Dean Snell's Video on the Distance debate

[15th Club]

Well okay then!

Expensive. Exotic. They have the tendency to emphasize an advantage to a player who can afford elaborate launch monitor testing and the auditioning of many, many composite shafts. They are part of the 21st century driver pattern of lighter weight, longer shafts that are part of the current distance issue.

I have said all of this previously; and I do not expect the USGA to take any dramatic action on clubs. I have offered these ideas as representative of a philosophy. Not as action items.

As ever, it is the golf ball that is the easiest and least intrusive thing to roll back.

 

 

[15th Club]

“15, you are seriously proposing rolling all equipment back to the mid-nineties?”

 

No. I am not. I didn’t write that. I can’t understand your hysteria on that.

 

[stingerfade]

Big Bertha and steel shafts were in the 90s. Not a stretch to think that.

[15th Club]

Yeah, it was more than a stretch.

Nothing I wrote was a “proposal.” Someone asked my opinion. I provided an answer. I’ve said that I don’t expect the USGA to take such action. What I wrote was, “ I have offered these ideas as representative of a philosophy. Not as action items.” That was after a post in which I qualified my remarks as just speaking “personally.”

[Ashley Schaeffer]

“I’d personally love it if the rules forced us back to one-material shafts (steel, or aluminum or Ti-alloy probably), and smaller, simpler steel heads. About the equivalent of a Big Bertha from the mid-90’s.”

See, it’s not a proposal, it’s a philosophy.

[ode1]

I flagged this as spam ?

[freowho]

He's a smart guy who understands the science but his maths isn't so good and he doesn't understand what is happening at the grass roots level.

The guys who are 40 yards behind the longest hitter wouldn't still be 40 yards behind the longest hitter. They would be the same percentage behind the longest hitter which would be a smaller distance.

The roll is not the problem. Firm fairways make it more difficult for the long hitter running out of fairway. Long hitters love dart boards. This is why Royal Melbourne and British Opens are the best tournaments in the world because good play wins rather than long play.

Distance is a bigger problem for clubs then it is for the tour. The unskilled long hitter is putting clubs in jeopardy. Clubs rarely had to worry about balls going through neighbours or passing cars windows. Rounds never took 5 hours because young blokes have to wait on all the par 5's and short par 4's. Scoring is actually the least important thing in this debate.

Only after typing this post do I now realise how far away this guy is from getting it.

Slow the ball down, shorten the longest club.

Athletics had to slow down the javelin so it could still take part in the main stadium. Swimming had to stop the suits and running will have to stop these bouncy shoes. Golf authorities just need a spine.

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

Dean Snell doesn’t understand golf at the grass roots? Are you absolutely certain about that?

His math seems close enough to me? The short hitters will be out of the game. That’s a fact that’s really difficult to refute.

[GeorgeHWB]

Dean Snell doesn't understand what's happening at the grass roots level? Please. He spends his work life designing golf balls for, and selling them to, the grass roots. Nobody plays a Snell golf ball on tour. It's people like me who buy them.

[freowho]

He says local clubs don't have a distance problem because his playing partners want to play off shorter tees! More property damage, more danger to nearby roads, slower rounds, less people on the course at the one time, more maintenance costs. The clubs are the ones suffering most from the ball going further.

He said that if the ball was wound back 30 yards the long hitters who are 30 yards longer today would still be 30 yards longer. They would be the same percentage longer but not the same distance longer.

Longer and softer grass gives an advantage to the long hitters because it removes strategy. If you're on the wrong side of the green you shouldn't be able to stop the ball next to the pin. A touring pro told me how stupid a hole was because if he aimed at the pin his ball went over the back of the green! Even a lot of good golfers don't get it because it hurts their ego too much. Firm surfaces protect the line of play. I'm not suggesting long hitters shouldn't be able to win or shouldn't have an advantage. I appreciate that being a long hitter is a skill. But they should still have to position the ball.

