I’ve never played Bay Hill – I’ve never played golf in Florida at all, truth be told – but I’m more than willing to give it a go. That being said, if Bay Hill was the only course I could play for the rest of my life, I might just give up the game altogether.
It’d be too expensive for one, and I’m not talking about the membership or green fee rates either. Even on my best day, I’d do well to get around without sending at least a couple of balls to watery graves, and I’d be in no hurry to go retrieving them; not with meat-eating dinosaurs lurking in the depths and shadows.
But for pro golf, it’s perfect. Especially when the greens are firm and the rough is penal, and even more especially when the wind blows like it did on Thursday.
Maybe I’m reading the room wrong and the majority of viewers would rather watch birdies galore, 10-under rounds and maybe somebody having a sniff at 59, but I don’t think so. These are the best players in the world – or 72 of them at least – and they should be treated as such by making things tough.
Compare this week with last. Mother Nature dances to her own tune, so wind is something that no tournament organisation committee can just conjure up, but there was a similar amount of rain in the leadup to both the Cognizant Classic and Arnold Palmer Invitational yet the courses were like chalk and cheese.
Back in 2018, the PGA Tour adopted a new slogan – Live Under Par. Despite overlooking the fact that ‘under par’ in any parlance outside golf is not a good thing, the Tour seemed to think that that was what people wanted to see. Birdies galore, course records being broken, and winning scores in the 20s-under… That slogan might’ve been abandoned after a couple of seasons, but more often than not, the sentiment remains.
And maybe there are people who want that. The odd time, maybe I do too. But only the odd time. At the risk of beating this drum too loudly and too repetitively, genuine jeopardy makes golf a much more entertaining product to watch, makes each birdie that bit more valuable, and generally raises the stakes of each and every shot.
That’s why the opening round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational was box-office viewing, and with the likes of Wyndham Clark, Shane Lowry, Rory McIlroy, Justin Rose, Scottie Scheffler, Collin Morikawa, Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas and Ludivg Åberg all inside the top 15, it doesn’t make for a bad leaderboard either.
I realise that’s not always possible. Sometimes members of a tournament host course don’t want five-inch rough and narrow fairways, sometimes a golf course just isn’t going to be tough enough regardless, and sometimes, the weather is going to dictate that the conditions are soft and these top pros are able to pick their targets and fire right at them, but those weeks should be the exception as opposed to the norm.
Let the cream rise to the top by cranking up the churning arm. That’s why major championships generally deliver major championship tests and major worthy champions and why golf courses and championships like the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill deliver champions like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler.
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