The Ball, An Update

There's lots of talk....  Yes, just talk for now, but we have to start somewhere...  I'll present in the order in which the items broke.

First a call for a tourney ball from a most unusual source:

In a recent interview with GOLF.com, Bridgestone Golf president and CEO Angel Ilagan agreed with the legends of the game. "As it relates to the Tour...there needs to be

something to standardize [the ball] because the guys are hitting it way too long," Ilagen says. 

This marks the first time the chief executive of a leading ball manufacturer has publicly called for a dialed-back ball.

The CEO echoed the sentiments of Woods — Bridgestone's most high-profile staff player — who said in a recent podcast: "We need to do something about the golf ball. I just think [the ball] is going too far. With the game progressing as it is, I think the 8,000-yard golf course is not too far away. That’s pretty scary.”

Let's remember the messy fight with Ping over square grooves back in the day.  Since then, the logic has been that the governing bodies could not constrain technological advances because of threatened litigation from the equipment manufacturers....  Yet here we have a manufacturer pleading for something to be done.

Now, let me hasten to add that Bridgestone is smallish player in the ball market, though after Titleist they're all pretty smallish.  Also, it's safe to assume that the CEO of Bridgestone is motivated by more than simple altruism, and there's likely some competitive benefit he sees in such a position....  Also, he males clear that he's a proponent of the "B-word", with separate rules for professionals and recreational golfers.

In the wake of that, Brian Costa files this interesting Wall Street Journal article on the subject, which is unfortunately behind their paywall, limiting me to that which others have excerpted.  He was presumably asked about recent reports of Tiger hitting it way far, and had this:

“I don’t care how far Tiger Woods hits it,” Davis said. “The reality is this is affecting all golfers and affecting them in a bad way. All it’s doing is increasing the cost of the game.”

Shack had this reaction:

For those of you more recent readers, you may not know it, but these may be the strongest comments yet from a governing body figure related to the distance explosion's impact.

 The soft bigotry of low expectations.... Shack then had this dispiriting excerpt from Costa's piece:

The concept Davis is floating would leave it to other groups, from the PGA Tour all the

way down to private clubs, to decide which category of balls is permitted on any given course. It could also create new options on the lower end of the sport. 

“What if we said to get more little kids into the game, we’re going to come up with a conforming golf ball that’s the size of a tennis ball, to help them hit it up in the air?” Davis said. “We are really trying to think outside the box.” 

One question to be answered is which groups would mandate the use of reduced-distance balls. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan declined to comment. Until someone requires golfers to use something other than the best-performing balls they can find, manufacturers will have little reason to bring reduced-distance balls to market.

Sigh!  The head honcho of the governing body thinks others should do the heavy lifting....  Hard to see how this issue hasn't been addressed....

“You can’t say you don’t care about distance, because guess what? These courses are expanding and are predicted to continue to expand,” Davis said. “The impact it has had has been horrible.”

Every party involved has some incentive not to force the issue. If the governing bodies tried to mandate a more restrictive ball for all golfers, they would face a massive fight from equipment companies. Those companies thrive by making a hard game easier, not harder. The PGA Tour relies on eye-popping distance numbers to highlight the skill and athleticism of its stars, which isn’t always apparent to the naked eye.

That last bit is laugh-out-loud-funny, no?  There's no doubt truth to the fact that chicks dig the long ball, and it's the simplest measure of the difference between that guy pictured above and us...  But there's also a reason that long-drive champs don't succeed on Tour, and guys like Jordan Spieth do.

Then there's this inevitable bit:

Brian Mahoney, head of the New York-based Metropolitan Golf Association, said elite amateur events like the ones his group organizes would be receptive to a reduced-distance ball. But for the idea to be more than an option presented by the governing bodies, some influential club would need to be the first to adopt it.

Riddle me this, Batman, which club...strike that, which influential club could they be thinking of?  

Like Geoff, I agree that the drumbeats are getting louder.  The last 'graph in his post linked above aggregates these recent discussions by players in the game.  

Next up is the comic relief, pushback from the man with the biggest stake in in the status quo ante, Acushnet CEO Wally Uihlein.  Shack amusingly characterizes the retiring CEO (he has literally announced his retirement, that's not a descriptor of his personality) as entering the "Get off my lawn phase of his career":

The chief executive of the game's best-selling ball manufacturer is unconvinced of the need for a reduced-flight ball. 

In a letter to The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Wally Uihlein, president and CEO of Titleist's parent company, Acushnet, questioned the evidence that a longer ball is negatively impacting the game. The letter came in response to USGA executive director Mike Davis, who suggested in an interview with WSJ's Brian Costa that the costs of lengthening courses were making the game more expensive for all. 

