"Mr. Throwback": Mark Brooks, on Artistry and the Modern Golf Ball

[Garland Bayley]

Huckster,

What about the new ball allowed you to hit it longer? Isn't it a bit presumptuous of you to assume you are hitting the ball farther because of the new ball? It may be that you are just finally getting all the new found weight behind the ball.

[JESII]

How many people are actually overpowering, to the point of obsolesence, golf courses?

Is it at all possible that the golf course operators have spent money needlessly to build new back tees just in case Tiger shows up?

Would it make sense to have the PGA and Nationwide tours play courses reserved specifically for them that can be set up much more difficult than a local club that hosts a tour event once per year?

Has anyone made 18 birdies in a round yet?

The ball goes too far, and too straight, but rolling it back will only open the gate for new technlogy that will return us to this point some years down the road...JMO.

[Garland Bayley]

Jim,

Lots of people are overpowering golf courses. It used to be that golf courses were only overpowered by TopFlite and Pinnacle users. But users of those balls were never skilled enough to make a difference in golf.

Your argument suggests that it was useless to put in the initial velocity test years ago, because distance was going to increase any way. To me, that is not a valuable argument, because it would have caused them to create balls that would go 400 yards. What has happened is that regulation sent them searching for something that would give a gain. There were not able to get nearly as significant a gain elsewhere, so we have balls only going 320 yards give or take. Put in the spin rate regulation, and it will be much longer for them to find a way to gain yardage and it will be a smaller gain than this one.

Regulations put the ball manufacturers on a path of diminishing returns.

[Tom Huckaby]

Huckster,

What about the new ball allowed you to hit it longer? Isn't it a bit presumptuous of you to assume you are hitting the ball farther because of the new ball? It may be that you are just finally getting all the new found weight behind the ball.

Garland:

Hell of a good point!  That is indeed possible.  My non-scientific assumption was that it was due to the ball.  But that could be very very wrong.  If so, look for one and all distance-junkies to start eating more twinkies immediately.

 

Seriously though I am also unsure what is attributable to the ball.  Pat's post and Chuck's did make sense to me, that's all.

TH

[Peter Pallotta]

Lots of good posts. Over the months of reading these types of technology-related threads, I've change my mind (and changed it back again) a half dozen times. But here's a question I've meant to ask people here who are scratch or close to scratch players and/or who've played tourament golf. What would you actually LIKE? If it were up to you to decide, today, would YOU decide to have everyone playing with a rolled-back, higher-spinning ball (and have related changes to grooves/equipment brought in as well)? Would YOU prefer playing golf that way? Would YOU do better in tournament play? Do YOU think that the GAME (in the broadest sense of the word and over the long term) would be the better for it?

Thanks
Peter

[Chuck Brown]

Several people make the point that for most of us, even middling courses are not "obsolete" thanks to equipment technology.

I think you are all correct.

This is a problem that is confined almost exclusively to elite-level players.  Much as I despise any form of "bifurcation,' the USGA is already headed, quietly, in that direction thanks to the new groove rule and the odd enforcement methods they have chosen.  To the USGA's credit, they say they are firmly opposed to any bifurcation.  The the USGA's shame, the new rule leads in that direction.  To the USGA's credit, it is a very mild and exceedingly clever and inoffensive kind of bifurcation.

But to most average recreational players, I say this to them about the Pro V era (and all solid mulitlayer urethane balls);  how much yardage have those balls given you?  Do you even know?  Is it even measurable?  The simple fact is, most recreational players don't even spring for $50+ boxes of Pro V's.  They buy cheaper balls, usually Surlyn- or other ionomer-cover balls.  If we banned Pro V's, tomorrow, the tour pros wouldn't know what to do.  For you and me, it wouldn't mean much of anything.

I think (as does Jack Nicklaus, I know) that there have been two problems in the Pro V era.  The first is the distance explosion for elite players.  The second is the expanding gap between eilite players and merely good players.  Nicklaus says that when he was in his prime, (and he was very, very long -- easily as long if not longer than Tiger in strict comparison to his peers) he still played a game that was within the same general parameters as other professionals, club pros, etc.  That is no longr true.  Now tour professionals, thanks to the dynamics of urethane balls and bigger driver heads, are just incomprehensibly long.  The game, and the game's great championship courses, are totally distorted.

I do not favor a ball rollback to go back to older equipment, retro designs, or some old way of playing.  But I do favor exploitation of the best new technology available to craft new ball specs that would close the gap I am talking about, and restore, for elite players, the shot values that have been lost at thousands of golf courses.

