If you feel that the golf ball should be rolled back, what age group do you fall into?

[Dpavs]

This purpose of this poll is to determine the age distribution of those who feel the golf ball should be rolled back, so please only answer the poll, participate or comment if you feel the golf ball should be rolled back.

This poll has bee set to be anonymous so that user votes are not made public.

[bogeypro]

Change the thread title to, "if you feel" instead of given that you feel. I don't feel that it should be rolled back.

[bamagolf]

Nope, don’t roll it back. Only the best of the best hit it too far. I need one that goes farther.

[Greenie]

I certainly don't think the ball should be rolled back for me but would consider answering yes if it was for the tour.

 

 

[marmaduk]

I predicted before i opened the thread that the majority of responses would be people against rollback.

[cugolf14]

I'm another that doesn't feel it needs to be rolled back. Limited moving forward? Sure. But I don't think the ball has created the issue.

[pmang]

I am against it also. If they reduce it for the pro’s, I will no longer watch the tour. It will take away the awe of watching it.

[gdb99]

The longest would still be the longest.

[ChitownM2]

I'd only be in favor of a roll back on the tour. For the average golfer on the typical course, to much distance isn't a problem.

[AmazinBlue]

Don't roll the ball back, raise the thw height of the fairways on tour and soften them up.

Recreational golfers need more distance not less.

[tannyhoban]

Roll back to what?

[marmaduk]

quail eggs.

i guess i’m just a traditionalist though

[ChipNRun]

Possibly you are talking of dreaded bifurcation: Pros and competition amateurs have a different ball.

Want more premium on accuracy over distance? Insert a rule for top tournaments that no one may use a wedge with a loft exceeding 56*. Remove the LWs, and we'll see who can manufacture clever close-in shots.

[Catty]

Roll the ball and the size of clubs back as well. If it takes you an extra shot to get to the hole that's what handicaps are for.

[widow-maker]

I don't care about the ball going further, but it's just so expensive to keep changing the courses to keep up with it. If they limit the ball, DeChambeau, Rory and the other long hitters will still have an advantage because they'll still be the longest hitters.

[Mudguard]

I'm all for bifurcation. I hate that a minority of players (tour level) should determine the rules that the bulk of us play by. Reduce compression to 40 or something for tour events. Allow long putters for amateur etc.

[Radeon962]

Seems like the people who call for the ball to be rolled back are older PGA Tour pro’s who don’t like seeing the youngsters pound the ball 300+.

I like to see the Tour players do things I can’t. I’m 52 and have no issue with how the game is played now.

If you are concerned about the ball going too far, play wood woods, blades and balata balls.

I like the technology that is available that makes the game easier and not harder as I have played for over 30 years and have as much fun now as I did back in my 20’s.

[Dpavs]

The main reason I posted the poll was to see if there was any validity to the narrative, I keep hearing that it is mostly older guys who want the ball rolled back. Not knowing the actual age demographic of the membership for GolfWRX the poll results cannot be measured against it so the results of course could be following the same age curve but unfortunately there is no way for me to understand that. That said, I am not sure that statistically there is enough participation for the poll to conclude too much at this point. Also, as a threshold assumption I suppose we could argue over just what "older guys" is supposed to mean. Is that over 50? 40? 35? All that aside, it is pretty obvious though from even this small sampling that there is likely only a small percentage of players under 30 who would support a ball roll back. The interesting thing is that for three of the other age groups, 31-40, 41-50 and 61+ the number who indicated they would support a ball roll back is pretty even. The standout exception is for those between 51-60 where the number is only half or less than the other age groups over 31. Hopefully, a few more will participate yet in the poll to see if the voting trend continues along the same lines as it has so far.

[Imp]

Should have an option "don't roll it back" as a control group. Otherwise, the poll results can be used to support rolling back the ball, and their ages.

"We did a poll and here are the ages of those that support the ball being rolled back."

"How many don't want it rolled back?"

"We don't know, but here's the support for rolling the ball back.... people want it."

(This is exactly how the media and politicians work)

--kC

[Dpavs]

It really wasn't my intent to determine the numbers of pro vs con for rolling the ball back but after creating it, I did think that perhaps I should have added a choice for that just to put things in perspective. That said, you can skew or twist any statistic if you really want to and you are correct in that this happens all too frequently the case. Alas, I do not know how to modify the poll answers if it is even possible at this point.

[North Texas]

Hitting it far is just one of numerous things I've watched the Tour players do that I can't do. And, at age 69, I've been watching them do it all my life, lol.

