Excessive golfing dwarfs the intellect. Nor is this to be wondered at when we consider that the more fatuously vacant the mind is, the better for play…Next to the idiotic, the dull unimaginative mind is the best for golf.
Sir Walter Simpson
The Art of Golf (1887)
Quoted in: Grounds For Golf
Geoff Shackelford (2003)
The indelible image Rory brings to winning these major championships in a rout is a huge smile, something fans find incredibly endearing and fun to root for. His eight-shot victory in the PGA Championship at Kiawah this weekend makes him a “multiple major winner”, number one in the world golf ranking, and a shoe-in to dominate all golf discussion from now through the Ryder Cup.
Jim Nance said at the end of the broadcast that when Rory won the U.S. Open by 8 furlongs at Congressional last summer it brought a smile to the game. Well if that was a smile then this time it is a Cheshire grin. He was 11-under over the last 36 holes and completely dominated the best field of the year on a course that was borderline psychotic. And this was the second time he orchestrated this scenario in a major in the last 14 months.
The fact is that he is just 23 years old and joins a very short list of Jack, Seve, and Tiger who have won two majors at such an early age. He shares with these guys the rare ability, in the heat of a major championship, to hyper focus his attention, block out the distractions that are derailing the competition, and let the gift of his talents produce play that separates him from the field.
What ingratiates him to the viewing public is the unfettered joy he brings to the arena. In contrast to the other guy who wears the red shirt on Sunday and seems to want to strangle a rattlesnake in the process, Rory has a sublime sense of calm as he is disarming the golf course and the field of competitors in pursuit. He has a respectful demeanor to his adversaries and an outward appreciation for the adulation of the fans who acknowledge his accomplishments.
In the post game interviews he shows equal measure of confidence in his ability and humility for what it all really means. When his accomplishments are compared to Jack or Tiger his response is that he is flattered by such comparisons but he feels he has a long way to go before justifying such associations.
He is also cognizant of the fact that his accomplishments make him a role model to thousands of kids around the world who look up to him as the new wunderkind. Instead of seeing this as a burden he says he sees it as an honor and something he keeps in mind as he comports himself every day pursuing his craft.
Anyone who saw his performance this weekend can only be in awe of his ability to compose his talents with such grace under pressure. It is just possible that time and accumulated accomplishments will put him in the category of the greats who have ever played the game. For now we will have to accept that this very bright star is illuminating the golf horizon, there for all of us to gaze on in wonder and thoroughly enjoy.
August, 2012
As is always the case when a professional golf event is being contested on a Pete Dye course, it is as much as much a matter of the players versus Dye as the players against the field. You can fill in the blank yourself because the possibilities are endless as to what will come off of their lips as they head to the courtesy cars each day at this year’s PGA Championship at The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island.
The PGA at Whistling Straits in 2010, The Players every year at Sawgrass, the Women’s U.S. Open at Blackwolf this year…just to mention a few…..the list goes on and on. In all cases it is more than simply a test of golf…..it is the challenge to survive and avoid personal humiliation. In Pete’s view he would have it no other way. His job is to baffle the best players in the game with big challenges, lots of strategic choices, and punitive results if they don’t pass muster.
This should only be their biggest danger of the day (photo: flicker.Adammart)
The Ocean Course may be the sternest test of them all. When Pete and Alice built this course on the sandy shores of South Carolina it was not enough just to route the holes along the ocean between the sand dunes. They actually raised the center of the property to make sure the interior holes would have full view of the ocean and full exposure to the ocean breezes. Add to this their ingenious eye for fashioning real risk and reward holes and this event adds up to a demolition derby in Footjoys.
The course was first built to host the infamous “War By The Shore” version of the 1991 Ryder Cup which brought enmity between the sides to new heights. As you will recall it wreaked it’s share of psychological havoc on a number of highly successful professionals of the day. They could put a Memorial Wall beside the 17th green to commemorate all the rounds that been drowned over the years trying to negotiate that tee shot. Personally, I think it is a hard par from the drop area.
Pete has since been back a number times to tweak the layout in preparation for the 2007 Senior PGA and once again for this championship. It certainly has not gotten any easier as a result.
