I’ve been fortunate enough to have covered golf in Colorado for 35 years, and you get to the point that not much that happens on the golf course surprises you a great deal. But what I saw earlier this month at the CGA Amateur was eye-opening, to the point that I recounted it several times — to CGA executive director Ed Mate, CGA co-president Joe McCleary and Pinehurst Country Club head golf professional Kevin Vena, among others.
Let me explain …
During my college years, I had the chance to caddie for Jack Nicklaus in an exhibition he played with Tom Watson and Dow Finsterwald on Aug. 24, 1981 at Pinehurst.
And on Aug. 4, I covered the third round of the 2018 CGA Amateur, played at the same course.
Everyone old enough knows that golf has changed an incredible amount in those 37 years — and that certainly includes someone like me who has covered a ton of tournaments over that time. But a comparison of what happened on those two days was a little jarring.
This centers around the16th hole at Pinehurst, a par-5 in which there’s a gradual hill that crests a little more than halfway between the back tee and the green. I still have a Pinehurst scorecard from 1981 — only because it was autographed by Nicklaus and Watson — and the 16th hole measured 553 yards from the back tees. For this month’s CGA Amateur, it was a 563-yard hole.
I remember — thanks in parts to reviewing columns I wrote not long after — how the hole played out for Nicklaus (pictured). Then a 41-year old, the Golden Bear was still among the longest hitters on the PGA Tour in the early 1980s, typically ranking in the top 25 in driving distance. On 16 at Pinehurst, he used his persimmon MacGregor Eye-O-Matic 945W driver and hit a good tee tee shot down the left side of the fairway, but still had more than 250 yards left to the flag. In fact, his ball didn’t make it to the top of the hill because he asked me where he should aim his second shot as the green wasn’t yet in view. I pointed out Loretto Heights College in the distance and he hit a perfect 250-yard 3-wood where directed.
“I hope you’re right,” he said as he handed the club back to me.
“I hope so too,” I replied.
Unfortunately, as we approached the green, it became apparent the ball ended up in a greenside bunker front right of the putting surface. But Nicklaus still got up and down for birdie.
That came to mind again this month when I was following the lead group in round 3 of the CGA Amateur. On the same 16th hole, playing from a tee 10 yards further back, Kyler Dunkle (left), who would go on to win the title the next day, ripped a drive that made Nicklaus’ 37 years earlier look laughably short.
Dunkle’s ball ended up on the left edge of the fairway — and even with the 150-yard marker. I went out to check a sprinkler head in the fairway, making sure it wasn’t really a 200-yard marker. But sure enough, his ball was right at 150 to the middle of the green.
It didn’t take much figuring to see that Dunkle had just hit his tee shot 413 yards — and without the ball landing on a cart path, a sprinkler head or anything of the sort. Just as notably, his ball had traveled roughly 115 yards further than Nicklaus’ had on the same hole in 1981. That’s 115 yards past arguably the greatest golfer of all time and one of the best drivers of the ball ever.
Now I realize that Dunkle’s ball no doubt had more roll than did Nicklaus’ because it was on a downslope. But I was in the landing area for Dunkle’s shot and the amount of roll wasn’t at all unusual.
Dunkle is certainly a long hitter by the standards of top Colorado players. He was leaving drives greenside or within 40 or 50 yards of the flag on plenty of par-4s at Pinehurst that week. But Coby Welch, who was paired with Dunkle that Saturday, wasn’t that far behind his fellow player that day on No. 16. As for Nicklaus, this was no mis-hit on his part. He’d smacked a drive almost 300 yards, which may be pedestrian by today’s PGA Tour standards, but was pretty darn good back then with persimmon-headed clubs, even with some altitude adjustment.
So what is there to draw from this non-planned comparison?
