Because 207 yards is not a threat: Bomb & Gouge: Golf Digest

Because 207 yards is not a threat

Monday, July 3, 2006 Comments

GOUGE: It is hard for me to say this, but if a professional golfer can average 207 yards off the tee and make the cut at the most prestigious tournament of the year, then maybe we don't need to worry so much about a rollback of any kind. 207? It is true. Rosie Jones did that this week. In fact, only the teenage wondergirl hit it farther than 280 on some of her measured drives. Hardly anyone else even came close to that. OK, so Rosie was barely in the tournament and retired from competitive golf after putting out on the 18th on Sunday. But still the average drive at the U.S. Women's Open was just 228.7, and that's hardly a threat to any golf course. Indeed, Newport Country Club didn't even play at its maximum yardage this week. Would the best men destroy it at its topped out yardage of more than 6,800 yards? Probably. As an example, at the recent U.S. Open at Winged Foot, the driving distance was 290.9 yards, or about 28 percent longer than the women are currently averaging. You want to know what's the real problem? People who complain that the golf ball is going too far may be short-sighted. The problem is that at the elite level (men) it's not the ball, it's the golf course. If men are driving it 28 percent farther than women, then why (at least in the case of the U.S. Open) are the men playing a championship course that is only about 10 percent longer? Shouldn't the U.S. Open and all significant men's championships be played at courses that are about 8,000 yards long, or at least 7,500 yards long? Well, I guess they're not because there's no room to make Winged Foot, Oakland Hills, Oak Hill, Southern Hills and Merion that long. That infatuation with the past is what Emerson called a foolish consistency. Maybe I've oversimplified the argument. Driving distance at the U.S. Women's Open is about 246 yards over the last five years, a number a little shorter than current LPGA driving distance, but not alarmingly so. Driving distance average at the men's U.S. Open over the last four years is a little longer than current PGA Tour driving distance, but again not alarmingly so. Again, I don't see evidence of a tragic trend. I'd like to, but I don't.

BOMB: Of course you’d like to. We don’t refer to you as “The Prince of Darkness” for nothing. But finally, FINALLY you might be coming to your senses. The ball is not the problem. The courses are not the problem. Drivers are not the problem. Know why? They’re ain’t no stinkin’ problem! And we don’t need to go to 7,500 or 8,000 yards, either, to keep it that way.

Opponents of distance regulation have long said “grow some rough.” Worked pretty well at Winged Foot, don’t ya think? Or maybe some courses with doglegs. No one is J.B. Holmes-ing Harbour Town. Hell, we even have the U.S. Open going back to Merion for goodness sakes. To MERION . You know—the defenseless poster child for all golf courses that have been made obsolete by modern technology. Guess the USGA thought otherwise.

But here’s the only stat that matters in my opinion. Throwing out the Match Play where they don’t keep the stats, there have been 26 events so far on the PGA Tour this year. In nine of them—more than a third—the winner has ranked 34th or higher in driving distance for the week. That’s out of about 70 players or so that make the cut. In six of those events the winner ranked 58th or higher. That’s right, 58TH—a lot closer to last than first. The winner has been in the top 10 exactly 10 times. That means sometimes distance wins and sometimes it doesn’t. And when distance is the difference-maker I’m all for it. Golf is a sport. An athletic endeavor where physical superiority should be rewarded. But unlike weight-lifting, it’s not the sole determinant of success. Tiger, Phil and Vijay may blast the cover off the ball, but I don’t think they’d be choppers if they didn’t. Holmes and John Daly and the like will wow us every so often with a week where they whack the ball a mile and hole an equally-lengthy amount of putts. But Fred Funk will win a Players and Jim Furyk a U.S. Open playing small ball. Year after year we see that it all comes out in the wash. And for those recreational players that say courses are getting too long for them, I point you to the words of Pete Dye, who said when confronted with that complaint: “I simply cannot help you if you insist on playing from the wrong set of tees.”