The Dye’s are the masters of deception when it comes to hiding their intent on a given hole. The Ocean Course is full of this. Fairways that are much more generous than they seem from the tee. Landing areas confined by fall offs to nastiness that you cannot discern from 220 yards away. Undulating table top greens that feed off to seas of undulation six feet below the putting surface. Add to this adjacent waste areas the size of small neighborhoods in Newark (and not a whole lot safer I might add), plenty of native grasses on sandy dunes, and a good measure of marshland from which, as the sign says, you are wise not to even consider trying to retrieve your ball.
Pete has gone so far as to introduce a mysterious new grass-Paspalum-in the green complexes that the pros have never played on. This stuff has a sticky character that will arrest the progress of a rolling ball and make using the bump and run recovery up the side banks of these platform greens a very low percentage shot. Tiger, among others, has expressed that given the number of times you get short sided on a wind blown approach managing this grass will be a significant factor in keeping your scorecard in tact.
Adam Scott in an interview early in the week gave a blunt assessment when asked his impression of the course, “The front nine is a really nice, playable golf course, and then the back nine is not.”
Typically the PGA set ups lead to a score of about 10 under plus or minus a few blows, but this year it will totally depend on the weather. The course has been softened considerably by rain almost every day. Good news is that the greens will be holding. Bad news is the course, which can be played at 7700 yards, could play very long. Besides the obvious issues of thunderstorms interrupting play, there are generally strong winds associated with these low pressure systems. The wind will be the major factor in determining whether these guys can hit the precise shots required to negotiate this house of mirrors.
The post round interviews should be very entertaining indeed.
August, 2012
Simply put this is Dante’s Inferno above ground. Pete Dye has tried and succeeded in producing the most diabolical compilation of golf holes he could conceive with the sole purpose being to humiliate the pros and mere mortals alike. It is safe to say that this course is truly unfair, almost unplayable, and just not alot of fun. It would be better to buy the 1991 Ryder Cup tape on video and enjoy the train wrecks from the comfort of your own home.
Not so much a real test of golf-it is more like an inquisition-meant to break your spirit and mind and bring you to your knees. It amply achieves all of this by the fifth tee. You will notice by the time you are done that all the people in front of you and behind you are trudging slowly like lemmings through the waste areas, head down, shoulders slumped, resigned to their sentence in this demonic golf hell. This is not an experience for the faint of heart.
The course is routed in an S-hook shape which means the first four and last five holes are in the same wind direction and the middle nine are in the opposite direction. The problem here is that if the middle nine are all upwind you will need a medvac helicopter by the fourteenth tee. Since the entire track is totally exposed to the ocean you will get ferocious winds on days that are calm back at the condo. Determining required distance and club selection are a major problem all day long. You can get real tired of hitting your 3-wood 175 into the prevailing breeze.
Pete and Alice pulled out all the stops on this one. You have your massive waste areas like TPC Sawgrass, your signature Dye railroad ties hardening the edges of the hazards, and Alice even raised the fairways on the inland leg of holes adjacent to the ocean to make sure you get the full brunt of the wind effect all day. Much like his other “made to humiliate the pros” tracks at Sawgrass and PGA West, this one is pure punitive target golf. Every tee shot or shot at a green is a forced carry or to a confined arrangement that has a penalty shot or an impossible recovery tied to your lack of success. Some of the adjacent waste areas run the entire length of the hole-and most are from five to eight feet below the playing area-making your extrication from same seriously problematic. Nothing is “kept” here-it is all raw and natural-that presents a beautiful esthetic background to enjoy if you were not in such physical and emotional agony.
Stunning beauty of the long awaited finish at 18 (pga.com)
I have great respect for Pete Dye as an innovative designer who successfully broke the mold of his predecessors Robert Trent Jones and Dick Wilson of designing long, boring heroic courses. But Pete might have slipped over the edge on this one. There are interesting tactical elements with risk/reward decisions attached but the ever presence of stiff Atlantic breezes make it far too punitive to enjoy. As a result, it seems to me that he ended up with a course that is nothing but a scenic and perverse marketing ploy meant to attract the “grip it and rip it” crowd in the golf demographic.
Kiawah Island, South Carolina
Architect: Pete Dye (1991)
Tee Par Rating Slope Yardage
Tournament 72 77.2 144 7356
Ocean 72 73.6 138 6779
Dye 72 72 134 6475
(Click here to review Ocean Course hole-by-hole descriptions)
Like the cyclists in the velodrome at the London Olympics, Keegan Bradley drafted the back nine in the wake of Jim Furyk’s apparent wire-to-wire victory pace passing him on the last leg on the way to a 64 and a stunning come from behind victory in the WGC Bridgestone Invitational.
