-20? Why lengthening golf courses doesn't work

The PGA Tour is experiencing a surge of low scores. The idea that the best golfers in the world would be tamed by simply lengthening the holes on golf courses is laughable, but it has been happening since 1999, when Tiger Woods started dominating the field on a weekly basis. The thought of the time was to "Tiger Proof" the course, making it harder for the game's greatest player to score low. I want to look at the different strategies implemented by the PGA Tour and their golf courses, and then what I think will work the best.

First the PGA Tour and their respective golf courses started lengthening the courses. This had one main effect, the rest of the field could not hit the ball as far, and Tiger had a bigger advantage. Then technology took over, and drivers became more powerful, but an odd thing happened, while the field could drive the ball longer, Tiger was still winning. It wasn't until he had swing issues did the golf world catch up to Tiger. Technology can always make the ball go farther, the goal should be to put a premium on accuracy.

Then the PGA Tour last year started regulating grooves in their golf clubs. While there has been an effect on accuracy and playing from the rough, the scores have not been lowered. A paper on this was presented at last weekends MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, the authors found this correlation between winning and driving accuracy, however did not discuss scores.

Finally the third idea and so far the most successful was the USGAifying of golf courses. Yearly the US Open in parkland courses have the winning scores near par. How they do it is by narrowing fairways, rolling the fairways, lengthening the rough, double rolling the greens (making them like concrete) and then sometimes not watering the greens and fairways towards the end of the week. While this is not the best presentation of a course, and would be difficult to play every week, it is entertaining once a year. But really the USGA goes too far sometimes, for example in 2006 and 2007 the winning score was +5. That might be too far. Their other strategy is turning borderline par 5s into long par 4s.

My suggestion is simple, too lower scores, the PGA Tour and their golf courses need to narrow the fairways, and lengthen the rough by about .5 of an inch. Also the need to length the space between the teeth of the rakes for sandtraps. This will make hitting the ball into the rough and the sandtrap a penalty and put a premium on accuracy.

I have had enough of -20 winning scores, something between -5 and -12 each week should be the goal.

The course that the players raved about in recent years was the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, ON. In 2003 the winning score was -8 in 2003 and -14 in 2006. In 2003 the rough was longer, the fairways were narrow and the course put a premium on accuracy.

My suggestion will help winning scores go up and make golf more fun to watch on tv, instead of every golfer getting birdie and birdie.