[Brent Hutto]

Yeah I'm willing to believe if Nicklaus had been born in 1970 and grown up swinging modern clubs, hitting modern balls, training and eating like athletes do nowadays...he'd hit the ball farther than he did back in the day. That in fact was exactly my point.

[Jason Thurman]

Jeff, I totally get what you're saying and I think there's a legitimate conversation to be had about how even guys like Zach Johnson can overpower some holes, while their equivalents in 1970 couldn't. I just think the conversation has to start with an average player and not an outlier.

On the flipside, though, I've been watching the Winter Olympics and thinking about Olympians past and present. Johnny Weismuller was an excellent athlete at his time. And yet, today, he'd be the slowest swimmer in the field for all the reasons that Brent mentions above. This is true in other sports as well. Today's downhill skiers are faster than ever. Same with lugers. Same with figure skaters who can pull off jumps that people couldn't do 20 years ago. Old ski jumping videos are flat out hilarious, as the techniques even 2 or 3 decades ago were just horrific compared to today's aerodynamic flyers. There's this fallacy around here that golf is the only sport where equipment has contributed to performance gains. It's not true at all. Every sport consistently cycles out old equipment and replaces it with newer and better equipment. Training and nutrition improve. Golf is not alone at all in that regard.

What makes golf different is that we've lost sight of the purpose of the game. The purpose is to get the ball in the hole in the fewest amount of strokes. That's it. The strategies for doing that will inevitably change over time, but the objective never changes. Or should I say, the objective never changes until some nostalgic traditionalists get upset that 3 irons aren't relevant on par 4s like they used to be, and try to change the game to keep them relevant.

There's no reason we can't contest tournaments on 7000 yard courses in perpetuity, aside from the fact that scores will get lower and certain clubs will gradually disappear as clubhead speeds continue to increase with technological, athletic, and fundamental advancements. The problem isn't the ball and clubs. The problem is our reactions to watching scores get lower. Speed skaters don't lament when world record times fall and become the norm. Why do golfers?

[jeffwarne]

So how many guys on Tour generated more clubhead speed than Jack in 1970? Maybe a dozen?

How many guys on Tour today generate more clubhead speed than Jack did in 1970? If not all of them, then at least a couple hundred. Zach Johnson probably creates as much clubhead speed as Jack did in his prime. Not as good an athlete but better technique, better training, better nutrition and just generally a couple generations of progress (and by "better" in this context I mean "better able to create clubhead speed").a

Brent,
I'll be the first to admit there are so many better players today than in the 60's, 70's.
 Sheer numbers, better athletes, and much better teaching.
I'd also say there are 20 players around the world who hit it as good as Hogan (blasphemy) just that they have thousands of great players to beat, not dozens.

That said,
Jack was using a 42 inch metal shafted driver. 43 was standard
Most Tour drivers now are AT LEAST 45 inches, often 46, with superlightweight shafts, and balls that spin way less so high speeds don't drive them spinningly up into the stratosphere. (those balls were available in the 60's but were useless around the greens)
Dustin could n doubt generate good speed with jack's driver(but not what he can with his own), but I doubt Zack could.

I'm merely suggesting the game is different now because of equipment, but also due to the factors you cite.

If a sudden evolution of arm growth allowed bowlers to reach out and dunk the pins, wouldn't an adjustment need to be made the length of lanes? and if an exploding ball made strikes automatic for pros, wouldn't the equipment need to be tweaked?

and Brent, Does eating nachos, drinking Budweiser and typing on my couch all winter explain why at age 50 I can routinely drive 15 at Palmetto, yet growing up never did until 5-6 years ago/

[jeffwarne]

and Jason, to your point about records.

I'd be OK if courses didn't react by narrowing fairways, growing deep rough, and making greens super firm and fast.
Why? all of these torture the regular player, and change the game for everybody with the average guy hacking out and hunting balls,and the elite player simply hitting less drivers.

In my fantasy
 I'd prefer a sensible rollback so we could watch them play golf, not hybrid wedge.
but of course iI'd also advocate to stop cutting fairways like greens and greens like countertops

[Garland Bayley]

So how many guys on Tour generated more clubhead speed than Jack in 1970? Maybe a dozen?

How many guys on Tour today generate more clubhead speed than Jack did in 1970? If not all of them, then at least a couple hundred. Zach Johnson probably creates as much clubhead speed as Jack did in his prime. Not as good an athlete but better technique, better training, better nutrition and just generally a couple generations of progress (and by "better" in this context I mean "better able to create clubhead speed").a

I think you are just fantasizing.

Dustin generates more clubhead speed that Jack was capable of, because he has lighter shafts and clubheads, and being taller, he can generate more angular momentum.

Zack Johnson doesn't even come close.

