Lawson Little and Bryson DeChambeau

[Thomas Dai]

Someone usually takes the rap.
Even though it was far from just him involved, Lawson Little usually takes the rap for the introduction of the 14-club rule.*
Should it occur, is it likely that Bryson DeChambeau will get the rap for causing a rollback in distance?

atb




* and did the club manufacturers of the time whinge and contact their lawyers when this rule came into effect?

[jeffwarne]

I would like to think the rulesmakers are not that obtuse as to change a rule due to hardwork and personal innovation, available only to said player.(until someone else follows suit)


earned, not bought


There are a 100 other reasons for a rollback-personal improvement should not be one of them.
In fact, a rollback of 20% would HELP him

[Ronald Montesano]

I doubt that the clubmakers cared. Their customers were part of the super-fringe game that golf was in the 19430. People were still broke, and they were happy to sell any clubs at all. At least in the USA, when Eisenhower's enthusiasm collided with television's rise, more folks came to the game.


An interesting game (could not be a study) is to ask self which decade would have been the tipping point for the 14-club rule? Would club companies have fought it in the 40s? 50s? 60s? 70s? We know that Karsten dug in during the 1980s over the topic of grooves.

[Tom_Doak]

In fact, a rollback of 20% would HELP him

That is not necessarily true.


Do you think that being a long hitter meant even more back in 1975?


It's all relative, but when you couldn't get to wedge distance on every hole, other skill sets were a bigger part of the picture.  So, a rollback would help long hitters to a point, but if rolled back far enough, it might change the balance of power in unforeseen ways. 


And that's why a lot of players are nervous about the possibility.  The people at the top of the pyramid are always going to resist change.

[Peter Pallotta]

There is a parallel, I think:
Relative to Little's 30+ clubs in the British Am, the USGA limit of 14 was a 'roll back' -- but not so much compared to Quimet's 7 clubs in the US Open. Similarly, with each passing year, the dramatic distance gains (especially for already-long hitters) that occurred circa 2000-2005 fade more and more into the past -- as much ancient history to us as Quimet's 1907 win seemed to those in the mid 1930s. Which is to say: I've never been more doubtful of a meaningful roll-back as I am today. The 'new normal' in distance is so outlandish (and so outlandishly common) that, now, to think of 295 yard drives as an ideal/upper end would appear as unrealistic & anachronistic as advocating for a return to persimmon and steel. Might there be some new USGA-imposed 'cap' on ball & club technology? Yes, there might be -- but if so I have a feeling that the phrase 'at current levels/specs' will be involved.

[jeffwarne]

In fact, a rollback of 20% would HELP him

That is not necessarily true.


Do you think that being a long hitter meant even more back in 1975?

 

yes
see Nicklaus-no par 5's. Leading Jones to say "he plays a game with which I am not familiar"
see Tiger in 1997-2001(before ProV 1) no par 5's
1997 was a distance dismantling of the course at Augusta



post 2001 when suddenly there were no par 5's for most of the rest of the tour, Tiger dominated via the best short game and putting in history, not via his dominant length-because many got long, and he stuck with a shorter steel driver for a long time
No proV 1 or thin faced drivers and Tiger has 5 more majors

[Thomas Dai]

In fact, a rollback of 20% would HELP him

That is not necessarily true.
Do you think that being a long hitter meant even more back in 1975?

yes
see Nicklaus-no par 5's. Leading Jones to say "he plays a game with which I am not familiar"
see Tiger in 1997-2001(before ProV 1) no par 5's
1997 was a distance dismantling of the course at Augusta
post 2001 when suddenly there were no par 5's for most of the rest of the tour, Tiger dominated via the best short game and putting in history, not via his dominant length
No proV 1 or thin faced drivers and Tiger has 5 more majors

Nicklaus (pretty much from the start) and Woods (after a little while) had something that most/many long hitters don’t have though ... patience, lots and lots of patience. The patience to play within their personal game plan to achieve the best possible score after 4-days, 72-holes recognising that their length advantage allowed them to not hit Driver to achieve the desired end result.
And then after such ‘matters internal within golf’ we come to the finite planet and public safety issues.
Atb

[Thomas Dai]

Yesterday - https://twitter.com/i/status/1276592234775711744



This is worth watching too - https://twitter.com/i/status/1276652037418123265


atb

[Ken Moum]

We know that Karsten dug in during the 1980s over the topic of grooves.

If you look at that dispute carefully, you'd see that Karsten wasn't objecting over square grooves.  They were permitted both before and after the rule change. 