[Radeon962]

 

When they used to play the Buick Open at Warwick Hills we used to go watch every year as you could get up close to the tee boxes and see how hard they actually swing as Warwick is wide open. They look like they are not swinging hard as they are so smooth (Bryson excluded with his current swing), but they take a cut at the ball.

The thing that amazed me most there was their ability to recover from most any awkward position they might be in. It was a lot of fun to spend a day or two there and watch the pro's play.

[herbert7890]

People that want the Roll back forget about a pretty basic principle, EVERYONE will be hitting shorter. Now the short guys have a 4 iron into the green and the long guys still have a 7-8. Prior to that, the short hitters would be hitting 7-8 irons (much easier than a 3-4 iron) and the long hitters PW. I would venture to say the diff between 3 iron vs 7 irons accuracy is much bigger than the diff between 8 irons to PW. So in essence, you are pretty much taking out all of the short hitters from the PGA tour and their livelihood if they do a roll back. Only the long hitters will thrive on it (which is actually the opposite effect of what they want to accomplish).

 

Humans are weird.......all I can say. SMH. All you need is to grow the rough on anything 300+ area of each hole, problem fixed.

[arbeck]

I'm for rolling it back, but doing it in a way that doesn't effect people swinging below 110 much at all, and makes gaining ball speed start having real diminishing returns as you get over 125. I think distance is already by far the most important skill (especially for pro's) and I don't want to see it become even more important.

[North Texas]

Not sure how much water your theory holds. I'm pretty sure that short hitters were just as competitive back when the driving distances were 30-40 yards less than they are today.

[bluedot]

Bingo! This is the question, and there is no sensible, data driven answer.

The current golf ball, like the evolution of a species, has two ancestors; the Top Flites and Pinnacles that were hard and fast off the tee, and the balata balls that spun like crazy off a wedge. Both of those were evolutionary dead ends because each had too many limitations. So if you want to go back, you have to go back to one or the other of those ancestors; there is no shorter, spinnier ancestor of the current ball. YOU CAN'T "ROLL BACK" TO SOMETHING THAT NEVER EXISTED!

Going forward, there are only two options. . One is to leave things alone as they are, with USGA limitations in place to prevent further BALL RELATED distance gains. The other is bifurcation. That's all; there isn't anything else that is a practical solution. Bifurcation changes something about golf that is absolutely unique, and I don't see that as a good thing; I can go to Harbour Town and play the same golf course with the same ball and the same equipment that Webb Simpson just used, and that's cool and special.

And focusing on the ball is an absurdly simplistic look at distance anyway, similar to blaming QB's and coaches for everything that goes wrong on a football field. DeChambeau hasn't gotten 20+ yards longer because of a golf ball; he's become a physical freak. For those of you that have never put yourself in the hands of a really top-shelf clubfitter, or a really top-shelf golf fitness guy, or a really top-shelf teacher with video and Trackman, you can't imagine the difference that all of that stuff makes, and the pros are doing ALL of it in combination.

[arbeck]

There is a third option. You can design a ball such that high swing speeds with low lofts will over compress the ball, making it less efficient to swing faster past a certain point. The swing speed/ball speed relationship would be linear until you get to about 120 (or pick a number) and then start to become flatter and flatter the faster you got. The faster players would still hit the ball further, but this would narrow the gap between the shortest and longest off the tee. It would have no effect on the shortest and the longest players with clubs other than the driver and perhaps fairway woods. This would probably be unnoticeable to 99.9% of amateurs.

The idea being here that distance off the tee has become the most important skill in the game. You would expect distance off the tee, approach play, putting, and short game to all have equal contributions to the game. But what we've discovered since strokes gained was introduced and understood is that distance is much more important than the other skills. It always has been, people just didn't know it. The old saying "drive for show, putt for dough," should actually be flipped.

Maybe it's not a bad thing to have distance be the most important factor in who has success on tour. But I understand the point of wanting to make the game much more of a balance between the 4 skill sets.

[bluedot]

I understand your point, and I'll assume that it is technically possible to make such a ball.

That said, I can't think of a single reason that it would be fair to penalize a guy who can swing 125 and make the ball go where he wants it to go and NOT penalize a guy who swings at 110 and is less accurate. Forcing a longer hitter to lose his advantage and have to play the same clubs into the green would be about as fundamental departure from the way the game has been played for centuries as anything I can think of.

[Nard_S]

They don't have to roll back "distance". All they would need to do is raise initial ball spin off impact which is in fact the major difference between now and days of "balata". Risk/reward gets steeper for 200mph ball speed but the ball will still go a mile down tee.

[Dpavs]

If only the spin is changed on the ball, won't manufacturers for clubs merely dial down driver heads and shafts to compensate for it? Which would of course, defeat the purpose of producing a higher spinning ball.