[Jim Nugent]

A few years ago, nearly 60-year-old Tom Watson came within an inch or so of winning the world's most prestigious tournament.  That fact alone shows athleticism cannot play too big a role in golf. 

Perhaps DJ will dominate the tour sometime.  He's not close now.  That's another mark against athleticism being so important.  The best athlete on tour does well, but has yet to win a major.  Many other players eclipse him. 

[DMoriarty]

Seriously.

There's a fine line between being pragmatic about dealing with modern equipment and just being a hater.

If you want to complain about how far the ball goes, you shouldn't make Exhibit A the best all-around athlete in the history of the Tour. Personally, I'd find it pathetic if the ruling bodies tried to ensure diminishing returns for guys who work their tails off in the gym and have 1 in a million genetics.

Last year on tour there were 999 drives of 347 yards or longer.  Only about 4% of them were hit by Dustin Johnson.

Uber-athlete Angel Cabrera hit 50% of his measured drives 300 yards or longer (and of these 30% were 320+ yards, and 10 measured 347 yards or over.) In total, 99 regular tour players hit at least a quarter of their measured drives 300 yards or longer.



Last year Steve Stricker was 124th on tour in driving, averaging 283.6 yards. In 1994 Davis Love was 1st on tour in driving, average 283.8 yards.   With his 2014 driving average, Stricker would have been one of the longest drivers on tour for every year before 1995, and would have been in the top ten in driving for almost every year up to the advent of the ProV1.

Funny how everyone got in shape and became a great athlete at the exact same time the ProV1 came out.  And the longest and strongest jumped to even longer and stronger when the ProV1x rolled out.

If Paul Goydos reaches 18 with a mid iron, then we have an equipment problem. If Dustin Johnson does it, we just have an athlete on our hands. You can't draw systemic conclusions by looking at outliers.

In 1994, at the age of 30, Paul Goydos's driving average was 258 yards. That year only two golfers averaged drives of 280 yards or better.  In 2004, at the age of 40, Goydos's driving average was 280 yards off the tee, ranking him 153rd in driving.  

Move along . . . nothing to see here . . .

[JESII]

David,

In a typical year, how many rounds of golf do you play on courses that host PGA Tour events?



Pat,

Tell me about this rising tide of players making Mountain Ridge obsolete. On the busiest day of the year, how many people play the golf course and feel it didn't offer them an interesting challenge because they hit the ball too far and too straight and shoot too low of a score?

[Brent Hutto]

I can't speak for anyone else but for my part, I have commented approximately 187 times on this forum that the USGA clearly abdicated their opportunity to limit the distance increase arising from the Tour's switch from rubber-band-wound Balata covered balls to solid core urethane cover ones.

That was an almost overnight increase of 10-15% in the distance exactly the same players were driving the new type of ball versus the old (ridiculously low-tech and suboptimal) one they had used for half a century. USGA could have prevented that from happening with the stroke a pen but they declined to do so for their own reasons that we can only speculate about.

But the 2013 ProV1 is not particularly longer than a ProV1 from the mid-2000's. And they've been using 460cc drivers with the same COR and the same lightweight shafts for the past decade-plus, as well. How long will you keep pointing out that one Balata to urethane switchover as somehow grounds for denying the plain truth that golfers keep generating more clubhead speed and applying it more efficiently with each year that passes?

And the Tour ain't going back to a lumpy Maxfli HT Balata no matter how many Grandpa Simpsons complain about it.

[Garland Bayley]

... USGA could have prevented that from happening with the stroke a pen but they declined to do so for their own reasons that we can only speculate about.

The USGA has stated that they declined to do so, because they would bankrupt certain ball companies by doing so. That is why they held off. Whether it was a good choice is something to speculate.

But the 2013 ProV1 is not particularly longer than a ProV1 from the mid-2000's. And they've been using 460cc drivers with the same COR and the same lightweight shafts for the past decade-plus, as well.

This is not true. The shaft companies continue to create lighter and lighter shafts, allowing longer and longer clubs to be built.

How long will you keep pointing out that one Balata to urethane switchover as somehow grounds for denying the plain truth that golfers keep generating more clubhead speed and applying it more efficiently with each year that passes?

Perhaps he does it because the USGA itself has reported it caused a 25 yard increase in distance.

And the Tour ain't going back to a lumpy Maxfli HT Balata no matter how many Grandpa Simpsons complain about it.

There is no need to do so. The technology exists to rein in the ball, and the USGA has asked for an received example balls from the manufacturers.

[Jason Thurman]

David, I never denied that the ball goes farther (in fact, I stated the opposite in post #76, so please don't tell me you've come here to post things at me that I've already posted).

