[Craig Sweet]

"And if all this was agreed to "under the radar screen" we very well may have an effective distance rollback for particularly the long hitter contingent in our future."

TEPAUL....if the USGA locks in clubs and balls right where they are now....it wouldn't be a "rollback" really....there just wouldn't be any future expansion....

[TEPaul]

"You and many others fail to understand that it's the game itself, and not the individual performers, that make it attractive."

Patrick:

I certainly don't think a number on here fail to see that and the dangers involved, otherwise why do you suppose the analogy of what happened to tennis about 35 years ago is brought up as often as it is?

[Craig Sweet]

Joe Hancock... Tony George has implemented cheaper, safer and uniform engine and car standards...he has consistantly rolled back horsepower...slowed down cars...he favors open car driving on old time ovals...currently, a handful of manufactures make the chassis and engines....

How is this different than advocating for a standard ball and club, taking the distance out of the ball, tournaments played out on historic courses??

Uniformity...standardization....

[TEPaul]

"TEPAUL....if the USGA locks in clubs and balls right where they are now....it wouldn't be a "rollback" really....there just wouldn't be any future expansion...."

Craig Sweet:

That's true, and you'll notice I mentioned that that is precisely what Dick Rugge said to us last week.

But what about this idea of a rule or regulation on "spin generation" (spin rate) that they have also been mentioning and have made public? Do you understand what the distance significance of that could be if they instituted such a rule and the manufacturers agreed to it and obviously if that new rule or regulation established a minimum allowable spin rate that is significantly higher than the balls that are presently conforming?

Do you realize the USGA/R&A has never before regulated the amount of spin rate of a golf ball?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Adam Clayman,

The proof is simple.
Golf participation is down, distance is at an all time high.
So distance isn't the lure.

I don't think design, good or poor, modern or classic, has anything to do with participation.

Doak and C&C have extremely limited exposure, certainly not enough to influence the number of individuals who participate in the sport.

With respect to your contention that MONEY is the only arbitor, you confine your example to the PGA Tour purses, which have gone up, but so has everything else in life.

Yet, with respect to non-PGA Tour events, golfing revenues are down.   Down at a time when distance is at an all time high.

Who's the harder worker, the more successful individual, the one who inherits 10 million, or the guy who amasses 2 million through his own labors ?  Under your example the neardowell is the better man, and I don't buy that argument.

You continue to be confused.  MONEY isn't and shouldn't be the focus.  It's the game.   If one is interested in the MONEY they can't be interested in protecting the game, it's a conflict of interest.  You can't serve two masters.

Craig Sweet,

Your analogy between golf and racing cars is flawed.

If you call racing cars a sport, it's goal is SPEED, that's the sole intent of the contest, to go the fastest from start to finish.   That's not the goal in golf.

In addition, auto racing is a spectator sport.
GOLF is a participant sport.

If you want to look at other sports in order to learn.

Tennis and baseball would be good examples.
Baseball regulated the ball and the equipment.
Tennis didn't and its popularity diminished.

But, let's stick to golf and not try to deflect and divert the issue and discussion.

TEPaul,

The USGA also maintained that distance had "maxed out" back in 1993.

As to the October 2005 edition of "Inside the USGA"
I found the absence of a firm position regarding distance ...... disturbing.

Everybody, from tour players, to tournament directors to golf course architects, to authors, to developers, to website fanatics is decrying the problems associated with distance, the ball and implements, yet, the USGA continues to fiddle.

They are in denial.

Next comes anger.

Then acceptance.

[A.G._Crockett]

I don't know the answer to the situation of technology in golf, but I do know that there is great danger in confusing correlation and causality, and in using flawed analogies.

The baseball analogy is flawed because baseball as a sport does not depend on participation; golf does.  The participants in golf have to enjoy the game for the game to retain it's popularity, which is not at all the case in baseball.  The wood bat/bifurcation argument is a red herring vis-a-vis golf; in baseball, the equipment choices are based on expense vs. safety, and it is a stretch to make that apply to golf.

Tennis is also a flawed analogy.  The tennis boom was a demographic phenomenon, and the golf boom was largely the same group 20 years later.  The baby boomers are already beginning to leave holes in the work force; leisure time industries like golf will be no different.  Additionally, tennis at the professional level has suffered from a variety of other ills besides the equipment changes, though I agree that the changes in the way the game is played have not helped, and may have hurt substanially.  That the golf boom has peaked and leveled off is undeniable; I think WHY that has happened is much more simple than all of the theories advanced here.
 
