Is it not a big deal Dustin Johnson hit 3w/6i on the 18th green at PB?

[Garland Bayley]

... it violates every law of physics with which I'm familiar.
...

What you don't understand is that you need multiple different applications of the laws of physics to explain the action of the modern ball. If the ball were made of a single consistent solid substance, direct application of single laws of physics would give you answers. If the ball were made thusly, there would be no need to have this discussion. Instead the ball has been tricked up. You now need to consider additional things like the friction between layers as they slide around each other.

[Jason Thurman]

Brent I think it would be better to limit distance, as I watch normal golfers on my course everyday distance does not really help golfers to score.It does allow them to hit it deeper in the woods though.If we keep this up courses are going to need to be longer and wider.I have seen 30 Hcp that can produce similar speeds as Dustin.

None of this is true.

Step away from the keyboard son. You don't know what you are saying. Of course what Lyndell is writing is true. It apparently just does not coincide with your close minded miniature imagination.

Umm, Garland, even Lyndell admitted that he embellished. So no, it wasn't true, as anyone whose mind operates in the same rational plane in which reality is located could see right away. 30 handicappers don't swing the club 130 mph. Only you and Skip Bayless would try to defend something that ludicrous, and while I'm sure it's fun for you, it's also why you have no credibility whatsoever when you post about this topic.

As for your "multiple different applications of the laws of physics to explain the action of the modern ball," I'm not interested in your conjecture and hypothesizing about how the golf ball works. Pat said an experiment was done. I asked him to cite it, because the purported result of said experiment was so wild that I can't take it at face value without something to back it up. If such a study can be corroborated, my mind may change completely on the topic of more tightly restricting the golf ball's flight characteristics. But not surprisingly, he can't produce a citation of the experiment. If you can produce a citation of the experiment, I'll be glad to read it. But I have no interest in reading while you make up nonsense.

I'm really just trying to save you time, since this is usually the point in the conversation when you start drawing things in Microsoft Paint and submitting them as scientific evidence. I'm with Brent in my fatigue for the boilerplate arguments, but I'd love to read some real science on this matter.

[jeffwarne]

Jesus, we're all just posting the same old boilerplate from the last 15 times this topic has been discussed.

I'm taking the pledge. Not a word from me on this topic again. Never, ever.

Never say never.
at least not twice in the same week

[Craig Sweet]

I think if you asked DJ how he hits the ball so far he would tell you its all the time spent in the weight room, perfecting a swing to match the conditioning, and finding the equipment to match his swing.  So many posting here make it sound as if the equipment manufacturers handed him a club and a ball and said "here ya go, have at it".  If hitting the ball long was simply a matter of the club and ball we would all be hitting driver/five iron on the par 5's.

[Garland Bayley]

... 30 handicappers don't swing the club 130 mph. ...

It is very easy for 30 handicappers to swing the club 130 mph. There are innumerable athletes that are more athletic than Dustin, that will generate that much club speed. Getting their handicap below 30 takes time. You can't break the 30 handicap barrier by hitting it 360 yards and then four and five putting greens.

Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle were quite famous for hitting the ball farther than any professional golfer could, but never being able to put together much of an overall golf game.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Garland,

Surprisingly, we agree.

Many mid to high handicap golfers can generate high swing speeds.

I have a good friend of mine, a great guy, who's 60 and routinely hits it 300 when he swings within himself.

When he tries to swing harder/faster, I sound the alarm for cars and kids within the vicinity of the golf course.

[Bryan Izatt]

Did anyone notice that DJ led the field in average driving distance that week at something like 311 yards?  And, that NOBODY else in the entire field average above 300 yards?   Do you suppose he has breached some new technological barrier to exceed the field by such a wide margin?  Or, is he just a freak of golf nature?

[Bryan Izatt]

David,

Some pages back you said:

Setting aside your made up numbers, you seem to be looking for some sort of equity between swing speed and distance achieved.  I don't think that this currently exists in reality.   I think that, if each group is using the most efficient ball for their swing speed, then a incremental increase in swing speed the low end is actually worth less distance gained than the same incremental increase at the high end of the swing speed spectrum.

