Golf: The Game Has Changed Over My Years of Playing

 I was reading an article in Golf Digest that talked about how the science of agronomy as it relates to turf has influenced the design of new golf courses. This got me to thinking.  When I started playing golf, golf construction and architecture was a fairly straight up thing.  Ground was sometime graded and contoured, greens were pushed up from the given landscape and given contours with no layering for drainage, bunkers were formed in the fairways and around the greens trees were planted or removed to line the fairway and bermuda grass seed layed down and bent grass planted on the greens.  That was it-well, it may have been a bit more complicated than that.

Building a golf course has changed since then and the science of agronomy is a critical part of the design of new courses. No longer do you have green construction which is the ground being pushed up and contoured to make a green.  Today's greens are layered  in order for the green to drain in rainy seasons, or when they are siphoned during the hot seasons to keep the grass cool and water does not puddle on the green.  Hybrid grasses such as zoysia and hybrid bermuda are now used, not just the plain old bermuda that was planted on older courses.  Trees are actually being removed from older courses in order for the sun to hit to the grass easier and to make watering more efficient. How architects build golf courses and the science that goes into building is one of the big changes that have come to golf over the years. Much of golf has changed over the years.

I am of the opinion-I may be wrong but hey, I'm over 70-that today's young golfers are not taught the game of golf. This is a pet peeve of mine.  Their vision of the game is to take out a driver, hit it as far as you can and then take a wedge to the green and one putt for a birdie. When I was learning the game, my pro was very adamant about me learning the game. He taught me the importance of playing strategical golf  such as where to hit the ball into position when going for the green wasn't exactly a high percentage shot. More importantly, he taught me how to estimate distance and know what a certain club would do and how to hit shots that would get me out of trouble and what to do if I did get me into a situation where I had to take my medicine-more about this later. To this day, I can estimate a distance to the pin to within three feet.  It's a lot of fun seeing my playing partner with a GPS device's mouth drop when he asks me a distance and my estimate is to within three feet of his GPS's reading. 

 Above all else, the short game is what the game is all about. "Drive for show, putt for dough" is more than just a silly saying. Inside 100 yards is my office. I carry four different wedges and am deadly with  the 100 yard bump and run.  I play a variety of shots from within 100 yards depending on the conditions. you just don't see many younger golfers being taught the skill of the short game.  To this day, I can't look a garbage can in the face.  You can read more about this when my book is published soon, but I used to have to put 30 golf balls into a garbage can from 40-100 yards in my lessons with my pro.

I don't want to get into this too deeply because it is a discussion that can go on for hours. What about the difference between today's clubs and thos clubs that we played forty years ago. I remember playing my persimmon woods, that by the way were really made out of wood and the extra still stainless steel shafts that they were tied on to. I took my driver that I used to play down off the wall and swung it the other day.  It was like swinging a telephone pole, but there was nothing like hearing the sound of the ball coming off that persimmon head when a ball was struck well. I still can't believe how small the heads are. They hit a heck of a lot different than the graphite shafted, big headed PXG driver I play now.

I used to play extra stiff steel shafted irons with very small blade heads.  I loved the performance that I go out of those clubs.  As I got older, I didn't play as much so I went to a midsize clubhead with steel stiff shafts and then transitioned into graphite because my back was deteriorating. The game to me just wasn't the same, but I couldn't swing as good as I used to because of my hurting back. Also, the lofts on the irons changed to what was before a 9 iron was now a 81/2 as far as flight and distance.  

Have I mentioned the ball yet?  I guess I haven't.  How many of you have hit a Titleist Balata 90 compression ball.  It was a ball that had a real odd sense of humor in that it was you friend if you hit it well, but after a few holes when you hit a bad shot, it smiled and laughed back at you. Those of you that have hit one know what I mean.  The cover was natural rubber and was wound with rubber bands.  The ball had an inner core that was a little rubber ball that was either solid or filled with a liquid substance. It cut very easily.  Today's ball is solid with a urethane cover that does not cut easily.

I guess that the winds of change are to be expected after more than 55 years of playing the game.  Technology is a big part of the game now, which I'm not sure that is a good thing but I do know that it changes the way the game is played and taught. It will be interesting to see the changes that will come about over the next 55 years.   

