Dean Snell's Video on the Distance debate

[Titan2113]

 

Very well...I challenge you to a duel sir!

[bigred90gt]

And graphite shafts allow people with elbow issues to continue to play this game with less or no pain. Not a chance they’re going anywhere.

[Titan2113]

Not that it matters but can anyone reference the quarter inch survey of fairways heights?

[farmer]

I don't know about the 1/4 reference, but at least up until 1976, the USGA had fairways cut at 1/2 inch. Before one round, the mowers were accidentally set at 5/8 inch. The pros, lead by Hale Irwin, went ballistic, accusing the USGA of all sorts of nefarious plots. The last time I attended a tournament live, not a major, the fairways were very tight, but I had no way to measure them. I have played this course in member trim, and the fairways were definitely more plush.

[ode1]

You lost me at Geoff Shackelford and Pepperdine!

[oikos1]

Lol! What the h***?

[rangersgoalie]

That 78+ scoring avg doesn’t impress?

[Ashley Schaeffer]

If the courses were designed the “proper” way, it would’ve been 71.4, max. I could write some books about it.

[mahonie]

What about making it a requirement that all clubheads are solid and not hollow?

[Titan2113]

huh interesting found that story about AAC. Anyways I just work on a golf course and am at Bay Hill this week, fairways here are .375, they were .400 at the Honda last week, and in Hawaii at the Sentry where players were hitting bombs they were .475. Now could the heights be wrong as you mentioned absolutely they could be. Mowing heights, stimps, and grass types are pretty easy to find on the GCSAA page for that weeks tournaments.

[storm319]

Again, why? How would the USGA perform conformance testing efficiently without destroying a the club?

Any regulation would have to be an attribute that they can test fast and efficiently (due to the volume of submissions) as well as in a non-damaging to the club. Materials and production methods are inconsequential, the point is identifying attributes that have a correlation to universal improvement of which the USGA has already limited everything meaningful.

[bigred90gt]

I am not in favor of the suggestion to make heads solid, but just to answer the question, Ultrasonic Testing can be used to determine material thickness, which would tell you if it was hollow or solid. UT is completely harmless test performed using soundwaves at specific frequencies and velocities per material type/thickness. Of course, This would also mean that any pores from the material manufacturing process could be misinterpreted as a cavity in the clubhead, so now you would have a more onerous manufacturing specification (be it casting or forging process, both are susceptible to porosity), with an additional layer of QC at the material manufacturer and the club manufacturer, with potentially a lot of rejected heads, which would put manufacturing cost and subsequently retail cost through the roof.

[MidwestGolfBum]

There are 9 clubs within 25 miles of my house that were all built in the 20s and early 30s and are certainly would be considered to be more on the short end when it comes to modern golf. I have friends who are members at all of them or am a member, zero of them are in "constant feuds with neighbors". I'm not saying it's not happening where you are, but it isn't happening where I am. This actually remains true for a very large number of the older, more classically sized clubs that I have either been a member of, or know members of across the region.

[mahonie]

Making the head solid would limit its size (due to weight), the length of shaft that could be used and the lightness/flexibility of the shaft material which would all impact swing speed/ball distance. Testing solid materials is no more onerous than testing hollow clubs with several non-destructive testing techniques.

With regard to manufacturing costs, as most driver heads are currently turned out very cheaply in the Far East, there would be very little impact. Notice the R&D cost!!!

[nitram]

Why is "toughening" the course with tighter & taller fairways, longer- juicier rough, and bunkers that are actually penal considered a bad thing?

Look, I know I tend to over-simplify things but adjusting the course seems to be a more logical "first step" to evaluate the effectiveness.

[Twism86]

Bravo! Make the courses harder on the pro weekends!! When Matsuyama can hit a 3W from a fairway bunker and put it on the green, that bunker isnt penalizing enough! Build it up. Fairways and rough need to be longer and bunkers need to be deeper. Add traps and tighten the fairway at 280-300y so the pros have to make a perfect shot but its still out of range of your weekend warriors. When the pros miss the fairway and still can use the same club and make par or better, its too easy.

The club isnt the problem, the ball isnt the problem, their strength isnt the problem. The course is the problem.

[oikos1]

^^^^ Exactly. All this talk about rolling technology back. How about the courses adapt to the technology? The changes at the pro level wouldn't be that dramatic to the small number of courses actually needing a few tweaks. The changes would be dramatic for the players, and that's where the problem lies. The PGA Tour wants long drives, low scores, birdies and players going for it in two on par 5's. That's the product they want to sell because that's what the "general" public wants to see.

The USGA isn't in a position to dictate course set-up to the PGA Tour (after their U.S. Open debacles, they lack credibility), and as such find themselves in a very precarious situation. Of course, as an organization they know this and that's why the USGA distance report was a big nothing burger.

[Titan2113]

I will say this, I sent snell golf and email last night inquiring about the fairway height chart and got a response back this morning. Although I don’t agree with it big ups for providing the chart.

[cutchemist42]

Smaller scale but the NHL has forced goalies throughout the years to buy new equipment. The outrage isnt there because its 1 guy on a team of about 22 people. Cost me about $700 years ago.

[smashdn]

Regarding number 1. My contention this has allowed golf to be played a completely different trajectory than in the past. Traditional deterrents to hitting the ball high, spin, ballooning, loss of distance, etc. have largely been overcome or at minimum the reward for the high ball flight greatly outweighs the negatives. Without wind (which traditionally does not impact US courses and US styles of course architecture to the extent of traditional links or more open designs) to force the ball flight down golfers are free to go higher and up and over obstacles golfers 30 years previous had to go around. I contend that Jack's advantage wasn't as much distance for distance sake but in the fact that due to his distance he could hit the more controllable fade and not give up distance to the field where others were were inclined if not forced to hit a running draw to glean that extra distance.

