Hi — allow me to introduce myself. I am a golf course. That little slice of heaven you trekked around when you were a youngster. You were captivated by my charm and challenge.

Initially, my appearance changed solely with the seasons. Sometimes I was green when the skies opened up and gave me nourishment to bloom. Sometimes I was brown when the summer heat parched my roots and made me thirsty.

I was your friend and quite often your foe, but we both held no grudges. I was that contouring, dog legging, hazard abound landscape that tested your physical and mental abilities each time we were confronted by one another. 

I now sit here partly abandoned and concerned that I have not become enough for you.

One day you were in my sights frequently. Walking along my fairways in search of your perfect and not so perfect shots and then your regularity dropped off, and I only saw you occasionally.

We both aged. Our appearance and our roles changed. Our love affair faded, and somehow I became of much less interest to you. I was shattered. After providing you with so many life lessons and supplying friendships to you, I was a little shook up that I was now an acquaintance and not your fondest pastime.

What happened? What did I do so wrong to be pushed aside with such disdain and abandonment? My heart was gently breaking. I always looked forward to our meetings.

You would bring your carry bag of clubs onto my gentle first tee and lay them down on my apron. I could see your eyes summarizing what my opening tee shot offered you.

I was seducing you into seeing me for who I truly was. A beauty if you chose wisely and swung fluently. A beast if you became reckless and attempted a shot beyond your true capabilities. I was offering you a tapestry to bring your mind and body into harmony. And you, my friend, were always up to the challenge.

That, of course, all changed. And what a sad day that was — especially for me. Yet deep down it was for you also. I still feel tears well up when I reminisce (probably a bad choice of words) and look back at that fateful day.

Imagine my dismay when one day you lay down your golf bag on my imperfect patch on that very same first tee and I felt my grass coverings go cold with the touch of metal.

My friends — the persimmon trees — your friends for so many years — were replaced with a giant head of titanium and graphite being used as the stalk instead of steel. The coldness of their contact on my skin, was like a dagger through my heart. I knew right there, and then I would have to change to have any chance of continuing our relationship.

My opening hole, while not long, had always been enough for you. It asked important questions. And you were, for the most part, up for the challenge. You always selected the wise route. The way I was designed to be approached. You saw the bait but would always play smart, hitting the long iron or fairway wood (WOOD!!! Damn you!!!) down the left side of the fairway. Just the right amount of club to stop short of the fairway bunker — my father, my architect, had so perfectly framed the corner of my dogleg all those years ago. 

Just the right club to be far enough back from the pines that framed my right side, so you could still have room to loft the ball up and over their outstretched needles and make the green without disturbance.

Just the right club to catch the camber of my gentle left to right slope and feed your balata down into the middle of the fairway adjacent to the 150 yard marker.

Remember that 150 yard marker? The one right there in the middle of the fairway sitting at the perfect yardage and angle for your 8-iron approach from the slight side hill lie that you were always comfortable with. The 150-yard 8-iron approach with the gentle fade, you would often stick in tight by the hole.

I remember you would mouth off at me and smile broadly knowing you had once again slayed the dragon I had laid out for you by my art of suggestive choices and subtle design.

Now you are — as Bobby Jones once said — "playing a game I am not familiar with."

Another shiver into my roots as I feel the extra long tee penetrate my soil much more gently than previous days. Teeing the ball up so high you wont even brush my surface when you swing.

I see it now. That oversized metal head that could feed stations to the cable television in the clubhouse. Now I feel it. The pain. The agony of defeat. 

You are going to just launch your tee shot over the pines. Leave yourself a short pitch or chip and make a mockery of me. 

You are going to dismiss the contours. You are going to steer far away from my white-faced bunker that used to laugh at you from the tee. Now you don't even see it or acknowledge it. He feels betrayed too that his presence is no longer appreciated and he has become an afterthought and of no significance. The beautiful pines on the corner of my dogleg are now just an aiming point rather than an obstruction. And yes — they are pissed off too!! Hurt just like I am.

Not only do I feel the coldness of the metal monsters on my surface, I see a shiny new box of white missiles you just took out of the zipper of your bag. I see those dimples. I see that seam. I see the hard center no spin grenades you are attacking me with today. I see them going farther. I see the writing on the wall.

I have no option now but to prepare for a facelift. I had always assumed facelifts were for older people trying to desperately hold onto their youth, yet here I am. About to go under the knife.

I hear them in the distance. The reverberating hum of bobcats and tillers. Warming up their engines. Charging in to rip my soul out and bring me back unrecognizable. Ready to revamp my appearance. Change my very existence. Move my insides around like I am on the operating table preparing for my regeneration. 

I do really still enjoy our company even if you have no regard for mine any longer. I will miss you. I will miss the times we laughed and shared a common theme of being happy with who we were.

I will be back — probably bigger but certainly not better.

I wish it could have been just about you and me, but technology determined my fate more than it did yours. 

I will ultimately forget how I was and greet you in the same way when you reappear on my new landscape. But things will never quite be the same again. And even though you will still have your fancy clubs and your expensive balls I just hope I can challenge you once more. 