Two things pissed him off. First, in his view as an engineer they'd invented a method of measuring groove width that wasn't correct by engineering standards.  What happened was that he made his Eye2 irons with legal square grooves that had sharp shoulders. That tore up golf balls, so he softened the edges.


Then the USGA decided that grooves weren't going to be measured by their actual width, but by a point on the curve of the shoulder that was touched by a set angle gauge.  Which he thought was bullshit, and  so did I.


He also wanted to protect the people who had already purchased Eye2 irons from having their clubs declared non-conforming.


So he sued.


When he settled, he got his existing irons approved and changed the grooves on his irons going forward. When the USGA created their stupid groove "condition of competition" that finally banned U grooves, Phil Mick brought out his 20-year-old Ping irons because the settlement superceded the new rule.


John Solheim caved to the USGA and agreed to dropping the exception. I'd have told them to stuff it, and suspect Karsten was rolling over in his grave.

[Garland Bayley]

Am I incorrect in believing the two greatest players of all time earned that distinction primarily through hitting it closer to the hole with the longest clubs? Sure they were long, which people notice, but that isn't what established their dominance.

Probably can add Ben Hogan who didn't drive as far as he could, but drove to locations where his stance and lie let him hit it close even with a longer club. In the few long drive competitions Ben participated in, he finished at or near the top.

[A.G._Crockett]

Whether or not rolling back distance is a good idea, it has dead zero to do with DeChambeau.  And I think there are more questions than answers about what he is doing at this point.
If majors are the measure, will the approach that he is taking get him over the top in those events?
Whether or not he wins big this way, is his approach of a couple of hours a day of intense workouts and a half dozen protein shakes per day sustainable going forward?  Remember, he put on the most recent 20+ lbs and added the most recent yardage while there were no events being played.
Will other players be able to cut and paste what he is doing to their own routines and games and lives?
DeChambeau is an outlier in almost any aspect of golf that you can think of.  It's a basic rule of sports that the more different someone is from the norms of their sport, the shorter their arc, and the less likely it is to be copied.  Don't mistake what DeChambeau is doing right now as any sort of fundamental change in the way the game is played.  It might be someday, and time will tell, but right now, it's one guy doing weird s***, which happens to be his specialty.

[Kalen Braley]

AG,

Watching the vicious way he swings is the real issue to the Bryson D dilemma. I just wonder how long his back will hold up with the various forces at work.  Even Tiger knew fairly early on he couldn't sustain his career with the ferocious swipes he was regularly taking in competition.

[mike_beene]

DeChambeau can fool you with his science. First and foremost he is in incredible control of a golf club. He literally can take a full swing and stop at ball one time and hit it next and there is no difference to the naked eye until he doesn't hit the ball. he can hit beautiful high cuts to a green 100 yards away with a less than 20 degree club. He is Lee Trevino in many ways. If anyone can do this and control distance he can. Who knows?

[Mark Mammel]

There is a parallel, I think:
Relative to Little's 30+ clubs in the British Am, the USGA limit of 14 was a 'roll back' -- but not so much compared to Quimet's 7 clubs in the US Open. Similarly, with each passing year, the dramatic distance gains (especially for already-long hitters) that occurred circa 2000-2005 fade more and more into the past -- as much ancient history to us as Quimet's 1907 win seemed to those in the mid 1930s. Which is to say: I've never been more doubtful of a meaningful roll-back as I am today. The 'new normal' in distance is so outlandish (and so outlandishly common) that, now, to think of 295 yard drives as an ideal/upper end would appear as unrealistic & anachronistic as advocating for a return to persimmon and steel. Might there be some new USGA-imposed 'cap' on ball & club technology? Yes, there might be -- but if so I have a feeling that the phrase 'at current levels/specs' will be involved.

There already is a USGA/R&A cap on ball performance, including distance under standard conditions. This can be found at https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/equipment-standards/test-protocols-for-equipment-9df6d04f.html
and says that at a clubhead speed of 120 mph and ball speed of 175 mph the maximum distance allowed is 317 yards +/- 3 yards. Of course, these values are far less than the speeds generated by a number of players, including DeChambeau. The likelihood of a new USGA/R&A cap will be so vigorously opposed by the manufacturers as to make it nearly impossible to imagine. I think the only remaining hope in keeping classic venues in play for professionals is Augusta. If they were to mandate their own specs for the golf ball and require manufacturers to meet these specs for the Masters, perhaps change would be possible. Augusta is a private club, not an organization  governing the entire sport, and also has a war chest the likes of which can only be imagined. Don't want to use their ball? Don't play. Other sports use standardized equipment that amateurs are not required to use. But then I am an eternal optimist.

