distance debate

[Nard_S]

OMG, day 2 and they're at -9, how exciting. Low scores send chills down my legs, The, great lag putts. These guys are great. -30 is going to be so thrilling. What a test, let's do this every week, the game will be bigger than world cup.

[Scooby555]

Not only do I think they should give us and the Pros the longest and best tech, I'd like to see PEDs become legal.  Bombs away!!!!

[Nard_S]

Let's move the Pro's up to the ladies tees and then they can putt for a double eagle and break the women's course record too!

 

So chilling & thrilling. They're my heroes, give them 750cc and super balls, I'll name my kids after them.

[Simpsonia]

17 hours ago, So_Cal said:

Guys driving 18 with 4 irons and rounds take 6 hours because of all the drivable par 4’s.  Hey if you don’t want a rollback at the top level I get it but I think it’s necessary.  The equipment is simply too good. 

 

You mean a muscleback 4-iron that hasn't substantially changed technologically in 40-50 years? Guess we need to rollback to hickory shafts just to make these guys happy. 

[So_Cal]

4 hours ago, Simpsonia said:

 

You mean a muscleback 4-iron that hasn't substantially changed technologically in 40-50 years? Guess we need to rollback to hickory shafts just to make these guys happy. 

Sorry but occasional mid and long irons into par 4s should be a skill tested in golf, like it was since the time of old Tom Morris. 

[buckeyefl]

33 minutes ago, So_Cal said:

Sorry but occasional mid and long irons into par 4s should be a skill tested in golf, like it was since the time of old Tom Morris. 

 

It happens literally every week on all tours.

[MUNIGRIT]

6 hours ago, Simpsonia said:

 

You mean a muscleback 4-iron that hasn't substantially changed technologically in 40-50 years? Guess we need to rollback to hickory shafts just to make these guys happy. 

Leather and feather balls too. I wish I was around here for the groove change. That was a joke.

[munichop]

In essence the golf tech has improved the pro game more than anyone else because they are so optimized. It is similar to tennis with the big racket heads. The pro men hardly play serve and volley anymore and not by choice. The equipment doesn’t allow it.  They had to slow the ball down in tennis and softball, bats too in softball. When the long-standing skill sets of a sport are reconfigured it is right to question if different is better. The governing bodies lost a suit in the 90’s on grooves because they wrote a crappy specification and tried to enforce it by bullying. Instead of hiring proper technical people to govern the equipment they buried there heads in the sand and by the time they noticed the top courses they had always counted on to challenge players at the top of the game were destroyed. Their response was to protect par by speeding up the greens and using mini golf pin locations all the while claiming we all play the same game. 
the old course now is really pitch and putt for these guys in ways it never was before the computer design world took over golf equipment. Yes you still have to get the ball in the hole but they have used the toughest pins on most of the holes and the lead is 13 under.  The 17 th tee is on another course and guys are hitting wedge. Like I said earlier this course is going the way of Prestwick where they won’t hold opens anymore. The  only reason they use it now is tradition and history.

[Nard_S]

8 hours ago, munichop said:

In essence the golf tech has improved the pro game more than anyone else because they are so optimized. It is similar to tennis with the big racket heads. The pro men hardly play serve and volley anymore and not by choice. The equipment doesn’t allow it.  They had to slow the ball down in tennis and softball, bats too in softball. When the long-standing skill sets of a sport are reconfigured it is right to question if different is better. The governing bodies lost a suit in the 90’s on grooves because they wrote a crappy specification and tried to enforce it by bullying. Instead of hiring proper technical people to govern the equipment they buried there heads in the sand and by the time they noticed the top courses they had always counted on to challenge players at the top of the game were destroyed. Their response was to protect par by speeding up the greens and using mini golf pin locations all the while claiming we all play the same game. 
the old course now is really pitch and putt for these guys in ways it never was before the computer design world took over golf equipment. Yes you still have to get the ball in the hole but they have used the toughest pins on most of the holes and the lead is 13 under.  The 17 th tee is on another course and guys are hitting wedge. Like I said earlier this course is going the way of Prestwick where they won’t hold opens anymore. The  only reason they use it now is tradition and history.

Thank you, well said and 100% fact.

