Original

Most people have heard about Donald Trump’s attempt to build a golf complex at Menie, north of Aberdeen and the problems he has had securing planning permission, particularly involving one stubborn individual who did not want to re-locate and Trump’s own objection to the ‘eyesore’ of an enormous windfarm that is proposed to be built offshore from his course.

An entrepreneur of his ability and passion for golf (he plays off a four handicap) has been undeterred and has continued to find £60m to put into the course, through these harsh, recessionary years, while

New

the announced £750m investment into a wider golf complex with hotels etc has been reportedly put on hold.

In earlier, better, economic times, three important golf courses have been built by Americans recently in Scotland which are vying for top status and acceptance within the ranks of the finest courses. Castle Stuart and The Renaissance have both been fully reviewed by FineGolf and I can report that, at the second of these, four new holes close to the Firth of Forth are under construction and plans lodged for a £5.5m clubhouse, located beside Muirfield. Kingsbarns has also been welcomed into the 200 finest courses with its beautiful visual aspects and exquisite links bunkering being particularly outstanding.

A classic links hole at Menie

Each of these three courses are on non-links coastal land that with high investment has given a fine running course but the terrain at The Menie Estate is proper classic linksland which potentially gives Donald Trump the opportunity of building a course that perhaps really could be as fine as our finest Open Championship venues.

I understand no expense is being spared in design and agronomy and we can expect a very special treat when it is finally opened for play this summer.

Martin Hawtree (the third generation of the Hawtree design partnership) is in charge and says “The golf course will lack for nothing. The landscape framework of the site comes close to an ideal. There is nothing missing and the layout as conceived would contain no weak holes. It will produce simply the most dramatic, stimulating, invigorating stretch of golf anywhere I have seen in my career.”

hidden tees

All the tees (these have an interesting design feature in being hidden, among the high dunes) and the fairways are composed of pure fescue while the greens and approaches are a bent/fescue mixture.  5.6 million marram grass sprigs have been planted, entirely by hand, to control sand erosion and stabilise the dunes.

John Bambury, the links superintendent (the American version of our expression ‘head greenkeeper’) says “the fairways have to be better than the best tee-boxes, the tee-boxes have to be better than the best greens and the greens have to be better than anywhere else in the world.”

The Menie website describes Donald Trump as “ bold and brash “ and the ambition here is infectious.

Rugged duneland at Menie

Bambury continues “the design marries the contrasting elements of a rugged, beautiful landscape and pristine grass surfaces and makes them totally complimentary, while maintaining the essential links experience. Mr Trump came up with the extended greens concept – he wanted a perfect frame of turf around each one. So we’ve used exactly the same cultural treatments, the only difference being the height of cut.”

Menie, so I believe, will have a membership component as well as pay-and-play at about £150 per round. No buggies or mobiles will be permitted and walking encouraged. Play will be teed off at fifteen minute intervals and is expected to result in a four and a half-, to five-hour, round. The clubhouse is to be built of local granite.

Donald Trump has promised the world’s greatest golf course and perhaps those involved are about to participate in a piece of history.

It is likely to be called ‘Trump International Links’ rather than Menie. But hey! doesn’t the guy deserve some pay-back from all that investment of time and money?

It is exhilarating to report that over the last eight years the Club has promised a return to the very highest standards that are the pinnacle of the running game and the R & A has awarded it The Amateur Championship in 2013 (last played here in 1923 and 1982).

Click here to see FineGolf’s full review of Royal Cinque Ports Golf Club

At the same time as the Ryder Cup last year was taking place in the soggy Usk valley at Celtic Manor, little was heard of a vicious crime just down the road at one of my favourite courses, Pennard on the South Wales Gower Peninsular.

This club with the most wonderful natural moorland/linksey golfing ground have been following Jim Arthur greenkeeping practices and the greens are a beautiful patch work of bents and fescue grasses that are firm and true in the running game tradition.

