Comments on: British Open Short Shots from Day 3

By: Phil

Phil — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 02:43:40 +0000

BD - Perhaps I was not clear in the two posts. I believe in having a par for each hole, and that should be assigned after a bit more consideration as to the difficulty of the hole. I believe that the R&A made a big mistake assigning a par of 4 to the sixth hole when the average score is so close to 5. Maybe they thought in this day when the US Open now features 500 yard par 4s that 499 was not long enough to call it a par 5. That being the case, they should have moved the tee up so it plays closer to an average of 4.5, or move it back to perhaps 515 so it would have the distance of a short par 5.

By: BD

BD — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:57:07 +0000

I agree with you on the wind rule. They should change the rule to provide that the Committee can adopt a temporary local rule, under high wind conditions, to allow players to replace a ball on the green that is moved by the wind, without penalty. The current rule is just pointlessly punative and slows the game down.

As to your comment on par being “arbitrary,” your point is well taken, but seems directly contrary to your post yesterday in which you characterized as “outdated” the concept that par is “just a number.”

My take on it is that par is a very useful concept, but its main use is in furnishing a benchmark by which to estimate how well a player’s round is progressing. If a course had no stated par for any hole, then you would have to rely solely on aggregate score and it would be very difficult to keep track of how well players on different holes were doing in relation to one another.

By: BD

BD — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 22:23:28 +0000

“Now imagine if Norman had married Evert 15-20 years ago. He would have had her coaching on the mental game for the bulk of his prime. ”

Yeah, and he might have saved himself about $50 million on the divorce settlement.