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

[Patrick_Mucci]

Look at how low that ball is teed

Impossible to get under it and launch it

[JESII]

David,

Sorry to be short but I'm on my phone in a conference...are there any side by side tests?

[DMoriarty]

Jim as you know we don't have side-by-side tests of balls from 25 years ago and the balls of today. When we have come up with such tests involving 15 year old balls, they've been called into question by the age of the balls.  So we have to make due with what we have.

Chances are you are going to be able to pour cold water on any test or comparison anyone can come up with, but at some point we have to be reasonable about the whole thing.   You think the old balls flew just as far as the new balls, but where is your study backing that up?   Where are the patent applications indicating that the Top Flite carried over 276 yards with 109 mph swing speed?  Where are the applications indicating the balls had a total distance of over 300 yards at a 109 mph swing?  I've looked at dozens of patent applications trying to find such examples and haven't found anything close.  If anything, the example I posted is on the high end of distances.  

If you come up with anything I'd be glad to consider it.  But as it is, it seems that this legend that a 1980's era Top Flite flew just as far as a 2013 Pro V1x is unsupported.  

[DMoriarty]

Bryan, regarding the Nike patent application, a the smash factor was very low at the low end and the high end, but in line at 110 mph swing speed, which is strange.  Do you suppose the Nike driver they used is crap at low speeds and very high speeds, but okay at 110?

As for the mention of the ProV1 in the example, but then the ProV1x in the conclusion, I think both are referring to the same ball as the numbers are the same.   Don't know which ball.

As for your chart comparing Quintavalla with the Nike experiment, obviously your curve is wrong for the Nike example, as I don't think it was losing distance at the top end.  More importantly,based on Quintavalla I think we have been assuming a straight line slope for balls below 90, but I don't think we should be.  We don't know what happens below 90 mph with those balls.  (If you try to back all the way down to zero mph, you can see that it can't be linear all the way down.)   It could be that there is a big drop from 90 to 80 like in the Nike example, only not as severe.  We just don't know, so I am not sure we should be making assumptions.

As for Rice's 46 yards difference, I am not as skeptical as you are.  Rice's numbers for the Balata are somewhat in line with what I'd expect from various old patent applications.  Maybe a bit low, but not crazy low.  And his ProV1x numbers are in line with what I'd expect from someone with a ProV1x at around 110 mph.   So maybe 46 yards is high, but I am not skeptical of the fact that he hit the ProV1 and ProV1x substantially farther than the Balata.  

Looking at the chart, you friend hit the Balata somewhere in the high 270's but his ball speed was around 7 mph higher, was it not?  If so, then the two numbers for the Balata are comparable, are they not?

[Garland Bayley]

...
So was there a difference between balatas and modern balls in this regard?  Titleist balatas had a liquid center, surrounded by a lot of rubber windings.  I don't know the density of the windings compared to the overall average density of the ball, but it is probably not as dense as solid rubber.  The liquid center was almost certainly less dense than the overall ball (unless it used a heavy liquid like oil)  That would mean the ball was probably lighter in the center and heavier in the cover, which would transfer less spin from impact, but lose less spin during flight.  I have no idea of the density of the various layers in a modern ball, but it is reasonable to assume that they are not of identical density.  Is it denser in the center or less dense in the center?  I have no idea.  Maybe those digging into the patents saw something about the densities of the different layers?
...

Your intuition is the opposite of mine on this. I have always assumed (without really thinking about it) that the liquid center was the heaviest. However, since the balls didn't float, you are probably correct. Oil would float, so what surrounded it must be heavier.

[DMoriarty]

Regarding the flight path of the old balls, I was fiddling around with the flightscope application and it looks like that flat trajectory followed by the rising shot starts to happen at around 4000-4500 spin for fast swing speeds. The application seems to be geared to the new balls.  Don't know how it would react if geared to the old balls.

[Paul_Turner]

The bottom line for balata ball vs new ball is that the gain from the ball is some fraction of the total gain.

