The Golf Crisis

Its true. Golf has taken over everything. It has insinuated itself into the otherwise tight twill of our everyday lives. For it, we abjure those things that are responsible, honorable and for which we endured years of arduous training. Golf has become a nonnegotiable demand on our time. And what do we get in return? Golf's current abuse. It used to be immensely rewarding. Here was a relationship we could understand. But lately, golf has been tarted up. Its once wholesome, animal allure is now in danger of losing its soul.

During the Seventies, it was trendy for golf architects to build new 7000-yard-long "backbreaker" courses. Existing country clubs joined the band wagon, stretching out their courses by building new tees farther back into the woods.

Equipment companies assisted golfers desperate for distance by designing the perfect distance combination for long tee shots: metal woods, graphite shafts and solid balls. Business boomed. Golfers, frustrated for years, now lived for the powerful clicking sound a metal head makes when a graphite shaft whips it into the ball at high club-head speed. Then a new architectural trend took place in the Eighties: shorter, narrower courses that were littered with more sand and deeper bunkers. Equipment companies came to the rescue again, only this time, the focus was on the manufacture of "game-improvement" recovery clubs. An array of high-lofted six, seven and eight woods with unique cambered soles gave the golfer ripping power in the rough.

More technologically advanced investment cast irons, featuring perimeter weighting, were designed to launch the ball high into (concluded on page 149) Golf Crisis (continued from page 113) the air and correct a bad shot hit off the club face's heel or toe.

To solve the problem of saving par from treacherous lies around the green, a 60-degree wedge (which looks more like a shovel than a golf club) was marketed. Any shot a golfer couldn't hit with a pitching wedge or a sand wedge the "third wedge" would now play for him.

In 1990, the trend was lightning-fast greens. Putting a ball to a hole on an undulated, slow green is tough enough, but shave a green down so low that the ball rolls like it's on a billiard table and the golfer's nerves become frazzled. Say hello to the long putter. Almost a foot and a half longer, this pole-vault-stick-like club helps a player employ a perfect, pendulum arms--shoulders type of stroke, rather than a hand--wrist action that's more apt to break down under pressure.

The newly designed game-improvement clubs essentially put the golfer's wood and iron game on automatic pilot. High-lofted utility woods slice through heavy grass with the ease of a sickle. The 60-degree wedge is so lofted it can scoop a ball from hell into heaven. The long putter makes a golfer "yip"-proof on the greens. Perfectly mowed fairways allow the player to pick the ball cleanly off grass with the ease of a hockey player hitting a puck off ice, thereby axing the challenge of playing a shot out of a divot, depression or scruffy lie--killing off the art of shotmaking. The men who introduced golf in America had an entirely different game in mind.

The historical consensus is that golf was first played in America on a cow pasture in Yonkers, New York, in 1888. Soon after, John Reid and his cronies built a six-hole course--called St. Andrew's after the hallowed home of golf in Scotland--and later bought 160 acres of land in nearby Hastings on Hudson and supervised the building of an 18-hole course and clubhouse.

That original St. Andrew's still exists, but because of the expensive face lift it was given by Jack Nicklaus, the evolution of golf clubs and the other gazillion changes in the industry, Reid would hardly recognize the old course or the game played on it. Which is a shame, because Reid had visions of Americans preserving the Scottish golf tradition.

In its birthplace, everyone loves golf, but it is only a game. It is not a rich man's sport, as it is in this country. The Old Course at St. Andrews, the cradle of golf, is open to the public for $60. In contrast, Pebble Beach, while open to the public, costs $150 for 18 holes.

Part of the raison d'être of golf for the Scots is the walk. St. Andrews prohibits anything else. For some American golfers, the electric cart is one of nature's perfect forms of locomotion.

Scots play fast. The typical player plans his shot as he walks to the ball, sets up, hits it and walks on. It is an unwritten law at the Old Course to play a round in less than three and a half hours.

To the modern-day American golfer, every shot is a matter of life and death. He dawdles over the ball, examines the lie, paces off the yardage from one of three marker plates to his ball, throws grass up to test which way the one-mile-an-hour wind is blowing, faithfully takes three practice swings to rehearse the perfect swing, waves the club head back and forth a few times, swings, slices and swears. Then he plops down into the cart, tells his buddy it's time to buy a new set of clubs and steps on the gas, zigzagging down the fairway.

The St. Andrews Old Course was not designed by a golf architect. It is natural links land crafted by God. It just happened as golfers played among the rabbit warrens on the lip of the seashore.

The Old Course is naturally rustic and, therefore, the golfer must improvise shots off tricky lies. When the wind blows off the North Sea, the game is even more challenging. But locals, who despise American target golf, are happy to play "wind cheaters," "pitch-and-runs" and the entire range of contrived shots. They play the game as an exercise in serial crisis management.

The most adventurous thing an American golfer could do, to revise his perspective and help diffuse the golf crisis, would be to go out alone and play a round with one club--say a five iron--in the quiet of the early morning or late afternoon. Just to reacquaint himself with the rigor of improvisation. Just to regain the feel of what real golf is all about: imposing your will upon a small ball as you smack it around nature. At its best and at its purest, it's the closest we ever get to playing God.

"At the St. Andrews Old Course, they play the game as an exercise in serial crisis management."