 

"The driver is bigger with a higher COR. Because it is bigger and the club head is lighter, guys can use lighter, better shafts, and because the head is bigger, can hit up on the ball providing better launch characteristics. As well, internal weighting in the head leads to better spin characteristics. And they can swing out of their shoes with very little penalty to bad strikes."

 

I have heard this from a club manufacturer's own mouth and it makes sense from a physics standpoint as well. Though there is a limitation on CoR, that is not the only limiting factor. It might be the only regulated factor (or one of) but there are also issues with physics that can be overcome with new club head and material designs. When a driver head strikes the ball both the ball and the driver face deform. But so does the crown and the sole and probably other parts of the club (torsion in the neck possibly). The crown and the sole of the club deforming is wasting the energy that the golfer is putting into the swing. it is energy that is not being used to propel the ball in the forward direction. Callaway came out with the "jailbreak" bars to help to counteract deformation in an undesirable direction and location within the club. I am sure there are other club makers doing the same. The CoR of the face does not change but more energy is imparted to the ball and not lost.

If there are balls that "are designed to optimize performance at swing speeds over X" and "designed or intended to perform best at swing speeds under X" by decreasing spin, adding layers, adjusting thicknesses of layers, etc. to provide these performance benefits, why would you think the technology does not already exist? If a golf ball manufacturer can manipulate the construction to optimize performance based upon swing speed why would they not be able to manipulate them to retard performance?

 

That is the ask. Make a ball that performs relatively the same for slower swing speed players but maybe spins too much or just doesn't go as far when an inner layer is compressed.

[storm319]

Spin is largely determined by dynamic loft/angle of attack and less about swing speed. If a ball could be designed to somehow do what you recommend (and have a drastic spin discrepancy), elite players would adjust the loft and AoA to compensate thus negating the change and making it a complete waste. A ball speed reduction (via reducing the current test limit and/or reducing max allowable weight) and to a lesser extent less efficient dimple design would be the only way to effectively reduce the golf ball without loopholes other than simply swinging faster (which will happen as a result).

[farmer]

I'd be interested in seeing the chart. I doubt that members want a really hard, tight lie in the fairway, just because of a general lack of skill. The difference between .375 and .25 is obviously 12.5 hundredths of an inch, not much in the world of Tour level players, doubling .25 might make a difference.

I would also like to know what feuds golf courses have with their neighbors. Golfers peeing in the bushes? Wandering off course? Buying a house in a golf course development adjacent to the course requires that the buyer have some different expectations than driving down a public street next to a golf course.

Mahonie, you seem to be advocating for wood. Wooden clubs sucked. Some were pretty, some performed well, but they were fragile, they beat up as badly as a balata ball. There is no market for that product.

Making bunkers more of a hazard is easy, rake them more coarsely, as (again) Jack did once at the Memorial. Shout out for Nitram et al for this suggestion.

[Titan2113]

 

I suppose I should have posted this earlier but here’s a screenshot of what I was sent.

[farmer]

Wow, a fairway that stimps 12?! I will trust Titleist on the rollout/Stimp numbers, as they have no dog in the rollout fight.

[MidwestGolfBum]

I find it hard to believe that there are any fairways that stimp 12, but hey, who knows. The graph does work well for what they are trying to say, but as we all know, it's easy enough to pick the data that fits what you want to convey. There are no doubts that fairways have gotten shorter and greens faster, but driving distance in the timeframe they have on that graph can be chalked up to a lot more than fairway length and much more with larger, metal drivers, as has been discussed over and over in this debate.

[smashdn]

That's conjecture and bad conjecture at that. Explain how short hitters would be out of the game. I really can't understand it as history points otherwise. We have approximately the years 1940 -1990 to look to to support that shorter hitters still won their share, and potentially more than their share, than they have in the last 10-15.

[MidwestGolfBum]

Unless they are playing from shorter distances, the shorter players are going to have a more difficult time still. Those who hit the ball further are going to have a distinct advantage over the shorter ones, more so when you're talking about 30+ yards, with the ability to control a shorter iron more than a longer, traditionally. You shorten the distances they play from now, we are right back to the same conversation, just with different overall yardage numbers. Courses like Riviera proved that you don't need a ton of distance to make a course difficult. There's no simple answer to this whole conversation, as most are probably more than well aware.

[smashdn]

Hitting the ball farther than your opponent has always been an advantage and always will. No argument from me on that. What I can't agree with is that somehow the results of increased distance and the lengthening of courses and having shorter irons in their hands would not be mirrored if a rollback of similar proportions occurred. In other words if we progressed and X happened, if we regressed would not X go away?

 

The reason I think that happens that way is that the advantage you get by being closer for your approach shot is not linear in advantage, and while not exponentially better, it is several percentages better and noticeable.

In other words the advantage of an approach from 200 versus one from 220 is not the same as the advantage of an approach from say 100 versus 120. There is some spot in the X Y plot of distance versus outcome proximity to the hole where the line gets much steeper. My thoughts are it might be around the 170-150 mark. A 170 yard approach is a different level of discomfort versus a 150 yard one.

Robin! To the MS Paint Cave!

[braincramp52]

This is way too easy and makes too much sense. That's why.

[smashdn]

 

Proximity to the hole on the Y axis, Approach shot distance on the X.

 

Now I am curious to see if there is data to show the average approach shot distance on tour. Are guys, as a whole, approaching the green from closer? Have to wipe out par 5's.