The Ball’s in Their Court
A rollback will only affect the small number of elite players who need to be reined in
The bowling ball, the tennis ball, the baseball and even the Magic 8 Ball have evolved since the end of World War II, when high-speed automation and ruthlessly efficient computer-driven engineering started to influence every aspect of modern life. But the changes were not radical, and that has made all the difference. The playing fields did not have to change. A Magic 8 Ball on a stereo speaker will still enliven any party, as it has for decades.
Ditto for the balls used in basketball and football and U.S. football, plus volleyball, kickball, dodgeball, handball and other sports that get you in touch with your inner sixth-grader. Stickball. Wiffle ball.
The one ball sport that has blown it is golf, which is weird, because is there any sport more hidebound than golf? Well, the truth is that golf only gives the appearance of being stuck in its white-belted past. The clubhead (size and material), the shaft (size and material), the tee (length) and the ball (inside and out) have all undergone extreme changes since the Ike-and-Arnie days that kicked this whole craze off.
Ever since the late 1980s, when Ping sued the PGA Tour and the USGA for trying to stop Tour players from using its clubs, manufacturers have tried to make golf more inviting for more people with more user-friendly equipment. Along the way, yes, of course, the manufacturers made money. They are not running non-profits.
The manufacturers have needed the game’s high priests to give these new products their stamp of approval before we piled on in. On that basis, the Adams Tight Lies hybrids were wildly popular for a while, along with the Odyssey Two-Ball putter and Eye-2 irons, to say nothing of the Titleist Professional ball, the Titleist Pro V1, the Titleist ProV1x and all the rest.
None of this technological improvement will turn a 92-shooter into an 82-shooter. But equipment is, of course, a fundamental part of our sport, and how we choose our equipment is part of golf’s unique and enduring appeal.
Now the USGA and the R&A, the game’s worldwide ruling bodies, want to slow down the golf ball, make it fly shorter distances than it does now. It’s a noble and I would say necessary goal for a tiny, tiny percentage of the world’s golf population: elite male pros playing in the world’s most important tournaments.
Nobody wants to see the game’s shrines—Augusta National when the Masters is played there, Bethpage Black when the PGA Championship is played there, Oakmont when the U.S. Open is played there, the Old Course when the British Open is played there—turned into relics. These courses, and maybe 300 other time-tested similar ones around the world, are on our collective bucket list. Now if any of us who can hit it 225 are lucky enough to play Augusta National, we’re not going to play the par-5 13th hole from the new back tee. Why would we? The goal is to see if we can do what they can do, carry the creek on the second shot. At 450, it’s a maybe. At 545, there’s no chance.
Let’s not even use the word bifurcated. Two different games are being played here.
I can prove to you that the USGA and R&A have not lost their standing with us. Do you know anybody who would play with more than 14 clubs? Do you know anybody who would play a ball that is one foot, or one inch, out of bounds, and pretend that it is not? We want a governing body in our golfing lives, and we need one. So the GBs are doing something right.
There is a real problem here: Golf courses are becoming obscenely long for a tiny number of golfers. If the GBs roll back the ball even 10 percent for the rest of us, we’ll never know the difference. The par-3 hole that was 155 yards will now be played at 145 and nobody will care and nobody will shoot a higher or lower score because of it.
But a wholesale change in the golf ball for the masses and the elites is not needed here. In fact, I don’t even think it will work. We’ll never know the difference and I don’t think the game’s best players will either. The 600-yard par-5 will still be a two-shot hole for them. Finesse has been taking a beating for years now.
You need a ball for golf’s major events so that our greatest temples don’t become obsolete. That’s it. You need a ball for the game’s longest hitters. I regularly see young men in their 30s who played college soccer or whatever who can bomb it. They can hit it past Jason Dufner. But they can’t break 85. They’re not the problem.
What the GBs ultimately have here is a political problem and a leadership problem. There is no need to change the game for the 60 or so million golfers around the world, and that is an almost impossible task anyhow. The game is, fundamentally, its playing fields, their challenge and their beauty and their charm. Challenge and beauty and charm are not the buzzwords of companies trying to make money, but they are what draws 60 million of us to golf courses on a regular basis. The GBs have sold the world on the importance of the 14-club rule and O.B. stakes. The gimme putt en route to an amateur’s stroke-play posted handicap score, which makes no sense, is proof alone that the game is, quote, bifurcated. Memo to the GBs: Keep your eye on the prize here. The only time the 330-yard drive matters, the only time it assaults the game, is when somebody like Rory McIlroy is doing it at some place like the Old Course. You’ve got Rory where you want him. Now go convince about 500 other people.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Bamberger@firepitcollective.com