What does “we can directly relate to a shot or a course that a PGA Tour player plays” actually mean?
It means that if you hit a shot to 2" from 164, you can say that you hit that shot better than 1000 PGA Tour players would have hit that shot in that moment. If you hit a homer in your beer league, you weren't facing Gerrit Cole, and you don't have that immediate and authentic connection. Of course there are differences in atmosphere, etc. but you're playing the same game by the same rules.
I don't know what's so hard to grasp here — sure the equipment manufacturers push this "same game, connection" stuff too much because it suits their bottom lines — but golfers appreciate and enjoy the connection too. It exists slightly in other sports, but not to the level of golf. (Individual sports with the same rules probablyhave this connection: I don't think the rules of the 100m are different at the Olympic and high school level, so if you run a really fast 100m race I imagine you can feel that connection too a bit.)
And right on cue there's Mike Clayton with a "back in my day" take.
The other issue no one talks about is how much easier the game is to play with modern drivers and fairway woods, hybrid long irons and the ball going 50-70 yards further (since 1980) over two shots.It's given literally 1000s of kids a very similar skill set - bomb it and hit short irons into greens designed for mid and long irons - and they all think they are good enough to be pros.
There are a lot more people playing golf, with better instruction, and starting much earlier, with expanded competitions. So of course there are more kids hitting it farther: there are not only more kids playing golf, they're getting better information, having reasons to work harder at it, and more.
As for 70 yards… if you look at the Distance Insights report… amateurs have gotten longer, but not 70 yards over two shots longer. I'll trust data over anecdotes almost all of the time.
Sean is also right that if EVERYONE has to roll back at once, the rollback will be smaller and have less impact than if they just got the elite players to do it. But it doesn't appear that the politics are possible for that. It's just like everything else in America, the status quo of big business must be preserved at all costs.
While I'm not going to deny big business isn't against bifurcation for the obvious reasons, bifurcation stinks at the player level as well. It
harms everyone just below whatever the cutoff is for "you must play the rolled back ball."
When the golf community switched from the 1:62” international ball to the US spec 1:68” not many noticed (or maybe even knew). I can’t believe that most golfers are good enough ball strikers nor savvy enough to notice this time.
You don't think a guy is going to notice that his 160-yard 7-iron now goes less than 150 when he hits it decent? Of course chunks will go just as far, but jeez: most golfers aren't chunking so many shots they won't notice that their good hits go 10% (or whatever) shorter. That they're hitting three clubs more into the 388-yard hole than they used to (225 / 160 becomes 200 / 185, with the 185 requiring one or two more clubs than 185 used to mean).
Like I said, if they're going to roll it back, I only had four real positions:
- I don't think they need to base any change on 0.1% of the world's golfers.
- That said, sustainability/resource usage was the best angle to argue it.
- If they do roll it back, I wanted them to know exactly what the results would be. I didn't want a massive disruption to the game only to have the PGA Tour players and equipment manufacturers work around it in six months and get all the distance back. And I didn't want something like a lighter ball pushed through without considering how it would affect putting, for example.
- I didn't want bifurcation. Roll it back for everyone if you're gonna do it.