Some fraction of the 28 yards for PGA tour and 22 for LPGA for the past 20 odd years.

Given the tech changes for the driver:  Spring Like Effect, center of gravity/launch optimization, larger more forgiving heads, possibly lighter longer shafts.  I can't see how the ball accounts for more than 50% of the gain,  I'd estimate 35-40% is due to the ball....about 8-10 yards.

Plus you can somewhat date these changes.  For the PGA tour, the 20 or so yards gained from 1992 - 2000 are mostly due to the driver/shaft and the subsequent 8 yards from 2000-2003 (and now) are mostly due to the three piece ball.

[JESII]

David,

Do you have a test that gives 276 carry and 300+ total distance for a 109mph swing speed for any ball?

[DMoriarty]

Paul,

Looking at tour averages is enticing because they are available and because the numbers are jarring in and of themselves.  But the 30 yard increase in tour averages doesn't necessarily provide a complete snapshot of what has gone on with the equipment, even at the high end.   Watch any tournament these days it it becomes apparent that many of these players are so long these days that that they aren't even hitting driver on holes that used to be a driver for almost everyone in the field.   

Also, as for you not being able to "see how the ball accounts for more than 50% of the gain," do you happen to have anything more solid than that?

[DMoriarty]

I don't have many numbers from the applications for the newer balls one way or another.   The ones I do have are pretty screwy.  See the Nike app for example. 

In the DT example, the ball carried 250 and total distance was 268.5.   Do you really think that, at a comparable swing speed (around 110), that the ProV1x would only carry 250?  

[JESII]

With the same 1990 metal wood with a COR of .78...yes, or very close to it.

I read a link that I'll connect shortly that attributes 4.2 yards per .01 increase in COR from .78 to .83 per the1998 change.

[DMoriarty]

With the same 1990 metal wood with a COR of .78...yes, or very close to it.

I read a link that I'll connect shortly that attributes 4.2 yards per .01 increase in COR from .78 to .83 per the1998 change.

While I look forward to reading it, I don't see how it could possibly impact what we have been discussing here, because we weren't working off of club head speed, but rather an initial ball speed of 239 fps.    That is post collision.

Also, when considering COR keep in mind that according to Quintavalla, at high speed COR is diminishing for the modern (206) tour balls.  At 125 mph, the COR is at about .80.  (He notes that this was not a characteristic of the wound balls.)

[Paul_Turner]

David

I think the tour average data is representative.   Unless shown otherwise, I don't believe that players are hitting 3 woods significantly more on the holes used for the average driving stats, than they were in the past 20 years.

There is data in the book I referenced earlier on club optimization that break  it down but I don't have it to hand.  It also breaks down how much the shaft length/weight helps.  The book was published slightly before the trampoline effect was optimized but that's not hard to factor in with a simple COR increase.

We also know roughly the timing of tech adoption and can draw reasonable conclusions there too.  If the ball wasn't changing significantly through the 1990s then the gains are due to the club and other factors.

Of the 28 yards, how much would you attribute to the 3 piece ball?

[JESII]

David,

The Tour Edition patent application (and maybe other sources that I cannot recall) used 239 fps but they didn't use the ProV. I was under the impression you were primarily focused on the change in distance for Elite versus Average golfers from some time pre 2000 to today.

According to an expert clubmaker, the increase in COR could have lead to an increase of 21 yards. Link posted here:

http://www.golfclub-technology.com/coefficient-of-restitution.html

[DMoriarty]

Paul, you are of course free to "believe" whatever you want.   But, with all respect, please let's not muddy the discussion by pretending that your proposed 28 yard measure precisely captures the exact yardage gain due to technological advancements over the last 20 years.  You know better than I do that drawing such an exact correlation just isn't scientifically sound for a whole host of reasons, only one of which I mentioned above. Trying to shift the burden to me to disprove it doesn't change that.

Had we followed your methodology after 2011, then technological advancement would have been measured at around 32 or 33 yards. Has technology regressed by 4-5 yards over the past few years? Of course not.

