Mike Davis At Length

Mike Davis spent a considerable amount of time with Jaime Diaz, and the result is worth its own post.  We'll no doubt go a little long here, so a fresh cup of coffee wouldn't be a bad idea....

I've always been a fan of Davis', largely because he saved the U.S. Open from itself, that being the dreadful Tom Meeks set-up era.  Even though perceptions have lagged, Mike has used innovations like graduated rough and multiple tee boxes to create more interesting tests for the players.  The one-dimensional days of protecting par at all costs are mercifully behind us, though we'll no doubt have a better insight into his strategy of moving to newer venues after this week.  That last bit aside, the upcoming venues most certainly skew towards the traditional....

The other aspect that I like about Mike is his love of the game and his appreciation of how it is played by mortals.  How can you not like a guy that does this?

‘I started playing when I was 8 with my dad at Chambersburg Country Club in south-central Pennsylvania, but growing up I played a number of small-town public courses in

the area. One was a nine-hole course that had sand greens, South Mountain. And there was another nine-holer that was almost laughed at around Chambersburg called Conocodell, where we played some junior events. It was really just a field to play. But it was fun. About eight years ago, I went in with my best friend from high school and bought about half of it. 

“It’s beautiful land, with a trout stream running through it. It had become a little overgrown, so we upgraded it a little, took out some trees. But the greens might be seven on the Stimpmeter, the bunkers are far from smooth, and the fairways are cut at an inch. I kept telling my friend, ‘I want this course to stay scruffy.’ It’s a throwback. Other than the cars in the parking lot, you’d think you were in the 1970s.

"Golf for everybody" he calls it, and good for him.  I'll take my shots at Mike when I think he's wrong, but I don't think we'll do much better than he in the most important position in the game.

Shall we get to some of the tougher issues?  Because Jaime covers most of the waterfront: 

NEW MISSION

‘We have absolutely changed. I’m going on my 28th year, and in-house there was always the principle that, whether there are five million golfers, 25 million golfers or 5,000 golfers, what we do is for the game. Just this abstract thing that we are all about the game. Well, about six years ago, we changed the mission. What we’re focused on now is that it’s still the game, but it’s also about those who enjoy playing the game. So it’s about golfers. So when people say, ‘Is the USGA trying to grow the game?’ then yes, we’re now at that point where we’re engaged in those things. We want to collaborate and use some of our monies to be a part of the focus on participation. But on the other hand, what’s dreadfully missing is the other part, which has become our central focus. Because if you’re trying to bring all these other groups into the game—juniors, women, pick your group—but it’s not enjoyable, and the golf courses can’t sustain themselves, it’s never going to work. You’re going to bring these people in, they’re going to try it, they’re not going to enjoy themselves, and they’re going to leave. I’ve asked my counterparts in the industry, ‘When you bring all these people in, and they’re not staying, why is that?’ 

“It starts with the golf course. What’s enjoyable? There’s no one answer. How I enjoy a golf experience, or how a beginner might, or someone who is an elite golfer, it’s going to be different. But there are certain things. People, by and large, want to play well. Some people want to be challenged more than others. Nobody likes looking for golf balls. So golf courses can present a setup where people are playing from the proper tees, there aren’t a lot of forced carries, the rough is not so high that we’re always looking for somebody’s ball.

On the one hand, it's pretty sad that this revelation comes so late, but it's also true that this is something that's perhaps more in the hands of local course operators.  But then he goes outside the box with scary implications:

“Speaking of balls, the rules say you can’t have anything electronic to help you find your ball. Well, why not? Just think about Topgolf, and the chips in those golf balls. 

“When it comes to pace of play, everybody wants to say that golfers are the problem. They’re part of the problem, but we find that the bigger problem is the golf course and how it’s managed.

OK, that second 'graph goes on to talk about sensible issues like tee time intervals, a place the USGA can and should have impact.   Chips in golf balls?  Please God, no.....

