SPORTS EXTRA / RYDER CUP : Old Country Flavor : Classic Design of Country Club, Europeans’ Ability to Adapt to Different Layouts and Conditions Mean U.S. Does Not Necessarily Have Home-Course Advantage

If one golfer understands the intricate problems facing this year’s American Ryder Cup team, it is captain Ben Crenshaw. An avid student of golf history and course design, Crenshaw made his national tournament debut at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., in 1968 and lists the course among his favorites. He comprehends the course’s subtle architectural nuances, many of which pose the same design problems American golfers have contended with in their last two team event losses. Namely, at Spain’s bizarre, cork tree-lined Valderrama and the more strategically complex 1998 Presidents Cup site, Royal Melbourne.

“It rewards good thought,” Crenshaw says of the old-fashioned Country Club design, which is hosting its first Ryder Cup this week and is consistently ranked among the top 20 courses in America.

“There are a lot of holes out there where you want to drive to a certain point. And there are some holes where they can let it out. It keeps you off balance.”

No problem, right? The Americans have seen extreme major championship setups this year, and the team is stocked with many of the world’s top-ranked golfers. Logic says there should be little problem overcoming the Country Club’s small greens, semi-blind approach shots, side-hill lies and layup tee shots.

But American golfers have struggled over the last decade on courses requiring them to adapt to unusual conditions and design elements--situations that the old-fashioned and charming Country Club design will present this week.

On many older, more naturally built layouts, the design problems are not necessarily evident to the golfer the first time around. Modern earthmoving equipment and higher maintenance standards have produced more straightforward looking and playing courses on the PGA Tour, where the problems are evident at first look. The Country Club, however, poses more subtle and unusual challenges typically found on many European courses.

American teams have fallen behind early in recent matches because of a lack of local course knowledge, and all too often, the instincts to ignore their yardage books and play by feel. At times during the 1998 Presidents Cup matches in Australia, anything out of the ordinary in the way of shifting wind or a semi-blind approach shot seemed to put the Americans at a disadvantage.

Some blame the Americans’ inability to adapt to unpredictable circumstances on the lack of architectural variety on the PGA Tour schedule. Namely, a few too many TPC courses with plenty of containment mounding and tree-lined fairways that frame holes so well, wind is rarely a factor.

Tour players also see little in the way of short risk-reward holes that force them to make tough decisions. Furthermore, modern architects are discouraged from creating boldly contoured greens in the name of “fairness,” the modern tour player’s favorite mantra in judging a course’s merits.

Others blame the recent team match-play struggles on the PGA Tour’s maintenance and setup of courses, which tend to be remarkably consistent from week to week. The tour’s seemingly rigid standards for green speeds, fairway width, turf conditions and rough height have taken many of the thinking and creative elements out of the American professional game. That variety of elements can still be found on European PGA Tour courses.

“We’re raising a generation of coddled champions who can’t even shrug off a bad lie and dig themselves out of a divot,” writes architect Tom Doak in an essay on maintenance and design.

“We see the evidence in major championships and the Ryder Cup against foreign golfers who grew up on imperfect courses and learned to deal with them.”

Architects such as Doak don’t necessarily advocate lowering the standards of PGA Tour course maintenance but instead believe that golf architects owe it to the game to incorporate a variety of the subtle and mysterious elements found on older, time-tested courses. These more “European” and classical design features were often implemented before large earthmoving equipment was employed by architects to move potential view-obstructing mounds out of the way, and before the need arose to stretch back tee yardages up to a marketing-friendly 7,000 yards.

Older architects such as William Flynn, who redesigned the Country Club in 1927, frequently built do-or-die style par fours and fives, several fine examples of which will be on display this week. Flynn also left the Country Club’s many rock outcroppings and elevated greens intact to give the course its distinctive style.

