.500 is a Failure

Well, at least the R&A got something right this week.  

As you will see from my previous post, I am not a fan of anchoring the club.  I have never been a huge fan of Tiger Woods, but always respected him as a golfer - how could you not?  I simply want to kiss the man when I hear his opinion on anchored putting.   "We swing all other 13 clubs. I think the putter should be the same. It should be a swinging motion throughout the bag."   Brilliant.  This was the basis of the ruling put forth today by the R&A and USGA and was made in the effort to preserve the integrity of the game.  Kudos to all parties involved for making the right decision.

As for the "other" decision this week, I am not a fan.  Having played in a British Amateur, and knowing some folks in the R&A, I highly respect this institution and believe they will act in the best interest of the Old Course.  I simply have a problem in the way that it was executed.  It seemed that there was no time between the announcement of the changes to the time we saw pictures of bulldozers and shovels arriving at the Old Course.  If your local club announced changes and immediately put shovels in the ground, there would no question be some uproar. Any changes to a course of this architectural importance should have been properly communicated to the golfing public, with adequate time for feedback and discussion.  

Golf purists and architects the world over were outraged by the fact that the R&A and St Andrews Links Trust were undertaking renovations to the sacred Old Course.  Tom Doak is even attempting to stop the changes with a petition.  The hash tag #savetheoldcourse lit up twitter world by casual golfers, golf course architects, and professionals.  Furthermore, as someone who was fortunate enough to live in St Andrews for a year while attending graduate school, eventually receiving a masters degree in marketing (and a PhD in Links Golf) I am sure that the people in the town of St Andrews are not fans of these changes.  The seven courses in St Andrews are property of the townspeople, yet I would highly doubt that if this was put to a popular vote, they would agree.

Make no mistake, these changes were made in the efforts of protecting the course from low scoring at the 2015 Open Championship.  If that is the rationale, they're a little late to the party.  Properly protecting the Old Course and many other venues around the world would have been infinitely better served by reining in club technology versus taking a scalpel to a course that Tom Doak coined "an international treasure that should be guarded."  We all just hope that the R&A, Links Trust, and Mr. Hawtree are using a paint brush versus a bulldozer.

Batting .500 would generally be regarded as excellent, but when dealing with issues of such vital importance to the game of golf, anything less than 1.000 average is a failure.  Let's hope all turns out well in St Andrews.

Hit 'em well.
- MG