Do you have any reference to a credible source that would demonstrate that?  It is contrary to any study I have seen so far.

IIRC you used to say that the distance/swing speed slope of the modern ball was greater than the slope of the Balata balls.  Is your statement above related to that position or are you comparing two current balls for for your "groups".  Either way, do you have some experimental proof of either.

Just as a side note, I've recently been on a simulator with a friend who is 62, but who is a long hitting freak of nature.  His ball speeds are around 162 mph, which is sort of middle of the pack tour speed.  He is, of course, somewhat erratic, but not off the course erratic.  Anyway, I had him hit a ProvV1x  and he consistently hit it 162 mph +/- 2 mph.  I then had him hit my one remaining 15 year old Titleist Tour Balata ball (without telling him what it was).  His first hit was 167 mph.  His second was 157 and his third was 161 mph.  He said he liked the ball - probably because it was softer and it felt like he was crushing it.

I was somewhat surprised that the initial ball speeds were comparable.  There was no spin monitor, but it's likely that the spin rate was higher with the Balata ball.  One wonders if you could optimize the launch angle and spin rate if the Balata would go just as far as the ProV1x?

 

[DMoriarty]

Jim, my point regarding the ProV1x is that the ball does not benefit the average player.  Doing away with it would have no impact on most golfers.  It is one example of an aspect of the new technology which only provides a relative advantage to the longest hitters, and regulation could focus on that aspect of the game, and thus not make the game less fun for your other 150 golfers.

While I agree with you that only doing away with the ProV1x would not solve much, I disagree with you when you assert that long hitters like Dustin Johnson not be adversely impacted if they could no longer play such balls.  They play the ball for a reason.  Somewhere in the back threads there is a graph showing the year over year distance gain of those who switched to the ProV1x when it first came out.  If those golfers could have achieved the same results with the ProV1 through optimization, then why didn't weren't they?  Was it another strange conspiracy, like the one Brent suggests?  
______________________________________________

Brent,

You've created this weird revisionist history where for decade after decade, the best golfers had been suffering under a horrible disadvantage of not being able to fully maximize their strength, as if the game at its core was inherently unfair to the likes of Nicklaus, and Jones, and Norman, or any every other long hitter who ever played before the advent of these new balls.  You act is if the game somehow owed them another 30 or 40 yards off the tee just to even things out!  

Well I don't buy it. I think the game worked pretty well before, and more importantly I think the architecture work well.  Long hitters like Nicklaus, Palmer, Jones, Ray, etc. have always been justly rewarded. There was nothing unfair to them when the equipment didn't allow them to swing with reckless abandon and hit it 320+.    And, most importantly in this context, they fit on the same courses as the rest of us.

[Bryan Izatt]

Patrick,

What you're not seeing is that the manufacturers designed a ball that disadvantages the low swing speed hitter while benefiting the high speed swing hitter.

.......................

The manufacturers deliberatgely (sic) developed balls that would go farther for those with higher swing speeds.

.................................

NO, it's not, because the guy who swung at 70 mph, who now swings at 90 mph, a 28.6 % increase is not getting the same distance benefit as a guy who swung at 100 mph who now swings at 120 mph, a 20 % increase, because the ball was speciifcally designed to only or disproportionaly (sic) benefit the 120 mph hitter.

You seem to have forgotten the USGA 2006 Quintavalla (and reiterated in 2011) study that proved that the "disproportionate" gain was and is a myth.

Here are a few quotes to remind you.

One opinion often accepted as conventional wisdom is that modern golf balls used on the PGA Tour give an unfair distance advantage to players with very high swing speeds. The thinking is that golfers with very fast swing speeds (for example, 115-plus mph) have gained a disproportionate amount of distance because modern golf balls only get "activated" when they're compressed at very high swing speeds. Another belief is that ball aerodynamics also result in disproportionately greater distance increases for those with very fast swing speeds.