To assert that participation is down because distance is at an all-time high is a very different thing that saying that both have happened at the same time.  Causality vs. correlation.  I lived in Atlanta when the city was awarded the Olympics for 1996, therefore I was responsible for bringing the Olympics to the city?  Besides, we only know what participation is right now, NOT what it would have been if equipment developments had been severely curtailed some years ago.  In that regard, what role did better equipment, including golf balls, play in the golf boom?  If it was significant, aren't we trying to have it both ways by "rolling back" one of the things that made the game more popular?

That said, I still don't know what should be done.  I DO find it interesting that the argument is advanced that we can make the game more popular by making the game more difficult.  While analogies are being made, find me one where THAT has happened!

[TEPaul]

Patrick:

That post of yours above (as many of your posts) has about the same aura to it as a moralizing and simplistic sixth grade teacher.

"Everybody, from tour players, to tournament directors to golf course architects, to authors, to developers, to website fanatics is decrying the problems associated with distance, the ball and implements, yet, the USGA continues to fiddle."

That's very true, a great many of those people are doing that and saying that. But do any of those people make golf balls and golf clubs, Patrick??

As is so common with you, Patrick, you forgot the most important part----the manufacturers.

You can't forget THE MANUFACTURERS Patrick. What does it seem to you they want to do??  Or do you really think that doesn't matter at all? If you do think that then you really are as naive and simplistic as many on here, including me, think you are!  

[TEPaul]

"Tennis is also a flawed analogy."

AG:

The tennis analogy is most certainly not a flawed analogy. The tennis analogy is not being used as an analogy of demographics or even popularity, it's being used as an analogy of what can happen to amateur regulatory organizations of a sport if they completely misread realities! The fact is tennis was once controlled by an amateur regulatory organization as golf with I&B still totally is today.

"To assert that participation is down because distance is at an all-time high is a very different thing that saying that both have happened at the same time."

No shit! To say that participation is down in golf primarily due to some distance increase sounds preposterous. It may have something to do with it but other reasons such as the state of the economy and the increasing costs of golf, not  particularly small factors, perhaps have a whole lot more to do with it than some distance increase leading viewers of the pro tours to become vaguely bored.

[Willie_Dow]

Tom

You will recall that Dick Rugge also mentioned the grooves issue as being a dominant factor in implements.  I got the message that he was as concerned with this subject as he was with the other considerations being discussed on here.
Do you agree with his assessment?

Willie  

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe Hancock,

It's not that the thrust is to make the game harder, it's to not make it much easier.

TEPaul,

Do you really believe that the manufacturers have the GAME's best interests at heart ?

Their goals are at odds with the good of the game.
They merely want to sell their products, irrespective of the consequences.

Have you forgotten the design, promotion and sale of drivers that were non-conforming.  Have you forgotten Arnie's role in that pursuit ?

The USGA only has to come up with the design specs for the "competiton ball" and the manufacturers will produce, promote and sell it.

You can't let the tail wag the dog.

In addition, it was Adam Clayman who maintained that distance, the long ball, was the inherent lure of the game.
I merely cited that with distance at all time highs, participation is down, which refutes his theory.

[TEPaul]

"Tom
You will recall that Dick Rugge also mentioned the grooves issue as being a dominant factor in implements.  I got the message that he was as concerned with this subject as he was with the other considerations being discussed on here.
Do you agree with his assessment?"

Willie:

I guess I heard Dick Rugge mention the issue of grooves but I don't recall he said it was something that the USGA/R&A are all that concerned about. If he did say that, to be honest, I think I'd be pretty concerned about their priorities of concern.

I believe the issue of grooves and what they actually do to a golf ball's performance is an issue of long-time misperception by an enormous amount of people.

Some even think the Ping/USGA and Ping/PGA Tour lawsuits was over the size of the grooves. Some actually think Karsten Solheim and Ping actually invented the "box" or "U-Shaped" grooves which lent so much more controll to shots out of the rough etc. Karsten Solheim and Ping most certainly did not invent the box or U-shaped groove. It was legal long before Solheim or Ping. Those two lawsuits were a misunderstanding of only how to measure the distance between grooves if a manufacturers "radiused" the edges of the grooves. Essentially Karsten did that on PING EYE2 irons as a way of preventing the club from stripping paint off the golf ball. Any performance enhancement due to "radiusing" was never an issue with anyone, as far as I know.