A Blue Tee overlooking Three Cliffs Bay

Some new back blue tees have just come into play extending the course to 6800 yards (par 72 SSS 74) and makes this course even more of a test for the longer hitters and will doubtless attract championships and even more category one roving golfers.

The rest of us are quite happy enjoying the breath taking views of the sea bays and three Cliffs Valley from the new 14th and 17th tees being the high points of the course.

Disastrously eleven of the greens and some tees were very badly damaged by a malicious attack with Round-up, killing the grass down to their deep roots.

The keen greenkeeping team led by Dean Thomas were lucky to be able to use the short window of good weather in October and early November before last years freezing snow arrived and they intensively hollow cored, seeded and dressed and with the aid of grow sheets, some borrowed from very obliging neighbours and some purchased hurriedly, all the greens remarkably were back in play this spring.

John Beynon, the hard working Chairman of green reports that they did have to endure some annual meadow grass (Poa Annua) invasion taking advantage of the bare soil initially but most of this has been eliminated through the summer.

I had the privilege of spending a weekend with friends on the Gower this September and Mike Bennett, the Pro of 37 years standing here who loves FineGolf, warmly welcomed us with his soft lilting Welsh accent and I can confirm there was no evidence of damage and the fescues are becoming dominant again, giving thrilling putting performance. 

Click here to read the full FineGolf review of Pennard.

Paddy O'Looney

There was previously scepticism as to the existence of a man with the name of Paddy O’Looney, a long time friend of Peter, until he set-up a centenary golf trip for us to play the links at Lahinch, Ballybunion, Tralee, Waterville, Dooks and the parkland Killarney.

The long hitting Paddy joined us on the trip and by way of a late extra thank you for the excellence of his organisation I would like to report :-

Paddy O’ Looney, Chief Executive Officer of SWING – South West Ireland Golf Ltd will be the recipient of the “2011 Jerry Donworth Outstanding Contribution to Golf Award”  The 2011 “Gala Irish Golf Awards” is a national awards ceremony recognising the very best in the Irish golf and tourism industry.

IGTOA Chairman Denis Kane spoke about his long time colleague Paddy O’Looney and the significance of his career:

“Twenty-one years ago, Paddy O’Looney decided to give up hotel management and move to Tralee as Chief Executive Officer of the newly-formed SWING (South West Ireland – Golf) thereby turning his lifelong passion into his career by becoming head of an organisation formed to specifically attract golf tourists to the South West of Ireland.

Paddy’s lifetime career has been built on the wonderful golfing product and world class links golf courses of Ireland. Other contributing factors have been O’ Looney’s unrivalled contacts and charm, his knowledge of what golfers want and his ability to spread the news that he could provide it. His ability to have doors opened for him in exalted golfing circles all over the world is unique. With all due respects to Padraig, O’Looney may be Ireland’s best known golfer in North America!

O’ Looney’s attitude is: ‘Life is full of bunkers, it is how you deal with them that matter!’

In the 1970’s and 1980’s, long before graphite or titanium, golfers delighted in long hitting and Paddy O’Looney was one of the longest hitters in Ireland throughout that period. Paddy was introduced to golf as a junior member of Portmarnock, figuring on the famous North Dublin club’s Irish Junior Cup winning teams in 1964 and 1966 before he moved to Limerick to manage the Glentworth Hotel and joining Castletroy GC. From 1974 to 1986, he was a stalwart member of the Connacht interprovincial team and figured, in 1983 at Connemara, on one of only two teams from the western province to win the interpro championship. He was unlucky not to be capped for Ireland as three appearances in the quarter-finals of the Irish Close will testify.

O’Looney has travelled to practically every corner of the USA as well as to Australia and Asia promoting golf in Ireland. The SWING concept of combining the marketing punch of its Member Clubs and Paddy’s outrageous yarns (that only a lunatically-devoted golfer could tell properly) were so much admired by Deane Beman and Tim Finchem, successive Commissioners of the USPGA Tour that they have personally become staunch supporters of Irish golf.

