USGA DISTANCE INSIGHT

[braincramp52]

Maybe I'm just being self centered but I really don't care what the USGA and R&A do with the ball or the equipment. I don't have to play by their rules or with their equipment.

[QuigleyDU]

 

I think he likes talking about his calves..

[Ashley Schaeffer]

It certainly is wild that Mackenzie's favorite US design stands up at 6500 yards to host the Western Intercollegiate every single year. DI players. 6500 yards. It's amazing what a great design can do.

[vman]

They've taken 2 years of detailed study to decide that distance has increased to the point where they're not happy about it.

They have no solutions but will take a collaborative approach to address the issue .

Wow! It's going to be interesting to see what they come up with.

[Jwin323]

Every sport has devolved into a pale comparison of what it once was. Baseball, football basketball. Why should golf be any different.

[Jwin323]

You will if nobody manufactures what you play with now. I guess you can keep your clubs for a good long time but eventually you'll run out of balls and most likely would only be able to buy the rolled back version if that is what happens.

[oikos1]

I don't understand this "can't shape the modern ball" argument. Plenty of golfers can fade or draw 100 yard shots, let alone 250+ yard drives. Maybe it doesn't curve up to 50 yards either way, but you can certainly shape the modern ball. Thing is, if you're in the fairway, most shots don't need to move too much left to right anyway.

[wilsonn24]

I agree with this 100%, plenty of good players (non-pros) can shape the ball.

[farmer]

So, the RB's decide to roll equipment back to regulate a tiny subset of the world golf population. How? Well, no one knows How much will it cost? Hmm, no one knows. Who will pay for the re-tooling and the R&D? That's easy, it will be everyone but that tiny subset.

[Ashley Schaeffer]

But, think of the kids. The kids want to carve in low hooks with a nine-iron, and hit baby fades with a six-iron. It's too hard for them to do it, now, and they are leaving the game as a result. We shouldn't value the opinions of today's top players because they are just players who have "people" handling stuff for them, but we should listen to the top players of yesteryear for obvious reasons, obviously. It's of no moment that certain short designs stand the test of time where others don't. The skill has left the game. Anyone can now do what the chain-smoking athletes of yesteryear did. Just point and swing. That's all that's needed. It doesn't matter that the average tour player is bigger, stronger, faster, and in far better shape than he was 40 years ago. There is no strategy or skill involved in hitting it long and straight. I want to see three-finger five-irons . . . like the kids.

[QuigleyDU]

I have brought this up a number of times. Other than a recovery shot out of jail why would you want to work the ball Horizontally that much to begin with? No one not even the pros out side of bubba try to bend the ball like that. Up/down, high/low I get. Left/right does not make sense.

[mahonie]

When you are talking about shape, how much curvature are you thinking? 5, 10, 15 yards?

When you have long, wide open stadium courses, shape doesn’t really come into play in any case...you can just play straight lines. Couple of courses in my area styled as ‘American-style’ courses...long, no rough, few trees, wide fairways, very well manicured, water features that look pretty but don’t actually come into play, best played from a buggy. They are just a slog...driver off 14 holes, hybrid or long iron into par 3s with no finesse anywhere. Only reason they get played by our society is because they are in good condition all year round off proper tees and greens.

Call it poor design, but they are mimicking the courses seen week-in week-out on the PGA Tour. To a lot of us older golfers it really is very boring. Kids coming through find it just as boring which is why participation is dwindling. USGA/R&A have had to look at why this is the case and the Report identifies the issue.

[Ashley Schaeffer]

It’s those darned Americans again. Making sure shots don’t shape and taking the challenge and fun out of the game. I vote that we should bring back the #purity of the game by adopting more of a Euro model. ERCs and small balls.

[braincramp52]

You really don't believe there won't be manufacturers out there that will make non-conforming balls and clubs?

[golfpunk59]

Speaking of the small ball. Did everyone quit when they got rid of a ball that went significantly further? A Golf Ball Is BannedThe ban dominated clubhouse and locker-room conversation today at the 7,001-yard, par-72 Warwick Hills Golf and Country Club, site of the Buick Open that begins Thursday. The ball was among the most popular on the PGA Tour. After the announcement, 55 of the 154 golfers entered in the Buick began looking for another ball to play. Palmer’s 1.62 “small ball” on display in Hall of Fame“The small ball, incidentally, back then was probably about the length of the golf ball we have today. We hit it about 50 yards further.”

 

[sevenputts]

☝️ This right here.. ALL THEY NEED TO DO IS GROW THE PRO FAIRWAYS OUT A BIT. PERIOD !

[QuigleyDU]

They really don’t need to grow them longer. Just water them at night.

[15th Club]

I can understand one or two people writing this, then doing some more reading, and then few other such comments.

But the actual number of nearly identical comments is really astonishing.

[QuigleyDU]

Well I think I said it first.. haha.

 

then it must also have some truth to it..

[A.Princey]

The only thing I notice these days is the ability to hit it much further, and much STRAIGHTER. Misses and L-R spin don't go up proportionally with ball speed, so the longest hitters are much more prone to keep the ball on the course. There's no real advantage to throttling back because the L-R miss is not in cards so much anymore like it was with wound balata.

 

And yes, the amount of rollout on these fairways is comical at times.

[cutchemist42]

I think golf on tv is bad product as well, and baseball is starting to go down that road with one style of play turning it into a boring pop fly slog.

[AmazinBlue]

Why is two sets of rules such a bad thing?? We amateurs don't play the same game as the pros now.