I think we need to address the elites because they are where the problem is.  I don't care much about the recreational players because they are not much of a problem.  But I think the notion of a single unified game played by one set of rules is essential to the spirit of golf.  (That'd make a dandy book title, wouldn't it?)

[Tom Huckaby]

Peter:

I'm not that close to a scratch (4.1 index) but I have played a lot of competitive golf over the years... although these days it's on a very very low level compared to many here.  So take my thoughts with an ocean of salt (if you take them at all... who you really need to hear from are Matt Cohn, Andrew Biggadike, Jamie Slonis, Jim Sullivan, etc.)....

I do think courses can be overpowered far too easily at the highest levels.  Not by me, but by many I play against.  The concept of a long iron into a par four hasn't existed for too many years.  Considering what they have to do to make courses difficult for such players (either insane length, stupidly narrow fairways, tricked-up greens), I do think a roll-back would be wise.  It wouldn't effect me at all; I'd still suck and get my ass kicked.  But it would make use of all clubs more viable, and I think that's a good thing.

I still don't know what to do for the remaining 98% (non-tournament) players though.  I honestly can't figure out if bifurcation is good or bad, and still look for wisdom there.


CHUCK:  Chuck - more great wisdom, many thanks.  Yours came up as I finished mine.  I do agree one set of rules is preferable.  I just also do worry about how a rollback will effect the recreational player.  I also don't understand this:

I do not favor a ball rollback to go back to older equipment, retro designs, or some old way of playing.  But I do favor exploitation of the best new technology available to craft new ball specs that would close the gap I am talking about, and restore, for elite players, the shot values that have been lost at thousands of golf courses.

How does this happen? How do you craft new ball specs that would close this gap? Can it be done?

[Garland Bayley]

...If it were up to you to decide, today, would YOU decide to have everyone playing with a rolled-back, higher-spinning ball (and have related changes to grooves/equipment brought in as well)? Would YOU prefer playing golf that way? Would YOU do better in tournament play? Do YOU think that the GAME (in the broadest sense of the word and over the long term) would be the better for it?

Thanks
Peter

I bet if you had tournaments requiring the use of high spin balls to compare against tournaments requiring ProV, half would do better in one and the other half would do better in the other.  Where are you OGA? And what happened to your spirit of experimentation?

Unless you had such tournaments you would only get uninformed opinions.

[Chuck Brown]

...
CHUCK: 
...
"I do not favor a ball rollback to go back to older equipment, retro designs, or some old way of playing.  But I do favor exploitation of the best new technology available to craft new ball specs that would close the gap I am talking about, and restore, for elite players, the shot values that have been lost at thousands of golf courses."

How does this happen? How do you craft new ball specs that would close this gap? Can it be done?

I don't know, very honestly.  But why not?  Why not have a "minimum" spin rate from a given test?  Why not craft specs with diminshing distance returns for swingspeeds above 115 mph? Or perhaps a steep falloff beyond 120 mph?

The perverse thing, Tom, and I am confident that you'll agree, is that the marketing of balls for tour players has resulted in millions of dollars spent on optimizing balls for tour players, whose choices in equipment are supposed to drive the marketing to recreational players.  "Adam Scott plays with the new Pro V1x!  Pick up yours, today!"  And that's slightly crazy.  If I were forced to play a tournament tomorrow, and I had to choose between using Adam Scott's clubs and balls, and Paula Creamer's clubs and clubs and balls, I'll take Paula's in an instant.  (Paula won recently with the new Bridgestone B-330 RX, a ball formulated for slower swing speeds.)

One thing that bothers me in all of this is that the USGA has spent lots of money and more than six years doing a detailed study of golf balls and they won't tell anybody what they've learned.  I think and awful lot is known that we haven't been told.  Very simply, if we can optimize golf shafts for different levels of players, we can probably do so for balls too.

[Charlie Goerges]

Have the $20/dozen golf balls experienced the same increase in distance as the top-end balls? In any event, I wonder how much worse my cheapies perform considering they live in the garage and are frozen/thawed dozens of times per year, and stay in play much longer than any tour ball.

[Tom Huckaby]

Chuck:  SOLD.  Many thanks.  That makes great sense and you made it understandable for me - no mean feat.

TH

[Peter Pallotta]

Garland - I think you misunderstood me, or I'm misunderstanding you. I'm asking only and precisely about personal preferences. I tried to phrase my questions so that there'd be nothing "scientific" or "universal" about the answers.  