To offset the potential European comfort zone at Brookline, Crenshaw’s first move nearly two years ago was to work closely with the Country Club’s superintendent, Bill Spence. Their philosophy has been to keep rough heights at no more than three inches and to widen some fairways. Those features should enable the longer-hitting Americans to attack certain holes aggressively, particularly on the front nine’s two drivable par fours. The setup should also make for exciting matches, since shorter rough means there will be more chances for recovery shots and dramatic comebacks.

The last time the Ryder Cup was played on American soil, captain Lanny Wadkins wanted the Oak Hill Country Club setup to reflect a U.S. Open-style layout. Oak Hill’s high rough and narrow fairways seemed to be a logical choice, considering recent American success and European struggles in the U.S. Open.

But the Europeans were better able to adapt to the high-pressure match-play situations, using Oak Hill’s extreme difficulty to their advantage.

Crenshaw’s next significant move was to insist the players see the Country Club in a practice round on Aug. 30, or for those who were unable, at their own convenience. Tiger Woods, Tom Lehman and Mark O’Meara had previous events scheduled and Davis Love III was injured.

The Country Club’s greens contain many subtle breaks and numerous semi-blind pin locations that will make gauging yardages from the fairway difficult. Furthermore, each hole location has good and bad places to miss approach shots, areas that players will pick up only after practice rounds in different playing conditions.

During the 1997 Ryder Cup in Spain, the Europeans were at a clear advantage on Valderrama’s deceptive putting surfaces, since it hosts an annual European PGA Tour event. Crenshaw believes the main difference between winning and losing the last match was the U.S. players’ inability to read and make putts, and he’s hoping this year’s extra practice round will help avoid a repeat performance on the greens.

Crenshaw’s final and perhaps most telling move in preparation came with his captain’s picks. Though former British Open champion Tom Lehman seemed to be an obvious and natural fit, Steve Pate was a surprise to many, considering that former major winners Fred Couples and Lee Janzen were available. But Pate’s sound short game, noted iron play and his third-place finish in the 1988 U.S. Open at Brookline made him a logical fit with the Country Club’s demanding design.

The non-traditional American architecture found this week in Brookline raises the question, Why would the PGA of America pick a golf course that might not be best suited to the modern American touring professional? Since the best PGA Tour players--Woods and Justin Leonard excluded--prefer to not deviate from hitting high approaches to receptive greens, why go to a course that seems so European?

The answers are simple.

The architectural subtleties of the Country Club are not necessarily apparent from the outside looking in. America’s long track record of success in Brookline begins with Francis Ouimet in 1913 and goes all the way to Curtis Strange winning the 1988 U.S. Open there, helping to hide the possibility of a slight advantage for the Europeans. More important, the Country Club is well suited for corporate tent space and is located in an upscale, golf-hungry market. Thus, elements like architecture and keeping the Cup on American soil take less of a priority when millions of dollars are at stake.

However, should the PGA go out of its way to put the event on more straightforward, long and simple American-style courses in a desperate attempt to keep the Cup? Or is that dismissing the spirit of the event, which started out as a friendly match between professionals from both sides of the Atlantic?

The good news for the PGA of America is that the European PGA site-selection process is even more flawed. It has been a sore subject with the Europeans, who feel they should be hosting the Cup on links-style courses. However, the 2001 Ryder Cup will return to the Belfry, which, with its lakes, trees, and large, flat greens looks as if it is carved out of middle America instead of the middle of England.

In 2005, the Europeans will host the event at Ireland’s K Club, a new Arnold Palmer-designed inland layout. It looks like any number of American PGA Tour courses, with lush, rolling fairways, containment mounding, clover-leaf bunkers and less wind than a links course such as Portmarnock would have presented in Europe’s favor.

However, for this week’s event, and for that matter all future Ryder Cup sites, Crenshaw sums up the problem in selecting sites best suited for each team. “It’s a difficult thing trying to figure exactly how to take advantage of your team,” he says. “We do have some long hitters, but so do they. A lot of people don’t understand how proficient the Europeans are. They’ve seen everything. They’ve seen all kinds of conditions.”

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Geoff Shackelford is the author of five books on golf. His latest is “The Golden Age of Golf Design” (Sleeping Bear Press).