As a recognition of SWING’s contribution to international golfing relations, Commissioner Finchem invited the by now adopted Kerryman to attend the 2005 President’s Cup matches held near Washington DC between the USA and The Rest of the World as an honorary observer. This entailed being introduced to the players and crowd on the first tee and walking the course with an assigned match; a huge honour which O’Looney enjoyed to the full not least because he was ‘given’ one of Tiger Woods’s matches. He made firm friendships with several of the players and all eleven of the other observers, including the Presidents George Bush Senior and Bill Clinton, Herb Kohler (Whistling Straits), Jaime Patino (Valderrama) and Ken Schofield (formerly of the European Tour.)

When asked why Americans like to play golf in Ireland, he says “Our links golf, unpredictable weather and tradition. What we have here is unique. Americans love the challenge of playing golf in the wind and rain on tough golf courses! We just ask them are they up for the challenge?”

Greenkeepers usually have to circulate through several golf clubs in order to develop their career and if they have served at courses like Muirfield and St.Andrews or Carnoustie, where everybody knows the fairway turf and the greens are of top quality, it always looks good for the CV.

Another course high in the ranking of being a true, firm, running game experience is Royal Dornoch, whom Tom Watson and Ben Crenshaw publicised  favourably in the 1980’s.

Nevertheless, even Royal Dornoch went through a phase of following the fashionable policy of the time, of fertilising and greening-up, perhaps as a result of pressure from members to follow what they saw on TV at Augusta and other target-style courses.

Anyway, whatever was the reason, one month of the wrong policy can take ten years to put right and having played there every year since the mid 1980’s I now can report good news. The Dornoch greens are back to 80% fescue and indigenous bent grasses with the heavier areas of Poa annua (Annual meadow grass) and coarser rye grasses having been identified and being converted.

What effect has this had on the playing quality of the course? 

EC Fraser winner putts on the 16th at Royal Dornoch

Although the Highlands like every where else had a dry spring in 2011, they also had a drenching summer and so for the Carnegie event (the main Open tournament of the year held in August) the course was not as firm and fiery as the greenkeepers would have wished. However, two experiences I had over ten days of golf there this August, convinced me of the ‘playing’ sense in pursuing a fine grasses policy.

Firstly, on one of the Carnegie qualifying days it rained hard while playing  all of the 18 holes and yet the greens were still running at between a 10 and 11 stimp, with a consistent, smooth roll-out. They didn’t get what I call ‘sticky’.

The greens were cut at 4.5mm during the Carnegie week (Dornoch cut to 6mm in the winter) and it should be remembered that many courses around London have to cut their Poa annua greens at 2mm to obtain sufficient speed to satisfy their members’ demands.

The golf writer Henry Lord on the 17th at Royal Dornoch

The second experience was that of seeing some quite good MCC Golfers (members of the third MCC Highlands golf tour) struggling to score well, primarily because if an approach shot to a green at Dornoch is not quite perfect, the firmness of the turf and the humps and hollows around the many raised greens and perhaps the breeze, exaggerate what is wrong with the shot and; “your errant ball rolls off and casually explores nooks and crannies until settling eventually on a spot where gravity can influence it no longer”.

In contrast, we also had most enjoyable rounds at Nairn and the Old Moray links  at Lossiemouth. Here the greens, with predominantly bent/poa grasses, will receive the ball with a divot and stop quickly when any backspin is imparted; a ball thrown to the pin will stay close by.

At the other links courses north of Inverness and particularly Dornoch and Brora, as well as on the beautiful pure fescue greens at Castle Stuart, such an outcome is less likely. Instead, a running shot is usually the best choice and though many of the greens are huge at Dornoch, it is a true challenge to get a ‘bump and run’ shot close to the pin, considering the amount of roll-out the bent/fescue grasses give.

A lot of golfers are more used to controlling their shots on ‘sticky’ greens, particularly inland golfers from around London where many of the fine heathland courses, that are blessed with natural drainage, nevertheless still employ a high proportion of Poa annua (Annual meadow grass) in their greens.