"Is there any evidence to support this canard…the trickle down cost argument?” Uihlein wrote. “Where is the evidence to support the argument that golf course operating costs nationwide are being escalated due to advances in equipment technology?"

Trickle-down?  Longer golf course are necessarily more expensive to maintain, but perhaps only on planet Earth.  Geoff has his own rebuttal at the second link above, I'd just ask Wally if he's played the second hole at Quaker Ridge recently?

Also, Geoff amusing embeds the iconic "get off my lawn" scene from Gran Torino in his post... well played.

Wally gives the game away as he rambles on in his letter:

"The only people that seem to be grappling with advances in technology and physical fitness are the short-sighted golf course developers and the supporting golf course architectural community who built too many golf courses where the notion of a 'championship golf course' was brought on line primarily to sell real estate," he wrote.

And this about his competitor:

"Given Bridgestone’s very small worldwide market share and paltry presence in professional golf, it would seem logical they would have a commercial motive making the case for a reduced distance golf ball," Uihlein wrote.

And you Sir are no doubt above such petty commercial considerations....

Lastly, lest anyone thought my mancrush on Geoff Ogilvy was in remission, the most thoughtful of professionals had this to say from the site of the Australian Open:

Geoff Ogilvy has used a baseball stadium analogy for what the soaring golf ball has done 

to established golf courses, and it is not pretty. 

The 2010 Australian Open champion said baseball was forced to act, and that golf would be the same soon enough. 

“Major league baseball in America they use wooden bats, and everywhere else in baseball they use aluminium bats,’’ he said. “And when the major leaguers use aluminium bats they don’t even have to touch it and it completely destroys their stadiums. It’s just comedy. 

“That’s kind of what’s happened to us at least with the drivers of these big hitters. We’ve completely outgrown the stadiums. So do you rebuild every stadium in the world? That’s expensive. Or make the ball go shorter? It seems relatively simple from that perspective.’’

I do agree that aluminum bats are the most obvious example of bifurcation out there, though the Aussie does mangle the sequencing a bit.  Not only would stadiums be obsolete, but pitchers would die if big-leaguers used aluminum bats.

So, where does this leave us?  The battle lines seem relatively clear.  The organizing bodies recognize a big problem and are supported by certain of their constituencies, including perhaps some of the equipment guys.  But those with the most to lose will inevitably dig in their heels and fight for their spoils....

But the discouraging part is that bit about the USGA leaving it to others, an obvious recipe for inaction.  In fact, the concept of different balls for different courses is pretty much the craziest thing I've ever heard.....

it seems to this observer that the only way this works is with the USGA, R&A and all of the major professional tours to be in the same room and agree on the need to roll back the ball.  Let me also digress and acknowledge an obvious point, that distance gains are the result of many factors, not just the ball.  That includes equipment, of course, but also fitness, course conditioning, and technology such as video and launch monitors.  But the ball is the simplest means to the end, and likely the only means....

Let's also remember that golf is the only professional sport where players choose their ball.... In Ogilvy's baseball example above, the players choose their bats within general specifications, but the league controls the balls.  This isn't always without controversy, as we saw in the most recent post-season in which the balls were consistently being described as slicker than during the regular season.

But the world Mike Davis envisions seems like madness to me.  The skill of golf is in the repeatability  of one's game....  Don't get me wrong, length is a huge advantage, but it's hard to pull a club if you don't know how far a seven iron goes with the ball being played this week.  That's why the concept of Augusta National doing this is so troubling to me, you're asking them to diminish their competition by having the field play balls with which they're not familiar.

It further seems to me that there's two basic ways to get where we think we want to go...the first being to have the Tour and other sponsors actually produce and distribute the balls.  This seems less likely to succeed to me because it ensures World War III with the ball manufacturers.  You're removing their sponsorship and association with the Tour players, and they won't be amused....

As an amusing aside, though, you might have noted that Rickie Fowler endorses Bushnell rangefinders, despite the fact that they are proscribed on Tour.  Food for thought...

But the smarter strategy to me is the one articulated by Tiger, to publish specifications for a Tourney ball and let the manufacturers work within those specs to produce balls for their players.  Players will still have some ability to find the ball that works best for them, and the manufacturers will still compete for allegiance of the players and the talking heads will translate actual distances into projected distances with the amateur ball.  

It would seem obvious that all professionals and the highest level amateurs would play this rolled-back ball, but the exact cut-off line needs some further thought.  It's also a little disconcerting that all of the attention is on distance, whereas spin is also an important factor, though one that makes eyes glaze over.

Stay tuned to see if this can transition from talk to action.