The Distance Insights report

[William_G]

WG,
Aluminum bats definitely help but they don’t seem to make the game that different as the best college players that end up in the pros are playing on the same size fields with no issues.  No one talks about 600ft homeruns that I am aware of.  If you play a course at 6000 yards, any course that has tees longer than that is costing you money.  As Jeff points out less than 1% play the back tees but unfortunately that 1% is very influential or those tees wouldn’t be there nor would all that extra acreage of golf course that goes with it.  Yes you probably don’t care if that kid that hits it 330 goes somewhere else to play, unless that kid is your own.  I try to talk clubs out of adding new back tees all the time for all the obvious reasons. These days I am building more forward tees (thank goodness), but I still have to deal with that 1% that doesn’t want their course reduced to clip and putt for that small number of times their course will see play from the big hitters. 

fake news, geez
have a great day if you want too
cheers

[Jerry Kluger]

I believe that baseball is bifurcated because professional baseball is made up and controlled by the owners of the teams who in turn own the stadiums.  They are not willing to spend the money to build new stadiums to accommodate new equipment so the wooden bat stays.  Look at what happened to baseball when Sosa and McGwire and later Bonds put on a home run show - sure, it was a great show but afterwards the fans viewed it for what it was and were happy going back to where they were.  Today baseball has jacked up the ball some so there are more home runs but they are not approaching what was done back then where stadiums might have been considered outdated. 


99.9% of golfers cannot tell the difference between the new Pro V1 and the prior generation but they still go out and buy them as opposed to buying the older generation at a lower price.  For that matter I would guess that the same percentage of golfers could not tell the difference between two premium balls in a blind test around a course but they insist on playing a particular ball. I believe that if there was a "tour" ball which did not go as far it would not stop all the other golfers from buying the newest ball and the one that they believe is best. Do you remember Tiger using a Nike ball - how many people do you know who played the Nike premium ball - I didn't know one person who did.

[Mark_Fine]

Just played Harbour Town yesterday and got paired up with a 25 year old from Jacksonville that could carry the ball well over 300 yards. He had 70 yards into the one 430 yard par four and 60 yards into one of the others that was playing 425 yards.  But it was great to watch how the design reigned him in on many of the holes as he hit a power fade and struggled to hit a draw or even a straight ball when he needed to. He was a very good player but probably ended up shooting four or five over par.  I was pleased to beat him by two or three shots but on a wide open course I think he would have pummeled me.  Smart design can help neutralize the bombers. Note: I have to say the new tree work at Harbour Town has really opened up many of the hole corridors but you still need to work the ball both ways and control trajectory.

One of the other problems with distance is safety at the driving ranges.  Most people like WG don’t care or think about this.  Not only the tour pros but college kids routinely come to play courses like Harbour Town and while the course reigns them in the range does not.  Kids can fly nets 280+ yards out into neighboring homes etc.  It is crazy. Many courses have limited practice area space and this becomes a real safety issue as there is no place to practice. Mayday was talking about this as his club where even with limited flight balls they may have to puts nets up over the maintenance facility to protect people or even move the whole facility. All of this leads to a much more expensive game.

[Garland Bayley]

...
Some may hit it a bit farther than they did before, but the increase is miniscule and a reduction in the distance they hit the ball would be counter-productive to the growth of the game.
...

Purely a speculative statement for which you have no proof. Also, which most arguments against reining in distance depend on, thereby making said opinions shaky at best.

[Garland Bayley]

...
But I don't remember William_G's dad gaslighting us about how they were ruining The Open by not letting Nicklaus et al. drive it 40 yards further like they could with the small ball.  But I guess back then the public at large didn't fall for the corporate line that "eyeballs" were the most important metric of how things were going. 

++

Gray, ya burnt!

[Garland Bayley]

...
Just imagine if the only thing that kept you heading out to the course was your 175 yard drives!

If that was the only reason some people played golf, then the game would be better off without them!

This is one of the most absurd lines of reasoning I have ever seen.

The Scottish King had to legislate against golf because all those golfers were so enamored with pounding their featheries so far that they just had to get back to the course!

 

[Garland Bayley]

...
If we have to have change, then I much prefer bifurcation. The tours can do as they will. I don't see any inherent problem with different rules for different events. Ya gotta break eggs to make an omelette even if in this case a great many people aren't hungry.
...

The NBA plays a game which most people are unable to play. Bifurcate the rules so they have to use a 12 foot basket so their game will resemble what the common man plays.