 

[buckeyefl]

12 hours ago, munichop said:

In essence the golf tech has improved the pro game more than anyone else because they are so optimized. It is similar to tennis with the big racket heads. The pro men hardly play serve and volley anymore and not by choice. The equipment doesn’t allow it.  They had to slow the ball down in tennis and softball, bats too in softball. When the long-standing skill sets of a sport are reconfigured it is right to question if different is better. The governing bodies lost a suit in the 90’s on grooves because they wrote a crappy specification and tried to enforce it by bullying. Instead of hiring proper technical people to govern the equipment they buried there heads in the sand and by the time they noticed the top courses they had always counted on to challenge players at the top of the game were destroyed. Their response was to protect par by speeding up the greens and using mini golf pin locations all the while claiming we all play the same game. 
the old course now is really pitch and putt for these guys in ways it never was before the computer design world took over golf equipment. Yes you still have to get the ball in the hole but they have used the toughest pins on most of the holes and the lead is 13 under.  The 17 th tee is on another course and guys are hitting wedge. Like I said earlier this course is going the way of Prestwick where they won’t hold opens anymore. The  only reason they use it now is tradition and history.

 

 

Weather. Its literally that simple

[So_Cal]

A St Andrews historian said that the course needs to be 8,400 yards to present the same challenge to the pros as the pre Pro-V1 era.  The upcoming rollback won’t restore shot values 100% but it will bring back a better challenge.  

Edited July 16, 2022 by So_Cal
Spelling

[Tasals]

16 hours ago, So_Cal said:

A St Andrews historian said that the course needs to be 8,400 yards to present the same challenge to the pros as the pre Pro-V1 era.  The upcoming rollback won’t restore shot values 100% but it will bring back a better challenge.  

Go look at past open winning scores, st andrews has historically been one of the easiest courses out there. Youd have to go back to 1946 to see an over par score win it at +2. Between then and 2000 the winning score has been low. Faldo won it at -18 in 1990, 10 years before the ProV1 era. Tiger won it at -19 in 2000 in the prov1 era, which was 3 months before ProV1 were launched. St Andrews is a course that is just laughably easy now, unless you get perfect weather conditions to defend it.

[Pastit]

On 7/15/2022 at 11:24 PM, munichop said:

In essence the golf tech has improved the pro game more than anyone else because they are so optimized. It is similar to tennis with the big racket heads. The pro men hardly play serve and volley anymore and not by choice. The equipment doesn’t allow it.  They had to slow the ball down in tennis and softball, bats too in softball. When the long-standing skill sets of a sport are reconfigured it is right to question if different is better. The governing bodies lost a suit in the 90’s on grooves because they wrote a crappy specification and tried to enforce it by bullying. Instead of hiring proper technical people to govern the equipment they buried there heads in the sand and by the time they noticed the top courses they had always counted on to challenge players at the top of the game were destroyed. Their response was to protect par by speeding up the greens and using mini golf pin locations all the while claiming we all play the same game. 
the old course now is really pitch and putt for these guys in ways it never was before the computer design world took over golf equipment. Yes you still have to get the ball in the hole but they have used the toughest pins on most of the holes and the lead is 13 under.  The 17 th tee is on another course and guys are hitting wedge. Like I said earlier this course is going the way of Prestwick where they won’t hold opens anymore. The  only reason they use it now is tradition and history.

It’s a problem easily solved though it involves asking the “ blue blazers “ to move out of their mansion and use American skills *1 to move it to the southern part of the auld grey toon. Demolish the houses between the 18th green and the new site, then add 100yds to each hole. 
 

I’d love to be a fly-on-the-wall at the next “ blue-blazers “ meeting. Definitely back to hickory and 100cc drivers. 
 

*1= They’re top-notch at doing this sort of thing. Aren’t they moving Ouimet’s old house at Brookline CC ? 

Edited July 17, 2022 by Pastit

[Htk084]

22 hours ago, So_Cal said:

A St Andrews historian said that the course needs to be 8,400 yards to present the same challenge to the pros as the pre Pro-V1 era.  The upcoming rollback won’t restore shot values 100% but it will bring back a better challenge.  

