USGA/R&A Distance Insight Project

[David Harshbarger]

Stewart Cink, in that article posted by Rob, argues that it's the consistent ball flight, not the ball flight distance, that really benefits the pros. The implication being that if there was a standard that made flight stability/predictability require more skill, that would help bring the equipment back into line with the course-stock.


Along those lines I heard a golf-stats-guy on Fried Egg pod say how most pros are playing solely on the y-axis (length).  Bringing left-right more significantly back in play for pros could make their game more challenging.


And, from a bifurcation standpoint, if you changed the ball to be more skinny (or shorter or whatever) you could easily make up "Champion Competition" standard spec.  Then comps could just specify that Champion Competition ball.  It's not bifurcation, it's just a different yet accepted standard.  And, bonus, the rest of us could go buy and play the Competition ball if we wanted to be like the pros.  It's just another ball.

[Peter Flory]

It's crazy to think that DL3 led the tour in driving distance in 1994 with a persimmon driver @ 284 yards.  That was only 2 years before Tiger turned pro and it was in the age of the metal driver.   Except for John Daly, the next man to lead the tour in driving distance was at a 321 average- almost 40 yards past Love. 

Here is a pro known for his ball striking precision!
https://youtu.be/EMKVbuo_WSg?t=37


If they did roll back the equipment, they might need to install nets. 

[Tom_Doak]

Here is what some of the pros think...

Paul Casey makes the worst argument of them:


“There’s an argument for this. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. But the golf courses became longer because the golf developers said if we can make the golf courses longer, we can get four more houses on that hole and two more on that hole, etc. That’s more money. And that’s when the manufactures and the players – including the amateurs – rose to the challenge. They had to start hitting the ball longer. I don’t like us players and the manufactures getting the blame. We’re not the only ones to blame.”


I am sorry, Paul, but this is total b.s.  If a developer has 300 or 400 acres, he doesn't demand that the golf course take up more of it.  It may be correct that many architects are complicit in making their courses longer than necessary, but that's an effect of the problem, not the cause.

[Dave Doxey]

    I’ve never understood the calls for an equipment rollback.  The main argument seems to be that courses “need” to get longer.  Why?  To keep pros from scoring lower?  What does that matter?  Keep courses as they are. Let pros score whatever they can.  Lower par, if that matters.  It’s just a number...
If a club wants a longer course for vanity reasons, let them pay for it.  Otherwise, leave courses alone.  The average golfer has enough trouble scoring on existing courses, regardless of their equipment.
The time for the mile run has decreased over time.  No one saw the need to add length to keep the times  the same.

[JESII]

Tom,


What is not total BS is the fact that, as a whole, golf course owners have made these decisions to lengthen/expand their courses for whatever their reasons are.


The golf ball goes farther and straighter so it's easier for the top players...but how many of them play at Stonewall each year? Just to pull a local example of your courses?


If Stonewall decides their courses need to constrict or expand for any reason, they will and Stonewall itself will deal with the results.

[jeffwarne]

Here is what some of the pros think...

Paul Casey makes the worst argument of them:


“There’s an argument for this. I’m not saying it’s right or wrong. But the golf courses became longer because the golf developers said if we can make the golf courses longer, we can get four more houses on that hole and two more on that hole, etc. That’s more money. And that’s when the manufactures and the players – including the amateurs – rose to the challenge. They had to start hitting the ball longer. I don’t like us players and the manufactures getting the blame. We’re not the only ones to blame.”


I am sorry, Paul, but this is total b.s.  If a developer has 300 or 400 acres, he doesn't demand that the golf course take up more of it.  It may be correct that many architects are complicit in making their courses longer than necessary, but that's an effect of the problem, not the cause.

