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USGA and R&A - Distance Rollback Proposals

If the USGA and R&A think pro tour distance is that big of a problem, have the pros only play Cayman Pimples, hybrid, or 80% Pro V1 golf balls. No money lost for course redesigns. Problem solved.
 
Canadan said:
So glad he's done after this year. LATAH!
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Unfortunately there are plenty of other stuffy, elitist, pleated khaki and cardigan-wearing grumpy old men to follow in his footsteps.

Funny how this was never a problem when Tiger was outdriving everybody on the Tour, and now all of a sudden it's a problem because it's not Tiger doing it anymore.

The USGA and R&A are so out of touch with reality that it's almost incomprehensible.
 
So I haven't had time to comprehensively read the entire discussion with work and golf today, but to the people saying the OEM's should threaten to reduce their advertising on tour, I don't fully understand that idea. I mean, they'll need to sell golf equipment and stay ahead of competitors, and they pay for that ad time during events for the exposure to buyers watching. If they need to make new and separate golf equipment that takes more R & D and manufacturing money, they'd need to find different ways to effectively advertise if they reduce it on tour, sue, different ways to maximize revenue within the current model, or raise prices to recoup those costs, wouldn't they? And aren't we the ones that actually pay for those costs? One solutiom here seems more imminent than the rest. Or is my hustling around town and skimming brain thinking about this wrong?
 
So eliminate "par" at tour events and the winner is low score period! That's basically what they do now except they use the wording "under par" so it sounds like the pros are over powering the course. Oh crap, logical thinking not allowed, usga police knocking on the door! 😎
 
Some players work hard to increase club head speed and devote time and effort to that. Does that give them an advantage, probably so. Some players are great with irons. Some with wedges and others are just better putters than everyone else. They all have the ability to put in the work and practice. Why take away someones advantage. Dont see how this is good for the game , particularly amateurs. And i cant see how this would be good for Pros.
 
I'm listening to the golf channel. My take away from them is the USGA & The R/A are right, we are all wrong.
That's any changes made would affect us amateurs....especially since most of us do not swing over 100 mph anyways.
The last part is from Tripp Isen(something)
 
Just listening now to this subject on Golf Central. Very spirited discussion. I believe these changes will target the pro golfer only and not affect us weekday/weekend hacks. Just think of the OEM club and ball inventory that would be at risk if this was implemented across the board.
 
So the more I think about this I think Bryson Dechambeau might have given the USGA an easy out here where they can say they did something, but they really don't change anything. Just make a new rule saying driver length is capped at 46". You limit the problem that could create if guys figure it out and add 20-30 yards onto their drives and absolutely nothing changes for everybody else. The USGA saves face on the unpopular quest to limit distance gains and says they did something and by and large no one really cares if they can't get a driver longer than 46".
 
Turtlerancher said:
So eliminate "par" at tour events and the winner is low score period! That's basically what they do now except they use the wording "under par" so it sounds like the pros are over powering the course. Oh crap, logical thinking not allowed, usga police knocking on the door! 😎
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I think reporting scores in relation to par causes a misconception. If you think about a Par 72 course for 4 days even par is 288. Let's say 20 years ago they shot -10 which is 278 and today they shoot -20 which is 268. That 10 stroke difference amounts to 3.59% of 278 they shot 10 years ago. So the best golfers have improved their scores 3.59% over a 4 day tournament with all the gains in equipment and conditioning. Golf is still plenty hard. But when you see -20 verses -10 it seems like golfers have gotten twice as good to a lot of people. 3.59% better is a far cry from twice as good.
 
Don't the pros use slightly different golf balls anyway from the ones sold in stores?

