- Admin
- #1
Over the last few years, the USGA has made some rulings that were not hugely popular to manufacturers (as well as consumers). Maxing out drivers, rolling back wedge grooves and more. A recent conversation came about this morning with a friend about "What if the USGA rolled back golf balls" and it got pretty interesting. Lets say for example 1 of these 2 things happened.
1. The USGA says "at the highest level (PGA Tour, etc), the golf ball technology is frozen right now and companies can continue to make new products for consumers, but at the tour level, they will be different?
2. The USGA says "No more urethane covers and all balls must be covered with surlyn type of material".
I had a while to think about this and I think two things come to be for me. #1, the industry (equipment industry) shakeup would be gigantic.
If the first one happened, no company could be out there saying "Play what the pros play" in terms of a golf ball, because the consumer would not be playing the same ball outside of brand. Would it matter? Would we (as consumers) still flock to certain brands, rather than worrying about whether or not its even the same product that they are marketing?
If the second scenario happened, it would be incredible to see how the marketing then changes to durability, or "spinniest surlyn" or creative names for the cover. Could pricing still be the same with a cover that costs less to manufacture? I believe, as a generalization, that price dictates quality in the game of golf more than the other way around. The golf ball fits this more than anything in my opinion.
Of course all of this is just a "what if" type of scenario and nothing has come in to THP to make us think anything like this is coming in the near future, but truth be told, it would not shock me if somewhere down the road, something of the sort happens.
What do you see happening if 1 of these 2 scenarios were to take place?
1. The USGA says "at the highest level (PGA Tour, etc), the golf ball technology is frozen right now and companies can continue to make new products for consumers, but at the tour level, they will be different?
2. The USGA says "No more urethane covers and all balls must be covered with surlyn type of material".
I had a while to think about this and I think two things come to be for me. #1, the industry (equipment industry) shakeup would be gigantic.
If the first one happened, no company could be out there saying "Play what the pros play" in terms of a golf ball, because the consumer would not be playing the same ball outside of brand. Would it matter? Would we (as consumers) still flock to certain brands, rather than worrying about whether or not its even the same product that they are marketing?
If the second scenario happened, it would be incredible to see how the marketing then changes to durability, or "spinniest surlyn" or creative names for the cover. Could pricing still be the same with a cover that costs less to manufacture? I believe, as a generalization, that price dictates quality in the game of golf more than the other way around. The golf ball fits this more than anything in my opinion.
Of course all of this is just a "what if" type of scenario and nothing has come in to THP to make us think anything like this is coming in the near future, but truth be told, it would not shock me if somewhere down the road, something of the sort happens.
What do you see happening if 1 of these 2 scenarios were to take place?