Why are we so quick to penalize distance?

[ThinkingPlus]

Yes you can, however, it would have still impacted play until you could replace the ball. Regardless, bomb and gouge will always be the best scoring approach unless missing a fairway reduces strokes gained significantly. Current course setups don't do it. If distance isn't dialed back by a huge amount (20% or more), bomb and gouge will still be the best scoring paradigm as long as courses are designed and setup the way they currently are.

[Soloman1]

Oh, I agree with all of your comment. And the ball flight would be affected by a smiling balata. I appreciate smart golf and not dumb golf. I think bomb and gouge is dumb golf. If we eliminate finesse, we devalue the potential of golf.

I’m going to get beat over the head. So be it.

[ThinkingPlus]

I view it slightly differently. For any course design and setup (and set of rules including equipment restrictions) there is an optimal scoring strategy and other less optimal scoring strategies.

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

Everyone enjoys watching and playing good golf. By dialing back to the early 1800s, I predict many more players will be playing worse golf if any golf.

[OrangeGravy]

I think a lot of people believe it costs nothing to grow the rough or narrow fairways and very little to rearrange the bunkers on a course.

[Titleist99]

The PGATOUR can put a stop to the distance debate next week....all they have to do is announce that the next tournament will be played with range balls. The tour may lose a few sponsors, a lot of revenue and a lot of viewers that do want to see touring pros hit the ball 250-270 yards and hitting woods into some green like your average foursome at the local muni on a Saturday morning.....but I'm sure It'll make a few Rollbackers happy.

That ought to grow the game.....smile.

[widow-maker]

If you gear the ball back 10%, DeChambeau, Rory, Finau, Rahm will still have a distance advantage. They'll still be closer to the hole and hitting a shorter shot than the other pro's. And if they want to, they can still bring the fairways in, grow the rough, and other things that make it difficult. The only thing it really changes is that the Golf Courses don't have to install new tees, move bunkers, reroute water ways (which Nicklaus is doing on 15 at the Memorial), or purchase additional land for $20 million like Augusta has done. You don't have to change an iconic hole like #13 because DeChambeau is going to hit Driver/9 iron into a par 5. Restricting the ball is just a cheaper way of achieving balance. Length will still be an advantage for those who have it. If you don't keep the price of playing golf down then people are going to find other hobbies that are affordable. In the end, if courses close because they can't afford maintenance, then we'll all pay more to play the courses that are open. Look at the cost of golf in Japan. The common folk play their golf at the driving range.

[oikos1]

More than what it costs to continue mowing and watering a pristine fairway? Give me a break.

[Lincoln_Arcadia]

They’d still require new tee boxes, shorter ones.

[Titleist99]

Most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.....No $20M land need to be purchased, No tees need to be added and no bunkers need to be moved. Everybody plays the same course, at the end a champion will be crowned and a check will be handed to the winner....And as usual the lowest number of strokes wins the tournament which is the object of the game. Put the mowers and the water hoses up and save fuel and H2O. Money saved will buy you a couple of mature oak trees to be placed in strategic places. The masters at Augusta has never been more exciting the way it is....

[widow-maker]

And all those things you've mentioned can still be done even if you roll the ball back 10%. Everybody will still play the same course, and the lowest score will still win. But instead of maintaining a 7800 yard golf course you can keep things the same and maintain a 7000 yard golf course. A roll back of the golf ball won't change much with how golf is played. It will just curb the distance back to what these golf courses were meant to handle. The one thing it won't do is penalize distance. The long hitters will still have their advantage.

[Shilgy]

What most mean by bomb and gouge will never go away. Analytics has proven it is best to advance the ball towards the hole as far as possible with each shot. The days of “lay back to your favorite number” are gone. Never to return. Does not matter the amount of a rollback..

We learned during the Tiger proofing era that all that was really accomplished was a benefit to the longer players. Same would happen with a rollback. The only benefit from a rollback would be because we could then play some old classic courses in elite events because the fans would stay away.

[klebs01]

Yes. You need to cut up and remove the fairway down past the roots to get them out, regrade, move irrigation, reseed and grow it in. To do It right. Fairways and rough aren’t the same type of grass. It’s not that simple.

[gvogel]

If the powers that be reduce club head size to 200cc for drivers, and roll back COR to around what wood was for elite players, they might not even have to change the specifications for your beloved ball. But the really good guys might enjoy the opportunity to separate themselves by ability over the rest of the players.

[Shilgy]

Most courses would not do that. If there is a rollback the tour courses would need to stay the same length they currently are to get the players hitting more than wedges and short iron approach shots. So we can all suffer to see the elite hit more club. Yay!!!

[Titleist99]

Funny you should mention that....Driver head size that is. I've been having trouble hitting my long irons lately so I went with my fairway woods. My fairway woods are about the size of a wooden soup spoon used for cooking, my point is that those PGATOUR players will eventually learn to pound the smaller head driver like I"m doing now...

