When two golf friends who had the fortune of playing in this year’s Alfred Dunhill Links called me to say they have driven two greens each at St. Andrews you would assume they are on Tour. You couldn’t be further from the truth. Both, who will remain anonymous, are weekend golfers and just love to pound the ball off the tee. When I asked what they shot, neither of them were concerned about their scorecard, as they had just driven two greens at the Home of Golf, so job done in their eyes!
This just sums up the divide that is being created right now with golf fans. The purests of the game will always admire a shot that has been shaped to work the ball into a challenging pin position. From the tee, you appreciate the strategic drive that sets up the approach shot that enables the player to craft a birdie where many previously struggled to make par. Then you have team power. Where you become entertained as you would watching Eddie Hall and Thor Hafthor Bjornsson go head-to-head in a strongman competition. You equally have more chance of deadlifting 500kg as you are driving the ball 340 yards like Bryson, but both are a spectacle and display of human strength.
Every Christmas in the UK I would watch two things religiously. The Queen’s speech and secondly the World’s Strongest Man. As I got older, the entertainment of watching epic feats of strength became boring and the Bake Off Christmas special would become its replacement!
The same is happening in golf right now. I really enjoyed the likes of Bryson hammering it down the fairways and over the lakes at Bay Hill. But given the choice of going to watch Seve in his prime or Bryson, the Car Park Champion would win hands down.
I you heard Billy Foster, who was on the bag at the time, recite the story of when Seve won at Crans-sur-Sierre in 1993 and pulled off what many would claim to be the shot of the century, you might start to shift camps.
Bryson’s demonstration of power at this year’s World Long Drive Champhionship was praise worthy for sure. But not as entertaining as watching Seve take on a shot that involved feathering a wedge over an eight foot wall and through a hole in the trees no larger than a dinner plate, while still clearing a swimming pool and four to 80 foot pine trees that guarded the green. He then lit up the galleries around the hole by chipping in his next shot to win the tournament by a single stroke.
His ability to dazzle golf fans worldwide with magical shots would attract huge crowds who just wanted a glipse of creative brilliance . Golf is now an entertainment industry so why not find a formula that unites both camps? Play events on courses where players have that risk and reward option, or even a joker hole that plays to their strength. Holes that entice the bigger hitters to take on the green, like the 17th at TPC Scottsdale, where if you stray off line, you will more than likely be asking your caddy for another ball. Then a hole that is just 77 yards long surrounded by pot bunkers and a green that isn’t far from being crazy golf.
I watch Tour golf all the time and I can’t remember the last time I saw a player lose a ball. Ok, the John Daly tin cup moment doesn’t count but you get want I mean.
The game is on the brink of a major shake up to tackle the dramatic fall in TV viewing figures and its ageing demographic. Unless things are made more entertaining for the kids tuning in for the first time, the longevity of golf is periously in danger of being downgraded.
