The Longest Yard

David Lloyd sets us up for some insight in his GolfWeek.com article “Seeing Both Points.” You see, he played the 8,548-yard Jade Dragon Snow Mountain course in Li Jiang, China. The course sits 10,200 feet above sea level and balls fly 20% further. The title promises to provide a fair analysis of the distance debate in golf.

Unfortunately, Lloyd misses both of his points rather spectacularly. He quotes U.S. Open winner Michael Campbell as saying “(Callaway’s) new FT-3 really made a difference for me in the U.S. Open. I was driving it miles and still hitting a ton of fairways. It was a big part of my win.” I assume that Lloyd feels Campbell’s quote is a great example of increasing distance on the PGA Tour, because Campbell’s statement is nearly devoid of actual fact.

Michael Campbell is currently ranked 124th on the European Tour in driving distance this year (2005) after managing to drive the ball further and place higher in the distance rankings in each of the previous four years. Campbell’s driving accuracy shows a similar decline, falling from the 23rd spot in 2000 to 106th in 2005. Campbell had just won the U.S. Open – Callaway’s first major. I’m inclined to believe that his remarks were merely an attempt to promote his sponsor, because they clearly aren’t grounded in reality.

The ball goes further than it did thirty years ago. You won’t find anyone who will disagree with that. Then again, today’s clubs hit the ball further than the clubs of three decades ago. The average handicap has remained relatively constant for those same 30 years, yet Lloyd seems to believe that it’s a self-evident fact that “the sharp reduction in rounds recently experienced in the U.S., Japan, Australia and elsewhere have been influenced by increases in the cost and time required to play golf on the increasing length of today’s golf courses.”

If golfers are scoring about the same as they did 30 years ago, “distance” can be removed from the equation. Whether a par-3 is 120 yards or 210 yards, I’ve still gotta wait for the green to clear before I can play. The rising cost can most likely be blamed on the demand for pristine golf course conditioning and the costs associated with that. Slow play? Blaming slow play on longer drives makes about as much sense as a bikini at the south pole.

Lloyd attempts to see “the other side of the debate” (having failed to properly find and identify the first side), but instead continues on with the same unfounded blather:

There are those who will point out that the U.S. Open proved that defenses against the ball and driver lie exclusively in course agronomy and setup. They may have chosen to overlook the point made by Bernard Darwin in his 1947 book, “British Golf,” and Geoff Shackelford in his book, “The Future of Golf,” published in 2005, that more distance means longer courses, more real estate, more maintenance costs and more time needed to complete a round.

The U.S. Open did show that a course need not be a billion yards long to be competitive. You’ll not find many who will disagree with that. You’ll also not find many who will disagree that increased driving distances mean longer courses, more real estate, and higher maintenance costs. That’s just common sense.

But where are the studies that show that increased distances result in slower rounds? If courses are 20% longer now but players hit the ball 20% further and scoring is almost the same as it was thirty years ago, how can distance be blamed for slow play without likewise tagging increased course traffic, high rough and fast greens, decline of golfer etiquette, reduction of monitoring by rangers, increased use of cell phones, and more trees along fairways?

In fact, golf course superintendents in a February, 2000 Golf Digest survey didn’t even list “increased distance” as a cause for slow play, but they list each of the other reasons cited above. What about blind shots? A par three as one of the first three holes? Long green-to-tee walks (or drives)? What about bunkers (and the time it takes to rake them)?

“Golf at the professional level continues to weather the storms of technological advances,” says Lloyd. Golf at every level continues to “weather the storms of technological improvement,” I say. Perhaps, instead of focusing on distance, we can attempt to calm the real storms facing golf today – those actually responsible for slow play and the rising cost of golf, the two biggest reasons golfers give up the game. Calling technology a “storm” to be “weathered” clearly tell us on which side of the fence Lloyd rests his balls when it comes to the distance debate.

Facts, Please
Lloyd’s article is long on hyperbole, assumption, and groundless guessing and short on fact. For an article called “Seeing Both points,” I’ve yet to figure out what Lloyd’s first point is.

Golfers are hitting the ball further as a result of many things, not just improvements in equipment (the ball and clubs). Yes, slow play is a problem, but according to those who should know, “increased distance” is not a factor. And finally, the game of golf has rules that govern our equipment. One of those rules governs the distance a golf ball can travel (the overall distance standard, or ODS) and another governs how “hot” a driver’s face can be (the coefficient of restitution, or CoR).

As several in the industry – including Frank Thomas, former director of technology for the USGA – have stated, the science of distance has likely reached its limits within the current rules. If you think we’ll be hitting 400-yard drives in ten years, why, you probably believed we’d all be flitting around like the Jetsons in the year 2000 as recently as 1990.

So I have but one question to ask David Lloyd: what color is your flying car?

Photo Credit: © TechImaging.