The fact that he thinks it's a discussion about long vs short hitters and suggests softer playing surfaces shows he doesn't get it. I think most course setups are a big part of the problem but for the opposite reasons to what he is suggesting.

He sells golf balls. He needs you to believe that the super duper quad core, multi layer antelope hide from the lower kalahari desert is going to help you hit it 50 yards further than everyone else!!!

Why is everyone so offended that the golf ball might not go as far?

There are lots of things to be offended by in this world but I wouldn't have thought this was one of them.

Slow the ball down, shorten the longest club, reduce the head size and give local clubs their tee times back, give them their boundaries back, let them get along with their neighbours again, reduce the time for a round of golf etc.

 

 

[nichho]

Meanwhile in the real world none of this is happening. The neibouring properties are not being reduced to rubble. The drivers on the local roads are not constantly dodging wayward golfballs nor swerving around golfers making recovery shots.

The golfers at my club still can't reach the par 5 ninth in two. I did see one guy do it once, the club had meeting about it but decided not to get their knickers in a twist about it.

Some golfers at my club are buying the latest and greatest equipment and somehow the winning scores remain static, being pretty much in the same region for all eternity.

The scores did change one year when they grew the first cut to four inches but so did the length of time it took to play a round. Both went up as more players spent more time looking for their lost ball. A change of policy the following year returned the status quo however.

Last week at the Honda did prove one thing. A difficult course will prevent the best players in the world from producing long drives and low scores, because they won't be in the field. Perhaps that is what the issue is.

[Maximilian]

Where I am, it kind of is. I'm a member at two different old clubs (one opened 1924 and the other 1931). Both of these courses are constantly in feuds with neighbours. I'm not saying a slight rollback would magically solve that, but both of these courses have become small for the modern game. I would think this is the case for a very large amount of older courses around the world, that are often conveniently situated close to town.

[deadsolid...shank]

To all those advocating that slowing down the course hurts the long hitter more , I’ll give you one number. 62. That’s the amount of roll Rory had on a three wood shot recently. That’s ridiculous, plain and simple.

All the big Broadie backers have expounded on the fact that closer to the green is better. Hence “bomb and gouge”. So if closer is better, how is it such a disadvantage because the firm course allows a ball to run into the rough? 20,30, 40, or even more, yards closer to the green. It’s not a detriment to the long hitter. And a lot of those big hitters hit it straight a lot of the time, then what? You have 62 yards of rollout is what

 

[braincramp52]

IDK, as I approach 68 years old this is what I wish would happen. I want big oems like Ping, Titleist, and so on to make all their equipment go as far as possible. Make me a driver that my 86-90 mph swing hits 260 carry and I'll buy it in a heartbeat. Do what you want with the college and pro game. They play a totally different game than the one I'm familiar with.

[15th Club]

I sort of regret my answering general questions about a ball rollback here, because I think it would have been better if this thread remained solely on the Snell video. There is enough in there to deconstruct without going into more general debates.

If anybody wanted to clean this up, I’d be perfectly happy to drop my other comments that aren’t explicitly directed to Snell.

 

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

Our interpretations are clearly different.

As a species, we all have the tendency to see and hear whatever our own preconceived notions steer us to see and hear, but I suppose that’s what differentiates us from animals and machines.

[jimb6golf]

Another great video from Dean on the realities of golf and equipment. Yes the ball has improved but it's more about the conditioned athlete and the course set up than anything. Over time you will pick up yards when you add up all the improvements, it's not just the ball.

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

It's nice having some affirmation, because that’s exactly how I interpreted his interview.

[Mudguard]

I didn't like the video as I've discussed in the other thread. We can all agree that it's not just the ball. However the simplest solution for pros is to reduce the permitted velocity.

Don't change the clubs, they're already fixed, don't bother with minimum fairway or rough heights etc. Simply have a ball that's 20% (or 10-30%) slower for pros. There will still be distance creep, manufacturers will still sell millions of balls to the public, who after all, fund these companies.

