No blog entries for a while... been busy golfing (among other things), which got me thinking...
A lot has changed since the 1970's. Although Mick and the Rolling Stones apparently still "can't get no satisfaction", athletes presumably can (or can come closer) thanks to improved sports equipment technology.
Like the 'hardware' we use in the media business, golf 'hardware' has undergone major changes, too. We've gone from hard spikes to soft spikes and can even now buy golf sandals (I love my new golf sandals by the way!). Lighter graphite shafts are now available. We've gone from wooden woods to metal 'woods'. Now, some of the metal drivers of today are bigger than a Winnebago. And ball engineering technology has not only eliminated cuts (when was the last time a golf ball 'smiled' back at you?) but has also increased distance significantly.
While none of these changes individually is enough to undermine the effectiveness of older golf courses, when combined, we reach a tipping point where, apparently, something's got to give. I noticed that last week, playing Bristol Harbour Golf Course near Canandaigua, New York. They were clearly faced with a challenge: what do you do to keep the game properly challenging in light of the consumer equipment improvements that have made things too easy Having no room to lengthen the holes (a scarcity of bandwidth, you might say), they did a wee bit of out of the (tee) box thinking . [A bit of background first. When built, BHGC followed the common tee arrangement of the day where the red tees, traditionally for the ladies and junior golfers, were the closest to the green, the white tees were further back and were intended for mortal men, and the blue tees were even further back and were intended for the gods of golf: the pros (and other really good golfers).] So, if you can't make the holes longer, how do you make it tougher in the face of new technology? Well, for two of the holes, (number 6 and number 10), they swapped the white tees and the blue tees such that the blue were now the ones closer to the green and the white were the ones that were farther back. In and of itself, that would make the white tees tougher but only serve to make the blue tees easier, not more challenging. BUT, if you then change the blues from a par 5 to a par 4 on those holes, leaving the reds and whites as par 5, the blues become harder, the whites become harder, and the red tees remain the same (I guess they couldn't figure out a way around that). I'm sure this isn't a unique approach and has probably been done at lots of courses, but I admire it as an example of innovative thinking in the face of unmovable constraints.
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