I know they're similar, but if a manufacturer already makes a different product for the pros, why can't they tweak it more to limit distance? Or make pros use a 2-piece surlyn ball only that manufacturers already make
 
I have mixed feelings about the distance debate. Courses were (logically) designed based on the distances golfers (elite and recreational) were hitting at the time of construction. Equipment companies and having to buy new clubs/balls notwithstanding, if everyone hit it, x% shorter than they do now, then the space required for golf would be y% less as well. Distance will always be an advantage and something that given static rules will always go up to some degree, at least at the elite level. To keep elite golf within the same window as recreational golf (e.g. typical par 4 is a driver and an iron), it seems bifurcation in equipment or courses will always be inevitable.

One thing that is interesting to me is that I'm not sure I've ever seen a forum post or a talking head argue that the rules should be changed so that there is more distance and more forgiveness. If someone is staunchly anti-rollback for the reasons everyone has mentioned, but not pro rules changes that make the ball go farther, bigger drivers, etc, then it seems they are then saying that the equipment we have now is the perfect embodiment of how golf should be played. Which is kind of an arbitrary place right? Are 460cc drivers perfect compared to 440cc or 480cc? Not sure what to make of that.
 
The Dave said:
Don't the pros use slightly different golf balls anyway from the ones sold in stores?

I know they're similar, but if a manufacturer already makes a different product for the pros, why can't they tweak it more to limit distance? Or make pros use a 2-piece surlyn ball only that manufacturers already make
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Depends on the player, but most are using the same balls available to golfers at the current time.

Surlyn cover will not limit distance. The cover has less impact on performance the further you get away from the green.
 
This is ridiculous. Bifurcation ruins the game. And 99.9 percent of golfers do not have a distance problem. This is madness. Solutions I’ve heard range from restricting the tee to 2.5 inches, to making the slighter bigger and thus slowing it down (creating higher drag) and spinning more, to full out assaults on the OEMs to restrict innovation. Again wtf.....?? I guess the governing bodies are happy to hamper growth as long as a handful of courses can stay “relevant”
Im looking at you Georgia.
 
GoldenBuff said:
  • I don’t want bifurcation. I want one game, one set of rules. This is my primary interest in this topic.
  • I know this is unpopular, but I agree that golf as an institution has to make some changes to equipment because of the trend in increasing Tour distance. If that distance was all due to better athletes, better training, and better preparation, I would be fine with it. But it is also due in an equally significant part to equipment that continues to improve at breakneck pace. Other sports like basketball, football, soccer, and hockey, for example, don’t have a similar equipment transformation component. What happens when par 5’s need to be 700 yards to be par 5’s? How long will rounds take if courses are 10,000 yards? Land is a scarce and premium commodity. The trend is not sustainable.
  • See #1. Please don’t bifurcate the game. I don’t care if I go from hitting 300 yard drives to 225 yards simply because of new equipment rules. I can adapt. I love the challenge of golf. Just give me one game. But if golf becomes one game for pros and another for amateurs based on different equipment rules, I’m out.
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Do you use a caddie or a laser/range finder? Do you use carts to ride? It is already a different game for us amateurs than the pros. You already use different equipment.

This is a problem for about 1/100th of 1% of golfers.

Every sport had different rules for the lower levels of play, including equipment.
* the size of the football in the NFL is different from all other levels of play. The harshmarks. The width of the goal posts
* the size of the lane is different in Europe and fibs competitions than NBA. The 3 point line is different. The size of the basketball is varies at different ages and for women. The height of the basket, too.
* baseball...see length of the bases, pitch counts, distance to the mound, aluminum bats, etc

Only golf holds on to the FALSE notion that we are playing the same game, that a 20 year old world class athlete is the same as a 60yo once a month player. It’s a patently absurd premise.
 
Let’s short the PGA tour and buy the Wound Golf Ball makers stock!.........oh sorry wrong thread
 
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I wouldn’t have an issue with bifurcation if there was an actual goal in sight besides just “fixing the distance problem”. At what point is it fixed? When only a couple of players can it hit 300? No one should be able to drive it over 350?

