For every golfer who appreciates a hole played intellegently and with finesse there are ten golfers who most appreciate seeing the ball go a long way in the air and land on target.

Put another way, which of these things would a typical golfer rather experience?

1) Playing a 370-yard Par 4 (on his 6,500-yard home course) with a Titleist Professional (c. 1995) by hitting driver 225 yards followed by a well-struck 6-iron from 145 yards that ends up fifteen feet from the hole.

2) Playing a 410-yard Par 4 (on his 7,000-yard home course) with a ProV1 (c. 2005) by hitting driver 250 yards followed by a well-struck 6-iron from 160 yards that ends up twenty feet from the hole.

Well, obviously he'd rather have success with the longer shots even though he has a better chance at birdie on the shorter hole. The problem of course is that even if the new ball gives him 25 more yards on the drive and 15 more yards on the approach (which ain't gonna happen) he's going to hit the longer shots farther off line most of the time.

But our typical golfer doesn't realize that. He notices that his best drive of the round goes much farther with the new equipment and that he can occasionally hit a 6-iron 160 yards which he could never do with the old equipment. So he wants the new stuff because he believes it will let him play a 7,000-yard course just as well as he used to play a 6,500-yard one.

It's fine for us architecture snobs to enjoy the strategic merits of a fun and interesting old 6,400-yard course, all the while realizing that it's not a pushover for us no matter how easily Davis Love III or this year's NCAA champion could dismantle it. But we can't lose sight of the fact that for most golfers the elemental joy of the game is hitting a ball a long way in the air and landing it near a well-protected target.

A competition ball will hurt golf because it takes away the link between regular golfers and PGA Tour players.

Brent's assumption of a 250 yard drive, conservative as it may sound, is still a dream for most players.

I still think fairway centerlines have spread in recent years which eats up more acreage than an extra 500 yards in length.

Brent,

Who is a "typical" golfer ?

A typical scratch to say - 12 handicapper has a realistic goal in achieving your examples.
A typical 13 - 28 hcpr dreams of achieving the same results.

Everybody, including Love etc, assumes that length is the ultimate goal ? Even my wife would disagree with that (I hope ?)
Maybe that's because so much influence is supressed upon typical golfers that length gives the greatest pleasure. I would argue that the typical golfer would give his back teeth to see him / her realise 18 straight pars on any golf course with the only sacrifice being the loss of a few yards on his / her distance averages ?

I would also argue that for every single golfer who takes a keen interest in all the subtleties of playing the game and it's rules and administration - there are 10 who couldn't give a shit what's thrown at them. In other words ; there aint goin to be a revolt by the introduction of rolled back ball which, on the long run, might just make the game more pleasurable and affordable for greater numbers. I've seen, and sympathised, with many hackers on a 600 yard par 5 that gives them no pleasure at all with modern equipment and balls. They know their goals are unachievable with their "hacker" game. But that's the opposite on, say, a 380 yard par 4 ! Then, anything is achievable with one good drive and a holed approach with the driver again ?

The longer courses become in the future (and they'll HAVE to keep up with progression), then I firmly believe you'll see far fewer hackers taking up golf. And the world of golf needs it's 99.9% of hackers !

Just an addition in case anyone thinks I'm against progression and technology. I'm not, when it's beneficial to something or someone.
Look at the fantastic advances in telecommunications / TV / computors etc....... Anyone ever notice how these technologies become much cheaper and affordable to ye masses of the world ? Isn't it somehow strange that golf appears to be in reverse mode from all other technologies ?
Answers on a postcard to the USGA / R&A.

Alfie.

Alfie,

I guess I was thinking about the typical club golfer I play with every weekend. Handicaps 6-11, drive the ball 220 most times and 250 once a round. Think of their 150-yard club as being an 8-iron when it's really a solid 7-iron at best. Almost to a man they all play ProV1 golf balls and I'd say 8 out of 10 use the ProV1x.

I'm the 13-28 handicapper you're referring to and you're right those distances are a dream for me. Yet when I make the comment (frequently) that the course is more fun for me from the 6,000 yard white tees than the 6,400 yard blacks I always get the same comment "You're not nearly old enough to play from up there". If you're 40 or 50 years old...whether you can reach those 380-yarders in two or not...whether or not you can break 90 from the blacks...you're not really playing golf if the course isn't 6,400 yards and up.

Now is that attitude an artifact of watching golf on TV? Probably. Is it from watching the young college guns tear our course apart from 6,800 yards? In part. But it's now truly engrained in nearly everyone (present company apparently excepted) expectations of what the game is about.

Honestly, I'll be perfectly happy if the USGA can somehow get off their collective butt and make sure Titleist doesn't introduce a new ball and driver next year that Ernie Els can hit 15 yards farther than his current titanium-ProV1x combo. A modest rollback of the ball (3-5%) is probably doable since in reality it won't cost the weekend hacker a perceptible amount of distance and it won't cost him any strokes. But the horse left the barn several years ago when the USGA was still insisting that testing balls with a wooden driver at Corey Pavin clubhead speeds was all that was necessary.