Do you know if they’re definitely doing a rollback?   I’m interested of what that could be like

[storm319]

On 7/14/2022 at 7:27 PM, munichop said:

The r and a never have been as obsessed with protecting par as the other majors. They felt that was up to the weather. That being said they put 12 of 18 pins in the most challenging spots according to Paul Mcginley and a lot of guys shot sub 70 rounds. In fact the r and a attitude is what allowed engineers to outwit the governing bodies in the 90’s when the biggest distance gains happened. 
Now TOC is going the way of Prestwick.

Prestwick being dropped from the rota had nothing to do with the playing area of the course, it was due to the lack of gallery space (and that was in the 1920s so it must have been bad).

What doesn’t make sense to me was the R&As lack of concern for history when dropping the original Open host yet they make it seem like not hosting at TOC once every 5 years will be the end of golf? 

[gvogel]

38 minutes ago, storm319 said:

Prestwick being dropped from the rota had nothing to do with the playing area of the course, it was due to the lack of gallery space (and that was in the 1920s so it must have been bad).

What doesn’t make sense to me was the R&As lack of concern for history when dropping the original Open host yet they make it seem like not hosting at TOC once every 5 years will be the end of golf? 

Yes, good point.  But when they played the first 10 or so Opens at Prestwick, it was a 12-hole course.  Pretty tough to get 150 golfers around 36 holes in two days on a 12-hole course.

[ThinkingPlus]

1 hour ago, Htk084 said:

Do you know if they’re definitely doing a rollback?   I’m interested of what that could be like

There are links to two GD articles posted multiple times in this thread that lay out the planned changes to be implemented by the Ruling Bodies.

[bscinstnct]

3 hours ago, ThinkingPlus said:

There are links to two GD articles posted multiple times in this thread that lay out the planned changes to be implemented by the Ruling Bodies.

 

No way they do it now. Cause…you know ; )

[ThinkingPlus]

20 minutes ago, bscinstnct said:

 

No way they do it now. Cause…you know ; )

Actually, it's the perfect time.  They have the tours in a vulnerable spot.  The RBs only have to deal with the OEMs.  Reduces the war to only one front.

[smashdn]

On 7/16/2022 at 6:00 AM, buckeyefl said:

 

 

Weather. Its literally that simple

But when there is none you got nowhere else to go.

 

This isn't a knock or even really a thought on distance, just sort of facts of TOC.  They have a narrow window to get that place how it needs to be to be the appropriate test/difficulty.  They can't let it get too far one way or the other too far out as, as the tourney draws nigh, thier ability to get it to the spot with the time they left is narrower and narrower.

 

My guess is sometime early last week when the forecasts were firming up they were getting more and more into the mindset that it was going to need to be rock hard and use the hardest hole locations.  We probably just saw that course at or very near the hardest they can possibly set it up.

 

Now to ypur point, sort of.  I would bet there is still "some in the tank" for a Shinnecock or Merion if there was zero compounding weather.  Its just the nature of the course.

[MUNIGRIT]

Course held up pretty well honestly. There have been some newer courses built that guys shoot lower scores on.

[storm319]

7 hours ago, gvogel said:

Yes, good point.  But when they played the first 10 or so Opens at Prestwick, it was a 12-hole course.  Pretty tough to get 150 golfers around 36 holes in two days on a 12-hole course.

Largest Open field on a 12 hole Prestwick was 27 players (and I’m willing to bet that there wasn’t much of a gallery for any of them). The game may have been better off if Prestwick’s 12 holes would have become the standard rather than TOCs revised 18 (granted we can thank Old Tom Morris for changing TOC from 22 to 18 holes).

 

Also, it is tough to get 150 players through an 18 hole course twice in a single day which is one of the primary reasons for spreading these championships over 4 days. 
 

[gvogel]

17 hours ago, storm319 said:

Largest Open field on a 12 hole Prestwick was 27 players (and I’m willing to bet that there wasn’t much of a gallery for any of them). The game may have been better off if Prestwick’s 12 holes would have become the standard rather than TOCs revised 18 (granted we can thank Old Tom Morris for changing TOC from 22 to 18 holes).

 

Also, it is tough to get 150 players through an 18 hole course twice in a single day which is one of the primary reasons for spreading these championships over 4 days. 
 