  

Viva Las Vegas: Golf In the Kingdom, Courses I have Played In Las Vegas-Part 4

 How interesting is a seven hour trip in the car through twenty miles on the other side of "The Boondocks"? Let me tell you, it's not very entertaining. How many rocks and volcanic cones can you see when they all look the same. This is basically what you get when you drive from Fresno to Las Vegas.  It is miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.  There are some interesting attractions along the way such as the tallest thermometer in the world, which is not always working, and of course The Mad Greek in Baker, California but not much else.  You have to have a good reason to make the exciting transit to Las Vegas. I don't mind flying, but I still hate Vegas.

In my last post, I talked about how I took part in the first of four annual PGCC Coaches Tournament and Clinic. I must say here that the conference turned into mostly a tournament where the majority of the almost 200 coaches played in the tournament but didn't stay for the clinic.  Being one of the 20 or so coaches that stayed for the clinic, I must say that I learned a lot about coaching golf from the instructors. Believe me, it was not a waste of time and I had plenty of beside the pool time back at the hotel.

I looked forward to the second year of participating in the event. This particular year the tournament was played over all three of the Stallion Mountain courses. We didn't get to play one of the courses last year as I said in my last post so I was excited to play the third course, and it was a lot of fun to play-but nothing to write home to mom about. After playing the on the third day, we packed up the car and headed for home.

After a long school year the summer vacation finally arrived And this was going to be my third trip to the PGCC Coach's Clinic.  This year's lineup of courses was two days at Stallion Mountain and the third day at Desert Pines in Las Vegas.  I am not going to say that I was excited to be going back to Las Vegas and The PGCC Tournament but I was ready to go because we were going to play a different golf course than Stallion Mountain for the third course and I was curious what the course was like. 

Stallion Mountain was..Stallion Mountain. I must admit though it was good to play the courses because I had played all three courses and they were not new to me.  Desert Pines was a different story. It was different and unlike any of the courses we had played in past tournaments.

What a total change of pace.  Yes, this was a course that was suggestive of courses you would find in the Carolinas such as Pinehurst and did not have a "Las Vegas" feel at all. There were tall Carolina Pines outlying the fairways and collection bunkers as well as lakes came into play. Desert Pines falls in a high place on my courses I have played.  I haven't gone back to Desert Pines, and I hear that the course has been neglected.  I don't know if that is true, but I have seen some of the reviews on GolfPass and they seem to reflect this.

I would be remiss-what does that mean, by the way-if I didn't share this story about my playing Desert Pines.  We of course were in Las Vegas and this was the last day of the Tournament.  In a rare form of misjudgement, I decided to slip out of the hotel room and do some enjoyment of the Las Vegas nightlife. I gambled too much and imbibed in what native Americans call "firewater". You could say that I was a bit "in the bag" when I returned to the hotel room at 2:00 AM or 02:00 for those of you serving in the military. Tee off time was 8:00 or in 6 hours. 

Yes, I did make it to Desert Pines in enough time to go to the driving range and hit some balls. Let's just say that the fog had not cleared over the Golden Gate Bridge as far as my body was concerned.  I walked onto the hitting area and picked out a stall.  The hitting stations were not grass but turf and I noticed there were no ball filled triangle of balls to hit.  There was a ball sitting on a rubber tee on the right side of the turf square? I said to myself what the heck and I hit the ball that was on the tee.  Whoosh and off it went out onto the range.

I turned away from where the ball was and asked someone a question.  When I turned back towards where the first ball was, there was another ball on the tee. At this point I began to doubt my sanity.  I knew that I had hit that ball off that tee and there were no more balls. But yet, a ball was sitting on the tee as big as you please. I knew I was in pretty bad shape and was slightly hungover, but I didn't think I had lost it that bad. Like Columbo in a good mystery, I was going to solve this. I was a little beat up mentally and physically I know, but I wasn't ready for the looney ward just yet. hey, I'm from Fresno and now Merced.  These things don't happen in my neck of the woods.

Here's what I did. There was a ball sitting on the tee. Thwack, I hit it off the tee and off it went majestically into the air.  I froze my eyes on the tee to see what was going to happen. The tee went down into the ground and then up comes another ball on the tee. There was a ball feeding system where the balls came up from a machine under the hitting area.  Wow, what high technology. I was still sane and the mystery was solved.  I was not losing my mind, but that didn't cure the intense hangover. 

I want to stop here because this blog is getting a bit too long and I don't want to lose you.  In my next post I will share with you my fourth trip to the  PGCC coaches Clinic/Tournament which was my last year participating in it. I will also talk about the three other courses I played in Las Vegas-Paiute, Bear's Best and Legacy- but on separate occasions. Stay tuned for Viva Las Vegas: Golf In The Kingdom Part 5 coming to a computer near you on The Golf Course Travel Bag.