Tom H - no need to take your answer with a grain of salt - it's exactly what I was hoping for. You're a good player and a tournament player, and I'm wondering if you (and others) would want to play with rolled-back equipment.  So, thanks

Peter

[Tom Huckaby]

Garland - I think you misunderstood me, or I'm misunderstanding you. I'm asking only and precisely about personal preferences. I tried to phrase my questions so that there'd be nothing "scientific" or "universal" about the answers.  

Tom H - no need to take your answer with a grain of salt - it's exactly what I was hoping for. You're a good player and a tournament player, and I'm wondering if you (and others) would want to play with rolled-back equipment.  So, thanks

Peter

Peter - well the grains are because while I may have once been each of those things, I am surely not any more... and even when I was it was at a level far far far lower than the truly great players I mentioned.

So consider that a comment from a low-level tournament player.

 

[Chuck Brown]

Have the $20/dozen golf balls experienced the same increase in distance as the top-end balls? In any event, I wonder how much worse my cheapies perform considering they live in the garage and are frozen/thawed dozens of times per year, and stay in play much longer than any tour ball.

Charlie, to be fair to the ball-makers, we should note that for pure rockin' distance, a Pinnacle from Walmart gives up nothing to a Pro V from Bob Ford's golf shop at Oakmont.  They both go as far, all other things being equal.  What the Pro V's do that is different is provide a very precise amoun of spin that elite players require, that was not previously available with other solid-core balls.
In one sense, the tour pros were always able to hit driver as far as in the Pro V era, had they opted for Top-Flite Tours, etc.  The Pro V era brought "distance" balls to the tour.  By giving them the short-game spin they required, and that Pinnacles and Top-Flites never could...

Indeed, as many here know, it is widely believed that an unspoken goal on the part of the USGA is to encourage a kind of self-imposed ball rollback, via the new iron-groove regulations.  The alleged unspoken goal is to get players to demand that their sponsor companies give them higher-spinning balls, to make up for the loss of spin when their u-groove wedges are taken away from them.

[Charlie Goerges]

Chuck,

I had no idea that this was the case. If the old Pinnacles and Ultras were roughly equivalent in distance to the ProV1s, then my increased length (or more accurately, the fact that I haven't lost as much I should have) is not because of the ball, but because my game hasn't deteriorated as much as I'd thought.

You just made my day!

Charlie

[Chuck Brown]

Chuck,

I had no idea that this was the case. If the old Pinnacles and Ultras were roughly equivalent in distance to the ProV1s, then my increased length (or more accurately, the fact that I haven't lost as much I should have) is not because of the ball, but because my game hasn't deteriorated as much as I'd thought.

You just made my day!

Charlie

No charge, Charlie!

The main difference between your game now and 15 years ago is that then you were probably hitting a driver with a 185cc head, mounted on a 127g shaft that was 43.5" long.  Nowadays, we'd call that a 3-wood.

You current driver is probably something like 420-460cc, on a 45-46" shaft that weighs 55-85 g.

If anybody wonders why Hale Irwin, at age 60-something with an aching old back, can hit the ball farther than the twenty-something Hale Irwin who was fresh out the defensive backfield with the Colorado Buffaloes, that is it right there.  And, Hale will add, a urethane ball...

[Garland Bayley]

...
In one sense, the tour pros were always able to hit driver as far as in the Pro V era, had they opted for Top-Flite Tours, etc. 
...

Just a nit here. You mean the TopFlite XL and similar. The TopFlite Tour is the technology that Titleist stole to create the Pro V and has recently lost the patent suit over it.

[Chuck Brown]

Garland - That was a nit that was exquisitely well-picked; you are entirely correct.  And I've little doubt that I was subconsiously thinking of the Callaway-Acushnet patent kerfuffle when I wrote.
I'm obliged to you.

[SL_Solow]

All the emphasis on the impact on the impact of a ball change on particular individuals misses the point.  The question is how does the change in the ball effect the game?  I have always thought that games reach a point where they are mature; a proper balance exists in the various elements that allows the game to maintain both current interest and continuity with its past.  Minor tweaks to the rules and equipment may be desireable but the basics of the game remain the same.

Baseball is a relatively mature game.  Once the "live" ball was introduced and stabilized within a range (after the overly live ball of the early 30's) the basic of the game have stayed the same, notwithstanding larger gloves etc.  Maintaining wooden bats has been a key.

