Senior Golf Post - Maybe Some Wie Content Too

[HDPM]

I found myself actually interested in the senior tour this week. The First Tee Open is a great event I think. Amazing what these kids are capable of. Kids stepping up on national TV and making several birdies in a row at Pebble Beach. Kids getting to play with pros and successful amateurs, doing interviews, it is something. I thought the level of play was pretty high. There is more than one 16 year old girl out there who is going to win on the LPGA Tour I think. And that is the negative Michelle content for the week, and no, it isn't going in the 14000 post thread on her. It just struck me seeing the 16 year old girl playing with Fuzzy Zoeller that there were two extremes. She gets to play with pros and show off her game and learn something where everybody wants to see her do well. Is Michelle better right now? Yes. But where will they both be in 10 years/ I suppose we will see and maybe this girl won't win on the LPGA and won't be a pro. I dunno. But it seemed like such a better way of learning. No playing partners wishing you cough up a lung because you play slow. No rules disputes. No spats with other players. Yeah, I thought it, but the jury is still out so maybe I am wrong.

I am a little leery of First Tee programs, but not as much after seeing some of the kids who go through it. I am leery because I am a huge believer in junior golf. I just think the best way to foster junior golf is through inexpensive public golf, coupled with caddy programs at private clubs to allow kids from less affluent homes to be exposed to the game and earn enough to pay the green fee at a cheap public course. As the dictator of golf I would ban carts of course, and promote caddies. One of the public courses I used to play has a First Tee program, and the last time I was there I liked seeing the kids out there learning stuff. OTOH, when I was a kid you could actually play the course. Show up, walk on, play. The green fee was less than 5 when I started. Now it is more expensive and the course is more crowded. Kids could play all summer for like 300 on an annual pass. And in my town in BFE the kids can play all year in a junior program for about that much. Is it the best golf course? No. But the kids learn a ton without a first tee program. Some of the kids mentioned they could not afford to play without the first tee program. So in that sense, I am glad it is there.

Things would be better though if we got rid of the golf cart and were willing to build cheap public courses that were actually fun to play. Instead, people build expensive or mid-priced public courses that attract people with some money who maybe can't afford a club or who like to play a tougher course sometimes. I recently played a couple of these tough mid priced public courses and was disappointed. Cart paths everywhere. Tough, relatively uninteresting courses. Unpleasant walks because of the designs and/or houses. Heaven forbid we could actually build sporty cheap walkable courses that kids could afford. If we spent half the money we spend on cart path building and maintenance on junior golf we'd be on to something. I mean, cart paths have no place or purpose on a golf course to begin with and they add huge dollars to construction costs of new courses. "Nice" concrete things with curbs that are better than many roads and guarantee the course is not as good as it might otherwise be. Feh. Until real golf gains a foothold in the US though I suppose we will have to hope enough kids pick up the game and enough players keep playing overbuilt, not that fun courses.

[Ron Burgundy]

I agree 100% about everything you said.

It's not just the ugly cart paths, it's fact that many public courses have mandatory carts, and sometimes have the ridiculous rule that carts have to stay on the paths. This actually makes bad players play slower because they need to keep running back and forth from the cart to their ball.

Another big factor to junior development is practice facilities. I grew up playing a 9-hole course that was a total dog track. A good drive down the center of the fairway was a coinflip to have a good lie, and the ball hopped and skipped all over the place on the green.

But I liked the course anyway because of 2 reasons. They had two practice greens, a big putting green, and a chiping green that had about 80 yards of fairway. That's basically where I learned the game. I never took lessons or went to the driving range, I just hit hundreds of 80 yard wedges and chipped and putted for hours and hours. Sometimes I didn't even play, either because I didn't have money, or because it was so crowded that I didn't feel like playing 9 holes in 3 hours. The other reason I liked it is because it was a great layout. It was a tight, short course that wasn't very difficult for hackers, but made a good player really think about shot placement.

I've never been to a First Tee facility, but I'm generally in favor of it. However, it's sad that we need charity organizations to allow lower income kids to play golf, when it's really not necessary. People have always thought of golf as only a rich persons game. It is, but that's only because people (well, Americans) judge golf courses by the quality of the grass and don't really pay attention to the real character of the course. Then they insist on driving around in dorky little carts so they can hurry up and hit another ground ball. God forbid they get some exercise, or take a moment to look around and think about what the best way to play each hole would be, or talk to the other people in the group. Instead it's just zip up to the tee, hit, and say "see you up at the green" to your fellow golfers/motorists.