USGA and R&A announce proposal to limit golf ball performance for elite level competition

[fbjim]

3 minutes ago, Titleist99 said:

C'mon Man......

 

"We have to save the game for our Grandchildren"

 

~Mike Whan- CEO, USGA

 

**** I spoke to my grandchildren and told them that they were going to have to save the game for themselves and even they understood that. 🙂

The rationale past that single-sentence quote is pretty simple - the arms race between driving distance and course length both increasing in response to each other is not sustainable in the long term. 

 

Obviously anyone can disagree with that, but it's not a difficult position to understand. 

[chisag]

5 minutes ago, Titleist99 said:

Plain and simple. You are emotional and don't like scoring clubs into par fours.

 

 

... Emotional? Your trolling posts are saturated with negative emotion. You constantly attribute ideas to folks that are completely false or ridiculous exaggerations. Everyone loves to see scoring irons on par 4's, just not every par 4. 🙄

[ThinkingPlus]

4 minutes ago, gvogel said:

Thinking, is that you or Bryson talking.  Tell Ben Crenshaw, who was an artist on the greens, that golf isn't art.  Tell Tiger Woods, who almost perfected the art of recovery, that golf is all science.

I've got a more advanced degree than Bry. 😉

 

Most tour players are artists. They have someone else do the science for them or have hit so many balls and have so much talent that they just know the right thing to do and how to do it. There is a reason Bryson generates so much hate even before his defection.

 

All the artsy, fartsy folks hate when things can be reduced to numbers. So clinical and devoid of beauty. So reliable and deterministic. 

[fbjim]

As long as we're all making sweeping generalizations, how about "all the numbers people freak out when it's suggested that aesthetics might matter to a spectator sport" 

[ThinkingPlus]

1 minute ago, fbjim said:

As long as we're all making sweeping generalizations, how about "all the numbers people freak out when it's suggested that aesthetics might matter to a spectator sport" 

Aesthetics is for art galleries and travel shows.

[fbjim]

1 minute ago, ThinkingPlus said:

Aesthetics is for art galleries and travel shows.

Aesthetics is why Pebble Beach can charge what it does for tee times, it's why fashion brands are involved with golf, and it's why golf club manufacturers seem to care as much about their new driver's paint job as it's testing numbers. 

 

Not that I think these things are necessarily "good", but there are obvious reasons for TPTB to care about aesthetics. 

[smashdn]

4 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

All the artsy, fartsy folks hate when things can be reduced to numbers. So clinical and devoid of beauty. So reliable and deterministic. 

 

Which is why LACC North #6 was so entertaining.  They struggled to reduce it to numbers.

 

I don't recall anyone watching saying in the moment that they hated that hole because there wasn't a clear preferred/formulaic way to to play it.  To the contrary, what I read seemed to laude the uncertainty it presented the players.

 

Back to the penal versus strategic aspect of the conversation for a second, if the above was the case, isn't more of that uncertainty a good thing as far as entertainment goes?

 

Personally, I sort of like seeing multiple strategies on display.  But we only get that when there are several more or less equal choices to select from and to some lesser degree disparate skill sets.

 

 

[ThinkingPlus]

1 minute ago, fbjim said:

Aesthetics is why Pebble Beach can charge what it does for tee times, it's why fashion brands are involved with golf, and it's why golf club manufacturers seem to care as much about their new driver's paint job as it's testing numbers. 

 

Not that I think these things are necessarily "good", but there are obvious reasons for TPTB to care about aesthetics. 

That's why I have never played Pebble, wear what fits me and is durable, and don't care what a club looks like as long as it provides the functionality and performance I need to play better golf.

[ThinkingPlus]

3 minutes ago, smashdn said:

 

Which is why LACC North #6 was so entertaining.  They struggled to reduce it to numbers.

 

I don't recall anyone watching saying in the moment that they hated that hole because there wasn't a clear preferred/formulaic way to to play it.  To the contrary, what I read seemed to laude the uncertainty it presented the players.

