Rolling back the ball

[Ashley Schaeffer]

And like you the USGAs mindset is built around emotion and opinion while repeatedly skipping over the obvious and facts. How many years has it been since the ProV1 was introduced? Suddenly its the ball.

 

Jack Nicklaus has been complaining

 

No way! I don't believe it.

 

Don't ever do that to me again on this forum, Ashley Schaefer. Don't pull a quote of mine like that, out of context, simply to be used for one of your insulting smart-alecky one-liners. My quote was not one line, "Jack Nicklaus has been complaining."

 

I might suggest that you knew better, and that you were being deliberately mendacious with that out-of-context quote. But I am not so sure what you know.

 

"Reported."

 

So I guess I was pretty spot on when I was going to say you were acting like a child with your " give me candy or give me cake. Those are the only two options or I'm going to hold my breath until I pass out."

 

I'm going to say it was sarcasm given the fact that he severely cut your quote (post #1580) to write the post I quoted. Nota big deal.

[lowheel]

the "carry distance" stat is misleading because it's not measuring the same drives as the "driving distance" stat. A perfect example is JB who averaged 304.4 yards of carry in 2009 out of 47 attempts while his driving distance was 304.6 out of 148 attempts. That was an outlier of course, but it proves how the stats can be misleading if you do not take all the information into account.

 

That considered, the average roll out on tour is about 20 yards on the measured holes, but we've also seen balls stop on a dime or roll out 100 yards on a down slope. We've already seen Tiger get -6 yards of roll with a driver and 36 yards of roll with a downhill 3-wood this week.

I would believe the 20 in some events. The radar unfortunately is not used on every tee shot. That said we see plenty of tee shots with little to no roll but they don't fit the narrative.

 

You keep talking about all these shots with little to no rollout. And while they obviously are occurring on occasion, it seems a lot more people are seeing the "narrative" ones as opposed to your no roll out ones. I guess all of us who are seeing the ball roll out are imagining it m

Fine, you win. Every tee shot rolls at least 40-50 yards. That's why these guys are longer than my buddies. Clearly the carry stats are incorrect.

Edit, yes I am saying the average is 10-20. It's longer than that perhaps on flat dry no wind tee shots. But you have uphill and into the wind shots that are much less, even none. So we may not be that far away just looking at it from different angles.

 

how about 80-100 yards of roll?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3cfGilDg4w

 

[media=]

[/media]

 

https://www.pga.com/...ay-championship

[Uhit]

Don't ever do that to me again on this forum, Ashley Schaefer. Don't pull a quote of mine like that, out of context, simply to be used for one of your insulting smart-alecky one-liners. My quote was not one line, "Jack Nicklaus has been complaining."

 

I might suggest that you knew better, and that you were being deliberately mendacious with that out-of-context quote. But I am not so sure what you know.

 

"Reported."

 

 

Look at this occasion, where a single sentence from a post I made (#423), was cherry picked, and all other points were ignored until now:

 

"

What would have Jack said in his prime time, if he would have been forced to use a ball, that flies 20% shorter, than that ball he was used to play since more than a decade?

 

I expect that Jack would have been overjoyed. What he cared about was winning majors. And if everybody in Jack's era used the same-design golf ball that was rolled back by 20%, I think that Jack would have won 6 or 8 more majors. He won most of his majors with the flatly inferior MacGregor Tourney ball.

 

Ditto Tiger Woods. I submit, having seen a young Tiger Woods compete in a major championship in 1996, that with that era's equipment, he would have won significantly more than he did. I don't think that anything in golf (ignoring things "outside of golf") held back Tiger Woods as much as the development of multilayer urethane balls for the entire field of the PGA Tour. Urethane balls allowed dozens of players less skilled than Tiger Woods to approximate his level of play.

 

Strange, that he started talking about a roll back after his prime...

...same with Tiger - isn't it?

 

I could well imagine, that the MacGregor Tourney ball (if it really was perceived as the flatly inferior ball),

was better suited for very high swing speed players (like Jack) - which were very rare at that time.

 

-

 

However, why didn't you answer to this part of my post?:

 

 

It is simply envy, because not even Jack, or the USGA provided a single argument, why they don't try different approaches as a local rule, or Conditions of Competition, like:

 

 

that every shot has to be performed from the deck

 

and / or that a special ball has to be used on some (Jack) courses, or during the Open.