So what are the performance effects on the golf ball of grooves on a golf club? Well, if you believe Barney Adams (Adams Golf), and I do, grooves are merely a mechanism to displace "junk" that gets between the ball and the clubface. Barney calls grooves "garbage cans" and he mantains that the larger the "garbage cans" the more "junk" they can displace when the club hits the ball and consequently the cleaner hit one gets and the cleaner hit one gets is directly attributable to the control one can put on a golf ball. Barney's explanation of grooves as only "garbage cans" is that grooves themselves do not directly put spin on a golf ball---they only do that indirecty through the displacement of "junk" from the face of the golf club.

The fact is that "box" or "U-shaped" grooves have considerably more "displacement" than "V" shaped grooves do.

But my recollection of what Dick Rugge was concentrating on last Sunday was distance and the issue of distance increase more than grooves. Maybe I felt that way since I asked him so many questions about distance control in such a short space of time!  

[Joe Hancock]

Joe Hancock,

It's not that the thrust is to make the game harder, it's to not make it much easier.

Pat,

What is this quote in reference to, please?

Joe

[Daniel_Wexler]

TEP:

I must not be understanding your full meaning; Since when is it the USGA's job to appease the manufacturers?

[Daniel_Wexler]

Adam:

You continue to cite the Tour's purse growth as somehow ratifying the value of modern equipment technology, yet both this and the previous commissioner advocate a rollback (Beman, who's done more to build the Tour than anyone, quite forcefully).

Do they just not understand their own product very well?

[Patrick_Mucci]

Joe Hancock,

Sorry, I should have addressed it to AG Crockett

I DO find it interesting that the argument is advanced that we can make the game more popular by making the game more difficult.  

[TEPaul]

"TEP:
I must not be understanding your full meaning; Since when is it the USGA's job to appease the manufacturers?"

Daniel:

Perhaps I'm wrong but I don't think I said it's the USGA's job to APPEASE the manufacturers. A word like 'appease' is obviously yours. What the USGA probably needs to do more of these days is to work with the manufacturers in various ways to insure that the major manufacturers remain willing to comply with the USGA/R&A's rules and regulations on I&B rules, particularly those I&B rules and regulations that relate directly to distance. I think it's become quite obvious that today the USGA/R&A just may need an additional rule and regulation that puts a limitation on the minimum amount of spin rate of the golf ball. Heretofore they have never had such a rule or regulation. This, in effect would add a sixth rule and regulation to golf ball conformance.

Now, to what degree the USGA comes up with to limit the minumum amount of spin rate of a conforming ball will probably be the amount they can effectively hold distance here or even roll it back in effect.

The USGA has what's known as a formal "notice and comment" period that involves any alterations of I&B rules and regulations.

I'm not saying the USGA's job is to appease manufacturers but any realist knows in this day and age and in this present atmosphere with major manufacturers that the most non-adverserial way to go about getting the manufacturers to agree to conform to what the USGA/R&A is asking for (as a new rule or regulation and the degree of it) is probably the best and most effective way to go here, in the end.

[Craig Sweet]

Patrick...the comparison with auto racing is to take a look at a "sport" that decided to regulate the "equipment" to save the "sport".

The result is a standardization that limited manufacturers (some deemed complying as too costly) divided the fan base, cut revenue,and drove many of the top drivers away.

Of course historic race tracks are still "relevant" and races are often very close and exciting, and the standardization has to some extent cut costs for many race teams...

So, what is gained and what is lost??? Apply this thinking to golf...will standardization of the club and ball force small companies to rethink their commitment to the tour? Will it cause top level players to say screw it and form their own tour based on bombastic drives? Will it cut revenue and divide the fan base between those that want to watch golfers play classic courses and those that want to see the long ball?

[Jim_Kennedy]

I'm not saying the USGA's job is to appease manufacturers but any realist knows in this day and age and in this present atmosphere with major manufacturers that the most non-adverserial way to go about getting the manufacturers to agree to conform to what the USGA/R&A is asking for (as a new rule or regulation and the degree of it) is probably the best and most effective way to go here, in the end. - TEPaul

For-What-It's-Worth: Every company rep I've met this fall has said that the focus going forward won't be on distance but rather on fitting the individual to the best product they have to offer. They all said that there is a realization that they have 'hit the wall' when it comes to distance and that there is no more room given the COR, ODS, length of drivers, etc., that appear in the regs.
Not one said that they or their respective companies has any plans to challenge the USGA on any of the aforementioned rules.  