When I was roaming the fairways of the PGA Tours of the world — as a player — I would often test new equipment. Golfers are always on the lookout for something extra that may help them gain an advantage. I still do the same thing today as an instructor, seeing if there is anything that could also produce that little extra for the players I work with. This is human nature. To try and evolve and become better.

Also, as a history buff and a traditionalist, I always hold concern for the entire game. And because of this mindset, I still hold the golf courses themselves in a higher regard than just the player.

The golf courses haven't had much opportunity to speak for themselves with the advancement in technology in recent years. Their voices are basically muted — or at least the volume has been turned way down.

There are so many arguments about this subject.

There is a player's perspective. There is the viewpoint of the equipment companies. The governing bodies also have a standpoint, although their lack of action makes them rather insufficient. And finally, the course architects have their viewpoint — for they are the ones who hold the worst cards in the deck and receive the most backlash — through no real fault of their own.

In all these arguments, thoughts, suggestions, concepts and insights, there is one main argument that tends to get lost, especially from the younger brigade who only know the version of golf we see today. 

And that is how golf courses were designed, not only for certain clubs and shot shapes to be demanded, but for how trajectory affects course design and the questions asked of the player.

Augusta National, the annual venue of the year's first Major Championship each April, has rolled with the punches better than anyone. The club has unlimited resources to tap into from its membership and the huge revenue it generates from merchandise and television rights each year the event is staged.

It has been able to 'try' and stay ahead of the curve by inventing new routings of some holes, by purchasing land from its neighbors and adding huge pine trees on some holes that look like they are 35 years older than they should be, therefore gaining immediate value to the hole they are trying to protect. But have they truly been able to keep the course test worthy and within the boundaries of the original design intention of Jones & MacKenzie? The answer is — no. 

Take holes 10-11-13-15 for example. Each of these green complexes were designed with a trajectory in mind.

The 10th hole was designed long and narrow with a right to left tilt to absorb a long iron approach and preferably a fade shot that would come in low and fight against the right to left tilt and chase up the green to the hole. The hole was designed for a shot that would skip up and bounce up. 

Ben Hogan declared, "If you ever see my approach shot into the 11th hole actually on the green, then you know I have hit an imperfect shot." His goal was to strike his long iron second shot approach to the right side of the green area to avoid the danger of the pond guarding the left side. He would then trust he could get down in two more shots from there. The 11th green is again a longer green than it is in depth- facilitating to a long iron second shot. 

The par 5 13th and 15th holes were both designed as the ultimate risk & reward second shots. Invariably, players would need to strike a majestic long iron or fairway wood to a green that was shaped narrow in depth but much wider across than the previous mentioned 10th and 11th holes.

It hasn't become uncommon for many players to now strike towering 7 irons and 8 irons into the 13th green and not much more into the 15th hole. The design of these holes and the original intention was to strike doubt into the players mind. "Am I good enough to hit a longer club into this green and stop it on the green whilst also avoiding the water?" Or should I lay up and have a wedge into a green that can now easily accept a short approach?

Trying to hit a long iron or fairway wood from a downhill or sidehill lie with just the right amount of precision to clear the water and yet stop short of going over the back of the green would have kept many a golfer up at night wondering how or working on being able to execute that shot. And if you could figure out how to hit that shot and have the nerve to do then you built an advantage over most of the other players.

Jack Nicklaus did this better than anyone with his high towering long irons. Ray Floyd's 5 wood was his tool to victory in his record-breaking win in 1976 as he demolished the par 5 holes with this higher, softer landing, highly skilled approach.

Technology in golf has enabled this quandary to be somewhat far easier for most players now. Mashing drivers into the 340 yard region from the tee scarcely makes the modern player think about any consequence of laying up on the second shot as the original design intent doesn't hold much fear any longer when you have a 7 iron approach.

Even a hole such as the short par 4 third hole is now being sacrificed as almost a long par 3 nowadays. Gary Player once admitted to Bobby Jones founder that the 3rd hole was a difficult hole to figure out because he could never birdie it. To which Jones eloquently stated, "You aren't supposed to birdie the 3rd hole!!" Yet every spring you will see almost every golfer in the field smash a driver from the tee and put it greenside for what has now turned into a relatively easy birdie for the players compared to what it once was.

More elevation of shots hit with shorter clubs. Lighter shafts are designed to be swung faster. More guys pumping weight for strength. Higher launching balls with less spin and the distance these players can now move the ball is rendering golf courses obsolete.

It's such a tricky situation as architects don't want to make holes ridiculous in length, or plant trees side by side along every hole or drop water features all over the course in their bid to make the course challenging for today's best.

There has really been only one real solution and that is the equipment. Many other sports have different versions of the same game. They use different bats and different balls. Yet mainly stay within the same confines of the court or field. But somehow golf managed to go in the wrong direction. And by not administering stricter equipment rules forced the courses themselves to change. And at huge cost.

But spare a thought for the courses and particularly the architects. They know far better what to do than the gaggle of ideas we hear on social media. But until the governing bodies draw the line in the sand and say, "we make the rules, and you just abide by them" then nothing will ever be resolved.