Remarkably, we southerners won the match with our hospitable hosts at Nairn, admittedly on a calm day, while there were some high scores at Dornoch and close to a thrashing in the match at Brora!

It was mentioned to us that Nairn’s greens are being cut longer (ie 3.5mm) than the normal 2.5mm as a strategy until the lead up to the Curtis Cup in 2012. Perhaps this makes the famous Nairn turf a little more ‘sticky’ than usual but it is still a four star ‘joy to be alive’ experience to play at Nairn’s ‘raised beach’ course along the Moray Firth.

There is good accommodation in and around the town (and those on the right can be recommended). Nairn Dunbar is another fine course on the east of the town, recently upgraded, that is well worth playing.

Eoin Riddell, the Royal Dornoch Course Manager, who took over from Bob Mackay in 2006, has been on the Dornoch staff since the 1980’s and perhaps is the exception that proves the rule, that to get a top job you need to move around!

The Club earns nothing but praise for its pursuit of sustainable greenkeeping in the fashion of the greatest ever golf agronomist Jim Arthur, a founding influence on FineGolf. 

If you want the true running game of golf you can do no better than visit Dornoch, Brora, Golspie, Tain and Fortrose & Rosemarkie, courses all located north of Inverness, whose greens are all going in the fine direction, a direction that is supported by the new R&A website.

How does Riddell’s team achieve this excellence? They aerate the tees and greens fortnightly and the fairways quarterly. Slit-seeding to greens, aprons and fairways with fescues is undertaken during and through-out the growing season and a minimum of fertiliser is applied while a seaweed application is given twice per annum.

Though I am an amateur in these agronomic matters, as a golfer I can see it works and what a joy it is to play to and roll your putts out on Riddell’s firm bent/fescue greens.

Are other, fast-playing golfers irritating you? Tired of being rudely rushed round your golf course? Fear not, friend; help is at hand with FineGolf’s recently devised “Guide to the Six Hour Round”. Simply following these sensible pieces of advice will banish forever the nightmare of fast play.

Now, before even striking the ball off the first tee, it is vital to appreciate the role preparation plays in achieving your full six hours. So, in order to set off, slowly, on the right foot:

1. Be sure to have your mobile phone with you. Place it in the deepest recesses of your, preferably enormous, golf bag. Just consider, you may be rung by your wife who urgently will need to know if you want chips or mashed potato with your evening (and it will be evening) meal. Similarly, your teenage daughter may also need to book a lift from you to her party and you will not want to risk your not participating in her twice required 100-mile round trip. And just think; you are going to be outdoors for six hours and in that time, no business or household could conceivably survive unassisted, now could it?

2. Ensure your golf-bag contains a comprehensive wardrobe of clothing choices for the numerous weather changes to come. These should be jammed on top of the minor impedimenta you might otherwise need, such as golf balls, glove and tees. Next, apply liberal quantities of mineral water, chocolate bars and cigarettes as you deem fit. These should all be of a size and colour that slip gradually downwards away from easy finding and retrieval, thereby requiring intermittent and complete emptying of the bag on the tee or fairway.

3. Load the entire ensemble onto a powered trolley. The importance of the trolley cannot be overstated. Its battery can usefully become tired and weak (after all your bag is going to exceed its operational payload) so that the necessary speed for walking falls below what you would achieve with a pulled hand-trolley. The merit of the powered-trolley’s 3-wheel system, of course is that it should under no circumstances be used on a slope of more than 10 degrees. Yes, yes, I know golf courses do undulate but in this way you will park your trolley some distance from where your ball is, allowing you to inspect the lie, gaze at the view ahead, and comfortably amble to and fro to the trolley selecting and de-selecting clubs at will.

4. Do, if you can, choose a modern course, preferably one operated by a large hotel chain, advertised as a “championship” course. Do not trouble to enquire exactly what “championship” means in this context. Suffice to say, it will be 7,000 yards long, your drives will reassuringly have no roll-out on landing and the walk from green to tee will be a minimum of 75 yards. Notice, too that the greens here will all have three tiers, helpfully designed to ensure you achieve your vital three- and four-putt scores. Modern courses are enthusiastic in welcoming your 6-hour play, rest assured.