Total bullshit.
But again that's on the USGA for letting this normalize when there was a massive jump just after 2001-2005 and they were in full on denial mode.
The first round I played with a ProV 1 my drives were a club longer as well as each iron-thats 20-30 yards per hole.
But they dottered as they always do despite how obvious it was and crazy obvious to a high speed (over 110 mph-player which I'm not)
The horse has been out of the barn a long time and they may never catch it as an entire generation has never played anything BUT a hot multilayer ball and rebounding low spin (as needed)driver

[Erik J. Barzeski]

And, from a bifurcation standpoint, if you changed the ball to be more skinny (or shorter or whatever) you could easily make up "Champion Competition" standard spec.  Then comps could just specify that Champion Competition ball.  It's not bifurcation, it's just a different yet accepted standard.  And, bonus, the rest of us could go buy and play the Competition ball if we wanted to be like the pros.  It's just another ball.

I'm not sure why you see that as "not bifurcation"?

    I’ve never understood the calls for an equipment rollback.  The main argument seems to be that courses “need” to get longer.  Why?  To keep pros from scoring lower?  What does that matter?  Keep courses as they are. Let pros score whatever they can.  Lower par, if that matters.  It’s just a number...

Hear hear. Or is it "hear here"?

Look, if they want to cap distance as it is NOW, cool. I don't know how they can really do that, because guys can always swing a little faster, but cool. I don't want to see 8,000 yard courses either, but we're also living in an age when Oakmont, Pinehurst, Pebble Beach, Shinnecock, The Old Course, etc. have all hosted major championships.

But again that's on the USGA for letting this normalize when there was a massive jump just after 2001-2005 and they were in full on denial mode.The first round I played with a ProV 1 my drives were a club longer as well as each iron-thats 20-30 yards per hole.

What would you have had them do, given the ODS at the time, and without taking away the surlyn "distance balls" (the Pinnacles, etc.) that the average golfers played?

Seriously, with hindsight aiding you and all of that, what would you have done? Mandated 43" as the max length of a club instead of 48"? Mandated that drivers be made out of at least 90% wood? What? I don't see much you could have likely done to the ball without making the balls played by average golfers illegal, as they were solid-core, multi-layer balls.

[David Harshbarger]

And, from a bifurcation standpoint, if you changed the ball to be more skinny (or shorter or whatever) you could easily make up "Champion Competition" standard spec.  Then comps could just specify that Champion Competition ball.  It's not bifurcation, it's just a different yet accepted standard.  And, bonus, the rest of us could go buy and play the Competition ball if we wanted to be like the pros.  It's just another ball.

I'm not sure why you see that as "not bifurcation"?

It's as bifurcated as the rules for match play vs. stroke play are bifurcated.  Anyone can choose match play or stroke play under the rules of golf...but...the rules are different depending on your choice.   

[Kalen Braley]

Erik,


That's the beauty of just changing the ball, because none of the rest matters. A flight limited ball doesn't care what the hell its hit with.  The dimpling, size, and weight can be tweaked so the ball only goes X distance with X Initial Velocity...

[jeffwarne]

And, from a bifurcation standpoint, if you changed the ball to be more skinny (or shorter or whatever) you could easily make up "Champion Competition" standard spec.  Then comps could just specify that Champion Competition ball.  It's not bifurcation, it's just a different yet accepted standard.  And, bonus, the rest of us could go buy and play the Competition ball if we wanted to be like the pros.  It's just another ball.

I'm not sure why you see that as "not bifurcation"?

    I’ve never understood the calls for an equipment rollback.  The main argument seems to be that courses “need” to get longer.  Why?  To keep pros from scoring lower?  What does that matter?  Keep courses as they are. Let pros score whatever they can.  Lower par, if that matters.  It’s just a number...

Hear hear. Or is it "hear here"?

Look, if they want to cap distance as it is NOW, cool. I don't know how they can really do that, because guys can always swing a little faster, but cool. I don't want to see 8,000 yard courses either, but we're also living in an age when Oakmont, Pinehurst, Pebble Beach, Shinnecock, The Old Course, etc. have all hosted major championships.

But again that's on the USGA for letting this normalize when there was a massive jump just after 2001-2005 and they were in full on denial mode.The first round I played with a ProV 1 my drives were a club longer as well as each iron-thats 20-30 yards per hole.

What would you have had them do, given the ODS at the time, and without taking away the surlyn "distance balls" (the Pinnacles, etc.) that the average golfers played?