What the Science Says: 

In short, there is no extra distance "bonus" for high swing speeds. This is true for balls used on the PGA Tour, and all others as well. In fact, distance does not even increase in a straight line (see Figure 1): there are diminishing returns at higher swing speeds – just the opposite of the popular misconception. To be sure, hitting the ball faster means it goes farther; it's just that you don't get quite as much bang for the buck at the highest speeds.

Moreover, when a ball compresses more, it actually becomes less efficient. To show this, the USGA tested the “coefficient of restitution” or COR (which measures how efficiently impact energy gets turned into ball speed) at speeds from 90 mph (typical for a male amateur golfer) to well over 120 mph (the fastest PGA Tour player swing speed averages less than 125). 

The result is that the COR for golf balls goes down as clubhead speed goes up (see Figure 3). Tests have proven repeatedly that the energy “boost" at Tour-level speeds is a myth: balls are actually less effective at translating energy into distance at higher swing speeds.

After the ball leaves the clubface, the combination of speed and trajectory angle, along with two aerodynamic forces – "lift" (which keeps the ball in the air) and "drag" (which slows the ball down) determine how far the ball will go.   

The USGA has tested the aerodynamic properties of several thousand golf balls, including all models currently used on the PGA Tour, and balls with speeds of more than 195 mph. As scientists predict, both of these aerodynamic forces on the golf ball rise significantly with ball speed. Positive lift force, which makes the ball fly, increases with ball speed, though there is a limit to how much is helpful; too much makes the ball balloon. Unfortunately, drag force also increases dramatically with ball speed; drag is the enemy of ball distance, especially for golfers with fast swings.

All together, this explains the diminishing returns with additional club speed seen in Figure 3.

Here is some Trackman data from thesandtrap.com that shows optimal carry distances for different swing speeds and angles of attack.  If you look at the different swing speeds for the same angle of attack (say 0*) you'll see that the difference in carry distance is more or less uniform across the spectrum of swing speeds.



Now, if you were to be moronic enough to compare a 90 mph swing with a -5* angle of attack with a 105 mph swing and a +5* angle of attack, rather than the same two with the same angle of attack, you'd get a distance gain of 72 yards vs a gain of 48 yards.  Methinks this optimization stuff is as much a contributor to the increased distances as the physical makeup of the ball is.

Here are some other images from iseekgolf.com that might enlighten you about launch angles and spin rates.

[Bryan Izatt]

Patrick,

In fact, I believe that an experiment with a particular ball showed that the harder (mph) it was hit, the less it spun..

Wrong.  See the Quintavalla study.  It's the other way around.

 

[Morgan Clawson]

DJ just hit Driver/Pitching wedge on #18 at Riviera 

[Doug Siebert]

... USGA could have prevented that from happening with the stroke a pen but they declined to do so for their own reasons that we can only speculate about.

The USGA has stated that they declined to do so, because they would bankrupt certain ball companies by doing so. That is why they held off. Whether it was a good choice is something to speculate.

That's bull.  How would it bankrupt "certain ball companies" to have put restrictions in place on how far the ball goes?  There would just as much innovation as there was otherwise, engineers would just be dealing with a different set of constraints.

Golfers don't buy new balls because they go further than old balls.  They choose new balls over other new balls due to whatever differences there are between the choices, real or imagined.  But they need and buy new balls either way, until someone invents a ball you can whistle at and it'll come to you from the woods or water.