At the Golf Course

1. The next key to success is to ensure you arrive on the golf course on time. This means that if your tee-time is, say, 9-37 am, you should be pulling into the car-park, located 200 yards from the first tee, at 9-37. This will automatically mean that you arrive at the pro shop with a good 20 minutes in hand to discuss the weather, your daughter’s party, the curse of others’ rapid play and your having left your wallet back at the car. Never rush this phase; those other, oddly agitated, strangers hurriedly swishing their drivers outside the pro shop window are simply trying to distract you from your objective.

2. Once on the first tee, gather your three partners (…Oh, and if there are only two others, or, horror of horrors, only one other, then you must simply go home immediately) and take the next five minutes debating which format you will play.  Foursomes should never be contemplated as it is a quick way of playing.

On the first tee

1. Ensure that once you have tossed a coin to decide the first to play, that person chosen has neither glove, ball or tee in hand. It is then a simple matter to begin the search for these, located underneath that extra clothing you jammed into the bag.

2. Always choose the longest of tees, especially in inclement weather. One of biggest advantages of such tees will be the necessity to walk 75 yards backwards from each preceding green, thereby ensuring you have to wait for the same green to clear of following golfers before you tee-off.

3. Do talk. The importance of talking cannot be exaggerated. Talk before you swing, talk while swinging, talk after the swing and talk all the way to your next shot. The successful talker will achieve a six round with ease. It should be done loudly and excitedly and relate to anything at all and is best done instead of swinging the club at all. Talking is also best done when the listener is out of range and so has to demand you repeat everything until he finally hears you.

(Keen students note: a major spin-off from your talking is the impact it can have on players outside your playing group. While the scientific reasons for the effect still remain unclear, there is a mysterious slowing down in the other golfers’ play nearby. Soon after your talking they will begin to copy your own pace of play. This is especially noticeable among those golfers on the fairways behind you)

4. Prior to taking the swing, ensure you take as many practice swings as possible, trying as many of the clubs as you might need at the particular hole. Under no circumstances, hit a golf shot without calculating the exact yardage to the hole and to every hazard between you and the hole. Yes, there may be a 150-yard marker in view, but do not guess your yardage (what could be sillier?); pace it off properly once you have reached your ball, always remembering to forget it before taking a club from the bag.

5. Should you discover, after hitting your ball, that it is veering badly off line, make no accurate note of its destination. Simply throw your head in the air and stare at your divot. Do not play a provisional ball; the proper time for this is in fifteen minutes’ time. After you have crossed the fairway a few times to watch your opponents’ shots and lost your bearings entirely, you may begin the vitally important job of looking in the wrong place. This activity must be undertaken by all four of you, thereby ensuring that the other three can forget where their balls have gone. If, after fifteen minutes, the ball is not found, you may begin the leisurely walk back to where you last played. Incidentally, you might be tempted at this point to use a bizarre, antiquated tactic, with which almost nobody need concern themselves these days, called “playing through” (I think). You may safely ignore such needless nonsense.

6. Having played your shot, study the clubhead very closely, it may need cleaning. This should be done immediately and on the spot, without taking another step forwards. Ensure your club’s grooves are spotless by using a cloth and brush and, once done, begin the process of setting it back in the golf bag in exactly the place it was before, with its head aligned precisely with its two neighbours, in ascending order and height in the bag. If this should necessitate the lifting of half a dozen other clubs up and out of the bag and re-aligning them too, be certain that you to do so.

7. When deciding the order of play from the fairway, always offer the other three players priority, after which they should offer it back to you. Always politely decline any offer and continue in this vein until reaching the green. The idea of playing your shot merely because you happen to be ready is totally unacceptable. Although the player furthest from the hole should always play first, there is absolutely no need for you to choose your club, test the wind and choose your line of play until it is your turn to play.

