The good, the bad, and the ugly of the PGA Tour
Part 2 - The Bad
As I said in the good segment, you don’t hear people write
about all the good the PGA Tour does.
That’s because writing about these things doesn’t sell. They like to dwell on the problems. It’s like an accident, when it’s bad you
don’t want to look, but find that you do so anyways. In that vein, here are some of the bad points
the Tour brings out and how it impacts the game.
Making course conditions perfect
For 1 week a year a tournament visits a course. For the golf course superintendent, it is 51
weeks of preparation for the event. One
bad comment during that week can mean a person’s job. Course conditions have to be perfect, or as
close as possible given Mother Nature.
So what we see at these courses is state of the art technologies. You have Sub-Air systems that keep the greens,
and in some cases fairway, at the proper moisture and firmness. Bunker sand that has been trucked in for
miles so they players get a perfect lie.
(Did we forget that these are hazards?)
And greens that are mowed to lowest heights possible to provide the best
surfaces.
So a golfer or club member sees this on TV and thinks his
course should always be like that. They
complain to their superintendent and put stress on them to keep the course in
tip-top shape. Courses spend more money
than they need to on bunker sand hoping it will do the same for their game as
for the pros. We just keep pushing
everything to the limit before something breaks and the person is booted out
the door.
All this does is increase the cost of playing the game. These added expenses to make the course
perfect get added to the cost of a round of golf. And when the course can’t cover the expenses,
they either cut the budget and the condition suffers, a management company comes
in, or it gets sold.
Slow Play
Slow play is always a topic on the Tour. But nobody will ever do anything about
it. Brandt Snedeker had a great idea
that other day. He basically said, “Start enforcing a penalty”. Golfers, and
especially kids, see guys checking the wind several times, getting yardages
down to the fractions, and reading putts from six angles and they start to do
the same thing. Tell me how a twosome or
threesome of Tour players, who take 70 or less strokes a round, don’t have to
look for their golf ball or rake a bunker, take over 4 hours to play a round of
golf. I know they are playing for a lot
of money, but many of these guys make more money off the course then on the
course. Brandt’s right, give a penalty
and it will get cleaned up.
There may be more, but I'm going to dwell on that. In the next blog we'll talk about the ugly.
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