Playing in the final group with Jim Furyk who set a torrid pace with birdies on the first three holes on Sunday, Keegan just kept himself within sight of the leader until they turned the back nine. Starting with two birdies on the back and a scrambling par on 12 Keegan had that look in his eye that he was not going to be shaken off the leader’s pace.
The key moment was probably at the 16th hole. Louis Oosthuizen who was two back at the time pulled the Tiger Woods Houdini flop shot from the spinach behind the green to make an unlikely birdie and get within one of Furyk. Furyk playing with the confidence that had built his the lead through 69 holes would not be outdone, he make a 25-footer of his own for birdie to maintain his position. Keegan then made a statement, making a 15-footer on top of Furyk to stay within striking distance one back.
With a one-shot lead, apparently Furyk failed to heed the warning message screened on his side view mirror coming down eighteen. When they both failed to hit the green in regulation it was Keegan who made a miraculous up and down par from a plugged lie in the green side bunker and Furyk who blinked taking two shots from off the green to get on and two more putts on the way to a disappointing double bogie and a two-shot swing.
As we saw with Keegan at last year’s PGA, this young guy has a knack for making big putts. He was first or second in all three of the putting stats this week averaging just 26 putts a round over the four days. As to the final 15-foot par putt that forged him into the lead he said, “I didn’t think for a second I was going to miss it….I knew exactly how it was going to break….I just needed to hit it hard enough….and it was dead center”.
Steve Stricker played some outstanding golf himself shooting 64 on Sunday. Putting like the Stricker of old he birdied four of the last five holes in a final sprint that grabbed a share of second place.
With only the PGA Championship next week between them and the eight automatic Ryder Cup Team assignments, Keegan consolidated his grip on a valued position moving from 9th to 4th on the list. Both Stricker (moving from 13th to 10th) and Furyk (moving from 15th to 11th) have positioned themselves for a final push next week. Finishing outside the top 15 this week, Rickie Fowler, Brandt Snedeker, and Dustin Johnson all have serious work to do if they want to avoid begging for a captain’s choice.
The FedEx Cup Playoffs with a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow are less than a month away. Serious jockeying for improved position in that race is going on and Furyk and Stricker both moved up significantly to get into the top 16. Keegan made the biggest move of all from 26th to 7th after today’s win. There will be a whole lot of listening for footsteps behind them as this qualifying race heads down the final stretch.
August, 2012
The humor of golf is a divine comedy in the deeper sense. Like all sources of laughter it lies in contrast and paradox; in the thought of otherwise grave men gravely devoting hours and money to a technique which so often they, apparently alone, do not know they can never master. The solemnity of the eternal failure is vastly comic. The perpetualness of their hope is nobly humorous.
R. C. Robertson-Glaskow (1901-1965)
Quoted in: Grounds For Golf
Geoff Shackelford (2003)
This warning is seen around rural Ireland where gravel tends to build on the narrow roadways from shoddy construction and wear and tear. It is an admonishment to drivers to beware because traction and control can be lost when navigating these surfaces.
With the WGC Bridgestone Invitational and the PGA Championship over the next two weeks, there are a number of players who need to heed this warning as they try to consolidate their grip on the roadway in an effort to make the Ryder Cup Teams or position themselves to feast on the $32 million available in the four FedEx Cup Playoffs events starting later this month. Failing to carefully negotiate this competitive terrain could leave them stranded off to the side of the road with the emergency flashers blinking.
Jim Furyk, who is currently wallowing at 15th in the Ryder Cup Standings and 25th in the FedEx Cup race, got everyone’s attention with his opening round 63 at Firestone yesterday. His seven birdies and an eagle thrust him to the front of the pack in Bridgestone Invitational. Keegan Bradley who is hanging on by his fingernails to a 9th spot on the Ryder Cup list relied on a hot putter to make seven birdies to offset four bogies on his way to 67 and a T-9 going into Friday’s second round. Dustin Johnson and Steve Stricker at 12th and 13th in the Ryder Cup list respectively, will need to do better than their one and two under scores from day one if they are going to grab a secure spot in the Ryder top 8 and avoid having to solicit Captain DLIII for a captain’s choice on the squad.