[Garland Bayley]

equipment and technology have helped the game for all of us
...

If you and I were to time travel to 1950, and play with period equipment on period courses, you would still be 18 strokes better than me. To 1900, same thing. 1850, same.

So exactly how has it benefited either of us?

Oh, I know. Gortex keeps us dry without making us itch like wool did.

[Jim Sherma]

+1 for Gore-Tex

equipment and technology have helped the game for all of us
...

If you and I were to time travel to 1950, and play with period equipment on period courses, you would still be 18 strokes better than me. To 1900, same thing. 1850, same.

So exactly how has it benefited either of us?

Oh, I know. Gortex keeps us dry without making us itch like wool did.

[Jeff Schley]

WG,
Aluminum bats definitely help but they don’t seem to make the game that different as the best college players that end up in the pros are playing on the same size fields with no issues.  No one talks about 600ft homeruns that I am aware of. 

Mark,
Aluminum bats have a big difference in both total distance and speed when batted. I don't think I have to find any specific research for it is generally accepted that aluminum bats produce a faster batted ball than wood bats, by IIRC 3-7 mph depending on the batter and how fast the pitch is thrown. I don't think you could ever use aluminum bats in MLB because the safety of the pitcher would be in serious jeopardy. For you hockey fans it would be like being in goal without equipment and only a glove on, while coming to a balanced position after a pitch.

I do know that one fall when I played at the university of Iowa in 1994, we used Baum bats, which were composite wood bats. The theory at the time is that we would spend all fall/winter hitting with these wood bats to find the sweet spot then a week before the season switch to aluminum and we would be crushing the ball. It didn't work simply, but it was like hitting with deadwood and when you did connect it was a good feeling, from a production standpoint didn't have anywhere near the performance of aluminum. In fact I preferred regular wood bats to Baum bats as they had more feedback, thinner handles although they broke much more often (Baum bats are very resilient and break seldom).
I would estimate that aluminum bats add 20-30 feet minimum to distance and up to 50-60 with proper swing speed/pitch speed. Not to mention the increased speed on all hit balls reduces defensive reaction time to produce more hits. That would turn MLB into a launching pad and as I said pitchers (even 3B/1B included) wouldn't be safe. I have huge respect for MLB hitters as using wood against that pitching is a true skill.

[jeffwarne]

One of the other problems with distance is safety at the driving ranges.  Most people like WG don’t care or think about this.  Not only the tour pros but college kids routinely come to play courses like Harbour Town and while the course reigns them in the range does not.  Kids can fly nets 280+ yards out into neighboring homes etc.  It is crazy. Many courses have limited practice area space and this becomes a real safety issue as there is no place to practice. Mayday was talking about this as his club where even with limited flight balls they may have to puts nets up over the maintenance facility to protect people or even move the whole facility. All of this leads to a much more expensive game.

Driving ranges(I mean irons only ranges) are huge problem...
egos are funny things though

[Kalen Braley]

Jeff and Mark,

Excellent posts.

Jeff as to point #3, I'm pretty sure if you put today's Pros on the same tees at courses 20 years ago, the scores would definitely be lower as most Tour venues were under 7000.  All the long hitters would be taking whacks at all those <400 yard holes which were far more common back then. Now sub 7000 is the exception, 450-480 yard par 4s are common, and in general courses need to be 7500+ to be considered long...and they still drop 65s and 66s left and right.

[A.G._Crockett]

The baseball analogy isn't pertinent to the bifurcation question in golf; never was. 

Aluminum bats began to be used in softball first, the gradually into baseball from the bottom up.  It was for cost reasons primarily, including the fact that professional baseball was sucking up all of the best wood; the bats being used in amateur baseball were even more prone to breakage than the wood bats in the majors.
As aluminum and later alloy bat technology got better, I guess you could make a tortured comparison to the golf distance question, but that's largely been addressed in the last decade or so by changes in the metal bats.  If you look at the change in the number of home runs being hit in the college World Series, for example, it's WAY down by as much as 75% some years, but the reason was safety much, much more than the way the game is played.  And the other advantage of a metal bat, which much more "forgiveness" when you don't barrel it up, has declined as well, so offense in general is down in college baseball.  Ironically, some are even calling for a livelier ball in college baseball to address the lack of offense.