[DMoriarty]

Bryan,

You asked me about a post above where I offered my opinion ("I think") about the various efficiencies at different swing speeds.  I don't have a direct study to back that up, but I think we have enough information to support the opinion.    But to clarify, I am not talking about what  happens with one particular ball.  If I remember the test results from that old USGA study (and basic physics) then the slope will flatten toward the top of the curve.   And I'd like to have the distance curves for other technologies including older technologies.  But we do have the USGA study and various info from patent applications and such, and it seems that: 1) Different balls have different distance curves (distance/mph) and 2) These curves sometimes cross.  (If they didn't then one ball would necessarily work best for all golfers at all swing speeds.)  Where those curves cross we have a situation which I described in the post above; the ball with the flatter slope is the better ball for slower swingers up to the point of intersection, but one that produces less distance gain per incremental increase in swing speed. Above the intersection is the opposite. The ball with the steeper slope is the better ball with those with swing speeds above the intersection, and each incremental gain would necessarily produce more distance gain relative to the ball with the flatter curve.  Otherwise they wouldn't cross.    

So where do I have it wrong?  Is it your position that a single ball produces optimum distance at every single swing speed for the entire spectrum? If not, I presume you agree that the curves must necessarily cross?  If they do cross, then isn't it the case that better ball for the lower swing speeds will always have the flatter slope at and near the point where the lines cross?  



Haven't looked at your last post yet.

[Michael Moore]

Besides, do you really want golf to be like basketball, where only the physical freaks excel?

I am a sedentary overweight middle-aged schlub, I swing at my ProV1 at 110MPH, I excel at golf, and there are tens of thousands of other golfers like me out there.

[JESII]

David,

Is your question/theory; we could take two golfers, an average player with 90mph swing speed and an elite player with say 120 mph swing speed, both hitting Titleist Balata's and comparing to ProV1's, the average player would not gain as much distance advantage as the elite player?

Just trying to clarify.

[DMoriarty]

David,

Is your question/theory; we could take two golfers, an average player with 90mph swing speed and an elite player with say 120 mph swing speed, both hitting Titleist Balata's and comparing to ProV1's, the average player would not gain as much distance advantage as the elite player?

Just trying to clarify.

Generally, yes. I tried that experiment some years back using a launch monitor and a low handicap consistent golfer with a swing speed in the mid-90s, only I compared the ProV1x to the Balata.  Fifty Balls, 25 with each ball, interspersed.  Threw out the worst five of each.   On average the balatas flew 3-4 yards further, even though they were at least six years old.  

[JESII]

David,

You do agree that this test doesn't reveal much of anything at all, right?

[DMoriarty]

It reveals that over 25 tries each this particular golfer didn't hit the ProV1x as far on average as he could hit a Balata.  This result is consistent with my experience with the ProV1x, and my observations of other golfers.  That ball doesn't fly very far for golfers who do not have high swing speeds, relative to other golf balls.   Do you doubt this?

What do you think?    "We could take two golfers, an average player with 90mph swing speed and an elite player with say 120 mph swing speed, both hitting Titleist Balata's and comparing to ProV1's, the average player would not gain as much distance advantage as the elite player?"

[JESII]

David,

I don't doubt that your 95mph imaginary friend may have carried the balata further than the X...nor do I doubt Bryan's imaginary friend with probably 115 swing speed had equivalent ball velocity off the two. Under a great deal of amateur driver specifications those numbers will result in longer carry distance for the balata than the X as well.

Neither of them tell us anything about your theory.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Patrick,

In fact, I believe that an experiment with a particular ball showed that the harder (mph) it was hit, the less it spun..

Wrong.  See the Quintavalla study.  It's the other way around.

That's not the study I was refering to

 

[JESII]

As you so frequently say...provide the evidence. Many of us are curious to read about it.

[DMoriarty]

I don't want to drag anyone else into this, but my "imaginary friend" is not imaginary.   I disagree with you about whether such stats tell us anything about my theory.   

Are you going to answer your own question?

[Patrick_Mucci]

As you so frequently say...provide the evidence. Many of us are curious to read about it.

Jim,

My recollection was from a conversation that I had with the Chairman of the OGA Ball Committee last November.
I'm hoping to see him in March or April and will inquire further.

[JESII]

My test would be better than yours...but the truth is, the degree of equipment optimization for the two guinea pigs has a ton to do with these results.


Pat...baited breath!