Amid the carnage at Carnoustie Golf Links, the site of last week's British
Open, the secretary of the Royal & Ancient Championship Committee responded to
mounting criticism of the murderous course setup by questioning the detractors.
 
As players finished their rounds complaining about the almost cruel
conditions of Carnoustie and stating that it was too hard, Michael Bonallack
shot back, "Too hard for what?"

 Too hard for golf, Mr. Bonallack.

 "You could get hurt out there," Tiger Woods said after hacking his way out
of jungle-like rough and deep pot bunkers.

 The British Open is the third major championship of the year, and in 1999,
it's the third one to be criticized for the course setup. Last week, though,
the criticism became a firestorm.

 Controversy has arisen over this year's majors not necessarily because of
the degree of difficulty, but because of the philosophy in preparing the
courses. Harsh criticism has surrounded the majors because officials, in the
eyes of many observers, have compromised the traditional characteristics of
each major in the name of making the tournament excruciatingly hard to win.
 
At the Masters, officials concerned that big hitters were overpowering
Augusta National grew rough. Not much, but enough to make it difficult to spin
approaches to the hard, fast greens. Still, the changes were viewed by many as
a gimmicky solution that had no place on perhaps the world's most storied golf
course.
 
The U.S. Open at Pinehurst's No. 2 course was spared heavy criticism, save
for some complaints about the USGA's decision not to grow the rough higher
around the fringes of the greens, making it even more difficult for players to
hold the putting surfaces with their approaches.
 
But the actions of Bonallack and his colleagues brought back the charges of
unnecessary changes. The R & A became a lightning rod of controversy for trying
to turn the British Open into the U.S. Open.
 
What always has and always will make the British Open one of the most
challenging golf tournaments in the world is the wind. Wicked breezes roaring
in off the sea can turn the tournament into an exhausting exercise in survival
at any time.
 
No player in his right mind would ever claim the British Open was getting
too easy. But for some reason, the R & A decided to let the rough grow high
enough for some of the shorter players to get lost in. If the wet summer was
responsible, the R & A didn't bother to cut it, either. As a result, the rough
looked like wheat fields planted just off the fairway, and was so devilish that
scenes such as Greg Norman whiffing a ball were commonplace.
 
And the rough came into play constantly, as the extremely narrow fairways
made it almost impossible for players to avoid regular forays into the brush to
hopefully find their ball.
 
The average score in the opening round was 78.3, and 57 golfers failed to
break 80.
 
Because of the R & A's mysterious motives, the British Open became an
exercise in futility and not much else.
 
"If the average player had to play out there," said David Duval, ``he'd
probably quit the game. A lot of pros, too."
 
Organizers insisted that the changes were designed to produce the most
worthy champion possible.

 "The best players in the world are playing the most difficult course in the
world in the most difficult conditions," said Hugh Campbell, chairman of the
Open championship committee. "At the moment, the most difficult course in the
world is winning."

But should that really be the objective? Any major championship course needs
to be extremely challenging, forcing the best players to use all their skills
and talents to negotiate their way to a major title.
 
But there's a fine line, and Carnoustie seemed to take a huge leap over it.
Does anyone really want to see the course win, as it seemed to this week? When
a course is almost unplayable, as Carnoustie was, players' skill levels really
aren't a factor. Instead of an ending in which Woods, Duval or another
world-class golfer summoned all his abilities and emerged victorious, the best
players were swallowed up by the course, and Carnoustie's climactic moment was
reduced to a battle between whoever was left.
 
Jean Van de Velde and eventual champion Paul Lawrie, ranked 150th and 159th
respectively in the world rankings coming in, and Justin Leonard, who put his
second shot at the 72nd hole into the water on the way to a bogey at 18,
qualified for a playoff for the claret jug after finishing tied at 6-over-par.
That winning score was the highest at the British Open since Sam Snead won in
1946 at St. Andrews.
 
Is that what tournament organizers envisioned when they supposedly set out
to produce the most worthy champion?
 
The debate is likely to resurface at the PGA Championship, the year's final
major, which will be played at Medinah, outside Chicago, from Aug. 12-15. The
PGA has always lacked in prestige in comparison to the other three majors, as
officials have tried for years to find a separate identity for the tournament
and remove it from the shadow of the U.S. Open.
 
The PGA of America attempts to do that yearly by trying to turn the
tournament course into a bear. Extremely tight fairways and choking rough are
the norm, but with Medinah's history, the extreme thinking that produced the
Carnoustie of last week could be in force at the PGA.

 
Medinah club officials and the PGA were embarrassed nine years ago, when
Hale Irwin and Mike Donald tied after 72 holes of the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah
at 8-under, with Irwin winning the playoff. Flustered at surrendering such a
low winning score at the U.S. Open, officials became determined to produce a
course with real teeth for the club's next major.
 
Eager to erase the memory of the '90 Open, PGA officials have lengthened the
course to a sprawling 7,409 yards, the longest major championship course since
the 1967 PGA Championship, played on the Columbine Country Club course in
Littleton, Colo., measured 7,436 yards.
 
Although the length is somewhat deceiving because some of the additional
yardage will be added to the par 5s, the added distance combined with the
alley-like fairways, deep rough and 4,161 trees that crowd the course are
likely to produce some of the same complaints in Illinois in August that were
heard in Scotland in July.
 
So what is the thinking behind the almost feverish attempts to make the
major championships tougher and tougher? It could be the result of a single
tournament, perhaps Woods' manhandling of Augusta National in '97.
 
Whatever the reason, such thinking seems to be in full force this year.
Although no tournament organizer would ever admit it, it's possible that the
majors are competing in a game of one-upmanship, trying to outdo each other by
producing the absolute toughest conditions on their respective courses. The
British Open's deviation from ancient traditions to allow huge fields of rough
to grow seemed like an attempt to trump the U.S. Open, which is known for
having the most difficult rough of any tournament.
 
Even if such attempts by tournament organizers are well-intentioned, they're
also misguided. Augusta National, Britain's championship courses and the
rotation of top U.S. courses used for the U.S. Open and PGA Championship don't
need major modifications to be difficult; they've always been that way.
 
And difficult is good enough to decide a major champion. Impossible doesn't
settle anything.