Thoughts on Colonial
GOUGE: I'm spending the weekend in Fort Worth watching Phil Mickelson do his best Ben Hogan impression. A thought occurs to me:
The prevailing wisdom is that Colonial Country Club, venerable site of this week?s Crowne Plaza Invitational, is like one big gallon of three-week-old milk. It has reached its expiration date. It is, the talking heads of golf expertdom suggest, a victim of golf equipment technology. Its unique charm and challenge lie in I-Am-Legend-like ruins in the wake of 350-yard drives. Its trees and angles and Perry Maxwell rolls and bunkering are nothing more intimidating than a trilobite. In short, a fossil.
This may be true. Still, it is alarming to those of us who remember Colonial as something more historically significant than the TPC of Scottsdale that the course that drew the greatest of respect from Ben Hogan has been beaten into submission by virtual nobodies with regularity in recent years. Johnson Wagner, who is not to be confused with Hogan, shot 63 on Thursday to mark the sixth straight year somebody opened the Colonial tournament with a sub-64 round. Those six players, of course, have won nothing more remarkable than an NEC Invitational.
But when you go out on the golf course, you wonder. Especially, when you take a trip around the anachronism?s third, fourth and fifth holes, affectionately known to locals as the ?horrible horseshoe.? More than a thousand yards of irritable bowel syndrome, the combination of the 467-yard par-4 third, the 252-yard par-3 fourth and 472-yard par-4 5th can bruise more than a few courtesy car-fed egos. These three holes are not the longest in the world, they do not scream contrived peril like the nefarious 17th hole at TPC Sawgrass, and they do not force a player to do anything other than play great shots with a mind stronger than six-way forged carbon steel. Do each of these holes play shorter thanks to a better golf ball, jacked up irons and hot-face drivers? Sure. Do they play any less difficult? I wonder. Midway through round 2, the field played each of them slightly over par. But this is merely an exercise in statistics. We already know hey are hard holes. For long hitters, the dogles on Holes 3 & 5 are uncomfortable in all the right places. Those less long can cut corners, but only after their respective courage has been firmly affixed to the sticking post.
But there are hard holes everywhere, even at my 5,784-yard home course. What gives me pause, what turns me in two directions is what I see at Colonial?s easiest holes. For instance, let?s look at No. 2. It?s a 387-yard gentle dogleg right with framing bunkers and trees at 260 on the inside corner and 290 or so on the outside corner. I just went and checked, and by day?s end on Friday just four balls ended up short of those bunkers and another seven went in one of those bunkers. That means 115 or so players played the hole as if those ?hazards? weren?t even there. This isn?t a good thing, is it? In the afternoon three-ball of Anthony Kim, Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard (one bomber and two guys not ranked in the top 160 in driving distance), no one had more than 81 yards in (Leonard missed the sweet spot on his tee ball apparently), and Kim and Furyk were closer than 50 yards. This seems a little wrong, like Bob Hope Chrysler Classic wrong. Until you realize that half-wedge shots to a tabletop green are not a gimme. Their scores: 4, 4 and 4.
But is that enough to make Colonial still relevant? With major championship courses approaching four-and-a-half miles in length, some of golf?s decision-makers would say a course of Colonial?s 7,000 yards of length is no longer worthy.
You decide. I truly don?t know if it?s time to retire Colonial or give it a raise. Either way, if the tour has outgrown a course that forces decision-making and courage like Colonial, then it?s probably growing in the wrong direction.
Colonial hasn't had a significant re-design in Lord knows how long. That's all it needs.
Move a few tee boxes, add a little length to holes that need it, re-design a few greens, deepen the bunkers and presto! New, challenging course, just like the old days.