Seriously, with hindsight aiding you and all of that, what would you have done? Mandated 43" as the max length of a club instead of 48"? Mandated that drivers be made out of at least 90% wood? What? I don't see much you could have likely done to the ball without making the balls played by average golfers illegal, as they were solid-core, multi-layer balls.

Erik,
You bring up very legitimate points.
Prior to the ProV1 there was a tradeoff-spin or distance.
The multi-layer changed that. (Ironically I was a year-late adopter of the PrV1 as I was playing the Spalding Tour Edition which I coveted for spin and workability while being durable)


Smarter minds than mine could figure it out, but there would have to be a construction tradeoff between distance and spin-want to bust it long at the Tour level-use a Pinnacle but lose the spin.(Jim Feree did this for years)
Want the spin? use a simulated balata or Tour edition type ball.


These guys were willing to put forth wedge grooves as driver distance regulators, and banned anchoring without actually changing the way many people putt with a long putter(unless you trust the player or use a telescope), and even encouraged forearm anchoring with their muddled arbitrary rules changes.


A distance rule might very well be muddled or overcome by far smarter manufacturers, but at least address it, and they should have addressed it many, many years ago, before it was normalized and generational.
As far as "freezing it "now"-they've been saying that for years.
Any change needs to be a rollback, or simply accept that's it's normalized and do nothing.

[Thomas Dai]

It's worth bearing in mind that various other non-golf specific issues are also mentioned in the report, as the extract below shows.

"Watch out, there's a Greta about!"

atb

[Erik J. Barzeski]

It's as bifurcated as the rules for match play vs. stroke play are bifurcated.  Anyone can choose match play or stroke play under the rules of golf...but...the rules are different depending on your choice.

I get your drift, but I don't quite agree because playing vastly different equipment, week in and week out, is a bit different than a traditional Local Rule.

That's the beauty of just changing the ball, because none of the rest matters. A flight limited ball doesn't care what the hell its hit with.  The dimpling, size, and weight can be tweaked so the ball only goes X distance with X Initial Velocity...

What's the beauty? I'm missing the context here - what are you responding to?

Smarter minds than mine could figure it out, but there would have to be a construction tradeoff between distance and spin-want to bust it long at the Tour level-use a Pinnacle but lose the spin.(Jim Feree did this for years)
Want the spin? use a simulated balata or Tour edition type ball.

Maybe.

I am not so sure that you could write rules that mandate some sort of spin in a way that manufacturers and players wouldn't just figure out how to work around it rather quickly.

These guys were willing to put forth wedge grooves as driver distance regulators, and banned anchoring without actually changing the way many people putt with a long putter(unless you trust the player or use a telescope), and even encouraged forearm anchoring with their muddled arbitrary rules changes.

Be fair now. That was to address "bomb and gouge." That was to address the idea that hitting the ball into the rough had no penalty. Now, we can show that hitting it in the rough is a 0.25 shot penalty, or a 70-yard penalty, depending on how you want to look at it. I wouldn't be so sure that the groove change was a failure.

And, I disagree with you on the putting thing. I think they didn't like that people weren't "swinging" the clubs from their arms. So, they wrote it in such a way that you can't anchor.

If two Champions Tour players are still anchoring, well, that's on them. If they can sleep at night… whatever.

A distance rule might very well be muddled or overcome by far smarter manufacturers, but at least address it, and they should have addressed it many, many years ago, before it was normalized and generational.

But again, what would you have done…? Years ago, what would you have done to not penalize the average amateur playing his Pinnacles? Maybe your "force a choice between spin and distance" was your answer… again, I just don't know how you'd write such a rule that couldn't be overcome pretty quickly.

[Forrest Richardson]

Ever since the golfing public has had the taste of the high profile professionals — beginning with early American tournaments until modern televised events — the average player has longed to emulate the length of the professional. "Father is better," and certainly more 'macho' than just focusing on accuracy. Unlike Wm Flynn, who said "Accuracy, carry and then length..." the modern golfer is all about "Length, carry and then accuracy." Not everyone, but I would say most.

