Geoff Shackelford

From the Hearth -
Author and Golf.com contributor Geoff Shackelford has shown acumen and candor in writing about course architecture, a perennial blind spot among golfers. His books include: The Good Doctor Returns, and The Captain, a definitive biography of George Thomas, whose bequests include Riviera. But it was his edited collection of essays on design, Masters of the Links, also published by Sleeping Bear Press, which prompted my call upon returning from St. Andrews.

THR: Geoff, my first visit to the Old Course was suitably revelatory. Is it still relevant to designers? In this day and age what can they learn from it?

Geoff Shackelford: Oh, boy. The way they're doing golf courses these days, there's more than they could ever dream of learning there. Where do you start? Basically, the quirkiness of it, the naturalness of the golf course and the way it utilizes the natural features and contours, the way it makes you think. As you know, that's what drives me nuts about modern golf courses for the most part. They don't ask the golfer to think and make decisions and have fun option holes and be creative, and that's what the Old Course does. And it tempts you to try courageous shots. It forces you to come up with some shots that you've never hit before. So, it's not all right in front of you, and you have to think your way around. You always hear players hate it the first time round and then it grows on them, and it's because of that. Too much of our golf is, I think, just right in front of us. That's fine the first time you play a golf course but over time that gets boring. It's fun to have a little mystery and some surprises and to outwit your opponent because you know the course better, or its nuances. Those are the beauties of the Old Course that they can learn.


Too much of our golf is just right in front of us. That's fine the first time you play a golf course but over time that gets boring. It's fun to have a little mystery and some surprises. . .

THR: It occurred to me that all the golf most of us play - and all golf away from true links land - is almost a distortion of what the Old Course represents.

Shackelford: Oh, yea. We don't have anything even close to it. Augusta National incorporated some elements of it, and of course they're just trying everything they possibly can to get rid of those elements, which is just shocking considering that Bobby Jones really intended to have that as a tribute to the Old Course, in a sense - although he never envisioned it could take on all the nuances the Old Course has, but it is fascinating how we've drifted from it and I'm not sure how we can get back. You can start slowly but surely and incorporate some elements, and there are architects out there who are doing that.

THR: The element of luck. You talk about that. It sometimes seems as if the P.G.A. Tour tries to legislate it from the game. . . mandating uniform course conditions, from the speed of the greens to the length of the rough from one week to the next.

Shackelford: It's just bizarre to me why they do that. Their job is to entertain. And I think what's happened is that they just take themselves so seriously and the players pretty much rule what goes on there and they've just lost sight of the fact that this is entertainment, pretty much like all other professional sports. So it's not only the variety of set-ups, well, that's just non-existent, really, it's the variety of golf courses they play and the variety of formats they play. It seems to be they've just decided that they have to play 72-holes of stroke play, and the fairways have to be 28 yards wide every week and the rough three inches. It's boring. And I don't know why it's so difficult for them to see it but this notion to make everything uniform and fair - it's just never going to happen. And that's the beauty of golf. It's not supposed to be fair but we all get lucky too, so it always balances out. If you play enough golf you know that. It's a mystery to me why they don't mix up their course set-ups more, though.


[The P.G.A. Tour] has just lost sight of the fact that this is entertainment pretty much like all other professional sports. …I don't know why it's so difficult for them to see it but this notion to make everything uniform and fair - it's just never going to happen. . . That's the beauty of golf.

THR: This won't surprise you but while I was in Scotland I visited with some Americans in the golf business. They immediately had suggestions on how the Old Course could be improved.

Shackelford: Oh, I know. . .

THR: I guess that's a typical American response. The Scots certainly know what they're doing.

Shackelford: They do. They know what works and they leave it alone. And they just don't try too hard to make things grand and upscale, although I've heard at times lately they have been, and their model for golf is so wonderful and it's what we need here: little community courses which are 6,100 yards and you can play in 2 ˝ hours and they're fun; they have the advantage of having some great linksland but still they don't take the game quite as seriously as we do, and in the end I think they enjoy it more and over a longer period of time. And they have a life! They're not out there for 5 ˝ hours.


[The Scots] don't take the game quite as seriously as we do, and in the end I think they enjoy it more and over a longer period of time. And they have a life!

THR: Talking about the courses the pros play, particularly for the majors, there are a number of courses that have been taken out of consideration simply because they're not long enough…Merion East, for example. What are your thoughts? Are an increasing number of courses just too short?

Shackelford: I don't think it's in all cases that they're too short. It's that the people who host the tournaments at those courses are very sensitive to low scores. Merion is borderline being too short, but I think more than anything they don't want to see 19 under [par], 20 under win. As far as I'm concerned, usually that's completely meaningless. The object in golf is to make the lowest score in golf you possibly can so you usually think that's a good thing. But courses just don't like that. And the governing bodies who've done nothing about the equipment issue are just as nervous about those low scores as anybody else, except the Brits usually, they don't seem to care. I think it's just a tragedy that we're losing certain golf courses from the rotation.

