It's just not golf

If this is where golf is headed who would want to play the game? It's a question you have to ask after the playing of the first two majors of the year.

Cringing at the carnage that passed as the US Open at Oakmont you had to wonder whether the worthies of golf administration were in a permanent whisky haze or just completely loony.

It was Sandy Tatum, chairman of the championship committee who presided over the “Massacre at Winged Foot” in 1974, who famously noted that the USGA was not trying to humiliate the best golfers in the world; it was trying to identify them.

There were snorts of derision then and 33 years later the USGA have still not got the balance right.

Remember the mess at Shinnecock Hills when they lost control of the greens and Oakmont was not much better.

For an organisation charged with promoting the game of golf, “run by golfers for the benefit of golfers” according to its own mission statement, the USGA certainly seems to be out of touch with what the vast majority of golfers would deem a fair challenge.

Officials will doubtless puff themselves up and point to the fact that two former champions, Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk, finished joint second but remain oblivious to the fact that they produced a winner and, in Bubba Watson, a strong challenger who cast caution to the wind and simply relied on their great length and strength to rip the ball out of the rough with short irons.

Oakmont was everything but a course for the purist – because the element of luck was weighted too heavily.

The sad fact is that instead of taking control of and governing the distance explosion the USGA has responded by producing horribly tricked-up courses for the US Open.

This is also true for the green-coated Gods of Augusta who have ruined one of the great sporting arenas of the world. Augusta National used to be unique – beautiful setting, unbelievable condition, super-slick greens and stirring contests involving players trying to beat the course with birdies and eagles rather than trying to survive it as though it was some military punishment drill.

And the US PGA is no better with even the professionals seeming to have settled into a mindset that for a player to beat par is to ghastly too contemplate – especially with the way grass is allowed to become so long near the edges of greens that the skill of the great pitchers and chippers is all but eliminated.

Fortunately the British Open still goes to links courses, with all the variation and adaptation that requires, while the Royal & Ancient, to its great credit, responded positively when it did mess up at Carnoustie in 1999 by acknowledging that man should not tamper too much with nature.

My contention, which I have often put forward at recent Nedbank Challenges, is that most golfers prefer to see how well the great players can play rather than watching them reduced to hackers.

Pardon me if I’m wrong, but are we not meant to play for fun?