I find it funny that while we talk about out of control technology, we see nothing wrong with the evolution from feathery to gutta percha to wound golf balls. Or from hickory shafts to steel to graphite.
Folks, there is so much technology involved in fitting golf clubs today it makes your head spin. Shaft weight, shaft material, shaft bend point, shaft flex, head weight, total club weight, head material, possible face insert material, grip weight, grip size, driver spin rates, golf ball spin rates, and I could go on. Changing the golf ball would make a difference, but not a huge one. People would just go to a lower loft, higher bend point shaft. Not to mention, Titleist and Callaway would still find a way to make the golf ball launch with different spin rates depending on the club, same as they do now.
How many courses were made obsolete when we switched from Hickory to steel? From solid wood heads to wood heads with face inserts? I don't see us wrangling about those changes, just about what has come recently. Seems to me to be a normal evolution of technology.
Ahhh, John. Good points all! Deserving of an equally good reply, meeting your points.
I don't oppose all technology. I like technology that tends to make the game better, more affordable, more accessible, more [small-d] democratic, and, quite possibly, "fairer."
These are all value judgments, to be sure. But let's do some specifics.
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The featherie, gutty, and other early balls: Good riddance to them. They were uneven in quality and so terribly expensive that they drove people away form the game.
Hickory shafts: Beautiful, and they encouraged a certain kind of beautiful, flowing swing. (See, e.g., Hagen.) But hickory was expensive, hard to work with, ureliable and less long-wearing.
Steel shafts: A wonderful invention that substantially reduced the cost of a set of clubs. Easy to work with, esay for clubbuilders to design around.
Persimmon: A beautiful wood. Nice to look at. Badly susceptible to moisture, swelling, breakage, requiring semi-regular refininshing. Notoriously inconsistent, such that the great players hunted for years to find a good persimmon driver and then played with it 'til it broke.
Metal heads (the Taylor Made 'Pittsburgh Persimmon' and 'Burner.': A fabuolous invention for the common man. Now, heads could be made in one's basement without pinning, whipping, etc. Just a shaft, a head and some epoxy. Consistent quality, bulletproof resistance to weather and breakage. Cheaper than persimmon.
Composite shafts: Eh. Another new expense, ennabling lighter, longer drivers. Perhaps they helped some people with joint disabilities, arthritis, etc. Not a disaster, but not much of a gain for the sport based on my cireteria. It didn't take long for the era of $1000 shafts to arrive.
Titanium alloy heads: Highly debatable. More expensive, for sure, than steel. Significantly so. And harder to work on (marginally, in that it is hard to drill or bend titanium). We would not have the era of 300+cc driver heads without Ti. Do they help recreational players more? Or the elite players? I don't know. I'm not thilled, either way.
Surlyn-cover golf balls: A wonderful invention. Balls that spun less, were less prone to cutting, and were cheaper to produce. A win-win-win, but a development that needed to be approached and controlled very carefully, in terms of overall distance standards.
Urethane-cover multilayer golf balls: Too much of a good thing. More expensive. Longer -- a lot longer -- for the best players, while recreational players saw no real advantage over their previous Surlyn balls.
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So there, John. Some technology good, some bad. And yes, they are all value judgments. I don't oppose all technology; I welcome a good bit of technology. (Remember Bob Jones' advocacy that the most important technological advancement in golf in his lifetime was nothing that was in his golf bag; it was the invention of the modern greens mower.)