I don’t mind even mind limiting certain equipment features on drivers, but at what point have you taken off enough moi off the club? 75%? 90%? I haven’t read the report yet, but I think to come out with a report that has no clear pathway to the goal (whatever the goal is) and instead list like 7 things that we may have to change to the equipment to make tour golf “playable” is a joke and a great way to ruin the game.
 
Probably needed. Stinks but we’re running out of room for the pros. Also lol I played just fine with HX Hot balls 10 years ago, I can adjust now
 
I have always thought that the distance issue is dominated by the fact that the USGA and the R&A fear that many of their historic courses are being rendered obsolete by how far they hit the ball.
 
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They say nothing will change for the average player but someone will have to pay for all that new R&D. The new drivers will go from $600 to $800. LOL!
 
I apologize for the long winded post.

I think, before we get too wound up, we need to remember, the OEM guys don’t develop new balls, equipment and “stuff” for the professional golfers. They do it for us.

Their R&D and marketing yields balls that go farther and clubs that allow our crappy swings hit the ball farther and straighter. The byproduct of that is the several hundred pros out there reap the benefits as well and that is the source of the perceived problem

To go through the cost of product development for the pros couldn’t yield sales to keep the OEM’s in business for 20 minutes. They use the pros as marketing tools to sell products to the masses. That’s it. They sell us on Tiger or Bryson, or whomever, being engaged in development of balls, etc... sure that’s fine... but it’s to sell products to US. The pros can shoot par on just about any course using a rock tied to a stick, and hitting any golf ball since the gutta percha . We can’t do it with the latest greatest stuff out there. All the product development is on our behalf. They won’t screw that up. (Hopefully)

The law of unintended consequences has reared its head and the damage is to golf courses that were once true tests of talent. Now we watch guys on TV dissecting them, with regularity, on a tournament weekend.

Regarding baseball, which has been mentioned... MLB doesn’t allow aluminum bats because it effectively shrinks the field and changes the game to a degree where it becomes unrecognizable from what it was intended. (That, and someone would get killed if hit by a ball coming off of an aluminum bat, at that level).

I think “Golf” wants to avoid that very possible circumstance, of shrinking the field/course, due to equipment advances, resulting in a game that is not what was intended. Whether they achieve their goal, to our satisfaction, is another story altogether. Again, sorry for the lengthy post.
 
Someone needs to straight up ask the USGA how this is going to effect the amateur that tries to qualify for the US/Women/Senior Open. How is that going to be fair?
 
tequila4kapp said:
Do you use a caddie or a laser/range finder? Do you use carts to ride? It is already a different game for us amateurs than the pros. You already use different equipment.

This is a problem for about 1/100th of 1% of golfers.

Every sport had different rules for the lower levels of play, including equipment.
* the size of the football in the NFL is different from all other levels of play. The harshmarks. The width of the goal posts
* the size of the lane is different in Europe and fibs competitions than NBA. The 3 point line is different. The size of the basketball is varies at different ages and for women. The height of the basket, too.
* baseball...see length of the bases, pitch counts, distance to the mound, aluminum bats, etc

Only golf holds on to the FALSE notion that we are playing the same game, that a 20 year old world class athlete is the same as a 60yo once a month player. It’s a patently absurd premise.
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I noted that I expected my opinion to be unpopular. My tune on this topic remains. Pros play different tees and course setups -- similar to other sport differences from pros -- but I don't want to see bifurcation in terms of playing different equipment. In the end my opinion is irrelevant. USGA and the Tour will do what they do, and we will all see what happens for us amateurs.
 
tequila4kapp said:
Do you use a caddie or a laser/range finder? Do you use carts to ride? It is already a different game for us amateurs than the pros. You already use different equipment.

This is a problem for about 1/100th of 1% of golfers.

