Keep it rough, just rough

The Australian Masters is underway in Melbourne and James Nitties, Brandan Grace and Tiger Woods lead the way and it was a pleasure to watch. If you weren’t at the course you would not have seen Tiger’s round live thanks to some great pre-programming from Channel Nine and FoxSports but tomorrow’s afternoon round will be shown live.

It is great to be amongst such an amazing golf atmosphere but I always get the biggest kick out of the Australian golf summer which is played on golf courses where the rough is just rough, not to some ridiculous length where Craig Parry could go missing.

The implications reveal themselves around the green. No longer can you miss a green by a metre and expect to play it onto the green from a metre. The ball bounces away and the golfers out at Kingston Heath yesterday including Tiger of course, were then forced to play longer chip shots from much tighter lies.

The sandbelt courses are always cut like this – modeled on the links golf design. We saw a lot of birdies yesterday and shots we’re not used to seeing on the PGA Tour. It shows you can keep golf entertaining and challenging for the professionals without growing the rough to stupid lengths. Course designers take note.