The USGA is now thinking about the average golfer!
In a recent article (see link at bottom for full article) the USGA is advocating that the old thought process that most architects seemed to subscribe to that hard is good, now they are beginning to swing back to the heritage of golf where every day golfers can enjoy the course if they aren’t so darn hard. The just of the article is that roughs are too penal, fairways are too short and greens are too fast. I have talked to several of our regular players about this subject. I believe that removing over 300 trees was a good thing for the golf course and most concur. The subject of greens speeds is interesting. Taylormade came out with the big cup this year; 15” cups so that beginners can enjoy the game more. See the thinking is if 1/3 of time and strokes are on the green it will be more fun for beginners and speed up play with larger cups. When I spoke to members and kind of put it this way, would you rather have bigger cups or slower greens which would you prefer? The answer was almost always slower greens. I am not advocating slower greens for us, we have never had the lightning quick greens that the really good players would like, we have tried to moderate so as many people can enjoy the course as possible without being at one extreme or the other. I realize that golfers travel from course to course and to have it extremely one way or the other makes it quite difficult to adjust.
Well, I for one am not sure about the idea of big cups; there are a lot of problems with it from management standpoint. One Superintendent said that it took 10 hours to set 9 cups. WOW! That is something we cannot do. Also, as you replace an old cup it will be almost impossible to make a good smooth surface again. So I have an idea that I will be trying this spring so stay tuned. We are going to have a BIG CUP TOURNAMENT ! But it will suprise you how we do it!
But in the meantime the article below is a good read. Let me know your thoughts and lets get some discussion started on it.
http://www.golfcourseindustry.com/gci/021215-USGA-course-setup.aspx