There are several things to address here. First of all, the excitement when a player has a four stroke lead going into the final round is the question of whether he can maintain that lead or will he collapse. It's more about mental and emotional pressure than anything else. In this case, DeChambeau played well and many of those chasing him did not. Keegan Bradley folded almost immediately. Had DeChambeau folded like that it might have been more exciting.
The golf course stood up pretty well. The rough seemed as though it was pretty penal. The problem I have with professional golf today is that the ball just goes too far. Although the rough was difficult, it's a lot easier when you're hitting wedges out of it. The biggest problem that these players have today is stopping the ball from the rough. The guys that hit it the longest don't care if they hit it in the rough because they'd rather be hitting a gap wedge from the rough than a six iron from the fairway. I understand that the players have higher swing speeds and that they are bigger and stronger than in the past, but to me, that's just another reason for reducing the length that the ball goes for The PGA Tour, Web.Com Tour and the all of the other high-level tours. There should be a ball for all of us normal human beings and then a tour spec ball for the tour players.
The problem is that we're running out of real estate. In many cases, great courses simply cannot be made any longer. There is no room. This has caused the importance of accuracy to be negated.
I recall seeing Hogan and Nicklaus and other great playing long par fours with a driver and three iron. Today, if a player is hitting more than seven iron second shot into a hole, he's either laid way back, hit a terrible tee shot or is playing a par five. So not only is driving accuracy no longer important, but the length of the holes is no longer important. One of the most famous shots in golf history was Hogan's one iron to the eighteenth green of Merion in the 1950 US Open. He hit it forty feet to seal the deal. In 2013 that hole was lengthened to 528 yards and most players still hit less than 1 iron. The longest players on tour were hitting six and even some seven irons. The winner, Justin Rose, hit a four iron.
As far as bunkers being automatic pars, that's simply not true. The best sand save percentage on the PGA Tour is 66% and the average of the top 150 players is about 50%. It may seem like they get it up and down from bunkers all the time, but we have to remember, most of the players that we see on television are the ones who are playing the best that week. We usually don't see players that don't make the cut or are finishing in 70th place. Those guys are not getting up and down like the leaders are. Besides, automatic pars are not great scores for these guys. The PGA Tour is about making birdies. Hitting into a bunker or missing a green lowers the chances of making birdie significantly and that is a very big deal.
It may seem like some of these courses are easy but if you haven't played them you don't understand. This course looked boring on television. Most parkland type courses do unless they have a lot of tall fescue, extremely penal fairway bunkers or other severe hazards. But I saw several balls out of bounds and several lost balls as well. Dustin Johnson made two triples and a double. Look at what happened to Beau Hostler on the first hole on Sunday. Jordan Speith lost a ball in the rough. Keegan Bradley shot 78. Had DeChambeau done any of that, it certainly would have been a more interesting event. But you can't say that the course presented no challenges.
Twenty six of the 80, 1/3 of the field that made the cut shot over par. It presented some problems for them.
DeChambeau won because he played the best. Sometimes a guy will just run away from the field. Usually, that's only exciting if it's Tiger Woods or some sort of all time record is going to be broken.
But scaling back the distance by introducing a tour ball would make professional golf a lot more interesting.
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Last edited by Dr Winston O Boogie jr; 08-28-2018 at 09:59 AM.
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