at PB while staying at the Lodge back then (Lodge was about $200 a night) - caddies were about $40 a bag plus tip and I would heartily agree with posters that say a caddie is a must. Of course those prices from the 90's sound like a cruel joke now - most recent offer I saw from the Lodge was $2300 for two nights lodging including a round at Pebble and a round at Spyglass or Spanish Bay and that was in the middle of winter when the weather can be very daunting. I have heard that there is something called a "Duke's Club Membership" one can buy which is offered by the old Del Monte Golf Course which offers significant discounts at Spyglass and Spanish Bay courses and even gets you on a mailing list for some specials at the Lodge which might provide a slightly less expensive chance to play Pebble - wondering if anybody else out there has such a membership and if it provides all of the benefits it advertises. Looking forward to maybe one more chance to play at Pebble as there really is nothing else like it in the golf world I have ever seen.

I would think there would be a number of PGA players that saw the late 90's versions of WWOG but most likely not the 60's versions unless their dad or mom was a fanatic about the series with a bunch of golf VHS tapes in the closet. The thing is that since there is now a golf tournament every week somewhere in the world the modern player just goes where he wants to when he wants to and can make a lot more money than any made-for-TV exhibition would be willing to pony up. Back when the Shell series was being done in the 60's or even in the late 90's the PGA tour season was only some 8 months (Jan-Aug) so PGA tour players would gladly go play an exhibition for a guarantee of travel expenses and $50K in the offseason. For the top dogs nowadays, a $100K or even a $300K payday might not be enough to get them to sign up for such an event given their bank accounts and opportunities for income from various endorsements. I believe the other factor working against a revival of such matches is the fact that there are so many venues that are now being covered over 18 holes for tournaments that the allure of a series that was going to show you all of the holes (which was not done until this century) of a particular famous course would be considerably dampered by modern TV coverage which offers 1st tee to 18th green coverage. And in terms of being able to see many courses around the world never usually seen, worldwide coverage of all the world's pro golf tours has provided glimpses at courses from Africa to Indonesia to South America to Russia, not to mention many of the great courses in the US or UK that had once been described only in writing but now are being used as tour stops. I fear that we will most likely not see any organization willing to go the route of Shell or any other company to produce such a golf TV series again.

The original series took place in the 1960's and was of course sponsored by Shell Oil - while originally featuring famous courses like Pine Valley or St. Andrews and some perhaps not so famous courses from around the world in places like Africa or Southesast Asia, the series at one point came under the influence of Rockefeller's "RockResorts" and thus became an advertisement for new resort courses designed by Robert Trent Jones to be found at those resorts (Dorado Beach, Mauna Kea, Fountain Valley (Virgin Islands), Royal Kaanapali to name a few). A number of other resort owners jumped on board so the parade of new (and not necessarily famous) courses continued with the likes of Cotton Bay (Bahamas) and El Conquistador (Puerto Rico). Of course, there was still a number of "name" venues like Pebble Beach (several times), St. Andrews, Mid-Ocean Club, Royal County Down, Royal Melbourne and Medinah that were used as well. The series ended sometime in the late 60's and was resurrected in the '90s by a production company I believe was owned by Jack Nicklaus and not surprisingly, featured a number of appearances by Jack and his contemporaries on courses designed by Jack and associated with resorts or clubs owned by some of his cronies. The shows also began to feature the "young guns" of the tour at that time including Fred Couples, Phil Mickelson and Payne Stewart from USA and European stars like Ernie Els, Sergio Garcia, Greg Norman, Nick Faldo and Nick Price. Eventually the idea of matches like those in the Shell format gave way to the Skins Game series which existed for a decade in one form or another only to be replaced by the more circus-like atmosphere of staged exhibition matches involving the hottest player in the sport, Tiger Woods. There are very few of the earlier Shell series matches from the 60's available on DVDs from what I have found - the Ben Hogan vs Sam Snead match is one of the few that was put on DVD. Those earlier original matches were most all available for a number of years on VHS but I have not seen many of them offered online in recent times (I have about 15-20 of the 60's matches on VHS). The more recent vintage matches from the 90's were available for awhile on DVDs (in some cases a whole year of 4-5 Shell matches was available on a DVD set) but I have not seen that many of those available these days. Somebody else may know of some internet sites were the VHS or DVD versions can be found. There is one other series of matches that took place in the 1960's that you might find interesting if you like the Shell WWOG series - they were called Challenge Golf and featured Arnold Palmer and Gary Player playing against another pair of players - one of those matches was Arnold and Gary versus Ken Venturi and Byron Nelson at Pebble Beach; another was against Jack Nicklaus and Phil Rodgers at LA North. And of course, there is always the venerable Big Three Golf series that featured Arnold, Jack and Gary at Firestone CC in Ohio and at Mauna Kea in Hawaii (where Gary had to hit driver off the back tee at famed #3 just to carry the ocean from the 250 yard back tee designed by Trent Jones just for that match and which now has been restored with a plaque commemorating that event) Good hunting if you are looking for these older videos or scouring the Golf Channel program listings to record these terrific glimpses into what the PGA tour looked like prior to the desecration of the game and its classic courses through new technology.