DMoriarty said;
"I don't disagree that it would be nice to just simply reverse the clock, but I just don't think that is very likely. It seems it would entail dictating certain specific design specifications to manufacturers and stifle their creativity and potential competitive advantage. However, why not stick to a distance limit but do so in a manner that encourages companies to create diversely performing golf balls.
Briefly, why not regulate the carry distance, then let the golfers and manufacturers try to figure out a way to balance feel and control with a desire for distance? Some might prefer to give up feel and control by playing a ball that flies low, and bounces and runs. Others might prefer the control of having the ball stop where it is hit. Like your ideal situation of years past."
David:
What I'm proposing and what you said there is very close. Diversely performing golf balls is what we used to have before this new age (combined ball) was created by all the manufacturers in the last ten years.
When we used to have diversely performing golf balls professional type players never used the two piece distance balls. And very few high handicappers seemed to use the soft balls the pros used.
Frankly, that diversity produced a situation where professional caliber players had to be giving up probably a larger amount of distance in favor of control (most particularly for control around the green) than many realized. One might even reasonable say that the tour caliber player may have been giving up about as much distance as they have recently gained when the soft and hard ball were combined and they started using that new age ball en masse.
At the very least it would be interesting to know what the ODS of those old soft balls was at 109 MPH. That alone could give manufacturers and regulators something to go by! It would not surprise me at all to find that regulators might not know today what those balls did distance-wise at 109mph relative to the hard ball. They may only know that they passed the conformance test and were somewhere under the ODS limitations. That very well may have been the extent of the USGA's "pass/fail" mentality of that time.
But I think ideas such as ours David are basically just searches for some framework that would bring excessive distance back under control. There're obviously numerous frameworks and methods to acheive them that would accomplish that end but the first thing to do is to get the necessary people--ie regulatory bodies, manufacturers and the golfing public to want to do that--to want to go in that direction.
That in itself is sort of a separate issue that would require a certain amount of persuasion regarding many people as to why that would be benefical. Certainly the longterm integrity and health of the game seems to be the most important reason probably mostly hinging on the preservation of golf's playing fields (architecture). This latter thing we've talked about ways of doing on the phone.
Golf's equipment manufacturing sector is an interesting animal in its ability to progress and advance their products. They never really seem to intentionally break the regulatory bodies rules (except for Ely Callaway). They sort of come up with things that are undefined under the regulatory bodies rules and regs and then the regulatory bodies have to decide what to do about it.
A ball ODS limitation certainly accomplishes a good deal in limitiing manufacturers from going crazy in the name of length but we can certainly see that some pretty odd things have happened with the ball in the last ten years despite those limitations. It appears that very few foresaw what could happen even within the present ODS limitation framework which has been in effect for years. Frank Thomas appears to have seen it coming but was unable to convince the necessary people of what it's effects would be.
What the manufacturers did was certainly not illegal or non-conforming within that existing and present framework of the ODS limitations but nevertheless it was quite amazing. I'd suspect that the manufacturing sector is immensely proud of themselves for what they accomplished--basically finally combining the distance characteristics of the hard ball and the control characteristics of the soft ball into a single ball. For years many obviously didn't think that was possible or at least weren't on the lookout for its effects.
If one looks at ball technology and production in the last 40-50 years that breakthrough was huge, probably just as significant as the two piece ball breakthrough about 40+ years ago that was immense--one of the real technological breakthroughs in the history of golf balls! Maybe you're too young to remember its impact but that was the first time that golf equipment manufacturing produced a ball that a huge segment of golfers could use successfully that didn't cut. That in itself was huge. The manufacturing sector was really proud of themselves for accomplishing that!
The irony is (probably in retrospect) that good players never used that huge breakthrough ball. Not for about 30+ years until it got combined into the type of ball they wanted to use in the last ten years.
So I don't know if it's reasonable or feasible to ask the manufacturering sector to basically give up or give back that huge breakthrough that they accomplished in the last ten years and obviously spent untold millions on researching and developing. But I do know if they would it would definitely create a solution to this present distance spike.
But I guess the idea here is to come up with a baseline and try to then imagine all the conceivable ways it could be exceeded and then try to legislate to prevent that before it happens.
It appears what's happened here is that something actually came to pass before anyone could really foresee properly it effects. It was always actually legal within the existing ODS framework and now it's out there and how do the regulatory bodies get it back or get it out of the hands of golfers.
Probably a good analogy to what's happened with this combined new age ball might be the example on another thread of Tiger Woods driver. Somebody said with a steel shaft he can send a ball at 170MPH but with a graphite shaft he can send a ball at near 200MPH.
Tiger has so far chosen to use steel and the lower ball speed in the name of control. That's a good analogy to the old soft ball (control)/hard ball (more distance) of the situation we used to have with the good players--until the manufacturers combined the two characteristics.
How long do you think it's going to take Tiger's manufacturer to give graphite shafts the type of control at a 200 mph ball speed as Tiger now has with steel at 170?
It may not take them long. Are the regulatory bodies prepared for that with their ODS rules and regulations? Are they aware of what might be impending with overall distance if that transpires? I don't know but maybe not!