But where the golf-baseball analogy fails completely is that nobody is trying to make professional baseball look like what they think it looked like decades ago by changing the equipment; if anything, the changes in baseball have been from the other direction, with restrictions on metal bats making the amateur game look more like the professional game, which is pretty much the opposite of the momentum in golf.

[Wayne_Kozun]

One other factor was that prior to 1930, not many clubs watered the fairways and distance was getting out of control.  In the early 30s, watering became more common.  If the floater ball would have been introduced 5 years earlier, it may have had more of a chance.  But... it may have taken a year of torture to make people happy with the eventual compromise.

Peter, I am not disputing what you say but I am surprised that  clubs were able to afford to put in place irrigation systems in the midst of the depression.  Was that really the case that clubs installed irrigation in the 1930s?

[Tom_Doak]

But where the golf-baseball analogy fails completely is that nobody is trying to make professional baseball look like what they think it looked like decades ago by changing the equipment; if anything, the changes in baseball have been from the other direction, with restrictions on metal bats making the amateur game look more like the professional game, which is pretty much the opposite of the momentum in golf.

Where the golf-baseball analogy fails completely is that there are no pitchers in golf throwing the ball at you at 98 MPH. 


It's you and technology vs. the golf course, and that's why people keep changing the golf courses as the technology is allowed to change.

[Mark_Fine]

I don’t disagree that the baseball analogy is not the best one to compare.  What I do know, however, is that it is time to address the distance issue.  It is not going to get better, it is only going to get worse.  Maybe Bryson will be the one to save the day and the game 😊 I have no issues with long driving competitions when they are confined to a specially set up area for the guys and girls to bomb it.  But when golf courses themselves are forced to accommodate that kind of play, something needs to be done.  It really does impact all of us.  I have a couple projects coming up this fall and I know there will be talk about where can we find three or four hundred more yards.  My position will be, we should maybe consider spending your member’s hard earned money elsewhere.

[Thomas Dai]

Question - does the permit process for new courses or significant changes include a health and safety element and if so how does golf ball distance envelopes effect permit award?
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

Question - does the permit process for new courses or significant changes include a health and safety element and if so how does golf ball distance envelopes effect permit award?

It's a good question.


There has long been an industry standard for how far away from the property line the centerline of a golf hole should be -- but it's not published anywhere, because nobody wants to get sued for suggesting a standard and then someone getting hurt in a place where that standard was applied.  [Welcome to America!]  Plus, of course, the "centerline" of a golf hole is not absolute.


There is usually not a health & safety approval of this kind for golf courses in America.  A municipal project might be questioned about it, but there is no department to deal with it for every application, as there is for wetlands or archaeology or erosion control.  I have only run into questions about it when consulting for existing clubs . . . but it's not like I'm often putting golf holes up against the property line on my own designs!

[Thomas Dai]

Thanks for this insight Tom.
Makes me wonder if sometime or other the golf ball distance debate will result in scenarios such as “Sorry Mr Developer but you can’t build 100 houses around your proposed new course you can only build 50” or “Sorry Mr Country-Club but your course is now too close to this road/school/etc you’ve got to change it.”
Cats get skinned in many different ways. I’ve used his name before but it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if there were a golfing Ralph Nader currently hiding behind a hedge or desk just waiting to jump out. Public health & safety and the environment lobby vrs the equipment manufacturers.
Atb

[Peter Flory]

Peter, I am not disputing what you say but I am surprised that  clubs were able to afford to put in place irrigation systems in the midst of the depression.  Was that really the case that clubs installed irrigation in the 1930s?

It looks like there was a lot of technology innovation in the late 20s and early 30s.  In 1926, they invented the pop up sprinkler with a timer.  Then in the early 30s, someone made a system with fewer moving parts, more reliability, and for a cheaper price.  By 1934, it was very commercialized under the Rain King (?) name or something like that.  I'm sure that the depression did have a counter effect as well, but the irrigation tech temporarily paused distance gains for a short period of time.

[Garland Bayley]

Prior to 1921, it was "Gibson's choice" and any ball could be used.  From 1921-1931, the official ball was 1.62 inches in diameter and 1.62 oz.  In 1931, the USGA mandated the floater ball- 1.68 inches in diameter and 1.55oz (bigger and lighter).  After a year of everyone moaning about loss of distance, they amended it and increased the weight back to 1.62oz (so bigger, but the same weight). 

The USGA's reasoning behind the balloon ball was to "curb long-driving and to prevent old courses from becoming obsolete as a result of the 1.62-1.62 ball's constantly increasing ballistic properties."  HA!