Regarding the 1990's, hadn't some players already moved away from wound balls to three piece balls before the Pro V1? I seem to recall Bridgestone having such a ball.

You ask, "Of the 28 yards, how much would you attribute to the 3 piece ball?"

As I said above, I don't accept that the 28 yard figure is a precise gauge of anything other than a tour average for the top 10% in 2013 compared to 1993.  I don't know what percentage of the change is attributable to the 3 piece ball, nor do I think it can be neatly broken down into percentages.  Nor do I think it matters much whether it is the ball or other aspects of technology.  

My point simply that I don't think it advances the conversation to just assume it must be less than 50% simply because you "can't see how the ball accounts for more than 50% of the gain."  
____________________________________________________

Jim,  

The only reason I tried to provide you with a specific yardage difference was because we were both working off of an initial velocity of 239 fps and a spin of 3232.  An advantage of such a comparison is that it doesn't depend on COR, nor on shaft length, weight, etc.  It is simply a measure of ball performance once it leaves the club.   And, for comparison, we can roughly calculate the approximate distance characteristics of a modern ball at that initial velocity and spin (provided we fill in the launch angle.)

[Garland Bayley]

...
So maybe controlling spin via the rules is more subtle.  Rather than dealing solely with initial spin rate, you have to deal with how quickly the ball loses spin.  i.e. a drive hit with an initial spin rate of x can lose a maximum of y rpm per distance or time.  It isn't that you don't want balls spinning at 3000 rpm when hit with the driver, it is that you want it carrying more of that spin throughout the drive, rather than quickly shedding it.

Impressive bit of reasoning Doug!

Here is what Tom Wishon says in Common Sense Clubfitting.

"In addition to an initial backspin rate off the face, all balls have downrange spin characteristics which are extremely important for determining what really will happen to the flight of the ball through the entire flight. The speed and spin of some golf balls will decay and change in flight at different rates because of the effect of air flowing over the surface of the spinning ball. Such information about different golf balls and their behavior in flight downrange is extremely difficult and expensive to obtain. Currently, while there are a few launch monitor systems which claim to have the ability to measure downrange ball flight characteristics, few if any people in the game know if these systems' capability to do this is accurate or not. Verification of such downrange ball flight measurements is incredibly complex to do and if it exists, it is proprietary and not openly available to golfers and clubmakers."

[Garland Bayley]

Jim,

What does "Comparing when you were playing those stainless steel drivers back some years ago and now the new titanium spring-faced drivers, you have gained 21 yards of distance- assuming a driver swing speed of 100 m.p.h. For every increase in C.O.R you gain 4.2 yards. " mean?
EDIT: I just saw your other post where you apparently concluded that an increase in C.O.R. mean a .01 increase.

I remember the press when the COR limit was set at .83. The press was saying this would only give professional golfers 5 or 6 yards, and the rest of us basically nothing, because we couldn't hit the ball on the sweet spot often enough to matter.

[JESII]

David,

To this point in the conversation, your claim of a 30 - 40 yard increase (at the higher ends of the swing speed spectrum) when today's ProV is compared to the hard balls of the 90's to today is pure hyperbole. Truth is, you have no idea how the ProV1 compares to those old hard balls.

Regarding our "calling into question" the value of tests with 15 year old balls; they were, specifically, 15 year old balata balls. This matters because balata balls contained liquid and rubber bands (which presumably contain some liquid as well) which must have evaporated some of their weight because they were 7% - 9% lighter than the other balls (46g compared to 42g and 43g). Do you think that difference is insignificant?

We have an expert club maker claiming 21 yards increase from COR after 1998 - it seems Quintavalla may disagree with this...have to re-read both.
We have claims by Cleveland Golf engineers that a 2 inch longer shaft will produce 6mph faster swing speed
We have your estimates that each mph equals 2 - 3 yards increased distance (increase slows as speeds get higher) so 6mph might be 15 yards
We know that the customization of clubs and balls has become ubiquitous over these last 15 years which must account for some positive impact, even if only a few yards.