 

Back to the penal versus strategic aspect of the conversation for a second, if the above was the case, isn't more of that uncertainty a good thing as far as entertainment goes?

 

Personally, I sort of like seeing multiple strategies on display.  But we only get that when there are several more or less equal choices to select from and to some lesser degree disparate skill sets.

 

 

Which hole was #6?

[smashdn]

5 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

Which hole was #6?

330 yard par four with a green benched into a hillside surrounded by scruff and deep fronting bunker.  Gave Rory fits as I recall.

 

 

 

Here's another.

 

 

Edited Wednesday at 07:43 PM by smashdn

[fbjim]

2 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

That's why I have never played Pebble, wear what fits me and is durable, and don't care what a club looks like as long as it provides the functionality and performance I need to play better golf.

I am not saying you, specifically, need to care about these things. I'm saying that it's unreasonable to suggest that arguments about aesthetic or subjective preferences have no relevance to sports. 

[chisag]

18 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

I've got a more advanced degree than Bry. 😉

 

Most tour players are artists. They have someone else do the science for them or have hit so many balls and have so much talent that they just know the right thing to do and how to do it. There is a reason Bryson generates so much hate even before his defection.

 

All the artsy, fartsy folks hate when things can be reduced to numbers. So clinical and devoid of beauty. So reliable and deterministic. 

 

 

... Right brain, left brain?  Don't know how old you are and would never ask a lady her age 😇 but some of us old timers grew up in an era of pure art on the golf course. One has to wonder what might have happened to swings like Chi Chi, Arnie, Jack, Lee and Raymond all with radically different swings, if someone had a future LM and more knowledge about the swing. As Arnie said "swing your swing" and it was so much more enjoyable to watch than many of the cookie cutter swings we see today. Granted the equipment was very different and lent itself to artistry and todays equipment more to science. 

... That said I have no complaints and understand you can't put the genie back in the bottle and the swing has evolved into what it is today. But much like movies used to be dialogue and story driven and not 4 second edits to accommodate modern video game mentality, I just enjoyed them more while reluctantly accepting todays reality. As always it is what it is.  

[Titleist99]

Question:  

Is it not a common complaint of rollbackers that there are too many wedges into Par 4s?

 

Just so I know, is it trolling when you respond to that untruth by saying that's emotional?

 

Anyone who watches golf regularly knows that the average club into a par 4 is an eight or seven iron. Depending on the wind.

Edited Wednesday at 07:52 PM by Titleist99

[ThinkingPlus]

9 minutes ago, chisag said:

 

 

... Right brain, left brain?  Don't know how old you are and would never ask a lady her age 😇 but some of us old timers grew up in an era of pure art on the golf course. One has to wonder what might have happened to swings like Chi Chi, Arnie, Jack, Lee and Raymond all with radically different swings, if someone had a future LM and more knowledge about the swing. As Arnie said "swing your swing" and it was so much more enjoyable to watch than many of the cookie cutter swings we see today. Granted the equipment was very different and lent itself to artistry and todays equipment more to science. 

... That said I have no complaints and understand you can't put the genie back in the bottle and the swing has evolved into what it is today. But much like movies used to be dialogue and story driven and not 4 second edits to accommodate modern video game mentality, I just enjoyed them more while reluctantly accepting todays reality. As always it is what it is.  

I'm old. I watched those guys in the latter stages of their careers at best. Mostly I was impressed by the competition and execution. They executed the necessary shots at the right time and won.

 

If they did something artsy, I wouldn't have cared much. No way I could ever do the artsy things. If I did it would be luck. Art is singular and irreproducible. IMO, trying to be an artist is not the way you get better at golf.

[chisag]

13 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

Art is singular and irreproducible. IMO, trying to be an artist is not the way you get better at golf.

 No way I could ever do the artsy things. If I did it would be luck. 

