Comparing baseball stadiums to golf courses in this context is ridiculous, by the way. For one thing, you seem to be advocating that spending hundreds of millions of dollars (usually at the taxpayer's expense) on new stadiums is a good thing. But more to the point, baseball is a sport which modifies its technology to keep hitting and pitching in balance - and that definitely includes messing around with the baseball itself. Imagine a world in which bat and ball technology evolved to where 50% of all routine fly balls turned into homers, which in turn incentivized all hitters to prioritize bulking up and maximizing the distance they get at the expense of making contact more often, which in turn would make the three true outcomes (HR, BB, K) increasingly the only three outcomes of an at-bat. Would you not think something had gone wrong with the sport itself?
I mentioned the death of the strategic par 5 in passing: they still exist in places, the 13th at Augusta National being a great example (although just wait until Bryson and his ilk start carrying the corner completely...), but it's curious how that particular torch has now been passed to driveable par 4. There have always been great short par 4s like the 10th at Riviera, but at some point in the past 20 years, the USGA figured out that you could take a normal mid-length par 4 like the 14th at Torrey Pines, move the tees way up to bring the green within range, and create strategy and drama out of holes that didn't really have any. This is a welcome development in many ways - strategy and drama are good! - but even this is relatively one-dimensional, insofar as the decision point for everyone is absolutely the same, with no judgement of lie or relative distance or angle of approach required. I mean, I'll take it, but this sort of strategic calculation used to be commonplace for pros on normal par 5s even when they found the fairway. And golfers in US Opens past used to have to make this sort of strategic calculation on pretty much every tee shot: do I lay up with an iron or fairway wood to give myself a 90%-ish chance that my next shot will be from the fairway, or do I hit the driver, hoping to be able to attack the flag on my next shot but understanding that any screw-up will likely result in at least a half-shot penalty? For me, that question is the very essence of golf: you assess your own limits, you take on as much risk as you feel comfortable taking, and you try to execute to the plan you've set for yourself. But Bryson and other very skilled golfers have figured out that if you hit the ball far enough, you don't need to be strategic, because if you can get close enough to the green and hit the ball hard enough and control it well enough even out of the rough, there's no reason to try anything else (except on those few occasions where water hazards or out-of-bounds might be involved). You still need to be a good enough putter and iron player, etc., to really compete - you can't *just* be long to win. But increasingly, you have to be super-long to give yourself any chance of really competing on a week-in, week-out basis - and as more and more young bombers like Wolff get onto the Tour, that will only become even more the case. And you also don't have to think as much: you can just grip it and rip it off the tee, all the time. I just don't see how that is a good development for golf, or why rolling back the golf ball and thereby increasing the mental challenge of professional golf is in any way a bad thing.