Does the ball go further? For me, I only see it in long irons and into the wind shots.

[JESII]

Jim,

What does "Comparing when you were playing those stainless steel drivers back some years ago and now the new titanium spring-faced drivers, you have gained 21 yards of distance- assuming a driver swing speed of 100 m.p.h. For every increase in C.O.R you gain 4.2 yards. " mean?
EDIT: I just saw your other post where you apparently concluded that an increase in C.O.R. mean a .01 increase.

I remember the press when the COR limit was set at .83. The press was saying this would only give professional golfers 5 or 6 yards, and the rest of us basically nothing, because we couldn't hit the ball on the sweet spot often enough to matter.

Not sure how he came to that calculation but he linked the .78 previous limit to the .83...so .05 equaled 21 yards to him. I found the link when I googled "COR for 1990 metal wood driver" or something similar. I was looking into the difference between the Tour Edition experiment in the 1990 patent application David posted and Andrew Rice's corn field test.

[Doug Siebert]

Based on the carry distances shown for the balata ball at an initial velocity of 239 fps (~110 mph swing speed with a good smash factor) versus a modern ball at 239 fps, I don't think anyone should be claiming the distance increase is mostly or even halfway due to the club without providing an explanation for that.

The word of a single clubmaker - without any supporting measurements - just isn't worth much compared to actual measurements in my book.  You have claims from a club company that longer shafts result in a specific amount of increased distance - again, without any supporting measurements or calculation.  You have "estimates" of what each mph is worth.  Where's the data?  Appeal to authority is a strategy for argument, not debate.

No one would deny that longer clubs result in faster swings, but you can't do a simple calculation based on shaft length, you must take moment of inertia into account.  Cleveland's numbers look to be simple extrapolation - shaft is x% longer, therefore speed is x% faster.  By that logic, if you gave me a 300" shaft I should be able to exceed the sound barrier.  Even if you had a club with a rigid 300" shaft that weighed only 60 grams you'd find you couldn't come remotely close to that, and moment of inertia is the reason why.

[JESII]

Then whose claims do matter?

[DMoriarty]

Speaking of hyperbole Jim . . . We were speaking of a distance given for the DT in a patent application, which you believed was at 239 fps and 3232 rpm.   You asked me how much further a modern ball would fly given an initial velocity (239) and exact spin rate (3232).  I indicated that the modern ball would fly 20-30 yards further.  More if spin rate and launch angle could be optimized.   I determined this by plugging the numbers you insisted upon into the optimizer application.  No hyperbole involved on my part.  Now you are twisting this particular discussion about this particular issue into something it was never intended to be.

Let me try to get us back on track.  

-I agree that I don't know exactly what the distance benefit is from the modern ball.  The evidence I have seen suggests it is substantial, but there doesn't seem to be a clean, agreed upon way to measure it, nor does it necessarily make sense to separate out the variables to even try to isolate the ball.  (If the balls allow for more aggressive swings with longer shafts, do we attribute that gain to the ball?  The shaft? The player? Does it matter?)

- I agree that other technological advancements in club heads, club shafts, and optimization also play a roll, but it is all intertwined.  

- I agree that, all else being equal, a longer shaft allows for a faster club head speed. I disagree that this automatically translates into a higher initial velocity for average golfers.  If it did, we would all be swinging 60 inch shafts.   For amateur golfers, a two inch longer shaft could just as easily result in a loss of distance.  

- I agree that it is reasonable to call into question the age of the balatas.  But I have no doubt that if I found some 1980 DT's and tested them, and you didn't like the results, you would dismiss the results as being a "corn field test" with old balls.  

On the other hand, if you liked the results you might likely accept them wholeheartedly.  For example, you have found something on online by "an expert club maker" who claims that golfers with a swing speed of 100 mph gained 21 yards by the club face alone - after 1998!

