HARD DOESN’T = Good

One of the game’s great misconceptions is to equate an arduous golf course or a particularly difficult hole with good golf. One golf magazine even has as one of its course ranking criteria a ‘resistance to scoring’ category. One can only assume it means a course where the scoring is easy is marked down and a course where even good players struggle is given extra points.

Conversely, so many critics are inclined to write-off something regarded as being too easy as somehow deficient.

Much of this debate is tied to the concept of par and, as it so often the case, Royal Melbourne is the best place to start. The West Course is barely 6,000 metres, not long by any standards except those of the early 1930s, but its relative lack of length clearly has nothing to do with its unquestioned greatness.

Many would see 6,000 metres and assume a course more than a thousand metres short of what they played