[North Texas]

Everything Dean Snell talked about has already been talked about. Absolutely nothing he said was earth-shattering. And considering his position in the golf industry, quite predictable.

The biggest change, i.e. distance gains, occurred in the late 90's and early 2000's and are primarily equipment related. Quite simply, the USGA and the R&A screwed the pooch on both the size of the driver head and the ball.

[storm319]

People are getting offended by rollback discussion because there is really no data that logically supports the need for it. When someone proposes a massive change with potentially large repercussions to an industry and provides no reasoning other than "why not?", it tends to get people worked up.

This argument has ultimately boiled down to optics (people not liking what they see from tee to green on tv) which is ridiculously illogical. Very little of the environmental, cost, or time concerns that have been brought up as justification would be solved by the proposals that have been offered. If scalability is the main concern, it would require a dramatic rollback and a massive investment to redesign the 16000+ courses currently in existence in he US alone which is simply not reasonable.

We should really stay on topic (Dean's video) or maybe just lock the thread. If people would like to discuss rollback rhetoric, this massive thread would be more appropriate:https://forums.golfwrx.com/discussion/1811201/usga-distance-insight

[storm319]

Javelin is a terrible analogy as the ultimate goal of those is to throw as far as possible. Running/swimming are time based goals so the actual distance is inconsequential unless people are concerned with protecting past legacies. Golf's ultimate goal is getting the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible so scoring trends should be the ultimate indicator of challenge.

[storm319]

Rory's swing looked fairly smooth here as well and the 3 wood was 15 degrees and ~160cc so reducing driver head sizes really would not do much to the elite.

If you look back at history, the greatest players approached the game with the same goal...how to get the ball in the hole in the most efficient way possible. Data analysis today points to the approach the modern professionals are taking as simply the most efficient path to the ultimate goal of getting the ball in the hole in the fewest number of strokes possible. Some may view the extreme consistency on tour as a negative, but the reality is that the increased motivation to perform has been largely driven by the amount of money that is at stake on tour which has created the tight bunching of competition.

[storm319]

The irony is that steel and titanium (usage for clubs) are alloys comprised of multiple materials so it is really no different than the multiple materials used in composite shafts or club heads. The material itself does not matter, the focus should be on the goal that the material usage hopes to achieve and whether that poses a universal advantage beyond existing regulation. Today, everything meaningful to distance with regards to equipment has already been well regulated for years so any equipment related gains at the elite level moving forward are really due to optimization (including weight reduction since there is not a universal correlation and the fact that most pros are at the point of diminishing returns).

As for smaller club heads, see the video of Rory above (steel fairway metal, ~160cc headsize under average Persimmon era driver size). Restrictions on materials and even head size is not going to make a difference to someone like this.

[storm319]

Keep in mind that the balls introduced in the 90's were within he same regulations as the balls produced in the 70's and 80's (last ball regulation change was in 1976 which did not deal anything non-conforming at the time). I agree on clubhead size for the non-elite population, but see the video of Rory I posted above.

[Ashley Schaeffer]

Agreed. I was just quoting my buddy.

[storm319]

I know, just too lazy to go back re-quote that blurb from his post :)

[15th Club]

Yeah well what you are pointing out is something that I am already acutely aware of; how hard it is to write technical regulations for equipment standards in an environment where ultra competitive manufacturers are researching and developing new products for ultra competitive athletes.

But I’d be more than happy to spend a weekend writing a definition that said that a metallic alloy would be regarded as a single material.

[storm319]

The question is not whether you can wordsmith a technical regulation for this, the question is why limit this and what do you hope it will accomplish? I really hope you are telling the truth about not being affiliated with the USGA, because the game is in big trouble if the USGA has regressed to this throwing cr@p against the wall to see what sticks mentality.

[15th Club]

I really don’t want to detract from the discussion of the Snell video. We should continue this on the pages of the Distance Insights topic.

Or — what I’d really like — is some other forum apart from Golf WRX moderation.