Per the NY Times (11/21/1931):
"Curiously enough, the ball that was supposed to curb length, reward skill and bring back the use of clubs that were coming to be neglected, such as the spoon and the mashie, did nothing of the sort.  The skillful hitters began getting even more length down wind with it than they had with its predecessor and even with the wind adverse the loss of distance was negligible. 

But the duffer and the dub suffered, or at least imagined he did.  It was all well and good for others to inform him that whatever distance he lost of fancied he lost from the tee would be recompensed by the way the ball sat up, begging to be hit, through the fairway.  The 1.62-1.62 ball had got him off the tee and nothing else mattered. 

In a great many cases, perhaps most, those few 150, 175, even 200 yard drives that he had been getting with the 1.62-1.62 ball brought the only thrill of the game, and to take that away left nothing, or next to nothing.  He complained justily and the USGA officials heeded." 

Just imagine if the only thing that kept you heading out to the course was your 175 yard drives!

The New York Times probably isn't the best source for this topic.

I would refer you to John VDB's article in the In My Opinion section of this site entitled "The Balloon Ball".

The balloon ball was a failure, because the highly skilled had no problem with it, but the average golfer had big problems with it, primarily its propensity to go sideways more. This is a feature the average player hitting it sideways on his own does not need.

Before the modern multipiece ball was introduced, the average player played a ball that didn't go sideways as much as the ball the highly skilled played. IMO this is what you want with a rollback. Therefore, my suggestion has long been to restrict the ball to two pieces, and allow the manufacturers offer covers with different degrees of hardness (softness).

[Garland Bayley]

I just read an interview on Golf Digest's web site with Martin Slumbers from the R & A, who said he was concerned about how far Bryson hits it now, in terms of the bigger impact it has on golf.


But he also said that they have delayed the second part of the Distance Insights report, because the pandemic has thrown everything off kilter, and they want to give the business a chance to get its feet back on the ground first.


That's how you can tell that they are not serious about making changes.  If they wanted to make changes, what better time to make them than when everything is in upheaval?  That's exactly when capitalists pounce on the opportunity to do things they want to do.


But when you DON'T want to make changes, that's when politicians say "it's too soon" to consider new policies and that "we don't want to be reactive," or "people need time to grieve."  So we might as well start grieving, because it sounds like this report is going to limit the options for change.

The article I read had the R&A emphasizing reining in the driver.

You don't specify what limits the R&A were thinking of. Did they specify?

[A.G._Crockett]

But where the golf-baseball analogy fails completely is that nobody is trying to make professional baseball look like what they think it looked like decades ago by changing the equipment; if anything, the changes in baseball have been from the other direction, with restrictions on metal bats making the amateur game look more like the professional game, which is pretty much the opposite of the momentum in golf.

Where the golf-baseball analogy fails completely is that there are no pitchers in golf throwing the ball at you at 98 MPH. 


It's you and technology vs. the golf course, and that's why people keep changing the golf courses as the technology is allowed to change.

Tom,
Agreed; I have said many times that for a sport where the ball is just sitting there and nobody is guarding you, golf is incredibly difficult.  And the approach of a ball at 98 mph is probably the best example of the differences.
But the point remains that the bifurcation of bats in baseball has the exact opposite history of what the advocates of bifurcation in golf are concerned about.  The only sense in which the analogy has an validity is that baseball has survived bifurcation of bats between amateurs and professionals, but using something that was done for cost purposes and that doesn't fundamentally alter the way the game is played at either level isn't good logic.

[Bruce Katona]

Ah........the distance and ball debate.  Lets see if we can break this down into a few different parts:


1. The average player (Adrian, Steve Lapper & Eric Bergstol's typical customers) will purchase and use a Pro V because the professionals use them.


    Should they really be using that Pro V ball? Nope. Can they actually tell the difference between the older Pro V and newer- no way.


    Why not use a ball tailored to their game?  There are other balls on the market that are designed to maximize the average players enjoyment of the game given their ability, swing & swing speed.  the golf professional in the shop is there to assisnt his customer. That ball may indeed go farther off the tee and with approach clubs than a Pro V, which would assist the player more.  The downside is those balls are typically a bit harder so the feel around the greens is lost.  PS: Most of these average daily fee players and struggling to make bogey and grind over the 1 meter putt for a double.  A harder ball that flies further for them that a low/+ handicap player wouldn't use on the range is a godsend and they may not feel the difference when chipping/putting.