 

 

... Well my artsy self started at age 35 and made it to a + index by age 55. I taught golf for 5 years and didn't use video or LM's and had very happy students that appreciated my artists take on the golf swing. Admittedly I had some methodical students and had to adjust my teaching. One of my tenets was help the player do what they already do, just help them do it better. And a good instructor can say the same thing but has to be phrased 10 different ways before it makes sense to the student. The amount of times I had a student say "OH, NOW I get it, why didn't you say that to begin with?" was too many to count. Nothing like teaching strangers of all ages to find out we all process the exact same thing differently. 

... I love "Art is singular and irreproducible" and am gonna steal it. 👍 I played QB thru college by feel and that's the way I play golf. I find repetition boring. Just watch right brain Mahomes and left brain Cousins to see how differently a given task can be approached. I do think for those of us on the far side of the left brain right brain spectrum, how the others think can be a complete mystery. Putting is the strength of my game and I get far more compliments about it than other parts of my game. I watch folks step of a putt or use aim point and have no idea what they are doing our how it could possibly help. Every putt is different so stepping off 12 paces for an uphill, downhill, sidehill, into the grain/wind, against the grain/wind and fast or slow greens seems just a placebo at best. As an artist I don't even select my line as much as I just let the terrain and conditions sink into my subconscious and trust my instincts. Sure that instinct comes from luckily being with natural born spacial ability and years of experience, so some secret science at work but I have no idea what spot my ball will roll over or exactly how much break I am playing or how much speed is need. I just have a feel for the putt and trust my instincts. 

... I was giving a lesson to one of my students, a very left brain accountant and very poor putter, and tried to get him to ignore numbers as he walked off every putt and he wanted demonstration of feel putting because he truly didn't understand what I was trying to teach him. So I dropped a bunch of balls and without more than a casual glance putted to every hole on the practice green getting all of them within a few feet. His response was very informative for me "My brain would self destruct if I tried to putt to all those holes without calculating everything about them". Probably relevant to this tread for those that love bomb and gouge and those of us wanted to see more artistry from the best players in the world. 🤷‍♂️

[fbjim]

Re: the putting example, I think I remember Steve Stricker saying that he never thought about speed, because he thought our brains were really good at estimating it. I think his analogy was, if you toss a can into a trash can, you don't sit there and think exactly how much force you put into the throw, you just do it.

 

Then again, I'm not Steve Stricker. I'm not even Rory. 

[ThinkingPlus]

6 minutes ago, chisag said:

 

 

... Well my artsy self started at age 35 and made it to a + index by age 55. I taught golf for 5 years and didn't use video or LM's and had very happy students that appreciated my artists take on the golf swing. Admittedly I had some methodical students and had to adjust my teaching. One of my tenets was help the player do what they already do, just help them do it better. And a good instructor can say the same thing but has to be phrased 10 different ways before it makes sense to the student. The amount of times I had a student say "OH, NOW I get it, why didn't you say that to begin with?" was too many to count. Nothing like teaching strangers of all ages to find out we all process the exact same thing differently. 

... I love "Art is singular and irreproducible" and am gonna steal it. 👍 I played QB thru college by feel and that's the way I play golf. I find repetition boring. Just watch right brain Mahomes and left brain Cousins to see how differently a given task can be approached. I do think for those of us on the far side of the left brain right brain spectrum, how the others think can be a complete mystery. Putting is the strength of my game and I get far more compliments about it than other parts of my game. I watch folks step of a putt or use aim point and have no idea what they are doing our how it could possibly help. Every putt is different so stepping off 12 paces for an uphill, downhill, sidehill, into the grain/wind, against the grain/wind and fast or slow greens seems just a placebo at best. As an artist I don't even select my line as much as I just let the terrain and conditions sink into my subconscious and trust my instincts. Sure that instinct comes from luckily being with natural born spacial ability and years of experience, so some secret science at work but I have no idea what spot my ball will roll over or exactly how much break I am playing or how much speed is need. I just have a feel for the putt and trust my instincts. 

