worth reading The Long and the Short of It

In recent years, developers have routinely built golf courses that are 7,000, 7,200, even 7,500 yards long. But are ever-longer golf courses the future of golf?

Not if Jeff Brauer, an Arlington, Texas-based designer, has anything to say about it. "When golf course development resumes," Brauer writes in the current issue of Golf Course Industry Magazine, "most new golf courses should be vastly shorter."

Brauer's argument against long courses is familiar: They cost too much to build and too much to maintain. They drink too much water. And they take too long to play.

Instead of designing "championship" courses for the biggest hitters -- a group that represents less than 1 percent of all golfers -- Brauer advocates the construction of "companionship" courses that he says could easily accommodate more than 97 percent of the world's golfers.

Maximum length: 6,800 yards.

"In this age of belt tightening," Brauer concludes, "wasting resources on so few in so many places just doesn’t make sense."

Brauer's essay is called "Should Future Courses Be Shorter?"