TLuke
Well-known member
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.
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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.So glad he's done after this year. LATAH!
There's no distance problem.......Just a solution looking for problem. Golf is fine, never been better.I have yet to hear a convincing argument that there is a distance problem.
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.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!
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
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.
- 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.
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.
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.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.
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.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.