“We can’t go on with glamourous golf because it’s unaffordable”. Tour and TV legend Ken Brown says golfers need to realise the sport doesn’t always have to be “just right” to be great.
The renowned Ryder Cup player and commentator was considering the future of golf course maintenance.
“The interesting thing for me is where is golf heading? As you know, there’s a cost in all of it,” he said. “Every year my wife and I go somewhere in Scotland and generally there’s a little golf course where there’s usually one greenkeeper, if there’s even one. You can see where golf has come from and where it’s heading.
We can’t go on with glamorous golf because it’s unaffordable. So, from a design point of view, you have to make a challenge out of a hole without plastering bunkers everywhere.
“I think the powers that be have got to separate championship golf from mainstream golf. It takes a phenomenal amount of manpower and technical skill and it’s not real golf.
“When I go to Scotland, some of the courses don’t have a greenkeeper and the locals come and cut them or sheep wander round, so it’s very basic. To me it’s just as interesting to play, more so in some ways, than to go around a course where it’s all beautiful.
“Tour golf has no relevance to club golf because you haven’t got a chance [of reaching those levels of course maintenance] in a million years. Otherwise golf has no future because you need more greenkeepers, more machines and there becomes a point where it’s not sustainable.”
Brown added pressure on resources, particularly water, will change the way the game is played with drier, bouncy conditions, potentially leading to a more interesting game.
“I think golfers want everything to be just right, but it doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “You can still have a great knock around. When Tom Morris was playing around St Andrews, nothing was raked or perfect, but that was the essence of the game.
“Golfers have got to understand that it doesn’t have to be bright green and stripy.
“Somewhere down the road they’re going to say ‘you know what, you can’t use water on the golf course because we haven’t got any to waste’.
“Then the whole thing will go back to where we were at Harpenden Common in 1965 [where Brown was a greenkeeper], where it’s going to dry out and you’ll have to roll the ball on and there’ll be a funny bounce here and there.
“Golf is much more interesting played along the ground than it is up in the air, so maybe the thing will turn full circle if everyone can get their ingredients right. It’ll cost less, be more interesting to play and courses can be shorter.”
