David,
Do you have any scientific study that has shown that the new clubs that are being pushed down golfers throats has improved any of their scores?
Do you have any scientific study that has shown that the new clubs that are being pushed down golfers throats has improved their swings?
Good one about the foundations. I forgot about them. However, that is not a feature unique to golfers, the current sum of whom will never approach what Warren Buffet gives back.
I'm sorry, but shooting better scores (if they even do) does not make one a better golfer. If you take away their "game improvement" clubs, and give them back their old clubs and they still shoot better scores, then you would have an argument. If I put a basket homing device in a basketball (e.g., perhaps magnetized) and start shooting a better field goal percentage, am I a better basketball player than I was before?
I'm the other David (fatter, and not quite as good a golfer), but I'll chime in....
I don't think we're looking at improvement in scores the right way. I do think, without question, golfers have gotten "better" due to a longer ball and better, more consistent equipment that allows them to hit higher, longer, and (generally) more accurate shots, but with a couple caveats:
1) Improvement in scores alone is difficult to figure because courses have gotten much, much longer, and much, much tougher. Even if the ball goes farther, that does not make up for the added length. A 7200 yard course (everything else being equal) plays much, much tougher than a 6,000 yard course even if the ball goes 20% farther today. If you don't know why this is, then raise your hand and I'll enlighten you. A hint: it has to do with shot dispersion and the way that distance affects one's ability to hit one's target.
To put it another way: Is there anyone who doubts that if no new courses had been built since the 1970's that scores would not be lower today, on average, than they were in the 1970's?
2) There has been a marked decrease in scores at the
low end of the handicap spectrum. Do I have proof of this? No, but I am virtually certain that it exists if someone was willing to do the research.
Anecdotal examples:
Course records: It is rare today to find a course record that has not been set in the last 5 years.
The course record at my old home club (6,570, par 72, 72.0/132) back in the 80's and 90's was 8-under 64. That score was shot exactly three times in about 30 years from 1967 when the club opened to the mid-90's.
Then, starting in about 1995, when the ball started to explode and large, light, easy to hit drivers hit the market, it was beaten or tied repeatedly. Several times a year someone would shoot 64 (I was one of them, and I'm
not that good of a golfer) to where it now stands at 62, which has been shot at least three times that I know of. There have now been too many 63's and 64's to count. I know this is one course, so it's not exactly a "study," but I also know that this story is not even remotely unique. I'd be curious to know of all the golf courses that existed prior to the mid 90's, how many of them have course records set in the last 15 years or so since the ball exploded and larger, light, easy to hit drivers hit the market. I would venture to say that it is 100%.
Everywhere I go I inquire as to course records, and it's rare for the course record to not have been shot by some local mini-tour pro or web.com pro or college or high school player in the very recent past. Rounds of 59 on legitimate, over 6,000 yard golf courses, are no longer anything amazing to hear of. The world of golf went over 100 years with only a handful of rounds of 59 on par 70 or greater golf courses, and now they happen so frequently on minitours and in casual rounds that they rarely raise an eyebrow. Yes there are more golfers now, but these ridiculously low scores have all been bunched since since the ball exploded and drivers got longer, lighter, and more accurate.
2) Number of golfers with +indexes. When I first took up the game, it was rare for any one club to have more than one or two golfers with indexes below zero. I used to keep track of this kind of thing because I was committed to becoming a scratch golfer from the day I first picked up the game. Everywhere I went, I would look at the "index sheet" and invariably there would be a couple players at +0.4, +0.8, and maybe one or two players at +1 or even +1.5.
Today, many, many clubs I go to have multiple players in the + category, and often players with low indexes in the +2 to +4 range, which was
extremely rare back in the 1980's.
Now the curious thing about that is that even if indexes on the low end are going down (which I highly suspect and believe could be proven if someone had access to the data and would take the time), that would not, necessarily, correlate with lower
average scores, since courses have gotten longer and harder and course ratings have increased correspondingly (especially the course ratings of courses that low-handicap players tend to play).
So, in short:
If scores have stayed the same, but courses have gotten longer and more difficult in the last 30 years (anyone who wants to dispute this with me, please, please bring it on!
) then that means that golfers have, actually, gotten better, even though their actual scores might not show it.
Much more to say on this topic, but there's probably enough "bait" in this post to bring on the old-timers....