On the green

1. Once on the green, ensure that your power-trolley is securely stationed at the very entrance to the green. Under no circumstances get ahead of yourself and start panicking about where the next tee is; it’s not going to disappear, now is it? The merit of this tactic is that the cloth to clean the ball, the pitchmark repairer and the ball marker can be carefully left in the bag until you require them, and no sooner. After politely offering priority to the other three, irrespective of who is closest to the hole, you may begin sizing up your putt. To do this, you must stand, holding your putter in the air, rather like the statue of liberty, and shutting one eye. Carefully ensure you never crouch down in an ungainly fashion to inspect the break the ball will take, or otherwise your chances of a successful three-putt (or more) will be seriously marred.

2. The good news on the green for you all is that, being now so much closer to each other, some really serious talking can be accomplished. After all, four putts will need three other commentaries as well as your own post-mortem. Thus, putting should be undertaken on the “committee” system, with copious bets, jokes, revisions and cursing. When all four balls have been holed, you may begin the recording of the scores. It is not important who does this (as long as they have left their pencil and scorecard in the golf bag at the entrance to the green), but it is important to not immediately know your score. While standing on the green, simply take your putter and, while staring back down the fairway, wave it at every place from which you think you played a shot. (note, to encourage you in this, some of the golfers back on the fairway may even give a friendly wave back at you with their clubs). When, and only when, all four scores have been entered on the scorecard should you exit from the green, via the entrance in order to retrieve our trolley. Never underestimate the role played by recording the score, particularly as the round progresses. Particularly, be alert to the opportunities for mis-recording your score, confusing the par with the stroke index and for completely misunderstanding that boon to the scorer, the handicap allowance. For advanced players of the six-hour round, the R&A, in a typically thoughtful gesture, publish annually a thick, superbly detailed, little book on handicaps which can easily be referred to dozens of times, while actually out on the course itself!

On the next tee

1. On the way to the next tee it is vital to talk (see stage 2 above) to each other about how you just played the entire hole, animatedly pointing out the misfortunes and luck that attended it. Allow yourself plenty of time to decide who should be teeing off. It might be the player standing nearest the tee, true, but is it necessarily his turn?, you must ask yourself. Once it is agreed who is to play away, be sure that (…if it is you…) you do not have your glove on or your driver unsheathed from its cover. These things can be done while your fellow players wait. More importantly, you may want to add or remove clothing and this will necessitate a walk back to your trolley anyway. Resist the temptation to offer the tee to another player at all costs, it will only make him feel rushed.

2. Scrupulously adhere to the above instructions for the entire round and a six hour round should be the safe consequence. It is tempting, I know, now and again, to “cut corners” by such irresponsible tactics as playing in a two-ball, or from forward tees or not filling in scorecards. Resist these ludicrous practices; you will only live to regret them bitterly.

Donald Steel at West Sussex

He feels “They (ie thatch and compaction) represent the common enemy whatever the soil, the grass or climate. This makes regular aeration the exercise most believe to be the common denominator in terms of universal policy.”

These are clear, strong, visionary words, often repeated by the followers of Jim Arthur, the world’s greatest ever golf agronomist and one of the founding influences in the creation of FineGolf.

It is interesting that David Cole, Loch Lomond’s Course Superintendent, an amiable, brilliant greenkeeper, lists as his three agronomic priorities – “Drainage, Drainage and Drainage”. This is not perhaps surprising as the UK’s “Augusta” (in its exclusivity and that it is only open from April to October) endures a very high rainfall that dominates all that his team does.

8th green and clubhouse

I was privileged to be invited by David to inspect their work and play the course with him, on our way up to the Highlands this August.

To highlight the scale of the job they had building the course in this location, it’s remarkable that while digging out the boggy ground, one enormous dozer slid so deeply into the terrain that they decided to leave it there and it is still buried under the thirteenth hole to this day.