... I was giving a lesson to one of my students, a very left brain accountant and very poor putter, and tried to get him to ignore numbers as he walked off every putt and he wanted demonstration of feel putting because he truly didn't understand what I was trying to teach him. So I dropped a bunch of balls and without more than a casual glance putted to every hole on the practice green getting all of them within a few feet. His response was very informative for me "My brain would self destruct if I tried to putt to all those holes without calculating everything about them". Probably relevant to this tread for those that love bomb and gouge and those of us wanted to see more artistry from the best players in the world. 🤷‍♂️

I putt using a line on the ball for every putt. My stroke is OK. Hitting lines got easier once I ditched conventional putting shapes and went with a L.A.B. Mezz. Torque balanced about the lie angle is a superior design. However, distance control is all feel. I have always had a good feel for the velocity off the putter needed to get the ball to the hole.

 

Reading greens is an issue. Aimpoint is probably good for bigger slopes, but it's the subtle small breaks which kill me. It helped when I started looking for dead spots on the greens. I used to think, "Where should the water drain?" Now it's, "Where did they screw up and drain water where they shouldn't have killing all the grass?" My reads got better. LOL.

 

I have taken a handfull of lessons. For the most part, the instructors left me frustrated.  All I want is:

 

1) What am I doing wrong?

2) Why is it wrong (because the pros don't do it that way isn't a great answer unless it is something I am physically able to do)?

3) What do I do to fix my issue (10000 hours of a special drill isn't a good answer)?

4) Once again why does 3) fix my issue (because is not a good answer, because I say so merits an upgrade to 6 iron between the eyes)?

 

The artsy stuff would give me a headache. Some training tools give me a headache (I'm talking to you Divot Board). I am not a good golf student. LOL.

[chisag]

13 minutes ago, fbjim said:

Re: the putting example, I think I remember Steve Stricker saying that he never thought about speed, because he thought our brains were really good at estimating it. I think his analogy was, if you toss a can into a trash can, you don't sit there and think exactly how much force you put into the throw, you just do it.

 

Then again, I'm not Steve Stricker. I'm not even Rory. 

 

 

... Exactly! It is pretty amazing to see people with poor spacial awareness or a very analytical approach putt with such poor speed control. Paralysis by analysis? Obviously a repeatable technique helps and far too many poor putters tend to flip their dominant hand, but you should be able to just look at a 20 foot putt, close your eyes and get it close. I liked to tell my students it is like walking a rocky path. You don't look where you place your foot because you are looking ahead at the next steps and your brain will intrinsically guide your step without having to look. 

 

[chisag]

3 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

I putt using a line on the ball for every putt.

 

 

... In keeping with this threads intent if I were the USGA, I would outlaw lines on the ball. 🤪 I think it does far more harm than good. The focus should be on the target and not a line on a ball. I think putting a ball straight is the easiest part of the game, because every putt is straight and you should move the putter the exact same way every single time, just a longer or shorter stroke depending on distance. 

[Archimedes65]

44 minutes ago, fbjim said:

Re: the putting example, I think I remember Steve Stricker saying that he never thought about speed, because he thought our brains were really good at estimating it. I think his analogy was, if you toss a can into a trash can, you don't sit there and think exactly how much force you put into the throw, you just do it.

 

Then again, I'm not Steve Stricker. I'm not even Rory. 

 

I became a much better putter when I started making my last thought simply ‘hit the ball into the hole’.  I don’t think about speed to get the putt to drop or my putter path, I just think about hitting the ball into the hole using the basic setup and technique that I’ve used a million times before.  My brain takes care of the details.  It improved my make rate significantly.

[Simpsonia]

3 hours ago, smashdn said:

 

Distribution is just stats.  There is going to be some distribution.  It might become compressed.  It isn't that I don't believe you, it is that your premise is based as much on a feeling as some of the stuff I get called out for as being anecdotal.