I'm simply saying that nothing Dustin Johnson does is relevant to deciding whether the distance the ball travels is a problem or not. He's an outlier. I'm also saying that the Tour will never go for a "tournament ball," nor will manufacturers go for a sudden and pronounced rollback. All those ideas sound nice until you start examining them economically and realize they're completely implausible.

Brent is right. The ruling bodies have drawn a line, and while it may not be the line you wanted, they've made their decision. I do think it's possible that we'll see a series of very slow, incremental changes to specs that pull the line back a hair or two further, but we're never going back to balata and we're never going to see 20 yards lopped off of driver distance. That ship has sailed, and we'd all be a lot better off if we stopped whining so much about low scores and long irons becoming obsolete. If we just accepted and even celebrated record performances, as other sports, do, then we could stop shrinking corridors and "protecting par" and just let our game evolve as others do.

[JESII]

Jason,

Just out of curiosity, what is the basis for considering Dustin Johnson a 1 in a million genetic freak?

I've heard this for years but always assumed it was just the Tour PR guys wanting to portray golfers as cool ad more athletic. What can he do other than palm a women's basketball on a TV commercial?

[DMoriarty]

Jim, Not many, and I really don't care a lick about the pga tour.  But tour stats are the only stats I can access.  If you have access to stats for non-tour golfers with a significantly higher swing speeds than average, I am willing to bet you find similar distance jumps corresponding with jumps in technology.
______________________________________________________________________________

But the 2013 ProV1 is not particularly longer than a ProV1 from the mid-2000's. And they've been using 460cc drivers with the same COR and the same lightweight shafts for the past decade-plus, as well.

I don't think what you are saying about the ProV1x is quite accurate. Golfers with extremely high swing speeds who switched to the ProV1x experienced a substantial distance increase, even over the ProV1.    But golfers with a lower swing speed did not benefit, and many would actually have been hurt by switching to the x.   Therein lies a large part of the problem.  The newer technology only helped those with extremely high swing speeds.

How long will you keep pointing out that one Balata to urethane switchover as somehow grounds for denying the plain truth that golfers keep generating more clubhead speed and applying it more efficiently with each year that passes?

The stats don't support your conclusion here, I don't think.  Distances don't get longer from year to year.  The increases almost always occur in waves which correspond to changes in technology.   The last two big ones have been the ProV1 and the ProV1x, although the ProV1x is harder to recognize because you have to control for swing speed.  

[Brent Hutto]

Here's my problem with all this nonsense.

I know what a golf hole of 550 yards looks like, feels like, how long it takes to walk it, what is required for me to get a golf ball to travel that distance. It's a long way, nearly a third of a mile.

To me, seeing somehow use only their bodily strength and an L-shaped stick to propel a ball 500 yards and get it in the hole in three strokes is just amazing. It's amazing if it's done with a driver and a 2-iron but it's amazing too if done with a 3-wood and a 6-iron. Hell I'd be amazed if it were done with a 38" long hybrid and a sand wedge. Getting from this tee, into that hole, over a distance of 550 yards is an interesting thing to do and an interesting thing to watch someone else do.

Now I'll admit, if I saw someone hole out in three strokes on a 550 yard hole with a hickory-shafted driver and iron and a gutta-percha ball that would be somewhat more interesting than seeing it done with titanium/graphite and a ProV1. But only at the margin.

And I guess that's where I part company with you lot. The game is either an interesting exercise in propelling a ball with distance and accuracy or its not. Quibbling over whether it's somewhat easier to do now than it would have been in some counterfactual situation where the USGA had outlawed everything except hickory and gutta-percha is just that. Quibbling over details.

The distance and accuracy young men like Dustin Johnson or Zach Johnson exhibit every week is pretty terrific stuff. The degree to which that entertainment value is lessened by the performance of a ProV1 is trivial in the bigger scheme of things. And hacking up classic golf courses as an exercise in quibbling over distances and club selections is ridiculously small-minded IMO. But it's "not a big deal" at all to anyone not beating a dead horse.

[jeffwarne]

I just consider myself extremely fortunate to have been born at exactly the right time where I got longer at between 40 and 50.
No doubt due to that hard practice, healthy diet,fluid control, and fitness regimen of mine .
Can't wait for 60
with my luck they'll do a stupid freaking rollback right when I'm peaking

[Patrick_Mucci]

Tell me about this rising tide of players making Mountain Ridge obsolete.

It's been happening for years, that's why MRCC has added length.

On the busiest day of the year, how many people play the golf course and feel it didn't offer them an interesting challenge because they hit the ball too far and too straight and shoot too low of a score?

I've found MRCC to be a very difficult golf course.
It's long, 7,100+ yards at par 71 with a predominant prevailing wind from the west/southwest.
The green complexes are very difficult and the greens are maintained in the neighborhood of 11.

The younger guys I play with, hit the ball very long.  And, I suspect that the younger generation of long ball hitters finds the course far mor benign than I do.

