There is precedent for sports changing ball characteristics for integrity of the game.
- Baseball reduced the liveliness of the ball to both protect past records and to prevent expanding outfields
- Football also stopped letting teams manage the balls after Brady-gate to protect the integrity of the game.
I don't know why golf would be the bad guy for wanting to preserve its history and a true test of a player is using all 14 clubs in the bag, not just driver and wedges and the occasional 3 wood.
Every time I talk about this to young folks at the local muni I come off like a grumpy old man. We now have grown men who grew up with composite drivers that hit like a trampoline. They think players today are just better, and that hitting the ball 300 yards is cool as hell. I really think the "we are trying to protect the integrity of the game" doesn't make a ton of sense when we've already made 8000 yard courses to accommodate the technology.
I obviously agree that we should at least
do something. If we were concerned about protecting the integrity of the game, though, we would be focusing on the clubs, not the ball. Nerfing the compression of the golf ball, to me, really seems like a nonsensical way to fix the problem. Instead of slowing down the swing, forcing players to focus on contact, we're essentially doubling down on power being the dominant force in the game and further eliminating some of the potential downside of over-swinging (higher energy in the ball at least exaggerates errors).
This is why it makes the regulators are coming off like jerks. They aren't addressing the real concern (the new high velocity golf swing), and just want these players to hit the ball shorter distances, period. Thus, to me, if we're going to do it this way, we should at least add get some anti-injury or environmental benefit, since we aren't actually even going to address the root problem.