[Thomas Dai]

A wee dispute between on the one hand the public-safety/environmental/golf-haters/rollback lobby and on the other hand the golf equipment manufacturers would be an interesting time to be a fly on the wall.
Generally speaking if you don’t get your own house in order someone else will come along and put it in order for you and you might not necessarily like the outcome they impose.
Fingers crossed.
Atb

[Garland Bayley]

So Mark, how are the manufacturers going to oppose a roll back?

Patents on the technology that enabled the excessive distance have expired so they can't claim lose of revenue due to protected technology. They aren't suing Vice or other companies that have sprung up to take advantage of the patent lapses.

[Mark Mammel]

Interesting comment. I just remember the sturm und drang when Ping challenged the changes to the grooves and assumed that since money is always the answer, the manufacturers would find a way to make any change mandated by the USGA/R&A some kind of restraint of trade issue at the federal level. If this isn't true, then why have the ruling bodies for the game refused to take any kind of meaningful stand as the professional game becomes completely detached from the game played by amateurs?

[A.G._Crockett]

I'd urge all of you to put the Ping lawsuit in a special, separate category, rather than conflating it with golf balls and spring-like COR rules and the like.  If you read Karsten Solhiem's side of that case, you get a VERY different impression of what happened.  Ping's position, I think, was that the groove rule was changed specifically to hurt Ping in the marketplace, rather than having anything whatsoever to do with performance, AND that the USGA measurement was bad engineering, which is what REALLY ticked Karsten off.
And, in fact, when Mickelson had one of his crazy moments and brought his Eye2 lob wedge out of mothballs, testing at the time showed that it created LESS spin that current conforming wedges.  That groove change was meant to do one thing; hurt Ping's sales, not "protect the game".

[SL_Solow]

AG,  reading one side's arguments in a lawsuit is a dangerous way to draw conclusions.  I am very well acquainted with a prominent lawyer who did work for the USGA in areas regarding equipment, amateur status and the like.  When I reviewed the pleadings I concluded that the settlement was reached to avoid the expense of the litigation as, at the time, the USGA had not created a "war chest" funded by the TV money which came later.  We'll never know what the outcome of a trial would have been but I thought the USGA had the better chance and I am no great fan of the USGA.  Notwithstanding the current war chest, they appear to lack the intestinal fortitude to take on the industry.

[A.G._Crockett]

AG,  reading one side's arguments in a lawsuit is a dangerous way to draw conclusions.  I am very well acquainted with a prominent lawyer who did work for the USGA in areas regarding equipment, amateur status and the like.  When I reviewed the pleadings I concluded that the settlement was reached to avoid the expense of the litigation as, at the time, the USGA had not created a "war chest" funded by the TV money which came later.  We'll never know what the outcome of a trial would have been but I thought the USGA had the better chance and I am no great fan of the USGA.  Notwithstanding the current war chest, they appear to lack the intestinal fortitude to take on the industry.

You are, of course, 100% correct that reading one side of ANY argument, much less a court case, isn't a good idea; I could have phrased that a lot better.
My point was that what the lawsuit was about to Karsten Solheim, and what the lawsuit was about to the USGA, were very different things. I think Karsten was a better engineer than the ones who "revised" the rule for the USGA; he knew, they knew it, and the settlement was because eventually the courts would have known it.

[SL_Solow]

AG,  I guess that is where we disagree.  The case was about a lot more than Karsten's interpretation of the engineering that went into a rule.  But we'll never know.   

[Thomas Dai]

Mr Manufacturers CEO to a Senior Employee - "How much will it cost us to fight a legal case against rolling back golf clubs and balls and what are our chances of winning the case?"
Senior Employee - "Zillions $£ and slim."
CEO - "How much will it cost us to have our clever scientists and production guys tweak the ball so it doesn't go so far and how long will it take?"
Senior Employee - "Peanuts and not very long."
CEO - "Well lets continue doing nothing and see if the gutless wimps at the USGA and the R&A are smart enough to realise this and have the strength of character to do something about it!"
 
atb

[JESII]

To the question of why the ruling bodies haven't forced a roll-back; is it not as simple as 99+% of the players in the game would not be helped and the small percentage (~0.5%?) of courses used for professional tournament play that modify their courses for that end do so willingly?

[Garland Bayley]

100% of the players would be helped if they shorten courses but don't narrow them.

[John Kavanaugh]

100% of the players would be helped if they shorten courses but don't narrow them.

I hate holes where driver is taken out of play. It’s the straightest club in my bag. So no, I’m one guy hurt by shorter courses.