[nemo44x]

There’s a lot of debate in golf if the game had been spoiled at professional levels because of modern gear. Courses have been made longer to accommodate and it’s very likely there’s less reliance on skill today. All the optimizations are around speed today because with such huge faces and low MoIs guys won’t miss when swinging even harder.

In fact you could argue golf should be more like baseball in that lower skilled players and amateurs use large metal clubs whereas pros use small wooden clubs.

[alabastervlog]

There do exist traditionalist golf leagues that use classic club styles and balls that are way less flashy than the modern stuff.

I briefly looked into it after playing Golf Story on the Switch, which features an area where you have to use a set of historical clubs (sometimes with different names from the modern versions!) and found such leagues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_golf

[nemo44x]

Indeed and I can see the appeal on old courses that were designed for a ground game that doesn’t exist in the modern aerial game. Especially if you have firm conditions like in Scotland.

[alabastervlog]

Reading about these was the first time I was even tempted to take up golf. Smaller courses are really appealing—the huge courses of modern golf kinda stress me out, and I've also got a vague and not-strongly-held dislike for how much land they use, which, environmental and community-development effects aside, I'd think would also tend to make the game more expensive, plus, when they're so sprawling as they often are, I usually find them less-attractive aesthetically than a more-mixed natural/human environment.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be a ton of courses really designed for shorter-distance games, which makes sense when most players are rocking space-age tech clubs, but does make getting involved in it challenging.

[nemo44x]

You sort of have a few different classes of golf course.

- Par 3/Pitch & Putt. Should be able to reach the green from the tee on most or all holes.

- Executive. Smaller course with more par 3 holes and shorter par 4s. Less than 5,000 yards and makes for fast play.

- Championship. Full sized course that most people are familiar with. These have gotten longer as equipment has evolved.

There has been a resurgence in par 3 and executive course openings. Especially par 3 courses. I agree that a faster round that’s more about shot making than power is fun.

[benmathes]

With golf, there are other dimensions course designers could use to make the pro game less about distance. Tighter fairways, faster greens, etc.

[nemo44x]

They do. But there’s a line between arbitrary and fair. One of the things players want most is for outcomes to not be random/arbitrary and for skill to be judged fairly. That good shots are rewarded and bad shots penalized. The game already has a lot of that baked in so no need to make it more so.

TPC Sawgrass is the closest to a perfect pro course (PGA National second I guess) since it was designed specifically for it. I think a course perfectly optimized for pro play would be very different from what most people would expect.