GOUGE: Still, just because we don't want the debate to end, here's the play-by-play for the top three finishers on the 444-yard 18th hole Sunday at the Buick Championship:
J.J. Henry:
Shot 1 361 yds to right fairway, 82 yds to hole

Hunter Mahan:
Shot 1 349 yds to right fairway, 94 yds to hole

Ryan Moore
Shot 1 332 yds to cart path, 110 yds to hole

Rating

Rate it:

1 star 2 stars 3 stars 4 stars 5 stars

Comments

Archived Comments (3) Click to expand

I don't think distance is the problem. What I would like to see is a ball that spins like the old balatas. That would bring more shot-making back into the game at the highest level and do away with some of the "I would rather have a wedge from the rough than a seven iron from the fairway" thinking. The higher spinning ball would mean that pros would think twice before hitting it as hard as possible. I don't care if the pros play 8000 yard courses or 6000 yard ones, but I would like to see them shaping the ball around doglegs instead of just bombing over the corners. One other thought, if Ben Hogan had hit a wedge into the 72nd hole at the 1950 Open instead of a one iron, it would have been just another golf shot instead of one of the iconic moments in the history of the game.

--from Clay Rouse

GOUGE responds: So what you are saying is you want a return to an inefficient golf ball. Doesn't matter to me, but it does seem a little unfair to ball manufacturers to restrict their RD teams back to the Dark Ages of persimmon, while clubhead designers are free to operate in the 21st century. If players are bombing it over the corners of doglegs, the course they're playing isn't long enough and the fairways aren't tight enough. Asking for a somewhat restricted ball design is like mandating that golf only be played during a 15-25 mile per hour winds. Golf ball design is what it is, but whether it's made the game too easy, well, that seems a bit of a stretch. Not a lot of 54s being shot these days and when they set up a course to really challenge the best in the world, you get a score like you saw at the U.S. Open. You can ski the hill at Torino when they aren't contesting the Winter Olympics. Go there and try to ski down the mountain when the women's downhill is set up and you'll end up carried back to safety by a St. Bernard. That's how hard a championship needs to be for the best players. And when they get it right, a score like 5-over wins, which is the highest winning score at the U.S. Open in the last 30 years. And the USGA has a few words about this distance dillying back and forth, so much fear overstating the case (http://www.usga.org/news/2006/april/myths.html).

Posted by Clay Rouse July 10, 2006 12:10 PM

Hey, I don't think the game is too easy for the pros, but the way they play has changed in response to the evolving technology. This is only natural, but I simply found the game more interesting to watch when the pros got their scores by "working" the ball instead of bombing it. And, yes, a return to a less efficient golf ball would make the game more interesting to watch. And, no, I don't expect that to ever happen. I'll just continue to spend less time watching golf and more time playing. Besides, I want another 50 yards off the tee as much as any other hacker.

GOUGE responds: Ball companies aren't in the habit of making inefficient products. Moreover, there is a sense that if you dialed back the ball in some way (let's say like the Ohio Golf Association is attempting to do for its Champions Tournament next month), new clubs would be developed to better match the ideal launch conditions. The only solution is an extreme one (balls with a thick layer of windings and clubs not made of any non-wood material), and I don't think that's much of a solution, or even a particularly necessary one. But dang could we find a way to get a few more driver-long iron par four holes in major championships?

Posted by Clay Rouse July 13, 2006 12:40 PM

Why don't they just make the maximum length of wooden tees like 1". This would keep the ball down, make smaller headed drivers a necessity and not cost anyone a dime other than a few insignificant tee manufacturers. Juice the ball, club, courses all you want.

GOUGE responds: Interesting. In fact Peter Dawson, head of the RA, has even gone so far as to suggest that the tee be outlawed. A 1-inch tee means the center of gravity of the golf ball still could be more than 1.5 inches off the ground, and most big clubheads still have a cg lower than that.

Posted by osisbs July 13, 2006 1:14 PM