Your humble blogger got it only half-right... And therein lies the rub, the coming battle for the soul of our game.
Not everybody loves the long ball.
On Tuesday, the United States Golf Association and Royal & Ancient Golf Club took their firmest stance to date in regard to distance by declaring their conclusions from their long-awaited Distance Insights Project.
At 13 pages, the sharply worded report distills oceans of data into a summary of what the governing bodies perceive to be golf’s distance problem, assessing where the game has been, where it is and where it’s headed, as well as where it ought to go for its own good.Exactly how to get there is another matter.
The report does not present solutions, but it hints at possibilities — including potential of new conformance tests for clubs and balls, and the adoption of a local rule that would allow courses to require limited-flight equipment — while laying out a blueprint for finding answers.
I've been reliably informed that chicks still dig the long ball.... we're just all old enough now that chicks aren't much of a factor in our lives.
Shack has a number of posts up on this topic, likely the most exhaustive commentary to be found at this early moment. He includes a number of excerpts from the report's summary, which saves me the trouble of reading it myself. Yeah, that's lazy, but life remains too short. This might be the money 'graph:
In summary, we believe that golf will best thrive over the next decades and beyond if this continuing cycle of ever-increasing hitting distances and golf course lengths is brought to an end. Longer distances, longer courses, playing from longer tees and longer times to play are taking golf in the wrong direction and are not necessary to make golf challenging, enjoyable or sustainable in the future.
So, remind me, who was in charge of the game during that continuing cycle?
But wait, Mike and Martin actually address this passivity:
For all the reasons stated above, we believe that it is time to break the cycle of increasingly longer hitting distances and golf courses and to work to build a long-term future that reinforces golf’s essential challenge and enhances the viability of both existing courses and courses yet to be built. In reaching this conclusion, we recognize that some have the view that the governing bodies might have done more in addressing the implications of the continuing increases in hitting distances and course lengths.
Have they considered a career in journalism? Because the "Some people say" trope is a bit over-used these days...
There are always uncertainties about the future, and an inherent part of our role is to incorporate the lessons of experience, continue to monitor and assess ongoing developments, and develop consensus on issues that should be addressed.Our views have evolved as events have unfolded and new information has become available, just as they may evolve in the future, and we believe that it is never too late to do the right thing for the future of the game. By stepping back to take this long-term view in the Distance Insights Project, we believe that we are in position to address this set of issues from all perspectives and to search for effective long-term solutions.
OK, let's acknowledge that this is a difficult area, one in which any regulatory action might have all sorts of unintended consequences, not to mention interminable litigation. But this is basically the timeline:
2002 - Joint Statement of Principals released, indicating any further distance increases would be to the detriment of the game.
2002-2020 -
2020 - We're all gonna die!
And even that middle entry lets them off the hook, because the body of reports released undertook active measures to disguise that which we all saw with our eyes.
Of great note to me is that suddenly the USGA and R&A are expressing interest in the entire history of our game, for instance:
You might not know it from watching your weekend foursome, but distances in golf have long been on the rise.
According to the distance report, the data trail traces to the late 1800s, when elite players typically hit drives of 160-200 yards, maybe 220 if they flushed one. Between 1900 and 1930, as the gutta percha gave way to the rubber-core ball, the average for big hitters swelled into the neighborhood of 220 to 260 yards, with the Cameron Champs of the era topping out around 290. Subsequent decades brought more of the same, as advances in equipment, agronomy and training, coupled with the growing athleticism of golfers, stretched distances ever farther, sometimes gradually, other times dramatically. By the end of 2019, the average drive of the 20 longest hitters on the European and PGA tours was 310 yards.
This actually represents progress of a sort. Because their recent reports all insisted that golf began circa 2002, which incorporates the distance gains of the solid core ball into the baseline.
Shack has this excerpt of their discussion of the ball:
The performance of golf balls has changed significantly over the last 25 years, with many of those changes contributing directly to hitting distance increases. The most significant change in golf balls in this period has been the replacement of the wound-core golf balls used since the early 1900s with the multi-layer, solid-core balls that are ubiquitous today. Multi-layer solid construction golf balls is not a new innovation, but many golfers continued to use wound golf balls until as late as the beginning of the 2000s. Typically, multi-layer, solid-core balls spin considerably less than wound-core balls at typical driver impact angles (R20 - Effect of Equipment on Distance - Golf Balls). This is an important factor for driver shot distance because decreases in spin can directly contribute to increases in distance. For example, referring to Figure 27, a decrease of spin of around 250 rpm can lead to an increase in distance of as much as five yards at a swing speed of 120 miles per hour.
A comparison of a popular, older, wound-core golf ball and a popular, modern, solid-core golf ball suggests that the latter has both improved aerodynamics and is optimized for a lower spin rate. It can be seen in Figure 27 that for the impact speed typical of elite male golfers, at a spin rate of 3000 rpm, the aerodynamic improvement of a modern solid-core ball was calculated to be worth approximately ten yards over a traditional wound-core ball.
Ya think? We noticed, Mike, you're the one that's been burying this... Also, there's a tendency to focus simply on distance, but the reduced spin of the modern ball is also a huge factor.
So, what comes next? This will shock you:
This paper provides notice to equipment manufacturers of this overall area of interest under the Equipment Rulemaking Procedures. This means that we are identifying research topics that have the potential to lead to an Equipment Rule change but that no proposals are being made today. We invite input from manufacturers and other stakeholders in the golf community concerning potential equipment-based options to help achieve the objectives identified above. To facilitate that input, within 45 days we will publish a more specific set of research topics. It is anticipated that this important step of gathering input will take at least 9-12 months. After the research is completed and comments are evaluated, if we then decide to propose any rule changes, manufacturers will receive notice of these proposed changes (including a proposed implementation plan) and an opportunity to comment under the Equipment Rulemaking Procedures. The time allotted for this step in the process leading up to a final decision on any proposed rule change would depend on the nature of the proposal.
