Skinning the Cat at Hole 7

God bless the greenskeepers at all our home courses, but PGA pros would hyperventilate if they had to play our courses on a regular basis. At the TPC Norton the collar at the edge of the green is cut like the regular green at our courses and the real green is shorter and faster still. Hole 7 is a 600 yard par 5 and yesterday the hole was about 8 feet from the back of the green. The green itself rises from the front, dips down in the middle and then rises again to yesterday's pin placement.

Current golf course design tries to give the golfer a variety of ways to get to the same result. You're OK and I'm OK thinking. Yesterday's pin placement created a more Calvinist perspective-there was only one way to be saved and it was a narrow and difficult way. Pro after pro ended their previous shot right at the front of the green and were faced with a 90 to 100 foot shot to the hole. The typical pro shot would be to throw the shot in a high arc past the hole and use the golf professional's almost magical control of spin to make the ball roll backwards towards the hole. Several tried this, but the ball either flew too far and got stuck in the rough past the hole or spun back too far and rolled down the slope away from the hole. Other pros putted the ball, a mighty whack even on a superfast green, but here everyone misjudged the dip in the middle and had their ball stop far from the hole. The only way to get the ball close to the hole was with a duffer's bump and run shot. Drop a low running shot into the low spot and the ball almost inevitably rolled to a stop just a few feet or inches away from the hole. Stray from the path and be damned! I've always believed that the Scots developed the game as a metaphor for life as they saw it-stay on the straight and narrow and you might get to heaven, but even then your ball may roll into a divot in the center of the fairway and you make double bogey. Dealing with sheep is bound to sour your view of life!