Geoff Shackelford debuts his column in the Golfobserver.com with a piece entitled "The Demise of Intelligence". Shackelford has written numerous golf books, most of which deal with traditional golf architecture. One of which is even a piece of fiction.
In "The Demise of Intelligence", Shackelford laments the dumbing down of competitive golf due to the current state of course design:
Restrictive course setups born out of a response to improved equipment have all but eliminated the tradition of intelligence. One could argue that intellect is on the verge of becoming a negative attribute for the professional golfer. After all, who needs to think about picking a fairway side when you are given 25-yards to hit to? And who needs to decide between a 2-iron and a driver when you can drive it past all the trouble and have a flip-sand wedge approach?The fear is that by de-emphasizing strategy and promoting a style of play that encourages players to repetitively hit the ball high, straight, and far (rather than shaping shots) competitive golf will go the way of competitive tennis, and drag the rest of the sport down with it.
Certainly, the level of interest in the highest competitive forms of any particular sport influences the sport's overall popularity. Everytime Mia Hamm scores a goal, countless young girls take to the soccer fields of suburbia. But golf has been addictive to humans long before the PGA Tour began to take shape or Bobby Jones amazed the world by winning the Grand Slam in 1930. In fact, the first sign of a society being addicted to golf (which is also cited as the earliest known existence of the sport), was when King James II of Scotland banned the game in 1457 because he felt it was distracting the male population from archery practice.
Yes, the elite golfers in the world should be forced to think their ball around the course a bit more, it would certainly be more interesting and therefore add to the overall health of the game. But as long as the masses find golf to be an escape and a challenge - and they do, go to your local golf course and you will find very few people who can reptitively hit the ball high, straight, and far - the state of the game should be of no serious concern.
