The NEW LOOK of Championship Golf
championship staff want it. Pinehurst has 1,100 irrigation heads on Course No. 2, but only 450 of them will be used—all down the middle of the fairway. As the fairway bleeds out into the peripheral sandy waste areas, the surface gradually fades to brown. It’s all part of a very different ap-
proach to championship golf. What once was an emphasis upon stringent, narrow setups intended to put players through a mental and physical meat grinder is now a more flexible, gradu- ated, naturalistic scheme that rewards strategy, decision making and imagi- native shot making.
Course setups for major cham-
pionships before World War II were very much a matter of the host facil- ity, with little intervention by golf ’s major associations. Micromanage- ment of golf course conditions would have been virtually impossible anyway, since single-row irrigation made water
application spotty at best. And with greens mowing heights at one-quarter of an inch (the equivalent Stimpme- ter speed would have been about 6) and fairway mowing heights around three-quarters of an inch, the major skill for players was adjusting to local conditions. There could be a vari- ance of 2-3 feet on green speeds for a single golf course (had anyone been able to measure it), and by afternoon play, it was common to catch flier lies from the fairway. Many venues were lengthened or
updated on the eve of hosting majors. It was also a matter of keeping up with the steady march of golf equip- ment technology. Innovations such as the advent of the Haskell rubber-core ball in the first decade of the 20th century, or the shift from wood shafts to steel and the adoption of the sand wedge by the mid-1930s all had a dramatic impact on the way vintage
courses challenged premier players. So, too, did swing instruction, with the post-World World II revolution in play, from a hands and arms oriented swing to one where the club was more systematically integrated with the rota- tion of the body as a whole. The one architect who understood this better than anyone was Robert Trent Jones Sr. He was also one of the few designers active in the 1930s who managed to retain his practice in the 1950s. He saw how the older, classic course setups of hole lengths and bun- kering were no longer the challenge they had been in an earlier day. And when he set this vision to work prepar- ing the South Course at Oakland Hills near Detroit for the 1951 U.S. Open, the modernization resonated with the USGA. He moved bunkers into land- ing areas 250-270 yards off the back tees, deepened greenside bunkers and tightened landing areas. The work had
It’s all part of a very different approach to championship golf. What once was an emphasis upon stringent, narrow setups intended to put players through a mental and physical meat grinder is now a more flexible, graduated, naturalistic scheme that rewards strategy, decision making and imaginative shot making.
The 16th hole at Pinehurst #2. SPRING 2014 /
NCGA.ORG / 47
PHOTO: PINEHURST
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