[TEPaul]

"Not one said that they or their respective companies has any plans to challenge the USGA on any of the aforementioned rules."

Very ironically that may be because with the manufacturers the USGA may be flying well under the radar screen, so to speak. Even more ironically that may be why so many have been criticizing them for being unresponsive.

It seems to me the USGA looks like they're planning on tell the manufacturers that a new I&B rule and reg is coming soon on what they refer to as "spin generation" and also "MOI".

Since notice of these two areas of investigation was sent out to all the manufacturers back in March and April obviously the manufacturers are aware of this. If they both have agreement on perhaps two new rules or regulations and it's done quietly it's possible that in the next few years there may be a reduction in distance that happens as mysterious as the spike in distance happened----at least the technical or technologic reasons how it happened.

[Daniel_Wexler]

"What the USGA probably needs to do more of these days is to work with the manufacturers in various ways to insure that the major manufacturers remain willing to comply with the USGA/R&A's rules and regulations on I&B rules..."


TEP:

There's where we disagree.  I mean, OBVIOUSLY it would be nice if there was a bit of harmony but if manufacturers wish to produce non-conforming equipment, I don't see that as the USGA's concern.  Among their (self-appointed) jobs is to make the rules and while communicating with the manufacturers is certainly important, at the end of the day, the USGA needs to do what it believes is right, whether the manufacturers like it or not.  This is NOT to say that one doesn't make some reasonable accommodation to economics in the areas of phase-outs/phase-ins and the like, but...  

Ultimately I don't believe they should be negotiating the rules with manufacturers, they should be writing them.

[George Pazin]

Haven't read the last couple of pages, so forgive me if this has been covered, but I don't think it's as simple as learning the lessons of the floater.

JohnV's article was very interesting and well worth considerable reflection, but I think the situation was somewhat different then. The difference in performance between the 2 balls appears to have been rather extreme. It seems as though the floater experienced the opposite of today's ball. Today we have surprise monster drives that go 350-400 yards. The floater seems to have had the characteristic of producing drives that were surprsingly short if not very well struck.

Would anyone really notice, in such a manner as to cause great grief for golfers like the floater did, if the ball was scaled back 5-10%, so that the average drove was more like 260 and the big ones were 310-320, rather than 350+? I personally can't tell the difference between when I hit one 260 and 320 (and don't laugh, I had two such drives just last weekend and would have sworn that the shorter one was the better hit drive).

To me, a much better and more direct comparison would be how the rest of the world switched over from the small ball to the big ball. If someone would care to research that and write an opinion piece, I'd love to read it.

Simply scaling things back a little - heck, do it gradually over a number of years - would help tremendously in slowing down the rapid changes in golf courses.

[TEPaul]

Daniel:

I don't see where we disagree at all except when you just add words and implications to what I write. I said nothing at all about the USGA "negotiating" rules and regulations with the manufacturers. The formal "Notice and Comment" period and procedure has been around quite a while and all I said it's in the best interests of the USGA and probably all of us that the manufacturers do agree to comply with and conform to the rules and regs the USGA/R&A propose. If you see no reason at all for their long time "Notice and Comment" procedure and period then I guess we do disagree on a phase of what the USGA does in I&B.

[TEPaul]

GeorgeP:

It seems the "floater" or "balloon" ball was so long ago and in such a different time and technology as to perhaps not be a very good analogy to much of what may inspire a cap or distance roll-back today. I believe the "floater" was of a lighter weight than the ball that preceded it and because of that had noticeably different flight characteristics particularly in the wind. It seems that may've been the primary reason for its general unpopularity.

[A_Clay_Man]

You continue to cite the Tour's purse growth as somehow ratifying the value of modern equipment technology, yet both this and the previous commissioner advocate a rollback (Beman, who's done more to build the Tour than anyone, quite forcefully).

Daniel, My point in using the tour money stat, is to illustrate how difficult it is for you, to make a cogent argument, and convince everyone else that something is wrong. That's all.

What is the purview of the USGA?

Protect the game?

Protect shorter courses predominately in urban areas?

[George Pazin]

I agree, Tom. But my good friend Adam seems to feel it is a lesson worth examining, so I was addressing his question about the lessons of the floater.

I'd be surprised if the fabulous engineers at Titleist, Bridgestone, etc., couldn't make a ball that has similar characteristics to today's, but simply reduces distance by 5-10%.

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