I have no idea why people who visit this site who, presumably, have an interest in golf architecture, think the status quo with the ball is just fine.
The effect of the ball on golf courses is as profound as it is obvious. It has changed the nature of the game played by good golfers. And not for the better.
Are you ok with pros and good ams rarely having to hit a middle or long iron into a par 4? Are you ok with pros/good ams regularly hitting lofted 2nd shots to par 5's?
We can do the math together. A 7400 yard course today, given how far the 30th longest player hits his driver, plays like a 6400 yard course in 1975 or thereabouts. A 7400 course today is, on an apples to apples basis, extremely short by any historical measure.
(Spare us the talk about scoring averages. It is child's play to to make a course resistant to scoring, and the USGA, the Masters, the PGA and sponsors of tour events know all the tricks. Heck, everyone knows all the tricks.)
Luke Donald said something interesting the other day. Looking at the strokes he loses off the tee (using Broadie's numbers), he said he can't possibly gain enough strokes in other phases of the game to make up the difference. When there are typically 30 or more players in an event averaging more than 300 yards from the tee, Donald is beaten before he take his clubs out of the trunk. Do we really want a modern day version of a Paul Runyan, an Art Wall or a Gene Littler or a Dean Beaman or even a Nick Faldo to be, essentially, unable to compete, even when they have their A games? That is what Donald has concluded. Is that a good thing?
But those are pros. They are the 1% at the top of the heap, you say. Which is obviously true, but it is also obviously true that they define the game for everyone, like it or not. Every Sunday afternoon on TV they model what the game should be about and how golf courses ought to play.
Yes, a rollback of the ball will make the game harder for hackers like us. At the end of the day, hopefully we will be playing with a ball not unlike the one we played with in the mid-1990's. Or pick your own rollback date. There will be a hue and cry. But note - whatever date you pick it will be a date in time when the game was more popular and growing faster than it is today.
To paraphrase Robert Hunter, what people like about golf is that it is hard.
Bob
Bob--
While reading through the threeish new pages on this thread since my last post, this one has stuck with me, and I'd like to respond to a few points if I may.
1. Re: the pro game defining golf for the rest of us, do you take this as an eternal fact? I ask because I think that influence is eroding somewhat, especially as courses like Sweetens Cove and short courses become more celebrated. I think more golfers than ever are waking up to the idea that worthwhile golf does not always have to look like the stereotypical PGA Tour course. Another reason for this: PGA Tour events seem to be visiting more architecturally sophisticated courses than they used to, and that architectural sophistication is discussed on-air more than it used to be. Old White represented an exciting development along these lines, and when the Tour visits Trinity Forest in a couple months, it will be another step toward a greater embrace of different styles of course on the most influential stage.
Also, to what extent do you feel that club developers and green committees are responsible for their choices regarding what changes they make to their courses? Given the increased focus on playability at many public and municipal courses, why are golf's governing bodies solely obligated to save unwise and perhaps insecure developers and memberships from their own bad decisions? I suppose rolling back the golf ball might mitigate some misguided course changes, but as long as people have more money than sense, they will spend it both wisely and unwisely. I take this as a pretty universal truth, personally.
2. Re: your question about whether we're "ok with pros and good ams rarely having to hit a middle or long iron into a par 4 [and]...regularly hitting lofted 2nd shots to par 5s" -- I personally feel inclined to leave par out of it and go back to the matrix of full shot distribution I set up back a few pages in the thread. If a course provides an adequate test of all of a players clubs, I'm not inclined to get hung up on where those shots are hit. My suspicion is that the vast majority of the pros are hitting more mid- and long-irons than is being assumed. Also, I just find basing the rollback argument off what Dustin Johnson does to be misguided. He's one of the longest hitters in the world. By definition, the longest hitters in the world are always going to hit shorter clubs than the shorter hitters.
3. Re: Luke Donald, I looked back at his stats, and it's fairly easy to see why he's fallen a long way since his brief spell as #1 in the world. Back when he was at his peak, he was able to overcome his short driving distance by hitting a good amount of fairways. In 2011, he was a serviceable 57th on Tour in Fairway %. The last handful of years, in addition to being one of the shortest hitters, he's also been one of the crookedest off the tee. He is 197th so far this year, and was 147th last year. I imagine that combination is almost impossible to overcome as a PGA Tour pro.
4. I see the correlation of the 1990s and the growth of golf, but would you suggest causation there as well? Was the inferior equipment key to the growth of the game at that time? Not meaning to be snarky here; if there's evidence of causation, it would probably make me think a little differently about this issue.
--Tim