I say limit professional golf to 400cc driver heads an grow the rough and fairways to slow them down. Make the ball spin again so they have to learn to control it, not just crush it.

Take the cap of the amateur game and let the OEMs make drivers for us that go 300 plus yards at slower swing speeds. We need the help, not the pros. Let a senior buy a driver that hits the ball 260. What does it hurt.

[oiler45]

Well - remember that opinions are like noses, everyone has one. FWIW - here is mine.

I disagree with any attempt to roll back the ball or equipment as it is classic case of the tail wagging the dog. Distance is an issue with .1% of golfers so lets change it for everybody?  Makes no sense.

how come Jack or Tiger never complained when they were out-driving everyone else. How come it always comes up when golfers are more in their "best before" years ?I've been golfing for 45 years - started with steel shafted woods and persimmon heads. I will say categorically that golf is more fun now than it ever was, mainly because it was just too difficult with the old gear.99.99% of golfers will never walk off a course and say - Wow, I hit the ball too far today. That course was too easy and too short.I don't give a rats-azz that some old courses are now unable to handle certain events. I have almost zero chance of ever playing a Merion or an Oakmont . Even if I did get the chance I wouldn't play from the back tees anyway.It's a red herring to say a roll back in distance will keep costs down and speed up play. Again - 99.9% of golfers will take the exact same time to play a 6300 yard course as a 7300 yard course - play the correct tees.I may be wrong but I seriously doubt costs are linearly more expensive with a longer course versus a shorter course - sure a longer course uses more land but I would bet it is not a major cost driver in totalityI don't have a solution to why golf is in decline but I'd be willing to bet all I own the main culprit is cost. When I was a young guy golf was not nearly as expensive a sport as it is now. Don't know why - but I am 100% certain that the reason more young folk aren't playing is because it is too expensive. Forget all this BS about it takes too long. the skills to play are diminished, it's just bomb and gouge now - blah blah - they are not playing because IT COSTS TOO MUCH MONEY !! Old retired dudes like me play as much or more now as we ever did because we can afford it and it is often our only sports related expense.I guarantee this will happen if bifurcation is employed. You'll tell your low handicap buddy - "hey I just shot an 81 - my lowest score ever. He'll say - oh yeah but you used a regular Pro V1 - I only use the tour ball. Your 81 would've been an 86 if you used my ball." Bifurcation opens up a whole can of worms.Golf clubs are regulated now, 460cc max driver size, maximum length has been set, COR limit set, ball speed limits etc. The cat is out of the bag - keep everything as is. If courses have to be made longer and some old courses are obsolete - so what ? Most major sports have evolved - watch football, baseball, hockey from 50 years ago and compare it to today - it is vastly different and so is golf. What would the score be if todays Kansas City Super Bowl champs played the KC Super Bowl champs from 50 years ago - 100-0 ? No one could run a 4 minute mile til Roger Bannister shattered the record - now everyone is running sub-4 minute miles - should runners now wear heavier shoes?

Sports -  like most things in life - change with the times - accept it and leave things alone.

[A.Princey]

I just happened to catch Tiger's crushing victory at the '00 Pebble Open last Monday, and just watching the likes of Jimenez, Vijay, Faldo, and others fight over 2nd place was like watching an entirely different game than Tiger was playing. You can totally "see" the CURRENT game in TW's swing and ability back then. The ones struggling over par definitely looked the part of the 80's golfer. Nowadays everyone has got a Tiger-esque swing, and it shows. Most everyone today resembles his game and moves from way back in 2000. It was shocking to see how "uniquely" unathletic each other individual player appeared vs the game of today, many of whom seemed to have been making lazy, loopy-looking passes at the ball.

[OldTomMorris]

If the USGA/R&A decide to go down the route of a rollback then we are looking at professional golf splitting away. No way can I see the PGA Tour etc following down that path.

[OldTomMorris]

That kind of water usage doesn't fit with the sustainability part of this report/issue. If fairways are to be slower it will be via longer grass.

[OrangeGravy]

I think you might also see, if you drilled down further, that the difference in yards between the top and the bottom of driving distance leader board would be much more compressed now vs back then. Maybe not, but for sure the number of players within shouting distance of the top 25 would be greater today than yesteryear.

[OrangeGravy]

I think another thing that gets lost in the tunnel vision of this discussion, is that this "problem" they are deliberating over, encompasses the entire world. Not just the US. The distance issue is a far bigger problem in the UK, if I were to hazard a guess. They're operating on a scale that is massively smaller than ours from an available land mass perspective and most of their courses were built back when 6500 yards was long. That island is packed. Those courses couldn't be expanded ( not all of them of course ) even if they had the money. People tend to personalize this debate way too much.

[84425]

On the one hand I would love to see that something is done to the current state of golf where you either need skill, or a huge swingflaw to curve a ball. Otherwise it just wants to go straight and you can hit it at 110% of your power for as much length as possible.

On the other hand I am afraid the ruling bodies would just fuck it up again like they did with the grooves. My 30 year old irons don't have square grooves or any other problem they wanted to fix when all manufacturers started using square grooves, but my clubs are 'illegal' to play in competition because they are not on the list of exempted clubs (just like 99% of all clubs manufactured before 2000). Now they will probably post restrictions on the ball that will render my perfectly good persimmons useless (or some other unforeseen side effects that makes something illegal that was never a problem before).

[Sean2]

@oiler45 Well said. I think this is a solution looking for a problem. I have been saying for a number of years, make golf courses smarter. No need to make them longer or roll equipment back.