As a young golfer/indentured walk-mower driver in the Sixties, I grew up on big, wide, roughless golf courses.  In those days, the expansive meadows of golf were fun to navigate and the game was much more relaxed than today's neurotic version.

Certainly maintaining the course was more fun, as golfers were yet to be contaminated by a constant weekly cathode-ray barrage of perfect greens, bleached sand and lush fairways mowed in argyle sock patterns.  The modern golfer, faced with wild inconsistencies--like green speeds varying from 9.5 all the way to 9.6--has been behavior modified to bitch like Lord Grantham encountering a servant wearing tails at breakfast.

With TV golf saturation came narrowed fairways and deep rough on our local nine.  Greens went from 5 speed to 8 and the explosion of Real Estate Bait Courses--often long, narrow minefields of sand, trees and angry homeowners--ripped the fun out of golf.

Until the Neo-Classicist architects, led by Gentle Ben, appeared and tried to bring some fun back, the seeds of our current downturn were already germinating in living rooms all over the US.  TV golf forced golf course superintendents to replicate "The Look", regardless of the reduction in fun, affordability and playability.

Before we can undo the damage inflicted by vacuum tube brain-cleansing, golf must first realize where it is right now:  Mired in the Penal Zone, driven there by a gaggle of penal-minded finance majors who don't actually play, have never touched a walk-mower, or tried to cut a budget by 10% every year for ten years.

Please watch this short film, "Curing The Penal Mind".  It's time to do something realistic, we're running out of time.