Well, after realizing that I wasn’t just seeing things … it’s a mixture of awe and concern. Awe because the evolution of equipment, the golf ball and to some extent better strength and conditioning regimens, has allowed a player to hit a 400-yard-plus drive that doesn’t involve any fluke-ishness or luck. And concern because it renders a lot of great golf courses near-obsolete for many elite/tour-level players, barring making fairways 15 yards wide, growing 6-inch-deep rough, making greens extra firm and having pin placements resemble those in miniature golf. And it’s even more of an issue at the altitude we are here in Colorado.
That certainly is no revelation. Observers have been debating the issue of “distance-creep” in golf for decades. And if I had a buck for every time I’ve heard Nicklaus say the golf ball has to be rolled back, I’d be one rich golf writer. But he’s right that that would be the most manageable solution to many classic and shorter courses becoming de-facto obsolete for PGA Tour-level players — and building ever-longer golf courses, with the increased maintenance and water they require. The problem regarding Nicklaus’ solution is, there’s plenty of pushback to rolling back the ball or to variable-distance balls — from ball manufacturers, many players with lucrative ball contracts and many others in the business.
While it’s an awesome sight to watch great golfers hit the ball jaw-dropping distances, at some point you have to wonder if the transformation in equipment and the ball renders it essentially a different game now for the world’s best than it was for comparable players decades ago. And equally as important, what does that progression bode for some great classic courses that once were a major challenge for the best golfers but are no longer — again, barring tricked-up setups?
For the record, in 1980 Dan Pohl led the PGA Tour in average driving distance at 274.3 yards. This year, Rory McIlroy leads at the way at 320.5 yards. If that trend continues, you’re talking a 400-yard average leading the PGA Tour by the year 2085 — if there’s still a PGA Tour then, that is.
Why does this matter to your average golf fan, particularly one in Colorado?
If you’re that golf fan, have you ever wondered why Colorado hosted six men’s major championships — meaning the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship because they’re the two held in the U.S. that change sites each year — in the 47 years from 1938 to 1985, but hasn’t held a single one in the 33 years since? (And you can tack on at least another seven years to that total as the next vacancy for a PGA Championship site is 2025 and for a U.S. Open site is 2028.)
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to surmise that the main reason a U.S. Open or PGA hasn’t returned to Colorado is significant changes in the ball and equipment technology over the last several decades, and the exacerbated effect that brings at altitude. Things like going to solid-core golf balls and from small wood-headed drivers with steel shafts to large titanium ones with graphite shafts have affected golf everywhere, but even more so at a mile-high altitude, where the ball flies 10 or 15 percent further than at sea level. That means if the longest hitters on the PGA Tour catch one particularly solid these days in the Denver area, a 400-yard drive is not only very possible, but not that big of deal — which is how Dunkle treated his 16th-hole tee shot at the CGA Amateur.
If you don’t believe that speculation, McIlroy hit a 370-yard 3-wood at Cherry Hills the week of the 2014 BMW Championship — and he’s upped his average driving distance by 10 yards since then. He said at Cherry Hills that week that with his high ball flight, a typical shot was “going a good 15 percent further than it usually does (at sea level).” Based on his 320-yard norm this season on Tour, that means that an average drive for McIlRoy in the Denver metro area would currently travel about 368 yards. And, like every PGA Tour player, he can certainly take it up a gear or two.
Also at that BMW Championship, Bubba Watson hit the green on the 555-yard 17th hole with driver-9 iron.
With driving distance having increased since then, it wouldn’t be at all surprising for players like McIlroy, Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka or Watson to hit driver-wedge on a similar-length par-5 in Denver now. My guess is that the USGA and the PGA of America, who run the U.S. Open and PGA Championship, respectively, would prefer not to see two of the most prestigious golf tournaments in the world come to that on anything approaching a regular basis.
Even back at the 1985 PGA Championship at Cherry Hills, some observers were aghast when several contestants were hitting driver-wedge at the 491-yard 18th hole. With what’s happened since then with distance increases, returning to Colorado for another U.S. Open or PGA Championship may simply be a bridge too far for the powers that be — particularly with plenty of sea-level alternatives.
If that’s the case, it’s a sad situation for a state with such a rich history of major golf championships.