The ladies locker room

The club, now owned by its 500 odd ‘International’ members, is lucky to have initially had the billionaire Lyle Anderson as its visonary founder and the beautiful mansion of the Colquhoun family as its clubhouse, containing a baronial, fine dining-room and a full collection of wonderful ancestral family portraits. Both ladies’ and gentlemen’s locker rooms are something to behold and enjoy. It is not open to the public but having hosted The  Scottish Open for ten years on television, the club possesses nevertheless a public face.

The short 5th

The course, designed by the American Pro Tom Weiskopf, is of an ‘International’ type and for a parkland course, the holes each have a different and mostly interesting and strategically challenging character.

The greens were originally seeded with an American ‘creeping bent’ grass with its requirement for high maintenance and inputs of fertiliser but soon the Poa annua (Annual meadow grass) invaded.

Less than ten years later, in 2000, the greens were re-built to a USGA spec and turfed again with non-indigenous creeping bent. (This is not something a normal club can afford, and only clubs as wealthy as Queenwood and Wentworth can re-turf all its greens in this manner, as they both did recently).

The 18th

Again, stopping the Poa annua from invading proved problematic so a decision was taken in 2005 to let the poa invade and transition into a fine dwarf variety, while indigenous browntop bent grass, which requires less fertiliser and pesticides, was over-seeded. Five years of over-seeding with this browntop has achieved about 50/50 bent/poa and the greens run well.

The poor growing climate at Loch Lomond of wet, damp, shady, humid conditions favours Poa annua and the greens are very receptive to golf balls with divots being made. This in combination with the ‘through the air’ design to most of its green approaches, Loch Lomond gives high quality target-style golf.

David Cole adds: ”The overall goal is to achieve firm and fast conditions when the weather is favourable and by an installation of intensive drainage network combined with careful organic matter (thatch) management this can now be achieved within 48 hour window vs. a long period of conducive weather”.

reviewed byLorne Smith  2011

Pro golf these days seems focused on maximising income around a somewhat manufactured modern celebrity culture in the hope that this is what is needed to create interest.

There is certainly a great commercial golf industry ( on which a lot of jobs depend) reliant around golf pros but a bit like David Cameron, those in charge need to be careful to remember not to allow the tail to wag the dog, with those who commercially gain creating the rules.

Darren in the Daily Telegraph after round 2

The reception that Darren Clarke received coming up the eighteenth, one would like to think, is a reflection of the public’s feeling for a man of mature attitude who has gone back to live with his family and hone his fine running game. It is a reminder that this game of ours needs to rely on the traditional fine values and not just run after the money for money’s sake.

Although Phil Mickelson’s putting touch gave him momentum there was an inevitability about Mickelson’s and McIlroy’s much heralded challenges coming up short. They hit the ball too high(!) though Mickelson’s wizardry did adopt some great running shots, but as McIlroy said, the professionals only play on running courses one week of the year (not totally accurate now the Scottish Open and Dunhill Links are played on fine running  courses) and so he is not going to change his game!

Well, even with all his enormous talent, Rory won’t become the Master Golfer unless he does get his head around the running game. Bobby Jones hated links golf when he first came over from America and it took him a while to appreciate its subtlety but within a few years he had grown to love it, his talent winning the Grand Slam of both amateur and professional Opens in America and the British Isles in 1930.

The gods did seem to want Clarke to win, giving him advantageous tee times on the first two days but the low running game he favours, using the natural contours of the firm ground, created for him the luck on a fine course, hopping over bunkers at nine and fifteen in the last round. These same hazards might have caught “through the air” golfers.

Nobody likes rain but the way these golfers who love the predictability of distance control, were pandered-to by the BBC commentators was frustratingly ignorant. The speed and difficulty of the wind, which was no more than  20-25 mph for most of the time,  a level the members hereabouts would call ‘a nicely testing two to three clubber’, was over-emphasised.

BBC golf commentary never used to talk down to its audience whereas now they seem to have been told they have to explain the entertainment to us, rather than just adding knowledgeable comment and amusing anecdotes etc.  Having said that, I was pleased to hear some comment on the ghastly nature of some shots, in contrast to, say, Sky coverage, where every excuse is made for incompetent play.