 

I think it incredibly unlikely that all the professional players are going to have average drives within 5-10 yards of one another.  Using the last full season (2022-2023) the longest average was 326.3 and the shortest was 271.5.  ~55 yards difference.  That is really going to have to close.  I just don't see what you are proposing happening.  Even if you wanted to throw the last guy out as an aberration, if you grabbed Aaron Baddeley, a guy with four wins and ranked 185 in average driving distance at 284.5, it is still ~42 yards difference.  I think you are always going to have guys who can win in spite of hitting it short, and physically they just won't be able to hit it far.  The data from the tour website doesn't copy paste easily or I would graph the distribution and snip it here.  I just don't think you will see standard deviation values that small in it in the future.  I will say it is likely shifted toward the high end however in chasing that distance and guys settling to a "comfortable" spot that is adequate for the courses they play currently.

 

If you really want to know what I would do, and I would do this only for professionals or as a MLR for however a committee wants to define "elite male competitions" (so bifurcation, yes), I would not only reduce the distance the ball can be hit but add spin back into the ball.  Make the outcomes of drives more varied and the risk of swinging fast a little higher.  But they didn't ask me.

 

Lot of outliers though still, the distribution is a lot tighter than it looks when you don't look at the extreme ends. 

 

Let me put it this way. For the full last 2022-2023 season, kick out the top 5 and bottom five as outliers. We've got Aberg #6 with 317 yards as our top end marker. A full 25% of the field is within 10 yards of his distance. A full 70% of the field is within 20 yards of him. Ten years ago, it was 13% of the field within 10 yards of the #6 driver (JB Holmes), and 56% of the field was within 20 yards. 

 

I don't have the time to plot out every year, but my guess is there is a very clear trend in compression of that distribution. 

 

 

 

[Titleist99]

3 hours ago, fbjim said:

The rationale past that single-sentence quote is pretty simple - the arms race between driving distance and course length both increasing in response to each other is not sustainable in the long term. 

 

Obviously anyone can disagree with that, but it's not a difficult position to understand. 

The average PGAT course length is approximately 7200 yards. They even manage to conduct tournaments on 6800 yard courses. This is black and white because I see it every year. Not opinion, fact.

 

There's no race. The only race is in the mind of people who yearn for two golf courses to play to par. This thread is about optics and sentimentality that have no place in competitive sports. IMO 

 

 

[munichop]

6 hours ago, Titleist99 said:

So, the answer is to return the game to where the youngster will not want to watch or play it.

 

Golf needs  a CEO that's smart enough to innovate.

This is one of the most idiot responses I have read on this subject.  So a sport that a 10 year old doesn't understand isn't worth any interest?  No wonder Top Golf will overtake real golf if not already.  

 

[chisag]

15 minutes ago, munichop said:

This is one of the most idiot responses I have read on this subject.  So a sport that a 10 year old doesn't understand isn't worth any interest?  No wonder Top Golf will overtake real golf if not already.  

 

 

 

... Right up there with gogoerky using the laughing emoji on most every rollback advocate post. I kinda view it as a badge of honor. 😊 

[ThinkingPlus]

1 hour ago, chisag said:

 

 

... In keeping with this threads intent if I were the USGA, I would outlaw lines on the ball. 🤪 I think it does far more harm than good. The focus should be on the target and not a line on a ball. I think putting a ball straight is the easiest part of the game, because every putt is straight and you should move the putter the exact same way every single time, just a longer or shorter stroke depending on distance. 

That doesn't surprise me. Where I play, the hole is almost never the target unless it's a fairly short putt. I am usually starting most putts outside the edge. I'm not worried about the line. It's my identification mark. 🙂

 

I am waiting for the ruling bodies to impose a minimum torque value for putters. As soon as someone wins a major with a L.A.B., then the rules boys will get to work. It started the last month with Bland now winning 2 senior majors.

[Titleist99]

24 minutes ago, munichop said:

This is one of the most idiot responses I have read on this subject.  So a sport that a 10 year old doesn't understand isn't worth any interest?  No wonder Top Golf will overtake real golf if not already.  

 

Just because you don't understand it doesn't make it idiotic.

 

Kids love hitting the long ball, now you tell them they're hitting it too far.

 

So, you tell them that the game is changing to a Nerf ball.....

 

Yeah, that should grow the game......