Who is your expert club maker?  
 - So far as I can tell he is some guy in Toronto who fits (not makes) Wishon club components.  If I start buying club components and fitting them, and if have a website, will you listen to me on scientific matters?  
 - His explanation of COR implies that collisions between objects of the same weight and substance are without energy loss, which strikes me as pure bunk.
 - His 21 yard figure has no support nor does it seem feasible.  
 - His 1998 date is strange because oversized titanium heads were already around before then.
Is he correct?   I doubt it, but I have no idea, really.  I do know that calling him a "expert club maker" doesn't make him correct.  

[JESII]

I wasn't listing any of that as gospel, just that there are plenty of contributors to the increase in distance with no real proof what portion can be allocated to each.

As I said very early in this thread, balls, shafts, club heads and understanding how to make them all work together evolved dramatically in about a 10 year window, maybe '95 to '05.

I cannot find the flight optimizer link, can you share it?

[DMoriarty]

http://flightscope.com/products/trajectory-optimizer/   I don't know how accurate it is, but it seems in-line with the trackman charts, and it is fun to play with.

Here is a link to an old Frank Thomas GD article on COR.  http://archive.is/guZi   He says 10 yards, but with no backup and no explanation whether that was without the USGA limit or with.  I don't know if 10 yards is right or not, but it seems much more reasonable than your club fitter and his 21 yards.   Here again, though, there is the interaction with the ball to consider.   See Quintavalla.

Here is link to Wishon's take on COR.  http://wishongolf.com/how-does-cor-affect-your-golf-game/ (I thought maybe this was where your club fitter got his info, but Wishon's view is much more sophisticated than his.  Wishon seems to not agree with Thomas's description of what COR actually is.

[Sean_A]

Sean,   

While there have been a series of jumps in distance brought on by technology over the past 100 years or so, this latest jump is by far the largest in history, at least for the longer hitters. Regardless, if you can figure out a way to get clubs and developers to "seek an alternative solution to courses being altered to accommodate equipment," then I am all ears.  But so far as I can tell, over the history of golf, courses have been lengthened to accommodate the changes in distance brought on by technology, and so far as I can tell that is continuing today.

I haven't done a formal study (nor do I intend to) but I have looked at how and when course lengths have been increased over the years, and I continue to do so.  While it would be impossible to prove direct causation, there seems to be a definite correlation between timing of jumps in distance brought on by new technology, and the the lengthening of courses.  For example, the old literature in the early part of last century is full of examples of courses that were lengthened/changed and the reason most often given was that they had become outdated because of the haskell ball. 

As for what would have happened if technology hadn't advanced since then, it is impossible to say.  But having played with some of the old equipment, I cannot imagine that course builders would be building many 7500 yard courses if modern golfers were still playing with hickories and haskells. 

David

Not that it matters, but so far as I can make out, the biggest reasons why folks want to more tightly control tech advancement is because great classic courses are altered to accommodate the advances and the cost of building/maintaining courses is rising due to the extra length of courses.  Both reasons are near and dear to my heart, especially that of cost.  However, I think to suggest (is this your suggestion?) that courses would not have been altered if not for tech advancements is speculative at best.  There is plenty of evidence for course alterations which have nothing to do with added yardage.  Additionally, as one who believes folks with money to burn will find ways to spend it and will spend it on their hobbies - golf being a famous hobby of the rich.  People in power want to leave their mark because they often think power equates to higher intelligence/superiority.  In other words, rich, powerful folks are used to getting their way  and if their way means changing classic courses then classic courses have and will be changed - just because.  Again, there is plenty of evidence for this sort of thinking which is not related to additional yardage.

While course changes for added yardage does add maintenance cost, do you really think that is the place to start if real money is to be saved?  Often times, the price of a green fee is only indirectly related (especially where classic courses are concerned) to the cost of keeping a course.  What the market will bear is at least as important as a determining factor for the price of a green fee or club membership.  I cringe at the thought of paying anything extra because of added yards to please flat bellies who never turn up anyway, but in this case, I blame memberships, not technology. 

Given (I spose according to you and other distance killers) the utter failure to preserve classic courses and keep green fees/club memberships prices in check via a distance control campaign, do you think another approach may be prudent? 

Ciao