Every sport had different rules for the lower levels of play, including equipment.
* the size of the football in the NFL is different from all other levels of play. The harshmarks. The width of the goal posts
* the size of the lane is different in Europe and fibs competitions than NBA. The 3 point line is different. The size of the basketball is varies at different ages and for women. The height of the basket, too.
* baseball...see length of the bases, pitch counts, distance to the mound, aluminum bats, etc

Only golf holds on to the FALSE notion that we are playing the same game, that a 20 year old world class athlete is the same as a 60yo once a month player. It’s a patently absurd premise.
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Agree 100%. If they think there's a problem within the PGA/LPGA Tour ranks, let them bifurcate and screw up their game, as long as it doesn't interfere with ours.

I have no illusions that I play the same game the pros do. I don't have their distance, accuracy or precision in any aspect of my game from tee to green. I don't have green charts and I don't have a personally selected caddy walking along with me carrying, cleaning and taking care of my clubs, giving me advice on every shot and reading my putts for me. I don't have galleries, forecaddies and TV cameras/crews to locate my ball when I hit it into the rough. I don't have my clubs custom made for me and provided for free, and I don't have a tour van at every round to tweak my clubs or hand me an instant free replacement if I damage one. I don't have a swing coach, a putting coach, a life coach, a nutrition coach, a personal trainer, a chef or a masseuse at my beck and call.

Basically I don't do anything like the pros, so why do I want to try to pretend that I am one? We don't play the same game - I fully understand that and I'm perfectly okay with it. I couldn't possibly care less that I'm not playing the same clubs or balls that the pros do, or that I'm not playing from the same tees or wearing their same clothes. This game is hard enough already, I don't need the USGA sticking their nose in and rolling back equipment so my 230 yard drives only go 180, and I don't see what possible good such a rollback would accomplish within the amateur/weekend warrior ranks except to make life miserable for about 99% of those players.

I mean, the ideal outcome would be that the USGA/R&A would institute their "solution" by making up these stupid local rules that clubs/events could use if they wanted to, and then that the PGA and LPGA Tours, Korn Ferry Tour, etc. would all say "That's nice, thanks" and never put them in play at any of their events. The only place the Tour players would have to deal with it would be the U.S. Open, and in an ideal happy world all the big names would boycott that tournament and leave them with a field with all the big name power of a weekend tournament at our local munis. :ROFLMAO:
 
NeverWiff said:
I apologize for the long winded post.

I think, before we get too wound up, we need to remember, the OEM guys don’t develop new balls, equipment and “stuff” for the professional golfers. They do it for us.

Their R&D and marketing yields balls that go farther and clubs that allow our crappy swings hit the ball farther and straighter. The byproduct of that is the several hundred pros out there reap the benefits as well and that is the source of the perceived problem

To go through the cost of product development for the pros couldn’t yield sales to keep the OEM’s in business for 20 minutes. They use the pros as marketing tools to sell products to the masses. That’s it. They sell us on Tiger or Bryson, or whomever, being engaged in development of balls, etc... sure that’s fine... but it’s to sell products to US. The pros can shoot par on just about any course using a rock tied to a stick, and hitting any golf ball since the gutta percha . We can’t do it with the latest greatest stuff out there. All the product development is on our behalf. They won’t screw that up. (Hopefully)

The law of unintended consequences has reared its head and the damage is to golf courses that were once true tests of talent. Now we watch guys on TV dissecting them, with regularity, on a tournament weekend.

Regarding baseball, which has been mentioned... MLB doesn’t allow aluminum bats because it effectively shrinks the field and changes the game to a degree where it becomes unrecognizable from what it was intended. (That, and someone would get killed if hit by a ball coming off of an aluminum bat, at that level).

I think “Golf” wants to avoid that very possible circumstance, of shrinking the field/course, due to equipment advances, resulting in a game that is not what was intended. Whether they achieve their goal, to our satisfaction, is another story altogether. Again, sorry for the lengthy post.
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Exactly. Every other sport not named golf realizes it is the same game even if minor adjustments are made to equipment and rules to enable the enjoyment and participation of the sport for the masses.
 
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