The USGA is a bit late to this party, though:

“A lot of innovations have made the game better, but there are some where you would say, ‘I’m not sure that’s really good for the game.’ Like the speed of greens. Today, people equate fast greens with good greens. But fast greens cost more to maintain. Fast greens are more susceptible to disease. Fast greens compromise some of the architectural integrity of great courses. Fast greens have absolutely caused more cases of the yips. And they’ve hurt pace of play. So there’s an innovation where we say, ‘OK, we’ve innovated with new grasses and new mowers, but has that really been innovation?’ It’s like over-seeding. It’s very expensive, and agronomically not good, and dormant Bermuda is a very good playing surface. I hope in the future we see a scenario where there is no over-seeding. Period. The notion that everything has to be perfectly maintained, it’s bad for the game, and bad for enjoyment.

Ya think?

Davis does deserve credit for embracing Pinehurst's return to its roots, but of course the USGA bears the burden of long rough and lightning fast greens, because that's all we saw at the Open for decades.

For instance, this:

“When I talk to architects, for about 40 years, hard equaled good. Now you’re definitely seeing that go in the other direction, where fun equals good.

And where did they get that idea?  

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE U.S. OPEN AND THE DJ RULING

“The irony at Oakmont is that some things went extremely well. You couldn’t have gotten much unluckier with the weather, but the course still performed beautifully. I can’t think of another golf course that could take that much water and still be that kind of test. We got a great champion. Dustin Johnson doesn’t get enough credit for how well he handled that. But we made mistakes and have learned from them. But it was also kind of a perfect storm. I’d guess that 99 percent of golf people still do not understand exactly what happened (see Golf Digest, September 2016). Tour players don’t understand what happened. DJ himself was operating under the old rule, telling the official that when his ball moved, he hadn’t addressed the ball, which is a term that didn’t exist in the new rule. So you had a player not understanding the rule, us getting incorrect information, then having the video evidence. I’m very comfortable that DJ should have gotten the one-stroke penalty, the way the rule was written. I hated the rule, but you have to apply what it said then. Thankfully we have since changed it.

Yes, but your new rule didn't work....  It took you two tries to get a simple concept correct, and that assumes that the latest tweak will be the last.

As for regrets, he has this one:

“If I had a mulligan on that one, once I found out what had gone on, I would have quickly gotten myself into the Fox booth and talked more about it. I wasn’t on the rules committee at Oakmont—we had some people who are better with the rules than I am—and they handled it. But that might have been one of those places where it would have been helpful to have the leader of the organization. In a moment of a crisis, you’ve got to step to the plate and deal with it. I learned from that.

I'd like a mulligan on his use of that term....  But he's even more clueless on Lexi:

THE LEXI RULING

‘There was a lot of reaction from the golf community when Lexi Thompson, in the middle of her final round at the ANA Inspiration, was assessed a four-stroke penalty for a rules breach that was brought to the attention of the LPGA by a television viewer from the previous day’s coverage. We were all affected by it, and nobody likes to see that happen. It’s cases like these that we have kept top of mind as we’ve worked to modernize the rules, to hopefully positively change those outcomes in the future. One of the proposed changes says, ‘The player’s reasonable judgment will be accepted even if later shown to be wrong by other information,’ and it will reduce the need for video review in certain circumstances. It’s our responsibility to thoughtfully evaluate the overall effects of video technology on the game, especially because we’ve seen the impact that these situations can have.”

Sheesh, we have a right to expect more.... Lexi did not receive a four-stroke penalty, she got nailed with two two-shot penalties each of which raises different issues.  Most important, there's a legitimate body of thought that the quickie rule modification would not have changed anything in the Lexi saga...  Putting the most favorable spin on it, it's hopelessly vague, so shouldn't we expect more clarity from our rule-making authority?

Now it gets even more interesting?

MOVING TO FOX, AND THE USGA WAR CHEST 

‘As far as the Fox television deal [a 12-year contract, announced in 2013, for $1.1 billion], there are different ways of looking at it. I watched us go from ABC to NBC [starting in 1995], and there were a lot of hurt feelings back then, the same way that there are a lot of hurt feelings with the transition from NBC/Golf Channel to Fox. On the other hand, getting another big network like Fox involved in golf probably has been a good thing, you could argue, for golf holistically. I would hope people would look at it as those are extra monies coming to the USGA, and we’re a nonprofit. Our monies must go back into the game. So rather than golfers saying, ‘They went for the big money,’ and almost looking at it negatively, you’d like to say, this is actually more money coming to the game of golf. We’re not somebody who would pocket that money.

So, we need a fourth network in our dying game?  My understanding is that Davis himself was not a big part of that process, but that to me is not terribly compelling.