Let it be said that the players used to play a lot faster when Prestwick was part of the rota, because they had fewer clubs, no yardage books, and much less overall information.  They played from experience, and gut feel.  Pick a club, hit the shot, done.

[storm319]

52 minutes ago, gvogel said:

Let it be said that the players used to play a lot faster when Prestwick was part of the rota, because they had fewer clubs, no yardage books, and much less overall information.  They played from experience, and gut feel.  Pick a club, hit the shot, done.

They also played for far less money. Financial incentives have driven most of the modern change in major professional sports.

[2over]

As a number of threads here have noted, and great players like Jack Nicklaus have long said, the modern golf ball just goes too far. It requires ever larger courses and exotic maintenance techniques to produce insanely hard and fast greens to make it somewhat challenging for tour pros. 

 

Most knowledgeable insiders say it's 80% the golf ball and that sounds about right. I would reference a brand new Titleist Tour Balata from the 80's (Titleist must either have some or could make a few). Mandate a ball with a much softer cover, and perhaps limit compression to no more than 80.  I'm guessing the spin rate off the driver with such a ball would be over 3500 rpm with a 115 mph swing rather than 2000-2200.. This would probably bring a 115 mph driver center strike from the 295ish carry you see today to something around 265-70. The 100 mph swing and the 247ish carry (I've seen this from a number of different robot tests, and I may be off, but I think that's ballpark) would likely lose less because lower speed is lower spin. Low to mid 230s? So the gap would narrow and it would reward the player who can manage spin with more level, square face center strikes. It would reward ball striking more than sheer force and would make the game a bit more interesting I would think. 

 

I'd also limit drivers to steel only, 200cc, 43" max, with at least 10* loft, made of steel or wood, no titanium or carbon fiber and require a minimum face thickness that removes most if not all the trampoline effect. I don't think this would have as dramatic an effect on distance (I saw a video of Dustin Johnson a couple years ago carrying a old persimmon driver 290+ yards--but with the modern ball. You combine an old school balata-like spinny soft ball with a small non-trampoline driver and you'll see distance come down and solid ball striking rewarded more than it is today. 

 

It would narrow the gap between the longest and shortest elite level players in raw yardage terms, and make it easier to hold the rock hard greens. It would speed up play because less balls in the woods (a shorter drive makes a functionally wider fairway). It would reduce the cost of equipment and R&D. A 6800 yard course would challenge tour pros again. Less real estate, more walkable, affordable and sustainable courses. The high handicap golfer would hardly notice much difference really, but the tour game would be dialed back distance wise and be more comparable to earlier eras and the winning score on the Old Course would not be -20.

Edited July 18, 2022 by 2over

[bscinstnct]

On 7/17/2022 at 1:43 PM, ThinkingPlus said:

Actually, it's the perfect time.  They have the tours in a vulnerable spot.  The RBs only have to deal with the OEMs.  Reduces the war to only one front.

Not sure I understand. I was referencing that there may be “competing golf leagues” (not naming names ; ) that might not adhere to the USGA/RA rules and just let the players keep playing any ball or equipment they want 

Edited July 18, 2022 by bscinstnct

[RogerinNewZealand]

Good discussion. Even back to 400cc or 380cc eg Yonex Ezone🙂 and 45 inches or Minimum Spin@2500RPM on the Dyno with Push 2 Pass Rory on the last 9 If your OzzyOzzyOzzy😇     sorry4that🤭

Edited July 18, 2022 by RogerinNewZealand
Spellcheck

[MtlJeff]

Next, the USGA will look into solving the enormous growing costs of maintaining every football field in America because NFL stadiums are getting more high tech and expensive.

 

I mean the local high school park must have a 160 foot LED jumbotron too right?

[TLUBulldogGolf]

7 minutes ago, bscinstnct said:

Not sure I understand. I was referencing that there may be “competing golf leagues” (not naming names ; ) that might not adhere to the USGA/RA rules and just let the players keep playing any ball or equipment they want 

 

I tend to agree, another tour that's not aligned with the rest could easily tell them to take a hike. I would think they have less leverage if anything. 

[Blaiser]

For the life of me I just cannot understand how shooting a couple more strokes under par changes the enjoyment of the tournament in any way.

 

IMO this past year has led to some of the best finishes in majors. Fully enjoyed watching them.