Tennis downsized to Pickleball, will golf eventually downsize as well?

[Ben Sims]

I see Pickleball as much more analogous to what’s happening in cycling for recreational and low level pro riders. For hard core roadies that are worried about the hazards of road cycling in the US, gravel riding has become a terrific alternative. It’s accounting for around half of drop bar bikes being sold over the last few years. But what’s more, former core mountain bikers are shifting to gravel as they age out of high consequence trails. Or they own a gravel bike as the bike they can ride in winter when trails are too snowy or muddy.


I left road cycling 8 years ago after my second surgery in 5 months due to a bad crash. Missed a Ren Cup! Had I been riding gravel/trails, my exposure to injury would’ve been lower.


At any rate, golf doesn’t yet have that less difficult, less intensive alternative that will appeal widely to core players. Other than the aforementioned par three course. I don’t see how 200 yard par 4’s and 50 yard par threes with a massively shorter ball will fit that platonic ideal. The scale is just, way different. Par three courses can do this without the change in equipment and scale.

[Jeff_Brauer]

Mark,


Interesting take that I hadn't thought of.  Maybe they will take after the NCAA and LaCosta and each state will have a course as a permanent home for the state finals.  Maybe even a few for regionals.  For individual matches, I gather we would just have to accept some high schoolers shooting in the 60's at their home course.

[Mark_Fine]

Jeff,
What did I say that you hadn’t you thought of? 


I have zero problem with high schoolers shooting in the 60’s. My problem is where do we send them to practice.  More and more ranges can’t safely accommodate them. 

[Steven Wade]

I think short courses will be so much more prevalent in this country in the next 20 years. I think for me it has less to do with land availability and resources than it does with adhering to time constraints. Many people just don’t have the time to show up early, hit balls, play a 4 hour round, take a shower, grab a drink or a meal. Being able to zip in and out in 60-90 minutes is the key to playing more golf. My club has a 9 hole short course that I value equally with our two other 18s because it allows me to get out there far more often than I can on the “big courses”. I know that this is a thread about a roll back ball, but I think the move to short courses will happen because of time constraints, not fear that kids are swinging driver 120 mph.

[Wayne_Kozun]

You can also just play 9 holes on a regular 18 hole course in ~2 hours.  Most courses have loops that return to the clubhouse, or you just walk back.

[Jason Thurman]

Short courses in the US are generally not very popular. I get that places like the Sandbox and Preserve are popular for lightening the load during a trip, but if I want to get a tee time locally, the easiest places to find one are consistently the "executive" courses around. Maybe there are quantifiable trends that demonstrate their popularity is growing, but I don't see the evidence from where I sit.


What I DO see growing in popularity, that also solves many of the problems of "golf takes too much time and regulation course play has a very steep learning curve for beginners" is simulator golf. Situationally for me, it solves a few problems:

• There are several 24/7 facilities in my area
• It's weatherproof
• It's about the only type of golf that I can play with my aging father-in-law and mother without spending the whole outing feeling like I'm herding them into position to keep pace
• A bad shot is just a bad shot, no longer followed by a subsequent tedious search

I see continued growth of simulator golf and similar offerings as more likely than new growth of executive courses and reduced-flight balls. I'm just not seeing the demand for the latter, even if it sounds practical on paper.

[Steven Wade]

You can also just play 9 holes on a regular 18 hole course in ~2 hours.  Most courses have loops that return to the clubhouse, or you just walk back.

True, but I can play our short course (which is from the late 1800s, so not a reaction to technology but that predates it) in about an hour. There is a big difference, my wife seems to think, in ~1 hour vs. 2.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

I can go to my local golf store and buy lots of modern, expensive putters, but out on a local muni golf course I don’t see people any better at putting than 50 years ago. The same is true for shots around the greens, whether from sand bunkers or just grass rough.

I have a 5-iron from 1954. I have a 5-iron from 2024. If you think a 5 handicapper is going to hit the same type of shots with both, I don't know what to tell you: you're not living in reality. Golf is easier due to equipment now than it has been in the past.

The truth is modern equipment helps elite golfers far more than the masses.

No.

How about we hand out some Wilson Staff blades, or McGreger Tourney irons along with some Top Flight or Club Special balls to all  the members at your club and see how long before they go back to using today's equipment....The game is easier today, it's more fun today, at EVERY level.

Absolutely.

[Mark_Fine]

This thread isn’t about the sticks, it is about the ball.  Use any high tech/state of the art clubs you want, but use them to hit a much shorter length golf ball.  The idea is to get back to where for example a 375 yard par four is maybe a driver and a long iron for three best players instead of drivable!  Where a 130 yard par three is not a flip wedge, it might be a hybrid or mid iron.  Obviously shorter tees on these same holes would make the course easier for higher handicap golfers just like on a regular course using today’s golf balls. 


Many here keep talking about par three and shorter executive courses.  I think of those as a very different species although in theory they might be an option for some for this much shorter length ball. 


