Less rough has made the game more user-friendly. The newly redesigned Poppy Hills eliminated rough.
Club in Centreville, Mich. has come up with the out-of-the-box innovation of its Quik Courses—designated loops within the 7,074-yard championship layout that golfers can buy à la carte as five-hole, seven-hole, nine-hole, or 12- hole rounds. “The fewer holes you play, the less you pay,” owner Bob Griffioen recently told the Wall Street Journal. To further increase participation at Island Hills, families can play for free on Sundays after 4 p.m., and kids under 13 are welcomed for free anytime when accompanied by a paying adult. All of these steps represent progress, but in the face of a dying sport, more
radical thinking is beginning to take hold. It has always been sacrosanct that amateur and pros use the same equip- ment but there is a new groundswell for bifurcation, by which differing equip- ment could make the game harder for elite players and easier for the rest of us. Earlier this year golf ’s ultimate power broker, PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem, created waves when he de- clared, “The whole question of bifurca- tion is always out there to be discussed. Personally, I think in some situations bifurcation is OK.” PGA of America President Ted Bishop, who has staked his tenure on
championing the needsof everyday golfers, was giddy at Finchem’s new open-mindedness. “I think those are pretty interesting and powerful words from somebody of his stature,” said Bishop. “I think that in a lot of ways, it signals what I view to be changing times.” A recent cover story in Golf World reported that various manufacturers are considering bringing non-conforming clubs to market, the USGA be damned. A more fundamental question is being asked: what is golf? Mark King, the kingpin CEO of TaylorMade Golf, has established Hack Golf as a way of crowd-sourcing ideas to make the game different and more fun. If the challenge of getting the ball in a 4.25" hole is too great, perhaps the hole itself needs to be rethought. King has been advocating for a 15" cup, roughly the size of a medium pizza. “Most 100-shooters three- or four-putt every green,” says King. “That’s my only point about the cup. Just as an entry point to the game, if you could cut all those strokes in half, all of a sudden a 100-shooter goes from 100 to 80. That’s pretty exciting! Plus we know that if you were to cut down on half of the putts the game speeds up a lot.” Once a year, Nicklaus’s home course of Muirfield Village stages a 12-hole tournament using 8-inch cups. (For the first British Open, in 1860, Prestwick was a 12-hole layout.) Recently, Island Hills tried out 12-inch cups. Tradi- tionalists may blanch, but they are a dying breed. Literally. “Fast forward 20 years when all the Baby Boomers are extinct, who’s going to play golf?” King asks. Some of us will, for certain. But it is increasingly clear that the game we play is going to be different from the one we know today.
ALAN SHIPNUCK is a senior writer for Sports Illustrated and writes two weekly columns for
Golf.com.
SPRING 2014 /
NCGA.ORG / 53
PHOTO: JOANN DOST
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