The Golf Ball "Problem": PGA Tour Players Hitting it Far is a Problem for All of Golf?

[joro]

I agree with you totally.

[TRACON]

I recently saw an interview on TV where John Daly mentioned that due to technological changes in equipment, that there’s many golf courses just being so old where they can’t accomodate further distance from better players with modern equipment.    He actually used the term that it’s getting “ridiculous” these days for the amateurs out there.   I’m not a pro, but I’d agree with him somewhat.  

[phillyk]

Its funny to see all these programs designed to make golf easier/funner/quicker. But because less than .5% of golfers are hitting the ball 300yds, they want to roll back technology. There is no bifurcation of the rules (and there shouldn’t ever be), so you can’t have this both ways. 

[Pretzel]

9 minutes ago, phillyk said:

Its funny to see all these programs designed to make golf easier/funner/quicker. But because less than .5% of golfers are hitting the ball 300yds, they want to roll back technology. There is no bifurcation of the rules (and there shouldn’t ever be), so you can’t have this both ways. 

I think this is an excellent summary of how I feel on the matter. Rolling back the ball will undoubtedly hurt the vast majority of people playing the game, and I'm strongly against different rulesets for pros and amateurs. Rolling the ball back to try and "rein in" the minuscule minority of golfers that hit the ball a long way is, frankly, pretty shortsighted and conceited when it would so negatively affect the majority of golfers.

[joro]

Well, whatever.     I will keep quiet to keep from being rude with my real feelings.      Good luck and Good Golf.       Like the car ads show fast, distance is the top priority in Golf, and it sells a lot of New Clubs that are supposed to be the Holy Grail.     

[Pretzel]

16 minutes ago, joro said:

Well, whatever.     I will keep quiet to keep from being rude with my real feelings.      Good luck and Good Golf.       Like the car ads show fast, distance is the top priority in Golf, and it sells a lot of New Clubs that are supposed to be the Holy Grail.     

Discussion requires both sides to share their view, along with the material that supports it. I'd like to hear your real feelings on the matter, as to why you think rolling back the ball would have a positive effect on the game.

If you're worried about the course design aspect that was recently brought up, courses don't need to be long to be challenging. Merion is an excellent example, where the course played under 7,000 yards every day of the 2013 U.S. Open and the winning score was +1. All the U.S. Open courses since then have played over 7,000 yards and the highest winning score since 2013 was -4 in 2016 by Dustin Johnson. The funniest part about that is that in 2016 the U.S. Open played shorter than it did in 2014, 2015, and 2017. In other words, the two "hardest" courses (highest winning U.S. Open scores) in the last five years of the U.S. Open were also the shortest courses in the last five years. In 2012 the winning score was, again, +1 at the Olympic Club, which played at around 7,100 yards (making it shorter than the 2016 U.S. Open at Oakmont where DJ won). Going back two more years, to the 2010 U.S. Open, Grame McDowell won the tournament at even par for four rounds at Pebble Beach, which played only barely over 7,000 yards.

In fact, Brooks Koepka's win at Erin Hills last year, where he tied the record for the most strokes under par during a U.S. Open win, was played from over 7,800 yards on three of the four days. This clearly shows that length is by no means the only way of making the game challenging for professionals, and it shows that rolling back the ball is really quite arbitrary. The pros aren't destroying the classic short courses of the world by any means, so why does the ball need to be rolled back? The only time that distance is used to make a course hard or to "keep it relevant" is when the designer of the course wasn't or isn't good enough and imaginative enough to find other ways of challenging the golfer that just making the course really long.

What rolling back the golf ball would do, however, is frustrate the average golfer. The average golfer already wants to hit the ball further, and the pace of play at most courses is already bad enough. Existing courses are already longer than a majority of players can handle, so why would you handicap the everyday golfer even further? Scores would go up for the average golfer, public participation and interest in the sport would go down (why play a game that they just keep trying to make harder for you to play?), and the industry as a whole would suffer as a consequence of the ball being rolled back. It makes little sense to do it, looking at either the amateur golfer or the professional golfer, so why do you want the golf ball rolled back?

Edited November 4, 2017 by Pretzel

[iacas]

The CEO of Bridgestone thinks, apparently, that there should be a "standard ball":

http://www.golf.com/equipment/2017/11/16/bridgestone-ceo-says-golf-should-standardize-golf-ball-and-tiger-woods-endorsement-provides-30

The problems with this include:

• Bridgestone stands to gain by any market shakeup. Titleist is still #1. Any shakeup is likely to hurt Titleist and benefit others.
• This could just be marketing. "Our ball goes so far these days they should be illegal!"
• "There's too much of a gap in what IIagan calls "Tour and casual." Sales to whom? Professionals won't be reaching for the checkbook. Tour level only doesn't cut it. What does the USGA mandate for its three Open events where both amateur and pro participate? Do they provide tournament spec balls free to amateurs? God knows they can afford it. What about the bulk its events for amateurs only? I wouldn't call those casual by any means."

[clutchshot]

It’s not a problem for the PGA... it brings crowds, people love watching the pros hit it 300 yards... it’s not a problem for average golfers... we don’t hit it 300 yards... and even if we do, most of us are not even close to scratch!

[joro]

Face it, like it or not the new Golf is all about power and distance.     So we play our piddly game and they smash the Hell out of it.    Is it really for us say whether it is good or  not?    Yet we all have  opinions that create discussions, and like Butt Holes, we all have opinions.

Enjoy  your game no matter how it goes.

[Jack Watson]

It can definitely hurt average players to get sucked in to thinking they need to smash driver far at all costs and give up control.