More importantly, that bit that its money "must" go back into the game is pretty rich, given the salry levels in Far Hills and the travel budget.  

But this may be the high water mark in terms of non-answers:

“Having a war chest is hugely important. It’s somewhere around $320 million that the USGA has in its investment portfolio. People say, ‘Why can’t you take that $320 million and put it back into golf?’ Well, that money allows us to do a couple of things. One, it’s insurance for something that could happen in the future so that we can keep operating. That could be anything. What happens if the U.S. Open is not played for a few years? It’s happened six times since World War I. If 9-11 had been on 6-11 at Bethpage, we wouldn’t have played that U.S. Open. The other thing is having enough money to do what you think is the right thing in governance. That’s really important. Because there were times when the USGA didn’t act because it decided it couldn’t afford to lose a potential lawsuit. We want to do what’s right for the game, and if we get sued and we lose, so be it, but we’re going to stand by our principles. But having said that, we’re at that point where we think that level is very healthy.

That last bit meanders towards the truth, that the slush fund is needed for the coming battle with manufacturers, such as in the Ping groove case of a few years ago.  That said, they seem to have ducked every opportunity to reign in the equipment and ball, so when exactly does Armageddon arrive?

Mike as much as admits as much here:

DISTANCE DEBATE

‘When I look back at the USGA over the decades, my biggest regret would be what has happened with distance. It’s been the thing, probably more than any, that has been the most harmful to the game. Billions of dollars have been spent to alter golf courses—and for what? If I said in front of a thousand golfers, ‘Who would like to hit the ball shorter?’ would any hands be raised? They’d think I had lost my marbles. Nobody wants to hit the ball shorter. On the other hand, increased distance has had a profoundly negative effect on golf courses. They’ve had to expand, they’ve had to use more resources to maintain. It takes more time to play. It takes more land and construction costs for new golf courses. And in some cases, architectural integrity has been compromised. Are any of these things good?

Mike actually makes a compelling case for bifurcation, since the distance explosion has been mostly good for the game at the amateur level....  Yet that would no doubt trigger the war of which he speaks.

This was interesting, because I've not heard him on this subject previously:

HANDICAP INTEGRITY 

‘People wonder why we’re no longer allowing rounds by a player playing by himself to count for handicap purposes. As we’re embarking on this world handicapping system, one of the things inherent in The Rules of Golf is player integrity. It’s all about that. But if you look at handicapping on a worldwide basis, the United States and Canada were the only two places where a player could submit scores playing only by himself. As we went into this, we realized that the credibility of somebody’s handicap was really important, and in fairness, there are places in the United States and probably in Canada where we found that all of someone’s rounds alone got questioned, and we thought, Well, that’s not good. But this really came down to the way golf is played in Australia, Asia, Europe, South America. By the way, a person can still play alone with a caddie or a marker and have that round count. But this really came down to uniformity.”

I play golf alone a bit during the week, but would you play for money knowingly against a player whose posted scores were all alone?  I mean real money....

Handicapping has to be, at its core, a peer review system, so I had no problem with this change.  The fact that it's a game played by gentlemen doesn't mean that everyone that plays it deserves that honorific.  Even the U.S. Constitution isn't a suicide pact....

ANCHORING BAN 

‘We are exceptionally pleased with how it’s worked out, because change hasn’t been as hard as some people thought it would be. The whole goal was to ensure that the game long term was played with the player holding a club with a free-swinging motion, which we feel is part of the essence of the game. We had seen some troubling signs, like young players being coached to anchor, and even long wedges being stuck under the armpit. As for the projections that hundreds of thousands of people would leave the game, we haven’t seen any evidence of that. This was not about getting the long putter out of people’s hands. We even showed methods in which the putter could be used without anchoring, which is the method Bernhard Langer now uses. I only wish the USGA and R&A had done this a quarter-century before. I know it caused some hard feelings among people and hard feelings among some of the organizations, but thankfully we’ve gotten that behind us. It was no fun going through it, but it was the right thing for the game.”

Long wedges anchored?  I agree with him here, especially about the twenty-five years....  they screwed up in not taking it seriously until guys started winning majors, and good for him for admitting so.

 There's much more you can explore on your own, so have at it....  I just wonder who's waiting in the wings to take over.