2. BK does not pretend to be the player many on this board are.  In a good year, I may break 80 1-2x though I do enjoy playing and keep the ball in play.  I know that my swing is in tune when I can play more than 1 round with the same ball since I'm then hitting it where I'm aiming and getting clean contact.  When the swing is suspect, my misses are typically left, as I pull/hook the ball, not fade/slice.  When I have an errant shot and need to look through the rough or taller grass; it amazes me to see how many Pro V lost balls I come across. In fact; on the occasion I do hit a double-cross slice, even more Pro V ammunition is easily seen.....at $60/ dozen the folks slicing Pro V's into the woods should be playing the lesser cost balls for all they lose during a round, especially on public access tracts.


3. I'm a lowly landscape architect like Tom D & Jeff B (I believe) not an engineer.  I have to believe the smart designers at Titliest, Bridgestone, Calloway, etc. can design one golf ball that we all can play, so bifurcation isn't necessary - above a certain swing speed the ball will go no farther.  Will some single person go beyond this design limit - yep.  Sam Snead was longer than his peers as was jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, John Day & Tiger, but they were exceptions not the rule.


Just my $0.02

[A.G._Crockett]

Ah........the distance and ball debate.  Lets see if we can break this down into a few different parts:


1. The average player (Adrian, Steve Lapper & Eric Bergstol's typical customers) will purchase and use a Pro V because the professionals use them.


    Should they really be using that Pro V ball? Nope. Can they actually tell the difference between the older Pro V and newer- no way.


    Why not use a ball tailored to their game?  There are other balls on the market that are designed to maximize the average players enjoyment of the game given their ability, swing & swing speed.  the golf professional in the shop is there to assisnt his customer. That ball may indeed go farther off the tee and with approach clubs than a Pro V, which would assist the player more.  The downside is those balls are typically a bit harder so the feel around the greens is lost.  PS: Most of these average daily fee players and struggling to make bogey and grind over the 1 meter putt for a double.  A harder ball that flies further for them that a low/+ handicap player wouldn't use on the range is a godsend and they may not feel the difference when chipping/putting.


2. BK does not pretend to be the player many on this board are.  In a good year, I may break 80 1-2x though I do enjoy playing and keep the ball in play.  I know that my swing is in tune when I can play more than 1 round with the same ball since I'm then hitting it where I'm aiming and getting clean contact.  When the swing is suspect, my misses are typically left, as I pull/hook the ball, not fade/slice.  When I have an errant shot and need to look through the rough or taller grass; it amazes me to see how many Pro V lost balls I come across. In fact; on the occasion I do hit a double-cross slice, even more Pro V ammunition is easily seen.....at $60/ dozen the folks slicing Pro V's into the woods should be playing the lesser cost balls for all they lose during a round, especially on public access tracts.


3. I'm a lowly landscape architect like Tom D & Jeff B (I believe) not an engineer.  I have to believe the smart designers at Titliest, Bridgestone, Calloway, etc. can design one golf ball that we all can play, so bifurcation isn't necessary - above a certain swing speed the ball will go no farther.  Will some single person go beyond this design limit - yep.  Sam Snead was longer than his peers as was jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, John Day & Tiger, but they were exceptions not the rule.


Just my $0.02

Bruce,
I won't claim to know why anybody other than I plays any golf ball, but the idea that a higher index would in ANY way other than cost be better off with a cheap ball isn't true anymore.  There are mountains of independent testing data on this, so don't take my word for it, but there's nothing on the market longer than premium balls.  The longest ball on the market today is probably either the TP5-x or the Snell MTB-x; both are premium, high spin golf balls.

While I might agree with you that, on purely a cost basis, a guy who is losing several balls a round might do better to find a cheaper option than a ProV1, a higher index player needs MORE help from his equipment, not less.  So a ball that spins more, has tighter dispersion, and is as long or longer, is a good choice for ANY golfer IF they can afford it.  And now, of course, there are options from premium balls that don't cost like a ProV1.
But this is really at the heart of the problem.  Nobody cared how far a Pinnacle went, because good players didn't use Pinnacles.  But when premium balls became Pinnacles off the tee, but had high spin off wedges, everything changed.  And that's the problem with a "roll back"; the Pinnacle was always legal.  "Roll back" is a popular catch phrase here and elsewhere, but it's a simplistic term that really doesn't have a path forward.
So it's either bifurcation, or leave it alone.