What I am envisioning is for example an 18-hole 4000 yard replica of say Oakmont CC that sits on roughly half the acreage, costs a fraction of what the big course costs to maintain, but still has greens rolling at 13+ (if you want), has deep bunkers, mounding, ditches, …., everything the original has but you can play for half the price and in a fraction of the time (by definition less walking or riding because less ground to cover).  You would bring your same clubs that you use on the big course, just play this one with limited flight balls. 


Maybe the idea is flawed but it is not really that radical and might be widely embraced if quality options (courses) existed.


If we can get 30+ million people wacking a wiffle ball around in a little rectangle - WTF 😳 I think we could get lots of golfers looking for a faster and cheaper lower cost option that still allows them to play “real golf”.  And furthermore, hard core golfers might find they enjoy this as well.  It is NOT chip and putt. 

[Steven Wade]

I think the fact that hitting a whiffle ball with a paddle is a fairly instinctive movement that people can pick up on quickly and have fun almost from the word go with makes a comparison more difficult. Golf faces the hurdle of being a very difficult sport for a new player to go out and enjoy the first several times they try to hit any ball with a club. I like the topic of discussion though.

[Tim Gavrich]

Two rounds in May radicalized me.


1) Pinehurst No. 3. Par 68, 5,200 yards. I got every club dirty except my 6 iron, and it took more than an hour less than playing one of the other big courses. Quite hilly but walkable because of the compressed yardage. I'm not sure a 7,000-yard version of that walk would have been so enjoyable.


2) Sedge Valley. Par 68, approx. 6,200 yards. Probably the most challenging course relative to par at Sand Valley (Lido is close). Played as a twosome in 2 1/2 hours.


With good hole variety and thoughtful routing, I think a case could be made that any incremental yardage past 6,500 or so without damn good reason is borderline irresponsible in the context of future restrictions on golf land and resources, and every golf course over 7,200 yards just might be a policy failure.


At the same time, even the best par-3 courses come up just a little bit short on the pleasure front. The general cadence of long-shot/shorter-shot/chip/putt is drastically missed.

[Charlie Goerges]

At the same time, even the best par-3 courses come up just a little bit short on the pleasure front.

I agree with this point especially and your larger point generally. Slightly more modest-length courses and (in my opinion) a bit more emphasis on the 9-hole round are probably the sweet spot.


That said, very-limited flight balls could be intriguing in certain circumstances.

[Chris Hughes]

My Dad always told me "everything in life is cyclical, son"...


...any thoughts on where we are in the "golf cycle"?


(a friend recently referenced crypto & SPAC's when elucidating his position)

[Craig Sweet]

I've seen those high school kids that hit it a country mile. I've played with them. Many of them can't putt, have little to no short game and often have no clue what direction their driver is going to go.


At the Butte Country Club they have the telephone pole high screen at one end of the driving range and a sign at the other that says NO HITTING DRIVER....does that stop high school kids and long hitters from hitting driver? No, Because they are dumb and they enjoy the hard on they get from 300+ drives.  But the condo's on the other side of the screen are a great deterrent!

[Mark_Fine]

Craig,
I take it you don’t own one of those condos     


The problem is there are a lot of these bombers out there and MANY courses have limited room for expanding their practice areas (assuming they have some in the first place) so they can accommodate them.  One of the only ways for some is to not allow woods (at least try to not allow them).  Then you get these kids on the course and as Craig said, many don’t have any clue where their 300+ yard drives are going.  You can’t prevent them from using woods and drivers out there. 


How does an architect deal with this, not so much from a strategy standpoint, but from a safety standpoint?  It is not easy as the cone of dispersion keeps getting bigger and bigger and that impacts design and safety considerations and significantly up costs.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

This thread isn’t about the sticks, it is about the ball.  Use any high tech/state of the art clubs you want, but use them to hit a much shorter length golf ball.  The idea is to get back to where for example a 375 yard par four is maybe a driver and a long iron for three best players instead of drivable!  Where a 130 yard par three is not a flip wedge, it might be a hybrid or mid iron.  Obviously shorter tees on these same holes would make the course easier for higher handicap golfers just like on a regular course using today’s golf balls.

When do you think the last time a 130-yard hole required a "hybrid" by a pretty decent player? C'mon now…

My Dad always told me "everything in life is cyclical, son"...

Your dad may have been wrong. Are athletes going to somehow get worse and forget things we've learned, and technology will go backward 100 years?

[Bill Seitz]

The Rec Center where I live has an active pickleball group. Pretty much all the people who play are older. I don’t recall ever seeing a thirty something. Most appear to be retired people in their sixties.

10 years ago I had never heard of pickleball.  It was described to me as a game for retirees who couldn't move that fast.  That year I played in the member guest at a prominent Midwest club, and we were paired with a couple NHLers in the penultimate round. They went out after our round and played pickleball.  We got paired with them again on the last day.  One showed up with cuts and bruises all over his legs, and the other didn't show up at because he blew out his knee.  They played it with the aggressiveness of high level professional athletes.