So, this leads to golfers not always playing the appropriate tees. Unless, of course, the course (or a few holes) only have "appropriate" tees. For example, on a shortish par-4 nearly everyone can "win" when playing from the farthest back tees. But, on a long par-5, the 200 yard player struggles from the back. Yet, just one long hole here and there will not convince him to shift. So, we leave him with too long of a golf hole, and on the aggregate, too long of a golf course. One not designed for him, but for the longer player — or even a professional.

There is no debate — we have built courses longer since the 1960s than we were building them previously. And, we have done this to keep up with the hitting distances of the minority — yet a minority that has a strong and passionate following.

[SL_Solow]

We discuss this issue periodically.  I have expressed my view before.  Aside from the environmental issues and the impact on the speed of play related to the increased distance which I attribute largely to new equipment (I saw Nicklaus et al in their primes) there has been a significant impact on competitive golf at its highest level which has made the game less interesting.  Before the substantial increase in distance which coincided with the introduction of the new ball combined with advances in drivers, players were required to use all the clubs in their bag in order to win big tournaments.  Nicklaus was outstanding in most phases of the game, with wedge play as his largest weakness, but his biggest ball striking advantage was his mastery of long irons.  Recall his shot to 17 at Pebble which was a 1 iron.  When was the last time we saw a player have to hit a long iron unless he was driving on a tight hole or laying up.  Instead,as a rule, mid or short irons are used as second shots to par 5's.  Thus the game has changed in a way that at the top end makes it less interesting and the players need a different  and less varied set of skills.


Erik, the science that allows increase in ball distance can also reduce it.  Baseball, at the professional level, decided to keep bats wooden to keep stadiums relevant among other reasons.  The ball gets incrementally varied from time to time (unofficially), mounds get raised and lowered, and those limited changes have some impact on power numbers. However baseball has managed to limit the impact of technology. In golf, the technology exists to limit ball distance .  Whether the ship has already sailed and/or whether the powers that be, who have no official power to govern the game (unlike MLB) have the resolve to take on the manufacturers and players who endorse the equipment is a different question.

[John Emerson]

Tom,


What is not total BS is the fact that, as a whole, golf course owners have made these decisions to lengthen/expand their courses for whatever their reasons are.


The golf ball goes farther and straighter so it's easier for the top players...but how many of them play at Stonewall each year? Just to pull a local example of your courses?


If Stonewall decides their courses need to constrict or expand for any reason, they will and Stonewall itself will deal with the results.

The same reason amateurs play “the tips”, or buy the latest and greatest equipment...because whatever the pros do, they feel like they have to also.  I can’t tell you how many owners/greens chairs I’ve talked to that have the “we need (or want) to get a pga tournament here” mentality. Majority are so delusional it’s not even funny anymore.

[Erik J. Barzeski]

When was the last time we saw a player have to hit a long iron unless he was driving on a tight hole or laying up.

Brandel Chamblee addressed this: players hit as many long-irons now as they pretty much always have. Some are now second shots on par fives, yes, and some are on par threes. But, despite what you said, they're not hitting mid- to short-irons on a bunch of par fives.

Besides, we can't complain about loft creep in one topic while bemoaning guys hitting par fives with 5-irons (that are yesteryear's 3-irons) in another.

Erik, the science that allows increase in ball distance can also reduce it.

Maybe. It remains to be seen whether it's fair, or whether it would affect average players, and those on the line should they bifurcate.

Baseball, at the professional level, decided to keep bats wooden to keep stadiums relevant among other reasons.

I've understood that one to be more about player safety than ballpark dimensions. Besides, not only are home runs exciting, they're the way the game is going. Players don't swing down anymore. It's all about exit speed and launch angles.

In golf, the technology exists to limit ball distance .

We've been under those regulations for decades. You can't regulate how fast people swing.

The same reason amateurs play “the tips”, or buy the latest and greatest equipment...because whatever the pros do, they feel like they have to also.  I can’t tell you how many owners/greens chairs I’ve talked to that have the “we need (or want) to get a pga tournament here” mentality. Majority are so delusional it’s not even funny anymore.

I keep wondering where these courses are, because I don't think as many courses have "lengthened" in the last 20 years as most people seem to think.