 

 

...not a single reason why every golfer worldwide should lose money and 20% of distance.

 

-

 

And I also want to hear a reply to this:

 

Wrong. Hard, firm, fast fairways do two important things for a 72-hole competition.

1. Architects intend for golf courses to play firm and fast. Firm and fast is how you bring the ground game into golf. The golfer then needs to not merely line and distance, but also how the ball might bounce and kick. That is the essence of golf.
    
    
    
    
   
2. Tournament administrators know what they are risking if they soak a course before tournament play. If it rains, the course cannot absorb any more moisture. The event might be ruined.
   

So why trick up a golf course outside of what is best, or what was intended for the course design, just to satisfy a golf ball marketplace? When did the golf ball specifications become so important?

 

1. golf was not invented to please the intentions of architects.

 

2. water, bunker, rough, (and 2. and 1. cut), and greens with a lot of slope, are the traditional ways to bring the ground game into golf - no need for a fantasy, that someone hits 300 yards, from a tee box, exactly to the wanted square-yard, within a fast and firm fairway.

 

3. since 1980, the average swing speed on tour increased from 104 mph to 113 mph, which equates in roughly 24 yards more distance - which is the biggest part of the increase in driving distance:

 

http://www.golfwrx.c...ns-on-pga-tour/

 

...interestingly, they don't highlight the substantial increase due to the changes in swing speed, within this chart...

 

...they also missed to highlight the additional roll of the ball, on faster and firmer fairways, which is also included in the shown driving distances...

 

...the chart pretends that those two factors would not exist and not contribute to the increase in driving distance, but only the equipment.

 

4. as you can see, the LET tour, which already lost more than 10 yards in driving distance since 2006, would run in real trouble

 

5. The true story in regard of the increased average driving distance since 1980 would rather look like:

 

24 yards because of swing speed

 

9 yards because of the fairways, and the equipment including the ball*

 

6. Jack made the golf ball specifications so important:

 

* http://www.golfwrx.c...k/page__st__210

"

 

...and still no reply to the really interesting points. :polling:

[15th Club]

I don't even understand what it is that you are asking. Please try rewriting it as a simpler, straight question. I'll be happy to answer directly.

 

btw; if I quote less than a full comment, it is to save space and to pare things down to one point. Often times when I do that, I leave the commenter's name out of it, just to make it about an idea and not any particular person. And even more often, if there is any risk of a misquote or mischaracterization, I will use ellipses to make it clear that there was more.

 

That's not what Ashley Schaeffer did, in pulling a phrase out of context from what I wrote.

[Ashley Schaeffer]

Here was your quote, 15:

 

"Jack Nicklaus has been complaining about technological distance and the problems it poses for championship courses, and the game at large, for 20 years."

 

The non-bold is implied by anyone with a brain by the thread title and context of the text you heavily edited and quoted.

Or, were you afraid people were going to think you were saying Nicklaus has been complaining about cold soup and hard crackers?Rest easy. Nobody thought that. Everyone knows you were talking about Nicklaus complaining about the ball/tech.

Get over it.

[15th Club]

Here was your quote, 15:

 

"Jack Nicklaus has been complaining about technological distance and the problems it poses for championship courses, and the game at large, for 20 years."

 

The non-bold is implied by anyone with a brain by the thread title and context of the text you heavily edited and quoted.

Or, were you afraid people were going to think you were saying Nicklaus has been complaining about cold soup and hard crackers?Rest easy. Nobody thought that. Everyone knows you were talking about Nicklaus complaining about the ball/tech.

Get over it.

 

Yeah; and your idiotic one-liner took it right out of the intended context. Mine was a direct reply to the wrong-headed notion that this debate has sprung up "suddenly." You still didn't quote it completely. HERE. Mine was not a one-liner.

 

It was a question that didn't involve you and didn't respond to you. I'd prefer to just not engage with you at all.

[buckeyefl]

I'm seeing a behavioral pattern.

[Roadking2003]

According to the PGA Tour website, only ‘primary’ rough is classified as rough. ‘Fairway’ also includes the first cut of intermediate rough.

 

The stats are skewed one way or another. I think we need the stats to tell us the difference in proximity to the hole when hitting from the first cut against hitting from the fairway...I can’t believe they would be exactly the same. If they are why have a first cut anyway and just make the fairways 100 yards wide?