The 2014 MGA Mid Amateur will be held at MRCC this year.
We'll see how the course holds up to a younger generation

[DMoriarty]

Jason,

I don't view him as as much as an outlier as you seem to.  There are plenty of golfers who regularly hit it over 100 yards further than average golfers. Eliminate him from the discussion and the distance discrepancy is still just as ridiculous.  What has happened has little to do with outliers or freaks of nature or athletes or fitness, and very much to do with technology.  And the technology has made it such that the best golfers don't fit on the same courses as the rest of us, and that screws up the architecture for all of us.

Not only that, but sometimes looking at outliers can give us some insight into where we have been and where we are heading.  John Daly was also considered an outlier and an freak of nature, even moreso than Johnson.   People had never seen anything like him.  In 1991, the year Daly won the PGA championship he averaged 288 yards off the tee.  Not much further than your 40 year old Paul Gydos averaged in 2004, at the age of 40.
________________________________________________________________________

Brent,  I'd agree with you if the architecture wasn't being screwed up to accommodate these guys, but it is.  Therein lies the problem.  It isn't about easier or harder, it is about what it does to the architecture.

[Bruce Katona]

Just a few observations:

1. While it would be very neat to play golf with and watch DJ the athlete play golf, 95 times out of 100 I would prefer to play with Paulina Gretzky. Period end of discussion.
2. I leaned to play golf back in the dark ages using wood woods and blade irons.  Hitting a 5 iron 150 years required clean contact. The invention of cavity backed irons, graphite shafts & composite headed woods & hybrids have made the game much more enjoyable to play.  With this technology the ball goes farther.  I just don't have the massive swing speed to get that turbo boost from a Pro V since back when I learned to play, you couldn't overswing  with the equipment available since the sweet spots on the clubs were so small, with a small mishit you had no idea where the ball would go. Plus it would really sting.

[Wade Whitehead]

Today Jimmy Walker had 184 yards into the 18th at Riviera.  He hit a "slight flyer" 8 iron.

WW

[Patrick_Mucci]

Don't the NCAA driving stats indicate that the next generation of golfers drive the ball farther than the PGA Tour Pros ?

[Jim Nugent]

Don't the NCAA driving stats indicate that the next generation of golfers drive the ball farther than the PGA Tour Pros ?

Even if so, you have to allow for the fact that they didn't play the same courses, under the same conditions.   

[Patrick_Mucci]

Jim,

When it happens year after year you can't make excuses or say that it's the courses

[Jim Nugent]

Pat, you're probably right.  But comparing driving stats does not prove the case.  Sometimes the college guys play in the U.S. Open and PGA tour events.  Do they hit their drives 20-30 yards further there than PGA tour pros do? 

[Sean_A]

Sean,

The extension of Jeff's query is:  how do you challenge that player from an architectural perspective ?

How do you get him to interface with the architecture which has become equivalent to the Maginot Line?

Pat

I think a loft range of 15 to 50 and 8 clubs in the bag does just what you ordered.  On a wider level, it really isn't up to anybody else except for the pro tours themselves to figure out how to make their players interface with architecture - if indeed it is of any importance to pro players.  As always, I say the problem lies with consumers buying the pro product and the equipment.  If folks stopped doing both, things would change.  Frankly, if what is passed off as pro golf these days upsets so many people why do they watch?  I suspect most that do watch like what they see and the ball rollbackers are in the extreme minority.  In any case, you are never going to convince me that manufacturers will not continuously find ways to improve equipment regardless of USGA specs.  I never believed a roll back would occur to a time when most rollbackers want (and I still don't).  Its pie in the sky stuff so why not look for a different solution such as I suggest - which is essentially bifurcation.  Only my idea is to let hackers keep their toys and focus on where the "problem" lies.  The biggest issue with my approach is the USGA doesn't really control where the biggest problem lies.  It likes to think it does, but in reality the pro tours can split their own way anytime they like if the USGA gets too stupid with their ideas of rollbacks.  Bottom line, I don't think anything like a majority of pros want to see a rollback to 1990 or whatever.  I could see a slight rollback, but so what if that happens.  I reckon to stop smash mouth golf the rollback needs to be huge.  Something like at least 10% if not closer to 20% and the courses remain the same length as today.  I can't see that ever happening so long as people are buying the pro product and all the new clubs.

Ciao

[Patrick_Mucci]

Pat, you're probably right.  But comparing driving stats does not prove the case.  Sometimes the college guys play in the U.S. Open and PGA tour events.  Do they hit their drives 20-30 yards further there than PGA tour pros do? 

Jim,

It depends upon the individual game of the college guy.

You can't deny the facts presented in the NCAA driving stats vs the PGA Tour driving stats.

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