6500 yards remains plenty of distance for the vast, vast majority of golfers.

[SL_Solow]

Interesting that Chamblee makes that assertion. In the absence of shotlink data, does he have another source or is that his personal recollection.  There are plenty of us who have been interested observers of the game for longer than he who have different recollections.  Moreover, merely taking a look at the distances players were hitting the ball and comparing them to the length of courses leads one to the inexorable conclusion that longer approaches combined with lesser distances achieved with irons and fairway woods required greater use of longer clubs for approaches.  I note that increases in distance have outstripped growth in course yardage even at the tournament level.  I will stipulate that I am not Brandel Chamblee nor do I possess his certainty that he is correct with respect to all things golf. 

[Rob Marshall]

https://www.golfchannel.com/video/golf-central-reaction-2020-distance-report


Chamblee says that players are still hitting long irons. On par 5’s and off the tee. I didn’t hear anything about par 3’s. I may have missed it.


According to him rough is the answer and he IMO, takes some pretty good shots at the architectural community. I’d love to hear the thoughts of some of the architects here.

[Tom_Doak]

According to him rough is the answer and he IMO, takes some pretty good shots at the architectural community. I’d love to hear the thoughts of some of the architects here.

Shorter hitters who used to compete by being straight drivers will always call for more rough, oblivious to how it affects the weekend golfer.

[Thomas Dai]

According to him rough is the answer and he IMO, takes some pretty good shots at the architectural community. I’d love to hear the thoughts of some of the architects here.

Shorter hitters who used to compete by being straight drivers will always call for more rough, oblivious to how it affects the weekend golfer.

Not quite sure about this.
Shorter drivers are usually physically weaker individuals and thus not so able to hit from rough and longer grass should they go in it.
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

Tom,


What is not total BS is the fact that, as a whole, golf course owners have made these decisions to lengthen/expand their courses for whatever their reasons are.


The golf ball goes farther and straighter so it's easier for the top players...but how many of them play at Stonewall each year? Just to pull a local example of your courses?


If Stonewall decides their courses need to constrict or expand for any reason, they will and Stonewall itself will deal with the results.

Jim:


I have always been a conscientious objector in the distance wars.  Stonewall was built at 6700 yards (par 70 helps), and even with a bunch of back tees *that the USGA proposed for hosting the US Mid Amateur* I think it's still under 7000.


Most of my clients have not insisted on building 7000 yard courses or they probably would not have called me in the first place.  Maybe 2% of the golfers complain that my courses are too short, and fewer that they're too easy.


It's ridiculous that so many people who don't play the back tees make value judgements about courses based on the yardage from the tips.


It's also a shame that great players are so seldom asked to hit great shots.

[Thomas Dai]

It's also a shame that great players are so seldom asked to hit great shots.

+1
Great line and so true.
Atb

[Kyle Harris]

Bifurcation is nonsense.


Grandfathering is where it's at. Everything up until 202X is legal. Everything after must conform to this...


I can't wait until I hear in a few years from somewhere well right of Blue #4, "Yo, Joe, I wonder if this ProV I just found is still conforming?"

Cause that guy is going to put it in play within the next three holes and you all know it.


A rollback hurts nobody and we'll all forget about it within 5 years.


The first tee of a muni, somewhere, in 2023: "I can't BELIEVE the USGA rolled back my Titleist Velocity!"


 

[Kyle Harris]

Also, I am sick of hearing how many "average" golfers will quit the game.


Man up, how many of YOU will quit the game? How much of a loss will the quitters actually be? How much room will be created for new participants?


"Man, I was going to take up golf, but the bloody USGA dialed the ball back, so I won't be able to dream of hitting 340 yard bombs off the tee anymore. Guess I'll go bowling, instead."


Stop creating a lazy rhetorical construct in the platonic ideal to advance a weak position.

[Tom_Doak]

"Man, I was going to take up golf, but the bloody USGA dialed the ball back, so I won't be able to dream of hitting 340 yard bombs off the tee anymore. Guess I'll go bowling, instead."

Maybe it's all just about the allure of the number 300?