Tennis is a sport that has suffered by allowing too much innovation.  Few would argue that the current game is as interesting as it was 20, 30 or 40 years ago.  I marvel at Federer's skills just as I marvelled at Laver's, but the current rackets, by making it too easy to generate power and spin from the backcourt, have eliminated much of the variety and strategy that made the game fun to watch.  I suggest that in modern society, when the game is less interesting at the highest levels, participation suffers.

So what of golf?  There have always been players who hit it further than the rest starting with Young Tom to Ted Ray to Jimmmy Thompson to George Bayer to Jack Nicklaus etc.  But there was always a great balance in the game.  The tension between the "bomber" and the "technician" made for great theater.  When a player combined both attributes, he had a chance to become one of the all time greats.

I fear that the combination of the new equipment, particularly drivers with larger more forgiving heads and the new balls which curve less has changed the equation.  There is less precision required so the incentive to hit it hard is increased.  The advantage gained from the greater distance overwhelms any advantage derived from shotmaking, particularly when shotmaking is limited by the ball.  The proof is in the prevalence of bombers in the upper echelons of the tour.  Compare the stylesof todays leaders to those of the wound ball period.  There is less balance today.  In short, it is a different game.  The question is, which of the "games" is better.  I prefer a more balanced game and thus a rollback to a spinnier ball, unlikely as it may be, would be welcome.

As far as the impact on the average player, I suspect he would find the spectator sport more interesting.  As noted, greater spectator interest generally creates more interest in playing.  Since average handicaps have not changed much, I further suspect the impact on the average player's game would be minimal.  But for those who really need to feel that they can hit it longer and straighter, we could have a competition ball vs a noncompetition ball. That would be contrary to the traditions of the game but it would be possible.

Finally the suggestion that those who favor stabilizing the game are "anti-progress" is almost too simplistic to answer.  Tools such as computers have objectives that are measurable.  There is no significant negative to improving the tool so that it performs faster and more accurately.  In golf, there is no objective benefit from making it easier to shoot a lower score if in so doing the interest and pleasure derived from either shooting that score or observing it is lessened.  I return to my initial thought about the "maturity " of the game.  If the game is essentially mature, there is no need to change it significantly simply because we can.

[John Kavanaugh]

New balls can be worked just as well as the old ones. ...

When you make it to the tour, we will be more willing to take your word for it. However, since you contradict most of the playing professionals including Tiger, we will ignore your misunderstanding of the facts.
 

Garland,

I am impressed that you have taken the position that what is good for the pros is good for the game and the opinion of the ball striking of an aging 80's shooter does not matter.

[Garland Bayley]

Thank you Shel.

[Garland Bayley]

John,

I prefer facts to opinions.

[Brent Hutto]

I have no objection to new ball specifications in the Rules that may the ball carry less far or spin more or whatever it is the dinosaurs think is appropriate. It will affect me hardly at all and may forestall the inevitable day that my club decides to spend a fortune to lengthen the course by 400 yards that we don't have space for.

But anyone who think it will have more than a tiny, marginal effect on the way elite players play the game is being very silly. And that includes Mark Brooks.

[John Kavanaugh]

Garland,

Show me the facts that the modern ball does not move to a degree that a 6 handicapper with the ability to hit either a fade or a draw does not have an advantage over a six handicapper that can only hit one type of shot.  The fact is that if a poor golfer can curve a modern ball than a great golfer can curve a modern ball.  If one swing is unintentional or not is moot.

[JESII]

SL,

Good post.

I have always been curious about the comment/statistic that the average handicap is the same therefore the game must not be any easier for the masses...Obviously this "average handicap" includes novice players that were not in the equation for the first reading to determine the "average" so they artificially inflate the number.

I would be surprised if the 18 handicapper from 15 years ago that regularly plays 10 or more rounds per year does not have a lower handicap today.

As to spectator interest...which I agree is the ultimate measuring stick...I have frequently argued on here that the architecture and conditioning of the golf course can accomplish everything we would like in terms of creativity...frankly, if someone can watch the television and tell the difference between 320 and 275 yards on a tee shot I would call BS...even in person for 98% of the people yelling "You the Man...".  to me, it's much more interesting to see these guys try to figure out how to stop the ball on a firm green...whether by perfectly positioning the drive or by creating a cool shape into the green the will work better than the bomb straight at the pin.

I am a believer that the technology these companies are using to find new alternatives for distance will find a way to hit the old balata the same distance these guys today hit it...so why not create obstacles that reward the player better for positioning that distance?