Tiger Woods, in an event that he has won 7 times since 1999, continued to show the inconsistent form he has displayed all year. He managed to guide his ball between the shoulders of the roadway yesterday hitting 65% of the fairways and 78% of the greens. But his putter, or maybe his green reading eye, let him down big time with 33 putts including a gagged 3-footer on the 18th hole for his third bogey on the back side on the way to a mundane par round and a T-31 to this point. He has good company in the mediocre pit with Rory, Graeme, Kootch, and Rickey Fowler all on that number.
So much will be decided over the next eight weeks-Fed Ex Champ, Player of the Year, Stewards of the Ryder Cup, and much more. How the top players do at Firestone and Kiawah the next two weeks will have much to say about their chances pursuing the treasures at the end of this road.
August, 2012
Established in the late 1800’s this place is a small scale version the old line rich man’s retreat, on the order of a Homestead or Greenbrier, full service food, accommodations, golf, spa, family recreation, and all. It has a much more casual presentation than those others but that may be a function of the new day more than anything else. A very comfortable atmosphere-well managed-it makes for a perfect two-day getaway from the hub-bub of urban life.
Par 3 “Tiny Tim” even has the chocolate drop mounds (omnihotels.com)
The golf course is quirky but very interesting. It is the result of the efforts of three architects over a thirty year period-and it has been recently updated in 2007 without changing the effective old style character of the links. Spencer Oldham did the original 18 holes in 1895 featuring chocolate drop mounds, geometric S-curve bunkers, and donut bunkers. In 1912 A.W. Tillinghast got his hands on it and scaled it back to a nine-hole course with his own architectural features. In 1923 Donald Ross took it back to a full 18-hole track and you can see raised greens with lots of tiering, artistic bunkering constellations, and, most distinctively, a creative and strategic use of the Shober’s Run that meanders throughout the entire golf course. The renovation work in 2007 was done by Forse Design Company of Pennsylvania who are known for doing period restoration and renovation work throughout the US and Canada-they have recently had their hands in renovation work to the Broadmoor-East Course in Colorado and the Newport Country Club in Rhode Island-sites of recent U.S. Senior Opens and U.S. Women’s Opens respectively. They did a wonderful job retaining the characteristics of all three of these fine architects while making it a very playable and a challenging golf experience.
The entire course is in the flood plain of the Shober Spring Stream and sits nestled between the foothills on either side. There is a good bit of meandering back and forth so the holes do not route in a typical outward and inward loop. For a course set in the foothills there are not that many severe elevation changes on holes and you get surprisingly few side hill or billy goat stances during the round. As with most old style courses the track does not sprawl-the next tee is a few steps from the last green and the round has a tidy-compact feel to it. Green surfaces are totally updated-very quick-lots of pitch and undulation and oddly shaped which makes for really small targets from the fairway. You will do some pitching and chipping to save pars.
The green speed is the course’s major defense considering the tiering and undulations you will face. But at the same time these characteristics provide you with a good correction mechanism for your approach shots if you pay attention to green topography and use it accordingly. Big hitters will be frustrated by the many times they cannot just haul off and hit as much as they can-position off the tee is extremely important to getting the best angle of attack into the greens.
The last characteristic worth noting is the balance of the types of holes and the sequencing. Five Par 5’s, Five Par 3’s, and 8 Par 4’s (only one over 400 yards) means you are hitting lots of finesse shots through the day and the mix is pretty random. There is a sequence from 2 to 6 where you play par 3, par 5, par 3, par 5, short par 4-other than the driver on the second par 3 you have no long shots for five holes. From 9 through 14 you have a similar 5-3-4-4-5-3 run but in the midst of this one you have two of the longest holes you play all day. My point is you have to be very mentally agile to play this course effectively-there is no natural rhythm to the course other than the constant sound of the babbling of the ever present Shober’s Run.
Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania
Architects: Spencer Oldham (1895), A.W. Tillinghast (1912), Donald Ross (1923), Forse Design (2007)
Tees Par Rating Slope Yardage
Medal 72 73.4 140 6785
Ross 72 71.9 136 6446
Tillie 72 69.3 130 6023
Oldham 72 69.8 122 5106
(Click here to review Bedford Springs hole-by-hole descriptions)
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