There’s a rumor that’s been going around the equipment biz that a major golf ball manufacturer has crafted a unique response to Jack Nicklaus’ continued complaints about how far today’s balls travel. The company – which hasn’t been positively identified, but I’m 99.9 percent sure it starts with a “T” and ends with “itleist” – made a limited run of golf balls manufactured to mid-1980s specs. The balls are stamped “RIP Distance” on one side, with the inscription “This is the ball Jack wants you to hit” on the other.
In the name of due diligence, Lawrence Donegan of The Guardian newspaper in the U.K. came across some of these rare old-school golf balls and had PGA European Tour player Gary Orr try one side-by-side with the new Pro V1. Read on to find out what happened.
Donegan’s complete article can be read here. It’s a must-read for anyone who cares about the distance debate in golf. That means you.
If you’re short on time, allow me to sum things up for you. Orr pitted the two golf balls against each other in a 9-hole match at Loch Lomond in Scotland. The Pro V1 dusted “The ball Jack wants you to play” 2 and 1, and Orr pulled off some nifty shots to keep the match that close. Some of Orr’s drives with the old ball left him more than 100 yards behind the newer ball, and he sometimes had a 3-club difference on approach shots.
The biggest differences were the way the two balls performed on bad shots, and how the wind affected them. With the Pro V1, Orr’s mis-hits didn’t lose much distance. But “The ball Jack wants you to play” was positively abysmal on off-center hits. Likewise, the newer ball’s lower spin rate helped it to knife through the wind, while the dialed-down version was more easily blown off line.
Orr concludes that he wouldn’t mind playing the “RIP Distance” ball if everyone else did, and he liked the soft feel. But he sums up the two-ball match thusly: “Trust me, life is much easier with a sand wedge in your hands rather than a 4-iron.”
Interestingly, this story appears on the same day as my new Golf Digest. The August 2005 issue of the magazine has a short piece in the equipment section called “The distance myth.” It details how the USGA has studied the stats and concluded that driving distance is a weak predictor of how much money a player will earn on the PGA Tour, while driving accuracy is essentially a non-factor. Hitting greens and putting well were much better indicators of how much money players will earn.
In fact, USGA Senior Technical Director Dick Rugge is quoted in the piece as saying, “What this data suggests to me is that the four major statistical factors were in reasonable balance to each other in the 1980s, and now driving accuracy seems to be no longer in balance. It also says that the idea of rolling the ball back to the golden era doesn’t necessarily get you all the way there. You need to look at a broader picture.”
Hmmm. So maybe to make Jack Nicklaus happy with how the game of golf is played, we’ll need to change more than the ball. How about “This is the golf teacher Jack doesn’t want me to work with,” or “This is the out-of-shape body Jack wants me to have,” or even “This is the Verti-Cut lawn mower Jack doesn’t want to mow the fairways so low?”
Or, how about we just let the game of golf evolve? This week’s British Open won’t be won with a score of 20-over par, like it was in the 1880s. Where will scores be in another 100 years? Who cares? It is still a game about outplaying your competitors, not what you shoot in relation to par. “RIP Distance”? I hope not. “RIP Clinging to the Past” would be much more welcome.
Very fascinating write-up!
I agree though, as long as the same equipment is available to all the golfers, it shouldn’t really matter.
And as was mentioned, putting and chipping is still going to be the determining factor for low scoring no matter what people think. Drive for show, putt for dough! It gets old hearing it, but it’s always so true!
Perfect article. You’ve hit the nail on the head that so many people seem to ignore.
I don’t necessarily agree that as long as everyone uses the same equipment, it should all even out. The bigger issue I see is the obsolescence of golf courses that were designed with a shorter ball flight in mind. It is hard to imagine that Tiger and Fred Funk would be on equal footing playing a long wide open course as long as they played the same distance limited ball. Tiger would still be hitting 5 irons into greens that Funk was hitting 3 wood into. By the same logic, would Tiger and Funk be on equal footing playing with the same ball on a normal length course where the fairways were 10 yards wide and the rough was 8 inches tall. You might think that Funk would have the advantage because of his Fairway %, but then you have to factor in that Tiger is probably hitting 3 iron from the tee so should hit just as many fairways as Funk, thereby taking away his Fairway % advantage. A lot of courses are having to be lengthened and “tricked up” to accomodate the longer ball flight. In most cases this only serves to give more of an advantage to the long hitters, regardless of whether they are playing a distance limited ball or not. Augusta is a perfect example. The longer they make it, the better chance Tiger has of winning it.
I think a combination of a distance limited ball and proper course design and setup is one of the only ways to stop the ruination of golf by technology. With a distance limited ball and a good course design that encompasses all aspects of the game (length, accuracy, shot shaping and making ability, short game and putting)things would be on as even a footing as they are ever going to get based on the huge differences in golfers strengths and abilities.