{"id":426950,"date":"2026-01-21T04:27:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426950\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T04:27:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T04:27:08","slug":"why-mens-professional-golf-feels-increasingly-one-dimensional","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/426950\/","title":{"rendered":"Why men\u2019s professional golf feels increasingly one-dimensional"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Sony Open<\/a> in Hawaii ended Sunday and I didn\u2019t watch the telecast of this opening tournament of the new PGA Tour season for more than 15 minutes. My indifference has me wondering why I watch so little golf anymore. I used to watch for hours and hours.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I\u2019m alone in this change of habit. My research is only anecdotal, but a recent chat with some avid golfers in Jupiter, Fla. \u2014 a hotbed of the game \u2014 tells me I\u2019m not wrong.<\/p>\n

One fellow, a golf pro of a certain age \u2014 up there, that is, as I am \u2014 said, \u201cI don\u2019t want to watch guys hitting 190-yard 8-irons.\u201d Another fellow, an avid golfer, said it\u2019s the same thing over and over again in the pro game on the men\u2019s side. Smash the ball 300 yards and more, straight as a frozen rope in most cases, and then hit a soaring short iron, frequently a wedge of some sort, into the green.<\/p>\n

I offered my pals the view I\u2019ve come to in recent weeks as to why I find watching the game more enervating than energizing. This idea hit me after my wife and I attended a professional dance performance at The Society of The Four Arts in Palm Beach in early January. I know nothing about dance, but found the professional performances mesmerizing. Eight couples performed 16 dances.<\/p>\n

The variety of the dances struck me with full force. The athleticism. The grace. The movement in space. The angles. It occurred to me that this is what golf at the highest levels of the men\u2019s game is missing: variation in shot-making, above all. It\u2019s one same thing after the other. Bombs away. High and hard. Every ball flight looks the same. Swings look the same, or aspire to.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u2019m generalizing, and there are exceptions. A golf swing will always be individual. You can tell who is making a swing from 100 yards or more away. But given the extent to which technology has overtaken the game, the idea is to make a certain type of swing that will result in a certain type of shot. Watching golf is akin to watching the same dance over and over again. Which is, dare I say, boring?<\/p>\n

No tour player can be faulted for taking advantage of the information and technology built into clubs and the ball. The annual PGA Show in Orlando this week will celebrate this, as, to be sure, will developments in helping golfers be as fit as possible in all the right places to maximize their games.<\/p>\n

But this doesn\u2019t negate my thesis that there\u2019s too little variety in the way the pros play the game. It\u2019s all about power. Call it big-ball golf.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to see more small-ball golf, akin to the baseball we saw during the dramatic run that almost brought the Toronto Blue Jays the World Series<\/a>. Bunts, sacrifice flies, stealing bases, advancing the runner, manufacturing runs, etc. Every at-bat for the Jays and the L.A. Dodgers was appointment viewing.<\/p>\n

I asked my friends if I\u2019m wrong in wishing men\u2019s pro golf were more small ball. Am I wrong in wishing tournaments were less home run derby and more shot-shaping?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re exactly right,\u201d one of the guys replied. Ah, vindication.<\/p>\n

Now, I do watch majors, especially when they\u2019re on the best courses. The Masters at Augusta National. This year\u2019s PGA Championship at Aronimink near Philadelphia, the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills on Long Island, N.Y., the Open at Royal Birkdale. I\u2019ll tune in to the Walker Cup at Lahinch Golf Club in Ireland come September. The 2025 Walker Cup at California\u2019s famed Cypress Point was must-viewing.<\/p>\n

Long, really long, driving is obviously advantageous on these grand courses. A 325-yard drive into the fairway works. But shaping the ball is also critical. And using the ground on a links such as Royal Birkdale can be important, should be important. Let the wind blow. When it does, even on some PGA Tour courses, the game broadens. Golfers have to hit shots. Ride the wind. Use the wind. Play under the wind. That won\u2019t be the case at this week\u2019s event, The American Express, played on three well-manicured desert resort courses in what is usually perfect Palm Springs, Calif., weather. It\u2019s like playing golf in a dome.<\/p>\n

Golf-watching becomes a pleasure when creativity is on display. The game becomes an art allied to the science of human movement. Playing the game becomes a deeper expression of what golf can and should require. Tour pros surely have the skills the game at its most challenging can demand, but they don\u2019t need to use them often enough. They play one-dimensional golf.<\/p>\n

I prefer to think of golf as a unified blend of art and science.<\/p>\n

A few more thoughts about this golf\/dance theme. After attending the performances at The Four Arts, I read the book Why Dance Matters, by Mindy Aloff, a longtime writer on dance whose work has been published in the New York Times and The New Yorker. It\u2019s a brilliant, inspiring book. She referred to dance as a \u201cfull-body movement.\u201d Isn\u2019t the golf swing a full-body movement?<\/p>\n

I consulted The Natural Golf Swing, the book I did with the maestro, sweet-swinging George Knudson. \u201cNever do anything at the expense of balance,\u201d he wrote. That\u2019s a principle of dance. He asked a 13-year-old gymnast in Halifax why she committed herself fully to her sport.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause I feel so free when I do it,\u201d she replied. Freedom. Letting go. That\u2019s what I saw in the exhilarating variety of the dance performances.<\/p>\n

The great teacher Ernest Jones had an indoor studio in Manhattan to which golfers flocked, all day, every day. He played waltzes on the record player in his studio. The rhythm of the music helped his students. The golf swing transformed into a golf dance.<\/p>\n

Percy Boomer, another esteemed golf instructor, includes a chapter in his 1946 book On Learning Golf called \u201cInterlude for Instruction: As a Dancer Sees It.\u201d He described teaching a professional dancer and teacher.<\/p>\n

\u201cDancing is movement,\u201d she told Boomer as they worked together. \u201cAnd movement is life.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to see more movement, more life, in the modern game. More variation and innovation. Shot-shaping. Shape-shifting. Those days seem all but vanished. As is watching a lot of professional golf for me and my pals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Sony Open in Hawaii ended Sunday and I didn\u2019t watch the telecast of this opening tournament of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-426950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}