The 100th and last USPGA (as we know it)

[ursus arctos]

Sorry, I meant public as in belonging to a city, state or county.

Like my home course in San Francisco



Or the repeat home of the US Open on Long Island



“Destination” courses that are open to the public can be worse in terms of pretentious rules than anything this side of Augusta National.

[WOM]

I play regularly with an old fuck who gets uptight when people play 'out of turn': lowest on the previous hole tees off first; farthest putter from the hole goes first, etc.

Fuck it...I just play ready-golf and move things along. Riles him to no end, though.

[ursus arctos]

Old Stock Canadian?

[WOM]

Sorry, I meant public as in belonging to a city, state or county.

Okay, that's what I thought. Municipal courses here are notoriously full of hackers and teens. Nobody who wants to enjoy a round in under 6 hours goes to them.

[WOM]

Old Stock Canadian?

Not quite pur laine, but near enough. He also picks up discarded beer cans for the deposit. I wish I were kidding...

[WOM]

He's got the stupid satellite golf watch and insists on telling me how far I am from the front edge of the green. Like that kind of information will - in any way - affect the outcome of my game.

[ursus arctos]

Seems like it's a very different context, then.

No hacker would dare try Bethpage Black, and my own score on it as a teen was quite a bit better than what I could hope to shoot today.

[Hot Pepsi]

Sorry...language issue...but do you mean 'municipal' courses or just courses open to the public? I can see golfing in a t at a City of Toronto course, but never even at a par-3 public (non-membership) course.

Yeah, I think public, when applied to golf, usually just means that they’re open to anyone who pays, with perhaps a discount to guests of a particular hotel. They may still be privately owned and even offer memberships, but you don’t have to be a member or member’s guest to play. Courses actually operated or subsidized by a government agency are called “munipical.” We don’t have any of those because the university has two courses that serve that purpose and price point.

That reminds me... Red Oaks is a good show on Amazon well worth watching. It’s a sort of Bildungsroman set at a New Jersey country club in the 80s.

And of course, Caddyshack is a bonafide classic.

[San Bernardhinault]

We have ludicrously good municipal courses here. It skews my thinking.

[Hot Pepsi]

I play regularly with an old fuck who gets uptight when people play 'out of turn': lowest on the previous hole tees off first; farthest putter from the hole goes first, etc.

Fuck it...I just play ready-golf and move things along. Riles him to no end, though.

I actually do that playing mini-golf. I don’t really care, I just like being able to move along and not have that “Do you want to go? No, you go. No, you go” conversation at every hole.

[Diable Rouge]

Seems like it's a very different context, then.

No hacker would dare try Bethpage Black, and my own score on it as a teen was quite a bit better than what I could hope to shoot today.

PM incoming for you, ursus.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm not as pessimistic as you, but I do think there's a big split between the West coast and the rest of the US on this. Courses in California are generally not struggling much and usually have full(ish) tee sheets. If I'm on a road trip in Middle America, I can usually rock up to any (non-private) course, anywhere, and get a tee-time on the spot.

There are innovations in play that might help, particularly speeding up the game - they're finally changing rules for amateurs next year where there's no penalty if you don't take the pin out, and you don't have to be so fussy about how you take drops, recommending players to putt out once they've started putting, and so on. And trying to encourage people to play 9 in the evenings rather than play 18. If it's taking up 90 minutes of your evening, it's much less of a barrier than taking up 5 and a half hours in the middle of the day.

As the article I linked above says, there was a bit of a bubble-burst with those housing development courses. I suppose that the places where people want to live in sprawl McMansions don’t always line-up with places where keen golfers want to play golf. My understanding is that golfers prefer courses without houses around them. I recall hearing that in radio ads for courses in the DC area (a lot of golf-related ads on DC sports radio). Not sure why. Perhaps it’s just more picturesque.

And the people who want to own such a house may just like having their back porch overlooking a fairway rather than another McMansion’s back yard, even if they don’t really want to play golf. My uncle lived in a place like that outside Omaha for a while. I don’t think he ever played the course.

Williamsburg (VA) has a number of those developments. A lot of that land is too swampy to use for anything else, I suspect, but in a lot of places, the developer can make a lot more money from the land by building more houses on it than maintaining it as a golf course.




I believe the USGA called their campaign to speed-up play the “While were young!” campaign in honor of Caddyshack. I read that somewhere.

And then there was that Curb Your Enthusiasm about the dead swan and the guy who played so slow and then had a heart attack.

It’s part of the culture.

[San Bernardhinault]

As the article I linked above says, there was a bit of a bubble-burst with those housing development courses. I suppose that the places where people want to live in sprawl McMansions don’t always line-up with places where keen golfers want to play golf. My understanding is that golfers prefer courses without houses around them. I recall hearing that in radio ads for courses in the DC area (a lot of golf-related ads on DC sports radio). Not sure why. Perhaps it’s just more picturesque.

From personal experience, it's because my drives are desperately wayward, and I don't like the risk of smashing my ball into someone else's window/pool/lunch on the terrace. The less constrained a course is, the more relaxed I am.

And the people who want to own such a house may just like having their back porch overlooking a fairway rather than another McMansion’s back yard, even if they don’t really want to play golf. My uncle lived in a place like that outside Omaha for a while. I don’t think he ever played the course.

It can screw people, too. A course here recently closed because it couldn't afford water (it was the only course in the county that didn't have access to either a lake or brown/recycled water, so they had to water using stuff fresh from the mains). People who had houses that backed onto that course are really pissed off. Particularly as the choices for what to do with the land now seem to be - abandon it to become a fire risk, or build the fairways with more McMansions.

[Hot Pepsi]

It can screw people, too. A course here recently closed because it couldn't afford water (it was the only course in the county that didn't have access to either a lake or brown/recycled water, so they had to water using stuff fresh from the mains). People who had houses that backed onto that course are really pissed off. Particularly as the choices for what to do with the land now seem to be - abandon it to become a fire risk, or build the fairways with more McMansions.

Apparently some places are turning that space into community gardens and/or trying to turn it into a nature reserve. But I can see how that that could be a fire hazard out west. Perhaps they can find a use that would require some irrigation but not as much as a golf course - soccer pitches, perhaps.

Houses require water too, but then they would bring in revenue to pay for that water.

Or maybe we should just stop building on land that is so dry.

[San Bernardhinault]

So, Koepka wins and now has 3 of the last 7 majors which suddenly makes him look like a titan of the game.

Meanwhile, Tiger finishes second and maybe justifies all that hype that was being mocked on the previous page.

Finally, I didn't see any of that. Went to brunch and there was an 18 hole executive course next door so the missus and I played that. Took just under 2 hours. Lovely little course, mostly dinky 80-110 yard holes, but a handful of par 4s. It felt like a much more relaxing way to play golf, and without the usual time drain. Oddly, I'm playing another 18 hole executive course on Wednesday night (it even has floodlights for when it gets dark) with my cycling buddies. Perhaps this is the future of leisure-golf.

[Hot Pepsi]

I stand by my mockery. It’s not the possibility that he might get a good result again - I really have no idea - but the way that so many people were actively hoping for it.