Somebody was saying that pin positions should be easy on the shorter easier holes and tucked away on the longer holes to obtain more contrast for birdies and bogeys. A par on any of Royal St George’s holes is good and the knowledgeable British golfing public don’t need to be spoon-fed their excitement.

However, it does seem that the game would benefit from those shouting ‘get in the hole’ (whom the enjoyable Wayne Grady felt were only to be found in the USA) being escorted off the field of play!

FineGolf heartily congratulates Darren Clarke, The R&A Championship Committee and Royal St George’s Golf Club for giving us some wonderful entertainment.

“I’m a great advocate of firm golf courses. If you give a player a 30-yard wide fairway and it is soft, the fairway is 30 yards wide. But if you make the same fairway firm, it plays only 10 yards wide and if you don’t hit the middle, you’re running off the fairway.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding about what makes a course difficult for professionals. People think that if it is 7,700 yards and they make it really soft, forcing us to hit 5-irons into greens as opposed to 8-irons, that’s going to make it tough. But that’s not what makes it tough for us. If the ball is in the air and stopping when it lands on the deck, it is under our control. Professional golfers are so good at controlling the ball from A to B. But if you make the course firm, so that when the ball lands it runs on the deck, it is out of our control. That’s what makes a golf course difficult. So a 6,600-yard layout that is firm plays extremely tricky. We can’t overpower it. But we don’t play golf courses like that anymore for a number of reasons, particularly TV.

All you have to do is make the course rock hard, but instead the owners are spending vast amounts buying extra land and building new tee boxes. I’d like that money to be put into the agronomy of a course. How can we make this course firm again? If it rains how can we get it firm again?

Then course management comes into it. This was a massive factor in the days of Faldo, but not so important in the days of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, the two who have dominated the world rankings in the last decade, but whose driving accuracy has consistently been around 150th on the PGA tour.

Courses are manicured so well to look good on TV for professional events, but when it comes to ones that are fun to play my favourite is Baltray (County Louth) because I feel I can shoot 62 or 75. It gives me something and it’s the same for amateurs. A 12-handicapper can break 80 there. If he doesn’t, he wants to go back and try again. He’s not losing five or six balls in lakes around the course.

I’m doing some golf course design at the moment, and although lakes and streams are important, often for drainage, my view on course design is that the game is so difficult for amateurs that intimidating courses make the game less pleasurable. I’m on my fourth course and it’s all based around that idea. I want a course that gives and takes. I don’t want to bust a guy’s balls, to use the expression. When I finish my career, that’s going to be the main area. I’ve got a passion for course design and I’ve got a really clear view on how courses should be.”

FineGolf welcomes yet another professional golfer ‘coming-out’ in favour of the fine running game and thanks Golf Monthly for its exposure of an advocate of the FineGolf trend.

But what really caught my eye was who was thought to be the best golf commentator of the last 100 years.

I suppose it is understandable that most people have forgotten Henry Longhurst (scoring10%) who was second to Peter Alliss with 65%. I was also glad to see Ken Brown, (who at least talks a bit about the course and shot-making, though like all of them assiduously avoids interviewing greenkeepers and making any analysis and comment on the contrast between the fine running game and target-style golf), coming third at 5% but sadly there being no mention of Bruce Critchley!

Surely Bruce is one of the best? Has his move away from the terrestrial BBC to Sky reduced his exposure, at least to Golf Monthly readers? He now commentates on all the ‘target-style’ PGA events but misses out on The Open and Scottish Open where his intimate knowledge and love for the fine running game would be most beneficial for the larger numbers watching at that time.

On the week when Peter Aliss’s former colleague passed away, it was also a pity that the wisdom and memorable Musselburgh accent of Alex Hay was not heavily  remembered by Golf Monthly’s readership.

Unfortunately being at Lord’s this weekend I will miss watching Sky’s coverage of the Senior Open at Walton Heath. Why have both the BBC and Sky stopped having a summary of the day’s play late in the evening?