Smaller courses would benefit golfers and operators

By Jeff Bass

Published Thursday, May 31, 2007

The love of the long ball. Baseball is infatuated with it (despite the public’s dislike of Barry Bonds and his chase of Hank Aaron’s career home run record). And the same is true, of course, in the game of golf.

Technology has allowed golf club manufacturers to make longer, lighter golf clubs for the sole purpose of allowing players to generate more club speed. Hence, more distance. Club heads that forgive off-center hits encourage players to “swing for the fences,” to borrow a baseball term.

Oh but what might have been had earlier generations had the foresight to see the dark side of distance in the modern game. Not as it applies to scoring, although there is a direct correlation — particularly among the game’s best players. The dark side is in reference to two of golf’s obstacles to growth: Time and money.

Despite the fact that players in this region have numerous options for affordable golf, the costs have crept upward over the years. In other areas the cost —or at least the availability of affordable golf — is prohibitive for too large a segment of the public. It seems that people are busier than ever, making it more difficult to find the several hours a round of golf takes. Thus frequent play is limited to the young, the old, and a fortunate few in between.

A couple weeks ago Pebble Lake Golf Club hosted a “night golf” event. Clear golf balls with a chemically activated light stick inside allows for such. In conversation prior to the event, players inquired as to the distance these balls would achieve as the make-up is quite different than a traditional golf ball. One player posed the question of whether the distance was comparable to the “Cayman” ball.

In the 1980's, when Jack Nicklaus had an ownership stake in the MacGregor Golf Company, he had his golf ball engineers develop a ball that traveled approximately half the distance of a normal ball. As a noted golf course architect, this new golf ball was part of an experiment associated with a course Nicklaus was designing in the Cayman Islands.

This experiment was born from the desire to build golf courses in spaces that would not allow construction of a traditional course. The availability of a half-distance golf ball would allow a course architect to design a half-size golf course.

Take that concept a step further. The average golf course is approximately 180 acres in size. 7,000 yards used to be considered a long golf course. Today new courses measuring 7,400 to 7,600 (or even more) are the norm. A new course in Michigan is boasting of the world?s longest hole of well over 900 yards.

To build even a “bare bones” course today requires over a million dollars just for construction. The average construction cost is probably in the 4-6 million dollar range. That does not take into effect the cost of land. Now factor the equipment, water, chemicals, and personnel to maintain that acreage, and it’s easy to see how much would be saved if half the land were used for a course.

This would not cut the time to play in half, but would take a large percentage off the length of a round of golf. Faster play would also allow course operators a higher maximum capacity which would also lower the required fees.

The cat’s out of the bag on this one, and there will be no turning back. One can only wonder, though, if our fascination with the long ball isn’t a curse in disguise.

Jeff Bass is head pro at Pebble Lake Golf Course