[Titleist99]

You're talking a days work with Jack's crew....

[klebs01]

So you want people to play out of 3+ inch bent grass rough? Hello 6 hour rounds.

[Titleist99]

Yardage is way down on the list for choosing a venue for a PGA tour event or a USGA tournament......with infrastructure heading the list. Not to mention that members don't want to give there club up for the time it take to get the course ready....

[Titleist99]

Did I mention the fact that the Euros are having a tournament on a 6800 yard course this week (British Masters) and a champion was crowned?

[tannyhoban]

They don't have to do that. They choose to.

Big difference.

[widow-maker]

And if they played the same tournament with a rolled back ball they'd still crown a champion. Rolling back the ball isn't going to change the game. It's still get the ball in the hole in the least amount of strokes. Course maintenance will cost less. That's about it.

[Titleist99]

It will take more than a few guy hitting over 300 yards off the tee before someone or something shake up the golf world and ruin golfs present prosperity.

[widow-maker]

We'll see. You might want to keep a close eye at the R&A's take on this. I highly doubt it would ruin golf's prosperity. Are you going to stop watching the Masters because they're only driving it 320 instead of 350? Or because they play a hole at 450 instead of 470. No matter whether they change the ball or not, it's still golf, and they're still the best players in the world... which makes it entertaining to watch.

[Titleist99]

If I wanted to watch shorter and crookeder I'd watch my own Saturday mourning foursome........

[Shilgy]

I don’t recall mentioning the rough at all. Does it not stand to reason that if they roll back the ball 10% they need to keep the current course length to avoid still having too many wedge approach shots? If you roll both the ball and the course back 10% nothing would change. As for your maintenance concern and cost savings.....the only thing most back tees “cost” is mowing and watering. The fairway does not typically start being cut back by that tee so no savings there. Clubs are not going to sell that land so they still need to maintain those acres. Lol, that’s what I was saying(with tongue firmly in cheek). They won’t need to have the massive infrastructure on tour if there are no fans. Roll the ball back enough and you will turn off many fans. But don’t kid yourself. Even if an old club like Minikahda club in Minneapolis, a great old course, had room for 100,000 fans the US Open will not go back there at 6830 yards.

[smashdn]

I don't care how a person plays Golf or what they need to do to get what they need/want out of it (beer, mulligans, betting, music, cart girls, dope, cursing, putter toss, etc.) as long as it doesn't impact my ability to get what I want out of Golf.

 

Maybe that's the thing. Let everyone get their version of golf that makes them happy in and not force people into playing a certain way.

My Golf doesn't need to be more like TopGolf either btw. I don't mind it as a rare diversion however.

[smashdn]

One of the most irritating things I have ever had happen to me on a golf course was along these lines. It was on a downhill par five that swung from left to right along a pond. The pond actually fronted the green complex. There was a grouping of bunkers up on the right hand side on the hill the fairway swung around. I had never played this course before so I was driving blind. I assumed if I made the heroic play of carrying the bunkers I would be rewarded with a nice roll down the backside of the hill and set up an iron shot into the green in two. As I popped over the hill beside the bunkers I realized that my ball was actually in quite penal rough. I ended having to lay up with a short iron then play another short iron into the green. If that path was pushed farther up the hill on the right and beyond the bunkers was cut to fairway height you could play a shot that might potentially run down off the hill into the bottom in the fairway. A real reward for carrying the bunkers.

I loathe bunkers buried in the rough. What's the point? I dislike the set up that they use for 18 at Bethpage Black for that reason.

 

[smashdn]

Harder is harder. And harder is okay at times. Growing the rough from a normal 2.5" to 3" is harder. Speeding up the greens or having a handful of holes cut in tough spots is harder. Narrowing the fairways by a mower width all around is harder.

Narrowing the fairways starting at 270 onward is tricked up. Mowing the fairways back toward the tee boxes to inhibit roll is tricked up. Tucking pins in in-approachable or un-holdable locations is tricked up. Every tee marker at the very back of the tee pad is tricked up. (I've played places that had them moved so far back you could not use the entire two clubs lengths of teeing ground allowed within the rules.)

 

That's the sign of good and compelling architecture, when you can do a few little things with set-up and create a challenging course but in normal day-to-day it doesn't present a course where a mid or high handicap player cannot get around. Losing and/looking for balls in the rough is silly. Any rough is already punishing enough for a high handicap player. For a good player in the rough hopefully he has a crap angle into the green and just enough grass between the club and the ball that it won't sit down and spin.

[ThinkingPlus]

You are correct, however designing a golf course to meet the criteria you specified is harder and also may result in a less aesthetically pleasing design. Today's architects are artists that don't want to work that hard. They want to follow their muse and let the RBs impose restrictions to make the architect's designs relevant for the elite player.