Davis Love III (like our wives) understands that length is not the holy grail (easy to say when you hit it as long as he does). The guys I see every time I play golf might say that but they don't really internalize it. If all they cared about was making 18 pars in a row one day they'd be practicing their four-footers and learning to chip the ball close to the hole from 30 yards. Instead, they're out there taking lessons and buying new drivers and hitting ProV1x balls into the woods because the game is pretty much about distance.

Rick,

Can't agree more with your comments on this thread !
But the Comp ball "can't" happen, unless the governing bodies do a u-turn on their agreed "Statement of Principles" ? Personally, I think it (comp ball) would prove to the world of golf that a rollback is no bad thing (even if it aint the American way !) and that hackers would immediately do what they always "try" to do - emulate their peers with the "same" equipment / balls. Of course, with the comp ball, every golfer has the "choice" to try out that ball, or just continue hitting their 300 yard bombers - as all golfers do ?

Hootie Johnson has the power to start this ball rolling - does he have the will ?

Alfie

I don't buy the time and money argument as a limiting factor in golf.  

Time:  There is negligible different when you add another 30 minutes to a 6 hour round.  Those making a time commitment to play golf have already blocked out an entire afternoon.

Money:  Sure you can buy the $500 driver.  But you can also buy last year's model for $199.

I think the barrier to entry is more about desire with respect to leisure time alternatives (ie. Nintendo).

As for land usage, I would suggest that the legal system has increased the required acreage more so than course length.  Wider gaps between fairway centerlines and more buffer to adjacent homes.

Wow, I'm almost not sure where to start here - but I will forge ahead nonetheless.

I often agree with a lot of what you post, Gary, but I think you're way off here.

Time? I rarely have an opportunity to block off an entire afternoon, but if 4 hours were the norm, or even considered slow, as it is overseas, I could definitely find time for more 9s and 18s.

If you wish to argue that technology has a minimal impact on time, that is another thing entirely, but time is certainly issue number 1 for me. I'd be surprised if it weren't #1 for a lot of people.

Money? Since the majority of new courses seem to bill themselves as championsihp courses, they must be by default over 7,000 yards from the tips. Regardless of where the regular men's tees fall, this is going to be a long slow walk. I suppose there are some rare instances with older courses where one might actually have to walk back to a tee, but you have to admit, this is rare.

Cart usage is equally at fault here - there is certainly a better than average chance that a 6,500 yard course would be equally unwalkable with many modern courses, because of the willingness of golfers to accept long green to tee rides. But it is hard to argue that without the obsession with championship layouts that can withstand a bunch of guys hitting 320 yard drives, we'd see more 6300-6500 yard courses built.

The extra yardage doesn't just add to the playing distance. As you noted, playing corridors do indeed have to be wider. Environmental regulations likely add to the problem here as well. But these are things that occur regardless of the technological state, so all these things being equal, a longer course will certainly add to both the time and dollar expense of playing golf.

I haven't purchased a club yet more than $120, yet the cost of playing golf is still quite high to me. My limited experience has been that the inexpensive 6500 yard courses around me are doing better than the brand new 7200 championship layouts, but that's purely an anecdotal observation. If golf were my livelihood, I'd reflect more on this, but it's merely my obsession.

I also don't own a Nintendo, so I'm not sure what that has to do with anything.

As for DLIII, he is kidding himself if he thinks that technology won't affect him or his pocketbook. I don't know many people as obsessed with golf as me, and I have stopped watching the normal weekly events, because there is little entertainment in watching guys hit driver wedge every hole and whoever holes the most putts wins. Outside of the majors, the TPC, Kapalua and Riviera, I have almost stopped watching golf. That should scare the shit out of any PGA/USGA higher ups (I used to tape Sunday action every week to watch later if I was busy), but if they wish to stick their heads in the sand like the honorable ostrich, they should at least recognise the risk in doing so. The higher ups now aren't the ones who will pay the price - it's there successors who will.

I for one won't be too surprised if we start reading articles in a few years wondering who killed the golden goose.

Brent,
Excellent response and I hear what you're saying. It's all down to a bit of education and I can hear the masses calling me a pompous b****** (which I'm not) ! Who is educating the 99.9% of golfers ? David Feherty ?
Personally, I'd rather listen to (but not entirely agree with) the likes of ; Nicklaus, Player, Woosnam, Nick Price, Dave Thomas, Cupp, Faldo, Els, Geoff Shackelford, John Huggan, my wife etc........................that golf needs a solution to a definable problem, aka distance !

A guy was nearly hung many years past for making the crazy statement that - "the world was actually round" ! Trying to impress that a rolled back ball might prove saner, is, I feel, much the same in our modern era ? Then again, maybe the world is a square ?

BTW. Horses are usually returned to the barn - and genie's put back in bottles  

I'd go for a game of golf tomorrow. But you know what - I can't afford it !

