BOMB: Perhaps the last thing I expected from our first day here at CordeValle Resort (other than you passing on the chocolate lava cake for dessert), was seeing Kirk Triplett tee it up two spots down on the range from us (he was here for the annual Steve Young/Jerry Rice Bay Area Classic). Even better was his open and honest assessment of the state of equipment and how it has impacted the game.
He listed three things he felt would help combat the advances technology had made. And when a three-time PGA Tour winner speaks, it serves people well to listen. Triplett felt that if you reduced driver head size to 250cc, took away square grooves and banned the long putter (an offense so egregious that you feel people should be banished to an island for using them), that the game would be more interesting. He even drove his point home by hitting some shots for us with a TaylorMade metal driver, circa 1983 which showed him getting 10-15 m.p.h. less ball speed than on a modern driver. Such limits might help rein in the game's elite, but I'm not sure they should be in place for the masses. You, however, may have different thoughts--even if you did hit one 7-iron shot a whopping 48 yards with a smash factor of 0.52 according to
Trackman.
GOUGE: I'm pacing myself. And we all know that long putters and belly putters are grotesque malformations of the game's true intentions. Triplett's assessment was intriguing, measured and thoughtful, not full of the blather you usually hear from golf technology reactionaries. He used the phrase "more interesting, not necessarily better," and admitted he had played his entire career with square grooves. He thinks that particular adjustment will be significant for shots from the light rough. Either way, I think we've both seen enough smart minds at the game's equipment companies to realize that any 250 cc driver of the future (the size of the old Great Big Bertha Titanium driver of 1995) would be way better than the original invention, but still not as helpful to you or I as the current crop of 460 cc clubs. In fact, we let a few other of the guests at CordeValle try out the TaylorMade relic, including a decorated teacher with a syrupy swing that Triplett assured us was much better than his own. Well, that swing that moved through the ball effortlessly with a a 460 cc driver head snap hooked a few and actually topped a couple others before hitting a couple serviceable pops (although short and low and about as lifeless as one of those lame parachute men you get at Chuck E. Cheese for 50 tickets).
And you'll see some research upcoming in the January issue of Golf Digest that shows just how uncertain performance might be with those everything-old-is-new-again V-like grooves. But you wonder just how much the game is going to change in the next 18 months. And how those changes will trickle down from the greatest players to the paying customers. In the meantime, our trailer is full of bounteous supplies of big drivers, sharp-grooved irons and wedges and a full fortnight's worth of enjoying just how playable all those mis-hits now are.
But search through every corner and every staff bag in our trailer and there's about only one piece of equipment you won't find: long putters. Or as I like to call them: Golf's Mortal Sin. Put it right up there with idolatry, genetic manipulation of humans for personal profit and baby seal clubbing.
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