[clevited]

12 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

That doesn't surprise me. Where I play, the hole is almost never the target unless it's a fairly short putt. I am usually starting most putts outside the edge. I'm not worried about the line. It's my identification mark. 🙂

 

I am waiting for the ruling bodies to impose a minimum torque value for putters. As soon as someone wins a major with a L.A.B., then the rules boys will get to work. It started the last month with Bland now winning 2 senior majors.

 

I designed my own putter based on actual thought rather than artsy fartsy junk (how it looks came secondary to performance) It performs very well.  I like to tell people LAB stole some of my ideas lol.

[chisag]

4 minutes ago, ThinkingPlus said:

That doesn't surprise me. Where I play, the hole is almost never the target unless it's a fairly short putt. I am usually starting most putts outside the edge. I'm not worried about the line. It's my identification mark. 🙂

 

I am waiting for the ruling bodies to impose a minimum torque value for putters. As soon as someone wins a major with a L.A.B., then the rules boys will get to work. It started the last month with Bland now winning 2 senior majors.

 

 

... Of course I was being facetious and would't outlaw lines on the ball but I do see many poor putters seemingly tied to them, making minuscule adjustments multiple times to get their line juuuuuust right and still miss the hole by 2 feet. Maybe it's in the semantics but the hole is always the target. If a 20 foot putt breaks 3 feet, you still stroke the ball with a straight stroke 3 feet outside the hole, which is the target. 

... I think a good putter can putt with most anything, although with a natural gate stroke I have a hard time using center shafted putters but I am sure I could adjust if I had to. Poor putters need all the help they can get and other than having a gyroscope in the head, I can't imagine a design I think gives anyone an unfair advantage. I have heard several admittedly poor putters find success with the L.A.B. and I think that's awesome. 

[AZBRONCFAN]

22 hours ago, chisag said:

 

... This place has it's own craziness with courses charging $250 to $350 in the winter and too hot to play without shade in the summer. I live 4.2 miles from Aguila just off the 202 so we play there 4 - 5 times week all winter, taking turns waking up at midnight to grab a time. $34 with a sr city card to walk at twilite. But two of my pards go back to Canada in late April and one goes back to Chicago in late May. My oldest pard at 82 won't play when it gets above 105* which of course is virtually everyday from June through September. And my youngest is literally building his pwn home so just me going Raven with Arcis for the summer and venturing out to some of the nicer courses while they are affordable.

... I'm sure you know this summer just set a heat record for the month of June 🥵 and normally with the Arcis card you get a free after 3pm round but pay $39 for the cart. Since the course is pretty empty, they moved the time this summer to anytime after 12noon Mon-Friday. But I like playing the last few holes as the sun is setting and it is cooling off, not getting hotter so I stick with 3pm.

Yeah that is a good plan. I'm always shocked at what Grayhawk fetched for tee times in season. They are packed out too. Does the midnight tee time bookings work at Aguila? I have been wondering if the bots that are happening in LA county courses were here in AZ booking the times.

[chisag]

1 minute ago, AZBRONCFAN said:

Does the midnight tee time bookings work at Aguila? I have been wondering if the bots that are happening in LA county courses were here in AZ booking the times.

 

 

... There are 4 of us that rotate getting the time and 6 of us that play 3 days a week and only myself and one other playing 5 times a week. We literally have our finger on the button as the clock goes from 11:59 to 12:00 and usually get the first tee time. Abut once week and mostly for Friday rounds, we get the 2nd time and have seen the foursome that books the first time that admitted one of their IT guys built a bot for them. But it is very rare not to get one of the first 2 times unless someone makes a mistake. It's kinda nice being regulars with all the starters, rangers and clubhouse guys always treating us very well. 

... I have to get to Grayhawk Talon after seeing it played by the college kids, if for noting else just to have played there. I would also love to play every Gary Panks course. I have played Aguila, Legacy, Raven, Trilogy Vistancia, Whirlwind, Boston Butte, Tonto Verde and FireRock CC.