They see the pros hitting 300 plus all day and swing out of their shoes and spray it.

Pro statistics are for pros.

Each average joe is an individual and for myself I can play a course aggressive with aggressive driver shots on all holes where that's possible but 90 percent of the time another birdie or two is offset by a bad double or two.  When I focus on keeping the ball in play off the tee my average scores are lower and Sometimes I go low relative to my cap.  I think if you are forced to hit Driver on every par four you might need to tee it forward a bit .

I just think you see average folks out there trying to hulk smash their driver 300 so much and imo they don't 'get' golf.

[joro]

The companies pay these guys big bucks to smash the ball so the buyer sees it and their Millions of Dollars of Marketing Money pays off with sales.   But I think a lot of people are wising up to the fact they change the product every few months to sell more and people are waiting for that so they can buy the last one a lot cheaper, which means that the Marketing Money will bring in less new Club sales.    It is going to be interesting, that is for sure.   Is your "old" 6 month old Driver really obsolete?

For yrs. I have said that newer is not always better, just more expensive.

 

[Lihu]

2 hours ago, Jack Watson said:

It can definitely hurt average players to get sucked in to thinking they need to smash driver far at all costs and give up control.

They see the pros hitting 300 plus all day and swing out of their shoes and spray it.

Possibly, but most of us are also playing courses that are 1000 yards shorter than the pros. I don't think anyone is talking about hitting as far as possible without taking club dispersion into account?

 

2 hours ago, Jack Watson said:

Pro statistics are for pros.

I don't know anyone who argues this point.

 

2 hours ago, Jack Watson said:

Each average joe is an individual and for myself I can play a course aggressive with aggressive driver shots on all holes where that's possible but 90 percent of the time another birdie or two is offset by a bad double or two.  When I focus on keeping the ball in play off the tee my average scores are lower and Sometimes I go low relative to my cap.  I think if you are forced to hit Driver on every par four you might need to tee it forward a bit .

Do you mean choosing a club that maximizes the chances for success on a hole?

LSW talks about hitting as far as "safe". Meaning not necessarily on the fairway, but not ending up in jail either. That's kind of where the shot zones concept comes into play. Keep it as long and safe as possible through a minimal amount of "analysis".

 

2 hours ago, Jack Watson said:

I just think you see average folks out there trying to hulk smash their driver 300 so much and imo they don't 'get' golf.

Possibly, but to many it's fun to hit far even if their scores suck as a result of it.

[Jack Watson]

It's probably a topic for another thread but to me golf I see most enjoyable when playing courses/yardages that force me to make a decision on the tee box.

It seems now that for the pros that's often not the case.  

[uitar9]

An amateur question:who started the idea that the game is getting to long? The owner who can't get a pro event because his course is too short for the pro ranks? 

I realize there are Sand Trap forumites who regularly hit it off the tips on a 7,000-8,000 yard course. I can't imagine the vast majority of golfers play off those tips.

No wonder golf is becoming slower. I would never hit off those tips but I'd still have to walk the extra 2-2,500 yards. 

 

[klineka]

17 hours ago, Jack Watson said:

It's probably a topic for another thread but to me golf I see most enjoyable when playing courses/yardages that force me to make a decision on the tee box.

It seems now that for the pros that's often not the case.  

Im quite the opposite actually. I enjoy being able to smash driver off the tee box (or at least attempt to), with relatively open fairways/landing areas, but then having tougher/more protected greens with bunkers, forced carries over water, false fronts, etc. Just purely my personal preference, and is skewed since I got a new driver this year 

12 hours ago, uitar9 said:

An amateur question:who started the idea that the game is getting to long? The owner who can't get a pro event because his course is too short for the pro ranks? 

I realize there are Sand Trap forumites who regularly hit it off the tips on a 7,000-8,000 yard course. I can't imagine the vast majority of golfers play off those tips.

No wonder golf is becoming slower. I would never hit off those tips but I'd still have to walk the extra 2-2,500 yards. 

 

Based on most of the courses I play that have tees 7,000+ yards, you have to walk right past the tips to play any of the shorter sets of tees, with the exception of maybe like 2-3 holes where the tips might be at a different angle. Obviously this comes into course design, but I bet most of the time you have to walk right past the tips to get to a closer teebox anyway so I dont really see how that is contributing to slowing golf.

[uitar9]

4 minutes ago, klineka said:

Im quite the opposite actually. I enjoy being able to smash driver off the tee box (or at least attempt to), with relatively open fairways/landing areas, but then having tougher/more protected greens with bunkers, forced carries over water, false fronts, etc. Just purely my personal preference, and is skewed since I got a new driver this year 

Based on most of the courses I play that have tees 7,000+ yards, you have to walk right past the tips to play any of the shorter sets of tees, with the exception of maybe like 2-3 holes where the tips might be at a different angle. Obviously this comes into course design, but I bet most of the time you have to walk right past the tips to get to a closer teebox anyway so I dont really see how that is contributing to slowing golf.

My point exactly-If a design adds another 1,500-2,000 yards to a course, It will take us hackers that much further to walk.

[iacas]

1 hour ago, uitar9 said:

My point exactly-If a design adds another 1,500-2,000 yards to a course, It will take us hackers that much further to walk.

What courses are doing this, though?

None. Whispering Woods was built within the last decade. You know how long the farthest tees are? About 6800 yards.

The idea that every golf course is having to buy new property or build more tees or whatever is a myth. It's untrue.

[mcanadiens]

I think there is some propensity for newer courses to be longer and have more distance from the green to the next tee. At least I see it in the courses around my area. However, that probably has much less to do with golf balls and more to do with the popularity of riding carts.