Mike Tirico said it on the ABC telecast that what an amazing thing it is that Old Tom Morris won The Open at St. Andrews and now here's Tiger Woods doing it. No other sport can say that, can have that kind of tradition. I think we're very close to losing some courses from being able to present a good challenge and a good test while not needing to be tricked-up. I think Pebble Beach is in danger.

When you consider the pace we're on equipment-wise, where the game has come in just the last five or six years. Curtis Strange mentioned it. Five years ago, a 300 yard drive was something everyone would talk about. Now it's every tee shot. Something has to be done. I just think it's vital to the game to keep playing these golf courses. And you have an element out there that says, "No, no, no, you need to mix some new venues in." Yea, that's true but, at the same time, golf has something very unique here and it needs to return to those storied venues.


Golf has something very unique here and it needs to return to those storied venues. . .

I think we're very close to losing some courses, from being able to present a good challenge and a good test while not needing [the course] tricked up. . . .I think Pebble Beach is in danger. . . .It's just a tragedy that we're losing certain courses from the rotation.

THR: Bill Melhorn once said that length never made a golf course. Are we reaching the point where length is having an adverse effect on the game?

Shackelford: Oh, we've reached it, we've passed it, and it's way too late. And it's only going to get worse! People are just building courses longer and longer. And it's a disaster. People look at a course based on the back tee yardage and that's just meaningless.

A well-designed golf course fits the property and it may be 6,500 yards and be phenomenal. It's really basically meaningless. If you take the top 10 courses in the world and average out their yardage and that proves that. They're all about 6,600 and 6,700 yards.


If you take the top 10 courses in the world and average out their yardage, they're all about 6,600 - 6,700 yards.

THR: Robert Trent Jones recently passed away. There's no question of his impact on the game and on course design, perhaps in the same way that Henry Ford revolutionized manufacturing. Put some perspective on his legacy.

Shackelford: Well, I'm really not sure how to put it yet. He did some good things and he did some things that I don't care for, and one of those is accentuating the importance of par and length. I think it remains to be seen how that effect is going to be viewed in a few years. I don't know. He did a lot for golf architects, I'll say that.

THR: I've always thought of his courses as kind of he-man courses.

Shackelford: Well, he'd consider that a compliment. That was his goal so…I don't know if I'd consider that a compliment if I designed courses. I'd just want people to have fun playing them. But he liked that notion of keeping par in tact.

THR: The classical designers didn't mind golfers shooting a good score. . .

Shackelford: No. They considered it a compliment.

THR: We seem to enjoy more penal design. The tougher the course the better we like it, regardless of our handicap. What do you make of that?

Shackelford: I don't know. I always find it interesting when I go to a major and someone tells me: 'I love the majors. I love the U.S. Open because I get to see the players struggle, because they get to know how I feel and see what it's like.' And I understand that because golf is such a hard game and it beats us down sometimes but the object of a major tournament is to find out who the best golfer is, not to put them down and remind them of what the average golfer goes through.

It's just a peculiar thing to me why in golf low scores and good play is viewed as a negative. Someone will look at the leaderboard at the John Deere and say: 'Gosh, look at all these low scores. What's wrong?' When I look it at, I say: "Geez, look at all that great play." You don't see this in any other sport. You don't see people saying: 'Boy, that Pete Sampras. He's serving so hard. We've got to raise the net. Or, Shaquille O'Neal is too good around the basket, we've got to make him play with a medicine ball. It's a very peculiar mentality that golf has a monopoly on. I'm not sure.


You don't see people saying 'Boy, that Pete Sampras. He's serving so hard. We've got to raise the net. . . .It's a very peculiar mentality that golf has a monopoly on.

THR: We like to be beaten up?

Shackelford: I guess. And I guess we like to see people suffer. I don't. I personally enjoy what we watched at Pebble Beach and St. Andrews. I'd loved to have seen some competition for Tiger but I still found it wonderful to watch, this amazing display of talent and skill. That made me feel good. Watching Carnoustie last year was awful. I didn't feel good about the game of golf and I don't think many other people did either as now everybody who was involved with that has kind of distanced themselves from the whole thing. It was just so bizarre. It just wasn't really golf.

THR: Last question. Regarding slow play. Is there a design solution? Will we see anything from the design community that will help?

Shackelford: No, I think a lot of it has to do with how seriously we take golf. People pay more so how can you ask someone to speed up when they've paid $100. The only answer in my view is shorter golf courses, 6,200, 6,300 yards. But golfers don't seem to like that. They'd rather be able to say they played a 7,000 yard course. Until that changes, I don't see any change because the architects in recent years have done their part. They've made courses less penal and a little more strategic. And, obviously, it hasn't helped too much.

© THR, 2000

Talking Points - Edition I - Ron Green
Talking Points - Edition II - Dr. Patrick Cohn
Talking Points - Edition III - Bradley S. Klein
Talking Points - Edition IV - Doug Sanders
Talking Points - Edition V - Curt Sampson