Always enjoy "YOUR OWN" game, Brent. What others do and think, is up to them.

Alfie

Americans probably don't realize but most of the rest-of-the-world had, in effect,a competition ball all through the 70s and early 80s.
Almost all amateurs played the small ball but pros played the big ball - the 1974 British Open was the first big ball Open.
Any amateur who wanted to be a pro played the big ball - which went 25 yards shorter and required more precise hitting


It made no difference to the game and it proved the game could survive with different balls - and two sets of rules.

MikeC:

The problem here, as I see it, and as perhaps evidenced by some of these statements by Davis Love in that article in this thread is that both ruling bodies in I&B have no real intention of either rolling back distance for any level of golfer and they have no intention of creating a two set of I&B rules and regs on golf balls by the institution of a "competition" ball either.

It seems their only aim for the future is to try to limit distance as best they can at the point it has gotten to now.

However, if one looks carefully at some to the ideas that have been floated recently by the USGA it seems they have begun to talk about the idea of some type of virtual rollback, at least in theory.

But this is probably just the beginning of the merry-go-round of ruling body/manufacturer informal negotiation which may or may not lead to some distance alteration. If the maufacturers actually pick-up and begin to develop what the USGA is virtually asking for we may get a form of distance roll-back but the more likely scenario (and one that happened in the last few years with the USGA's proposal on "Optimization" testing is that the manufacturers will balk and the ruling bodies will simply decide to try to live with the status quo and limit it at that as best they can in the future.

MikeC:
It would be interesting to know, at this point, if the R&A ever bothered to do the type of scientific distance testing for the old small ball the way the USGA has done in recent years with the unified spec ball. I would serious doubt the R&A ever did that. In other words, what distances would these tour players today be hitting the golf ball if they used the old small ball spec rules and regs, if any even existed for distance limitation?

I'd seriously doubt the R&A did any scientific testing of the small ball vs the large ball back then.  i don't believe the R&A have facilities to test the current balls, leaving it up to the USGA to come up with the relevant data.

I can only offer anecdotal evidence - the small ball goes further and is less affected by the wind.  The larger ball was, by comparison, easier to control around the green.

There is precedent for two different types of ball.

Mike,
Absolutely correct ! I remember playing club golf in Scotland where every player had the "option" of using the 1.62 or the 1.68 in a Medal round. The rule, if I remember correctly, was that in no way were you allowed to interchange between the two balls in any given 18 hole round.

This fear of Bifurcation is a fallacy. Does one set of rules cover the entire scope of international golf as we speak ? I don't think so !

But in regard to the workhorses of the R&A - they are actually planning a £1.4million testing centre for 2006. We're on the ball now ?

Alfie

TE Paul
I'm no sure about the testing with the small ball but if we were still using it the distances it would go would be frightening.
The problem with switching to the big ball was it was designed largely for American conditions - less wind and more demand from courses to get it in the air - but it was really difficult to play in the high winds of Britain and Australia - especially Australia where we have almost no inland golf.
The current ball is even better in the wind than the old small ball - and long hitters are so much straighter because the ball has let them hit harder.

I was at a dinner  a few years ago where Peter Dawson told the assembly there was no problem with the distance the ball was flying - and he is right if he is talking about 99% of golfers.They should make a ball that goes further for them.
There is however a massive problem for the showcase of the game - and it seems so incredibly obvious we need two balls - unless they can do as you suggest and wind back the technical advancement.
Surely with a single rule we have two games - with two rules we could have a single game again.

David.
The small ball was more difficult around the green - but it was almost impossible to buy a balata ball - certainly in Australia. The balls were rocks which was what made them difficult to chip with. A small ball that behaved like the current ball would have been a lot easier around the green than it was.

Alfie.

We used to be able to change from one to the other - I never did but guys used to play the big ball downwind and the small one into it.It was ridiculous.

Mike,
I've argued here, and elsewhere, for a voice of reason in this whole debate. But not the DLove kind !

If there is a problem - find a solution. Otherwise - if it aint broke, then leave it alone ?

Most adhere to the FACT that there is a problem within golf. The question must surely be why nothing constructive has (really) been done to solve the problem !
Give me £10K and a month max and I'll bring golf back all the answers to the hypatheticals being thrown about surrounding this whole issue. We're talking about examining OLD and known technologies to clear the field a little. We have living professionals and even robots to test the old balls. If the gov bodies need some old Dunlop 65's (aye, those were the days) then they'll find thousands of them on EBay. Still in their wrappers !

Believe it not, I recently salvaged a dozen old (and used) balata's from a friend with the intention of going out and testing them for myself using my modern Big Bertha and Wilson irons. Sorry, no results because I've never got round to it. The point is - why the hell are the gov bodies failing to at least TRY a similar excercise ? Simple - but highly complicated thanks to golfing politics.

But I still think we're making ground with the issue - so long as the minority keep chipping away at the 99.9% !

Alfie