 

1. Intermediate rough is usually so close to fairway height that it probably makes very little, if any, difference in the quality of the shot. So it's doubtful that the stats are skewed.

 

2. Intermediate rough is usually two yards wide, so that adds four yards to the fairway making it way way less than 100 yards wide.

 

3. Why have intermediate rough? Good question. Same question for fringe. Why have it?

[North Butte]

3. To stop marginal shots from rolling directly into the primary rough from the fairway or green, respectively.

[bladehunter]

Uhit-

 

 

Tiger posted 129 mph yesterday which suggests he isn’t past his distance prime. He’s in it. Why do you keep stating that he’s waited until after his prime to complain about the ball. Your point is impotent. He is complaining while being one of the longest guys on tour. Not as a short hitting old man you portray. Why won’t you answer that ?

[DavePelz4]

Ashley, if you make it out to Chicago, golf is on me.

 

Mr. Club, if you make if you make it out to Chicago, I'll introduce you to Mrs. Pelz's mother.

[tnord]

i got in an hour long argument with a friend of mine about this yesterday.

 

it was basically everything you'd expect, but he had no response to the question of "how much is too much? is there no limit?" when pressed, he conceded that things should be stopped as they are right now. i asked him if the mfgs were going to stop selling and marketing higher/longer/straighter? and pointed out that if you DO attempt to freeze it in time, that would be a regulation change on the ball.

 

after another 30min he came to the point of saying the ball should spin more, i told him i was all in on that, and that more spin DOES mean less distance. there was still a disconnect that i couldn't get past there.

[bladehunter]

i got in an hour long argument with a friend of mine about this yesterday.

 

it was basically everything you'd expect, but he had no response to the question of "how much is too much? is there no limit?" when pressed, he conceded that things should be stopped as they are right now. i asked him if the mfgs were going to stop selling and marketing higher/longer/straighter? and pointed out that if you DO attempt to freeze it in time, that would be a regulation change on the ball.

 

after another 30min he came to the point of saying the ball should spin more, i told him i was all in on that, and that more spin DOES mean less distance. there was still a disconnect that i couldn't get past there.

 

Yep. I’ve argued it with my club pro. Who’s also my neighbor and usual playing partner. Lol. He’s 56. And a very good player. But he relies heavily on tech. Driver and irons for distance. Small guy who doesn’t hit it very far.

 

That’s were the disconnect seems to be. Some can’t understand the distance issue and how some can just own a older course with it. They don’t see the lines that the long hitter sees. But I stumped him with this.

 

I reminded him of when he was on Tm staff and hit the sldr Driver. He hated it and could not get distance out of it. Finally convinced him to get on a monitor and we saw he was spinning it around 1500-1700 rpm. He didn’t have the speed to keep the ball in the air. He swapped To a titleist Head then and picked up 15 yards carry over night. Then I asked him if he thought he knew of any player that spin his driver too much that wasn’t a longer hitter. He couldn’t name a single one. I said. Bingo. How many would likely gain carry with more spin at the bottom level. Answer is plenty.

 

He will sit and spout the same nonsense aboot the V1 ball being the same since invention and that cor has been capped for years. Sure. But when I asked him why he didn’t play a 983 titleist Driver and a V1 392 he didn’t want to answer. The answer is because today’s Driver and V1 type ball is longer. And the one 5 years from now will be longer still.

[Roadking2003]

. The one-dimensional nature of the modern game takes away the most satisfying parts of golf and does not attract long-term converts to take the game forward...kids don’t get bitten by the golf bug like we did. As courses become obsolete and participation dwindles (25% down in the UK in the last 10 years) golf itself will become obsolete. Hopefully this won’t happen in our lifetimes, but I don’t want to be telling my grandkids about this game that you used to be able to play.

 

I'm not buying it.

 

I doubt that any measurable number of people gave up golf due to the ball going too far. Or that any kids refused to play because of the ball.

 

But life goes on even if golf dies. Lots of things throughout history have either died or diminished. New things take their place.

[SheriffBooth]

Rather than try to straighten out the last 10 pages of this topic, we're just going to close it down so you guys can move on to something else. At least we've resolved this ball debate once and for all, though...

 

/thread