I've never played it, and I'm sure it's fun to play, but lord is it dreadful to watch on television.  Instead of downsized tennis, it looks a lot more to me like upsized ping-pong.

[Chris Hughes]

My Dad always told me "everything in life is cyclical, son"...

Your dad may have been wrong. Are athletes going to somehow get worse and forget things we've learned, and technology will go backward 100 years?

Erik, my observation was focused on the economics of golf, not equipment or distance. Cheers.

[Craig Sweet]

Driver and a long iron into a 375 yard hole?  Yawn...no thanks.   We tried that 130 years ago and decided there had to be a better, more fun way to get around a golf course

[Steve Wilson]

Back in the day I had several Caiman balls which I used to play around an executive course near my house.  Two things occurred to me after a few rounds.  I could bludgeon the Caimans with my irons so that a six iron carried within 20 yards of my driver/3 wood.  The second thing was that Caiman being lighter sat up sweetly on the grass and very easy to sweep with any club in the bag. 


I presume the ball you have in mind, Mark Fine, would be heavier than the Caiman and so would reproduce the relative distance for each club, i.e. each club would lose the same percentage of distance and would also nestle down and reproduce the need to hit down on it to make it go up.


I don't know if your proposal will come to pass or if the analogy to pickleball/tennis is correct, but I do agree that we need to make our courses more compact which will benefit the game making rounds quicker, land usage less, and all the other economic savings that can be gleaned from smaller courses.


Anything that can save space and time ought to be applauded.

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[Mike Nuzzo]

Tennis is to Pickle Ball as Golf is to Frisbee Golf.


If you wanted to make a different form of golf with sticks and a 70% ball, I would try changing or eliminating putting.
A green stimping 13 would require more than 50% as much cost and maintenance as Oakmont.
I don't think you could get half the fee to play.


To get pickle golfers you'd need to get them away from pickle ball --- good luck with that.

[Mark_Fine]

Craig,
Do you play the back tees?  The driver long iron into a 375 yard hole would be for the pros and very long players.  You could play from the middle or much shorter tees so you can still hit your driver/9I if you like.  The idea is we don’t need 500+ yard holes to test golfers abilities with long irons. 


Erik,
The same point with the 130 yard hole, with today’s ball it is a flip wedge for a strong player, with this ball that would no longer be the case. 


Steve,
I believe the technology exists to make a ball that would feel like your ProV1 but only go half as far or 75% as far - whatever they want. 


Mike,
I believe there will eventually be a paradigm shift to something similar but different that gets embraced by many.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

The same point with the 130 yard hole, with today’s ball it is a flip wedge for a strong player, with this ball that would no longer be the case.

And so?

I agree that if golf had begun where we measured in feet instead of yards, and a 450-FOOT hole was considered a decent length par four, that we'd be in a better place right now. But it didn't, and an attempt to move to 50% distances or 70% distances is just not going to happen. So I don't know what the point is here.

I don't think 130 yards was ever really a hybrid for a pretty good player.

[Tim_Weiman]

I can go to my local golf store and buy lots of modern, expensive putters, but out on a local muni golf course I don’t see people any better at putting than 50 years ago. The same is true for shots around the greens, whether from sand bunkers or just grass rough.

I have a 5-iron from 1954. I have a 5-iron from 2024. If you think a 5 handicapper is going to hit the same type of shots with both, I don't know what to tell you: you're not living in reality. Golf is easier due to equipment now than it has been in the past.

The truth is modern equipment helps elite golfers far more than the masses.

No.

How about we hand out some Wilson Staff blades, or McGreger Tourney irons along with some Top Flight or Club Special balls to all  the members at your club and see how long before they go back to using today's equipment....The game is easier today, it's more fun today, at EVERY level.

Absolutely.

Erik,


It doesn’t make sense to discuss equipment for a 5 handicap player to understand whether modern equipment really makes the game easier for the vast majority of people who play the game.


A 5 handicap is achieved by a very small percentage of golfers. They can make far better use of modern equipment than most people can.


I see no evidence that modern equipment help people putt better or execute shots around greens. That’s half the game. Moreover, I don’t see it making full iron shots better in terms of distance control or accuracy.


Finally, I’ve played a lot of muni golf recently and seen very few people hit fairways with their modern $500 drivers. Most people can’t, certainly not with any consistency.


IMO, your perspective is distorted by focusing on golfers (e.g., a 5 handicap) who are far better than the average guy.


Tim

[Mark_Fine]

Erik,
This concept of golf might never happen but you have to admit, many different versions of the golf have been tested; some have failed and some have done ok. Time will tell. 


The guys who thought of Pickleball never in their wildest dreams thought 30 million people would be playing their game (and it is just getting going).  You never know but someone will try at some point.  Time to play, cost, land availability,…, there are lots of drivers.