On the one hand, your humble blogger nailed that one. Alas, the Degree of Difficulty was so low that one can't post much of a score.
This aspect will get the most ink pixels, as the report can be read as an initial salvo pointing us towards bifurcation:
1. We will assess the potential use of a Local Rule option that would specify use of clubs and/or balls intended to result in shorter hitting distances. The concept is that equipment meeting a particular set of reduced-distance specifications – for example, a ball that does not travel as far or a club that will not hit a ball as far – might be a defined subset of the overall category of conforming equipment. This could allow committees that conduct golf competitions or oversee individual courses to choose, by Local Rule authorized under the Rules of Golf, whether and when to require that such equipment be used. Such a Local Rule option could be available for use at all levels of play, and golfers playing outside of a competition could also have the option to make this choice for themselves.
But heaven forfend our regulators actually take a position, there's language that undercuts that:
“One of the great qualifies of golf is that we play under a single set of rules,” said Thomas Pagel, the USGA’s senior managing director of governance. “It’s one of the strengths and virtues of the game and something we are steadfast in retaining.”
It seems clear they can't have it both ways... Alas, it's equally clear that they're in no hurry to get to that day of reckoning, seemingly unaware that these problems don't get any easier to resolve.
Let me close with a few reactions of varying relevance. First, in any matter relating to the USGA, I'm reminded of the late, great Frank Hannigan's warning to Geoff of the USGA's need to be liked. I'm not finding it on the Google Waybac machine, but one always wonders about their conflict avoidance tendencies....
Also this Mike Bamberger item on Nick Price. Why Nick?
Nick Price is the best golfer of the 15 members of the USGA executive committee. By alot. He is newly 63 (a score he once shot in a Masters) and he’s been chipping away at the game for a half-century now, as a player and as a thinker. The 13-page summary of the USGA’s long-awaited Distance Insights Project? Child’s play, for Price. He’s been through the actual report, 90-plus pages, highlighter in hand, again and again. A good read, he says.
“You really should read it,” Price said the other day.
Price’s you is you. It’s you, me, my bosses, Tour players, resort operators. It’s ball manufacturers and club manufacturers. (In analyzing distance gains, this distance report does not discriminate between the two.) It’s caddies, course architects, superintendents. Price’s you is anybody and everybody who cares about golf, whether it’s your livelihood or your hobby or some combination thereof.
Mike does exhume this old and dated bit from Nick:
Whatever worries Price should worry us. If the subject is golf, he’s often the smartest person in the room, or right up there with Lee Trevino and Johann Rupert, a South African businessman. When the term Tiger-proofing became a thing in 1997, Price said, “If you want to Tiger-proof a course, make it shorter, not longer.” Golf did not listen.
It all depends on what you mean by Tiger-proofing, as it's the date that's the giveaway... When it was only Tiger hitting it that far, this made good sense. But we're at a point of worrying how far Webb Simpson hits it,
OK, so what's Nickie's point:
“It’s a first step in an education process,” Price said recently, during a long lunch that at a South Florida club he founded with others, McArthur Golf Club. “It’s an attempt to get everybody, no matter how you come to the game, to understand where we are and where we’re going, what might happen if we do nothing and what we could do. But the first step is to get everybody on the same page.”Price, a Hall of Fame golfer with three major titles, is the best sort of company man the USGA could have. He of course has his own opinions. He’s not sharing them. He knows it’s critical for the USGA, working in conjunction with the R&A, to speak as one voice. “People really don’t understand that the USGA has only the best interests of the game at heart,” he said.
Now you see why I bothered to bring up Frank Hannigan?
“I was once one of the players in U.S. Opens, grumbling about how the USGA sets up their courses and what they do with all the money they make,” Price said. He had a handful of good U.S. Opens, but he was never, surprisingly, right there at the end.
“But then when you get into it and start to really understand what the USGA does, you learn that the U.S. Open is the only USGA event that makes any real money, and that all that money is going back into the game.”Price doesn’t say this next part quite so pointedly but he knows what all clear-minded people in the game know: touring pros of every stripe, manufacturers, Tour executives with incentive clauses, course owners, network executives and various others from various other constituencies have an almost innate desire to make more money every year. It’s human nature. The USGA wants to make more money, too, but only so it can put more money back in the game with the goal of improving the game. Those last three words are make-or-break.
Relevance, please? Do so many straw men really need to be sacrificed?
A tuna melt plays far too big a role in Mike's narrative, though I'm concerned with the Kool-Aid apparently used to wash it down.... though the continued sensitivity to that Fox contract is really quite amusing.
“If the USGA did this long, thorough study of the role of distance in the game, and the first statement out it was, `We have to roll back the ball by 10 percent,’ we’d lose people even before we got started,” Price said.
The distance summary does discuss the prospect of the use of a local rule that “that would specify use of clubs and/or balls intended to result in shorter hitting distances.” Do not say you’ve heard about tournaments like this already called the World Hickory Championship! Keep an open mind, people. That’s Nick Price’s suggestion, for all of us.
Nick is a good guy, but this is totally unconvincing. We all get that there all sorts of stake-holders that need to have input, and that the manufacturers will seek to protect their own interests.
I'm happy that the governing bodies have drawn a line in the sand, but we've seen this movie before. They drew and equally bold line in the sand in 2002, and have stuck their heads in the sand since then. I eagerly await Mike Davis' request for a mulligan for those eighteen years....
No need to torture you more on this subject, as the only thing certain is that nothing will happen for at least a year. We can catch up on other news tomorrow.
No comments:
Post a Comment